New Economy, society & culture
There’s a bit of a misunderstanding about the promise of the You Economy.
It’s not all about you: your self-worth, your passion, your personal brand.
It’s about your power to create and offer something of lasting value. It’s about your ability to contribute to things that are bigger than yourself. It’s about your access to the machinations of commerce.
My friend Amanda Steinberg, who is also the founder & CEO of the financial education company you simply must subscribe to, wrote recently of the proliferation of personal brands in the wake of the solo entrepreneurship craze.
She describes it–and I squealed when I read this–as a “torrent of social media one-upmanship.” It’s a race for the funkiest website, the hippest photos, the most profound tweets, the cleverest pins, the most raw Facebook updates.
Stand out, or stand down.
And she’s right. It’s a mess.
The You Economy doesn’t promise that you can get paid to be you. It doesn’t guarantee that you can make money & follow your passion.
The You Economy promises that you have the chance to create something that makes others lives meaningfully better.
You can harness your passion, your personality, your pizzazz to realize that imperative but those things are no substitute for stick-to-your-ribs value.
If you’ve found yourself in the one-upmanship game of personal branding or the race to social media stardom, it doesn’t mean your business is doomed. But it does mean you need to stop–today–and evaluate the value your business is creating.
Escape “digiphoria; the cold, joyless comfort of softly glowing screens.”
Venture into the pursuit of something real.
Click to tweet!
What are you pursuing? What keeps you up at night? How does that drive you to serve? To create? To question?
The You Economy has asked you to show up. Not just as you are, but in pursuit of the solution to a problem, the answer to a question, the fulfillment of a desire.
Will you rise to the occasion?
New Economy
Despite the lasting effects of the recession, despite crippling college loan debt, despite the stubborn unemployment rate, there has never–ever–been a period of history where you have more control over your work and the way you get paid for it.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a part of the ever-growing movement of entrepreneurs and freelancers that are making up the global economy in larger & larger shares. But there are plenty of others joining small teams of motivated doers, organizing to create something new & meaningful and then disbanding to look for the next opportunity. Still more people are writing their own job descriptions and determining their own expectations at growing companies.
This rapidly evolving economic environment, this strange new world of work & creative energy, requires unprecedented agency to get ahead, to make an impact.
The You Economy is self-determined.
Are you? Click to tweet!
Success in business today is not predetermined by a particular set of preconditions. It’s not contrived from a particular set of tactics or forged from a website with graphics and layout just so.
Only you can determine the course by which your business succeeds. Only you can determine the best way to merge your ideas with your customers’ perspective to find the winning combination of service and profit.
This is your chance to shine, to decide. Don’t lend your light to others you believe know better than you. Learn, grow, collaborate–but don’t lose track of your own ability to create a path that allows your business to make its greatest impact.
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Ready to realize your own dreams? Ready to forge a self-determined future that includes a business with a big impact & a life of meaning?
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Art of Growth, Big Thinking, New Economy
“Only you can do what you do” is a pop culture principle of the microbusiness movement. But it only tells a very small part of the story. And in doing so, keeps the impact these businesses can make on their customers and the world–as well as their owners–very small.
Yes, you have a unique set of skills, talents, and experience. Nilofer Merchant calls this “onlyness” and my friend Michelle Ward, the When I Grow Up Coach, calls this “uniquity.”
You’d be remiss to underestimate what that adds to the value your business creates and how it engages customers. However, your onlyness or uniquity is not the value itself. It is simply a channel for that value. It’s a differentiator. It may be a selling point but it’s not what sells.
I see this misunderstanding stemming from one problem and contributing to another:
First, microbusiness owners–and predominantly women–all too often see their businesses as a method of discovering their self-worth and an engine for igniting their personal development. While entrepreneurship and business ownership can, in fact, be part of the process of developing both, it is not the source of either.
Business development and personal development are not one in the same. One might inform the other but your attention to both should remain separate.
“Only you can do what you do” tries to validate your specialness through your business.
But until you can stand confidently in your beliefs, experiences, and worth as a human being, your business isn’t going anywhere. You’re already special. You don’t need a business to validate that fact. And your business won’t.
Your business can’t make your special. You already are.
Click to tweet.
Let your business grow on its own merits not yours. Focus more on selling the value it creates for your customers and focus less on selling yourself.
Second, microbusiness owners use “only you can do what you do” as an excuse not to create leverage in their businesses. The adage blinds us to opportunities for scale. If only you can do what you do, then it reasons that you must be involved in every aspect of your business.
