Things I Have Googled Because I Own a Business

Owning a business has made me temporarily knowledgeable about an absurd number of things.

Not actually knowledgeable.

That distinction is important.

But knowledgeable enough to solve one extremely specific problem at 11:30 on a Wednesday and then retain just enough information to be dangerous if the subject ever comes up again.

My search history could probably qualify me for several professions for which I am profoundly unqualified.

Marketing is my job.

This has somehow required me to research DNS records, printing specifications, event permitting, email authentication, sign dimensions, QR codes, postage, accessibility requirements, tent weights, music licensing, domain transfers, search indexing, paper stock, media deadlines, file formats, and whatever Meta Business Suite has decided to do today.

Nobody tells you how much of owning a business is just figuring things out.

I had a much simpler understanding of jobs before this.

A baker bakes. A photographer takes photographs. A consultant consults.

Adorable.

A small-business owner also becomes a receptionist, salesperson, IT department, accounts receivable department, purchasing manager, project manager, scheduler, quality-control department, customer-service representative, and occasional printer troubleshooter.

“I can probably figure it out” is both a skill and a problem.

Usually my process looks something like this: What exactly needs to happen? Who would know? Is there documentation? Has someone made a YouTube video? What piece am I missing? How badly could this go wrong?

Do not spend too long on that last one.

Being comfortable not knowing something immediately is an underrated business skill.

I do not need to know every answer. I need to know how to find the answer, how to evaluate whether it is reliable, and when the answer is “call someone who actually does this for a living.”

The internet assumes every search is a new hobby.

Research one obscure topic for a client and suddenly every algorithm believes you have developed a lifelong passion for it.

No, I am not opening a commercial kitchen. I needed to know one thing.

Thank you for the recommendations.

Small-business owners become generalists almost by accident.

Working across different problems teaches you to see connections.

The website problem may actually be a customer-service problem. The marketing problem may be a scheduling problem. The event problem may be a communication problem. The inbox problem may be a process problem.

The more different things you encounter, the easier it becomes to recognize patterns.

The real skill is knowing when to stop Googling.

There is a point where “I can figure this out” becomes “I absolutely should not be the person figuring this out.”

Resourcefulness is useful. So is knowing the edge of your competence.

There is a weird confidence that comes from solving random problems. Not “I know everything,” but “I have seen enough bizarre situations that we can probably start somewhere.”

My browser tabs are evidence of an education I did not know I was signing up for.

There was no syllabus.

Just problems, opportunities, questions, experiments, conversations, mistakes, and a truly unreasonable number of searches.

I do not know whether that technically counts as professional development.

But at this point, I am counting it.