What Broadway Taught Me About Building a Business

Why Live Theatre Lessons Apply To Producing a Successful Business. Broadway business lessons.

Why Live Theatre Lessons Apply To Producing a Successful Business. Broadway business lessons.

Every great Broadway show starts with zero buzz and ends in standing ovations. What does that have to do with running a business? Everything. This article explores what Broadway teaches every entrepreneur. Running a business is like being a stage director. Your product launch = opening night, when the goal is to score emotional reviews and a standing ovation.

Studying what it takes to produce a winning Broadway show can teach every entrepreneur valuable lessons: emotional storytelling, anticipation, and spotlighting the customer. This curtain-up guide will help you run your business like a hit show.

Opening Night for Your Business 

Before any Broadway show becomes a hit, it starts the same way every business does: behind the curtain, full of mystery, potential, and just a little fear. You don’t know if it’ll work. You don’t know if anyone will care. But you hope that someday, someone will stand up and cheer. Bringing a product, service, or idea to life takes heart. It takes drama. And most of all, it takes storytelling, just like live theater.

Act I: The Reviews

When a new show hits Broadway, critics and audience reactions either spark buzz or bury it. Not ads. Not algorithms. Just raw, emotional responses that get shared. That’s exactly how modern businesses grow. Forget sterile testimonials. Capture the emotion behind a customer’s experience:

  • “I couldn’t believe how personal it felt.”
  • “They helped me solve a problem I’d buried for years.”
  • “I told everyone I knew. I still do.”

These aren’t marketing lines. They’re mini standing ovations. And every brand should collect them like applause.

Why Live Theatre Lessons Apply To Producing a Successful Business. Broadway business lessons.

 

Act II: The Viral Hook

No show makes it big on paid ads alone. Hits go viral when a clip finds its way to TikTok… when a fan records a line and it gets quoted a million times. That’s the power of micro-moments. And it works for every business. Whether you’re a bakery, a tech startup, a small shop, or yes, a photo scanning business, when you spotlight your customer’s story, you give them the starring role. Challenge your customers. Invite stories. Create a hashtag. Keep it real. Emotion wins. Always.

  • 📸 “This was the last photo I took with him.”
  • 🧡 Now it lives forever — online and in my heart.

Act III: The Star Is Your Customer

What sets great theater apart is that the audience feels like they’re part of the experience. Great brands do the same. The secret isn’t in the product — it’s in how you make people feel. Let your customers become the heroes. Share their stories. Feature their journeys. Celebrate their wins. Don’t just sell. Spotlight. Make it human. Make it art.

At ScanMyPhotos, we started a series called “Before & After: What Changed Everything.”

Final Curtain Call: The ScanMyPhotos Story

All of this isn’t just theory. We’ve lived it. At ScanMyPhotos, we didn’t build our business like a website — we built it like a Broadway production. We leaned into emotion. We shared real stories. We treated every scanned box of photos like an opening night performance. From viral challenges to customer testimonials… from hurricane photo rescues to a CBS Evening News feature… we brought Broadway-level heart to every order.

Here’s What Producing a Broadway Hit Teaches You:

  • People don’t remember what they bought.
  • They remember how it made them feel. And that’s what turns a product into a showstopper. Take a bow.

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