This is not the case. I’d much rather believe that you, in fact, can do what I do. But even if that doesn’t work for your business, it’s important to know that just because your perspective is unique, executing it is not.
Your perspective is unique, executing it is not.
Click to tweet.
What if instead of running yourself ragged, trying to do it all, you trained someone to act on your insight? What if your business was driven by your unique perspective and realized by others skill?
If you choose to forget “only you can do what you do,” what new ideas could you dream up? What new areas for growth could you explore? What ways could your business create a greater impact on the world?
— PS —
The Art of Growth, my book on redefining business growth for a new generation of entrepreneurs shares more ideas like this one. Grab your copy today.
Big Thinking, New Economy
It seems cliche but small – even micro – businesses are the backbone of our [global] economy. In the United States, 91.5% of businesses have fewer than 5 employees. And according to the US Census Bureau, $837 billion in sales are generated by non-employer businesses (businesses of one) in 2009. That’s equal to about 70 Apples. That’s big business.
Small businesses employ more people and turn more dreams into reality.
Small is mighty.
No doubt your inbox, mailbox, Facebook stream, and main street are littered with “Shop local” and “Support small business” flyers this weekend. Between cash mobs, Small Business Saturday, just general Black Friday backlash, you are feeling the heat from small business owners and their friends this holiday season.
That’s not bad.
But it’s not good either.
See, we are hurtling towards a new age in commerce where businesses are no longer big or small.
All businesses have access to the most powerful tool of the day: the network. Some use it, some exploit it, some ignore it, some serve it… but all have access to it.
What made business BN (before-the-network) a boys’ club was that only certain boys had access to the most important tool of the day: money. Money meant machinery, human capital, real estate, technology, training, supplies. Controlling financial capital (or being able to turn other assets into financial capital) was the only way to enter the market and do business.
But with power concentrated among those with access to financial capital, things got real uneven, real fast. The more things got uneven, the more financial capitalists saw an opportunity to squeeze profit & productivity out of human capital, environmental capital, and organizational capital.
In other words, we got the shaft.
So we started to see big business – financial capitalists – as the enemy.
“Shop local!” “Support small business!” Cash mobs, the maker movement, food trucks, the modern farmer’s market movement–they all developed in response to a system that had enslaved us and our culture for so long. For many–though certainly not all, these developments were fueled by Us vs Them energy. Rage against the machine.
But we don’t live the in the industrial age anymore. We don’t even live in the information age anymore. We live in the connected age or, as Nilofer Merchant refers to it, the Social Era.
It’s not the steel-fisted financial capitalists that hold the power.
It’s each of us, network capitalists, that hold the power. It’s distributed influence and it’s based on your ability to cultivate connections between you and others around you.
The Us vs Them paradigm just isn’t accurate anymore. A microbusiness, with just 1 or 2 people, can produce a video that is seen by millions. They can grow a subscription base that makes newspaper corporations swoon. They can develop apps that sell for a billion dollars. Small is powerful.
Perhaps small is more powerful.
“In practical terms, here’s what all of this means: a person or team anywhere in the world can create scale without being big.”
— Nilofer Merchant, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era
(emphasis mine)
The problem is that the Us vs Them paradigm is what we’re accustomed to. It’s what we’ve always lived. So we tend to put people/business/regions/organizations in groups that need to square off.
The “versus” paradigm I see so often taking shape now is Unsustainable vs Thriving.
We’re cheering on those who have created businesses that don’t work, don’t create viable connections, and don’t grow. I’m all for cheering them on — but what are we doing to turn them into Thriving businesses?
Here’s an example: I shared a recent post on how “Facebook is not an advertising charity.” The article makes the case for how Facebook’s fairly new “sponsored stories” option is a triple win. It’s good for Users because they get to see better content, more often, from the people & pages they actually care about. It’s good for Facebook because, well, they make money and seeing how they’re a business, that’s important. It’s good for Page Owners (read: many small business owners) because it challenges them to create better content that will be shared well beyond the initial ad buy.
Every day it seems I see a small business owner bemoaning and condemning a change on Facebook. Generally, it’s not about privacy–it’s about cost. “Facebook is evil” was a comment that graced my screen a day or two ago.
Besides the fact that if you think it’s evil, you should probably not be using the platform, Facebook is a business. Their job is to make money (not unlike yours). To do that, they’ve built the most powerful social connection platform the world has ever seen. As far as I know, it’s the business with the biggest, broadest user base the world has ever known.
Facebook–like it or not–performs a huge service through it’s software. It will learn how to make money. It can (and probably will regardless) make money selling data. But it can also provide immense value to small business owners (that’s a helluva big market) by providing inexpensive, scalable, targeted advertising.
The problem is not that Facebook is evil. It’s that it’s successful (by many measures, if not financially yet).
Facebook, for it’s valuation and reach, it’s very small company with around 3500 employees.
Unfortunately, I see the “Support Small Business” movement as all too often trying to prop up dying business models. Mom & pop shops (virtual or analog) are often run in entirely unsustainable ways. They rarely translate sweat equity into financial equity. They often rely on cheap or free labor instead of trained employees.
I’m convinced that more-faster-cheaper big box stores won out in the Eighties and Nineties because the mom & pops more often than not failed to convince us that they had something better to offer.
I believe we’re not hardwired to prefer paying less, we’re hardwired to pay to get what we want.
Click to tweet that!
Big box stores figured out how to present a package that appealed to us. Small business has the same burden.
When mom & pops provide a package that appeals to us more than the big guys, we pay more, shop shorter hours, and jump through more hoops. But so often, they do not.
Small business abdicated power to big business not so much because the big business muscled their way into the domain of small and more often because small business had failed to deliver a compelling reason for customers to jump through the hoops.
Maybe you’ve heard how a new Starbucks can actually increase business for popular independent coffee shops?
The Us vs Them paradigm we use to celebrate small business glorifies failing business models and practices. It glamorizes the refusal to evolve.
This isn’t Us vs Them anymore. It’s not Small vs Big anymore. It’s us and them. It’s small is big. Small is mighty. Small is powerful.
But not if being small means relying on the generosity of others to prop up what is broken.
So my question is, how do we encourage small business in an era when small is mighty?
How do we celebrate small business in a way that acknowledges its immense opportunity today?
Click to tweet that!
Here are three of my ideas. I would love to hear your own in the comments.
Education is encouragement. Know a small business owner that doesn’t take credit cards? Introduce him to Square instead of cash mobbing him. Know a small business owner that is exploiting free labor? Let her know how much you value well-trained, engaged, attentive service.
Change public policy. Public policy in the United States was built for a different era of employment. With small businesses & freelancers, often unincorporated, becoming a larger & larger part of the workforce (estimates as high as 50%), we need regulations, policies, and laws that make the social safety net (including health insurance, worker’s compensation, unemployment, and bonus retirement savings) the norm for everyone.
Buy what you value. Don’t support a small business or friendly freelancer because they’re small. Support them because they create a quality product. Support them because they add value to your life through their work. Support them because they believe in the same things you do, whether they’re family, faith, the beauty of finely crafted single origin coffee, or the importance of a dozen different mac and cheese recipes.
So yes, shop local and shop small this holiday season. But don’t do it out of sympathy. Shop where your values and value-desired align. Shop where you can get exactly what you want, the way you want it.
Celebrate the opportunities that await small businesses today–not their shortcomings.
Business Brainstorm, New Economy
When community invests in an idea, it also co-owns its success.
– Nilofer Merchant, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era
Your business is not yours alone. Welcome to the brave new world of co-creation and co-ownership. Here, individualism coexists with collectivism. Here, the results of your ambition rely on your ability to create the network that allows you to succeed.
So the question is: are you creating a customer network that is ready to co-create your vision?
There is a piece of “popular” business advice that asserts that “you should teach what you know to people who are a few steps behind you.”
For instance, if you’ve worked through a big personal transformation, you can become a life coach & help others through their own personal transformations. If you’re a blogger, you can help others set up their own blogs. If you write books, you can teach beginning authors how to get published.
Makers, keep reading, I’m not going to let you off the hook.
Hey, this isn’t a bad idea. In fact, this is probably a decent way to get started serving others and making money doing it. You’ve honed in on a specific problem that you can solve and you’re willing to put a price tag on it. Sure, go for it.
But where will you go next?
Honest question.
You can keep serving these clients, incrementally increasing the sophistication of what you’re offering. As you solve new problems for yourself, you can turn those solutions into products and services.
It makes a lot of sense and it can work. Just like monetization.
But will you be satisfied?
I like a challenge. I love the thrill of unleashing my great work for clients who scare the pants off of me. My work gets better & better in environments of great uncertainty.
Having a client that challenges me doesn’t mean that my back is against a wall, it means that my eyes are open to the full array of possibilities before us both. I’m not relying on personal experience or a single formula for my success. It’s an opportunity ripe for never-tried-before ideas and mutual magic-making.
By honoring their experiences, their knowledge, and their trust in our work, we can create something brand new. Together.
I used to feel threatened by the brilliance of my clients. I worried that I failed them when they had an idea or a revelation that wasn’t directly prompted by …me. And then I realized that our very connection was what made that possible. When working with clients that challenge me, I don’t have to be the end-all-be-all in business strategy.
No, it’s my job to co-create the space for our mutual success.
I can be the catalyst. Our work together is the entry point. It isn’t confined to my knowledge & expertise; it’s open to collaboration.
When you & your clients are co-owners of collaborative success, you both are creating something more meaningful than livelihood or results. You are creating movements, future opportunities, and networked transformation. The effects are more wide-reaching, the value is more long-lasting. The possibly of up-ending the status quo is much greater.
But will I rise to the occasion?
Look, it’s easier to cultivate a social network of people who want to be like you. To do what you’ve done. To grasp a little piece of your success. But the rewards of creating network connections to those who are ready to co-own your success are vast.
It can be the difference between slogging by doing something that once thrilled you and forging a new path to a more lucrative future, both financially & meaningfully.
- Are you cultivating a network of yes-people? Or are you gathering a select tribe of idea-challengers?
- Are you going with what you know? Or are you seeking out opportunities for growth?
- Are you seeking out reinforcement of your own experiences? Or are you creating a hub for shared intelligence?
“… attracting and seducing consumers with a relevant, helpful, and unique point of view works better than shoving more messages into the already loud marketplace.”
— Nilofer Merchant, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era
But how will I find these people?
Here’s a common exercise I do with clients who are ready to make this jump:
Look around your network right now. Make a list of 5 people with a “relevant, helpful, and unique point of view” who are connected to you in some (even tenuous) way who could benefit from your time, talent, and skills.
- How would working for them be different than working with the clients or customers you currently have?
- What conversations or projects would get their attention?
- If you were working for/with them, what changes would you make to the day-to-day operations of your business?
- What problems or desires would you be working on?
- How would your message be different if it was crafted for them and not the mass market?
“Attracting and seducing” the clients that will take your business to the next level begins with everyday changes in behavior. If you don’t adjust your routines, expectations, and message to be especially for them before you attract them, you’ll never have the opportunity to co-create your next-level business with them.
The answers to the above questions are your first steps. Those answers will guide you towards making the changes today that will breed success tomorrow. Those answers will help you step into the attitude of success before it’s even created.
Essentially, you’re inviting your future customers to co-own your success before they’ve even invested in your world.
And that’s why those kind of customers are powerful. And why that’s the kind of people you want to be in business with.
— PS —
I wrote this post with service providers in mind. But product creators & makers, you don’t get off so easy. I see so many makers limiting their visions to a customer who doesn’t fully appreciate what they do. And it shows. What happens if you challenge yourself to create your product for a more challenging set of customers? What would need to change about how your make, market, and sell your creation? How could your product fulfill the ultimate fantasy of a very special network?
Are the customer you’re courting ready to co-own your success?
— PPS —
If this is the kind of leap you’re looking to take in your business before the end of the year, I invite you to join me, Adam King, and a small group of dedicated business owners for Make Your Mark. It’s a 12-week, intensive business coaching program designed to allow you take on challenging, satisfying work that creates loads of personal wealth.
And it’s the only opportunity to coach long-term with me with Fall. There are a limited number of spots on the team – and they’re going quickly! Click here to learn more.
Business Brainstorm, New Economy
Has “monetization” made you nervous about pushing your business ideas to the next level?
The word “monetization” has a shadowy past in the world of business online. Bloggers have tried to monetize their audiences. Developers have tried to monetize free products. Old school media has tried to monetize their content.
Some people have made money through monetization. Some haven’t.
My problem with the idea of monetization isn’t that it doesn’t work but that it’s a destructive, extractive way to view your business. It lacks the innovation, disruption, and creativity that a value(s)-driven business model has.
Isn’t this all semantics?
Perhaps. But I put a lot of credence in the language people use. And when people use the word “monetization,” it blocks their creative juices and dampens their abundance receptors. Click to tweet it!
Here’s why:
Monetization is rent-seeking.
In economics, “rent-seeking” is basically trying to get a bigger piece of the pie. It assumes that there is a finite set of dollars or customers and that you need to through your weight around to get some of it.
The business owners I work with & that read this [site, blog, email] don’t think that way about their business growth. They want to serve. They want to contribute. They want to create things of great value. But they are often following strategies that were devised for monetization & rent-seeking.
And they see a false causality between monetization strategies & success.
For instance, blogs were never designed to be businesses. Blogging grew out of the human desire to record & reflect on life. They became communities out of the human desire to connect and cultivate intimacy.
At some point, people realized there was commercial opportunity in blogging. And I don’t blame them at all! Those early professional bloggers were creating something truly valuable, generating fresh wealth on a daily basis, creating connective threads through communities. As others wanted to get on the growing market, they wanted to learn how to duplicate the success those early bloggers had.
What started as genuine value creation became “monetization strategy.” Here, it was not only the business model that got copied but the content, communities, and outreach. Look around the blogosphere and you’ll see layer upon layer of sameness. Again, what was genuine value is now fluff designed to make money, generate traffic, and simulate credibility.
So when I see people tell you to create lots of free content, build an email list, reach some magic number, and then launch your first digital product, I want to throw up a little. It’s backwards because it’s a strategy that was reverse-engineered from a misunderstanding.
What will you do to generate new, stick-to-your-ribs value? Don’t worry if what you have in mind can’t be “free.” Who cares? Creating value creates buzz. Even when it’s for sale. Especially if it’s for sale. You can build a community or movement from a product that people pay for. Below are three examples of vibrant, profitable communities built on paid products.
Remember Tara Mohr from yesterday’s post? She was amazed at how her audience grew when she launched the very first session of Playing Big. Beyond reaching her sales goal, she added hundreds of new fans. People took notice because she was generating fresh value.
Danielle LaPorte didn’t grow a massive blog and then launch products & services to serve her readers. She sensed she had wealth to offer the world, packaged it as a Fire Starter Session and offered it to anyone who could use it. I believe that the massive value she delivered through those sessions was much more the catalyst of her growth than the awesomeness of her blog. To this day, she continues to create fresh value first instead of extract monetary reward from her audience.
MailChimp created a great email service that companies paid for before they started giving free accounts away to microbusinesses by the drove. They had a profitable business long before they started growing through the freemium model. When they went freemium (you can have a robust email marketing account with them for FREE), they actually noticed a sweet uptick in larger, paying customers as well. That’s not because MailChimp started offering free accounts, it’s because they were delivering a great product.
Why on earth could going freemium bring in these larger and larger paying customers?
Because we did everything totally bass-ackwards.
— MailChimp blog
MailChimp regularly adds 2,000 new accounts per day, most of which are free, but that initial community grew because of the greatness of the product not because it was free.
A small percentage of a very large number is indeed a large number, but can your startup stay solvent while you wait for the conversion to kick in? Freemium only offers the hope that non-paying users will fall in love with your product and start paying for it.
— Rags Srinivasan, Gigaom
You’re looking for impact and growth. You’re hungry to make a difference in as many people’s lives as possible. But free first isn’t the only way.
Your greatest asset to growth might be the product or service you’ve been waiting so long to create.
Click to tweet it!
Your fear of “monetization” is justified. It’s your fear of having something to sell that’s not. If only you had a framework for knowing whether you were truly creating a remarkable product with stick-to-your-ribs value or launching yet another rent-seeking monetization strategy, you could fix it, change it, launch the damn thing already.
If you find yourself questioning the products or services you’re considering launching, it’s probably because you see so much rent-seeking around you.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine whether your idea falls under true value creation or whether it’s just a monetization strategy:
- What is the impact of this product on my customer’s life right now?
- What is the impact of this product on my customer’s life over the next 1-5 years?
- How does this product address a genuine frustration or desire that my customer has?
- Would my customer seek out alternatives if my product didn’t exist?
- Who do I want my customer to become as a result of using my product?
- Will my customer want to tell his/her friends about my product?
Create something that people are willing to pay for first.
And let them pay for it! Let them tell their friends.
Don’t rest your success on your ability to convert the masses. Use your early adopters to recruit & court your next wave of customers.
Don’t rely on monetization strategies that seek to collect rent from a community you’re sharing with others in your niche. Generate fresh value that solves a problem or fulfills a need for the customers you want to serve.
There’s plenty of room in the kitchen to build a bigger pie. There are plenty of ways you can serve, needs you can fill.
You’ll create a more robust movement of customers who are engaged, motivated, and results-driven. You’ll get feedback you can actually use. You’ll see opportunities as they present themselves.
It might take longer to grow. But your growth will be more sustainable, longer-lasting, and less dependent on you.
And you can take that to the bank.
