Big Thinking, New Economy, society & culture
To make it really work, we might need a new indie economics (of creativity and innovation), plus a new indie set of political policies.
— Bruce Nussbaum, Fast Company Design
I’m nailing my theses to the NYSE door. This is economic Reformation.
What is the New Economy?
What Nussbaum terms “indie economics,” I call “you-centered economics.”
You are not used to being at the center of the economy. You have not been the linchpin of economic growth. You have been a mere cog in the machine. You were a commodity to be traded.
You are becoming the heart & soul of a new engine of economic growth. You are influencing giant corporations through your words & actions. You are forming microbusinesses and taking earning into your own hands. You are less dependent on “the system” and more dependent on your community.
But “you” doesn’t just mean you. You is also “the other.”
When you make business decisions, you not only think of “me,” you consider the “we.” It’s not enough to make a business decision for your own singular benefit, you make business decisions that serve others as well.
You understand that a business is nothing if it doesn’t serve a greater good. All business is social entrepreneurship, to you. All business has an obligation to create a legacy of sustainability, creativity, innovation, and service.
Businesses serve people. People do not serve businesses.
Global is the new local.
Indie economy is local. They are small scale. They are built on relationships, trust, and mutual appreciation. They find power in the individual and growth in the community.
Indie economy is global. Communities are no longer limited to location. Convenience is no longer defined by how quickly you can get there in your car. Accessibility is no longer constricted by long-distance phone calls and postage stamps.
Businesses operating in the You-centered Economy realize that community is connected through values, purpose, and affinity. What we have in common is more important than where we live. The internet is a tool for intimacy and connection not a weapon of anonymity.
Local economies have gone global. Global economies are local.
Are you a member of the Entrepreneurial Generation?
Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.
— William Deresiewicz, New York Times
This generation – defined again by affinity and not by year of birth – is attracted to small business as our chief medium of expression. Entrepreneurship is a manifestation of the commerce culture we grew up in, heightened by an ever-increasing accessibility to the engines of that commerce.
Entrepreneurs are not just salesmen. We see entrepreneurs as innovators (bringing us one step closer to the realm of science fiction), beacons of hope (business brings change – for good or bad), and a key check in a system that is increasingly without checks.
By becoming entrepreneurs, we’re inserting ourselves in a system that we don’t fully understand – because we crave the connection. We crave the understanding. We crave a different way.
It’s not that we hate consumption – it’s that we hate what consumption looks like now. It’s not that we hate big business – it’s that we hate what big business looks like now.
The Entrepreneurial Generation is one that still has hope – despite college loan debt and a poor economy. We have hope that we are a part of the change.
Entrepreneurs are artists, reformers, saints, and scientists. We are innovators, communicators, leaders, and visionaries. We are attracted to business not because it is business but because of what business allows us to accomplish, how it allows us to express ourselves. Click to tweet it!
It’s the fierce ideals & vision of this kind of entrepreneur – paired with infinite accessibility to communication – that are propelling her & her generation towards affluence.
The bellwethers of a New Economy entrepreneur…
New Economy entrepreneurs are always looking for the triple bottom line: profit, people, planet. They believe individualism can coexist with collectivism. That sustainability can coexist with growth.
New Economy entrepreneurs value themselves and the work that they do. They are so over the romantic notion of the starving artist. They set prices and work in business models that reflect a desire for quality over quantity. They understand just how special their product or service is in the lives of those they serve.
New Economy entrepreneurs seek purpose & meaning in everything they do. Instead of asking themselves “What?” they ask “Why?” Instead of seeking to fill a need, they seek to create an experience.
New Economy entrepreneurs pursue mistakes. Why play it safe when you can challenge yourself? Why default to status quo when you can invent a new standard?
New Economy entrepreneurs are more interested in what they don’t know than what they do. Business is a learning opportunity. Customer service is an education. Sales is scholarship.
New Economy entrepreneurs embrace the quirks of a niche. They’re not in the people-pleasing business. They’re in the right-people-pleasing business. They don’t walk on the eggshells of the mass market. They look for ways to crack all the right eggs. They invite others to crack eggs with them. Mostly from free-range chickens.
New Economy entrepreneurs understand that there are infinite choices. There is no such thing as competition in the New Economy, only opportunities for differentiation.
Towards a Connected Economy
Why now? The sense of disconnection has reached a boiling point.
The average consumer is tired of being thought of as a wallet to be put to use by government policy, big business, and corporate fat cats. It’s a system based on disconnecting us from our humanity.
We crave the connection – with ourselves and with each other. We crave control. But, ultimately, we crave our divine creative power.
As we reconnect with our creative power – as artists, makers, developers, writers, philosophers, designers… – we have discovered the need for critical selling. Critical selling is the process by which we examine our output in the marketplace. It connects our humanity with others. And it does so in the universal language of our times: money.
This is the You-Centered Economy. This is the commerce of connection, meaning, and experience. This is how you & I do business. Click to tweet it!
Big Thinking, society & culture
The jobs just aren’t coming back.
They left on what was supposed to be a round-the-world cruise and the ship sank somewhere off the coast off China. Recession is supposed to be a cyclical phenomenon where what is lost comes back to us in spades.
One part innovation, one part government intervention. And sometimes one part war for good measure. Hard times are temporary.
Not this time, it seems. Things just refuse to go back to “normal.”
It seems this led Scott Timberg of Salon.com to announce yesterday that the creative class is a lie. Timberg would like you to believe that this “utopian” society where you can get a job with a master’s-degree-in-just-about-anything is too good to be true. Salon would also like to sponsor your prescription for Zoloft and help you settle your credit card debt.
Okay, I made that last part up.
Timberg paints a dismal picture of what is happening now, economically speaking, without providing any sort of recommendation bringing about a brighter future for the world’s brightest minds.
I’ll grant him one part of the thesis: the transition from old economy to New Economy is not an easy one. And it doesn’t involve the return of the jobs.
The rest of their thesis is myopic. While Timberg was quick to point out that “the Creative Class” was hard hit in the economic downturn, they failed to consider how Richard Florida (the sociologist who made the phrase popular) described the great reset occurring in today’s reality:
The Great Reset … [is] the result of the multitude of tiny resets that individuals are making all over the world.
The root of the problem is not that college grads and highly trained professionals are out of traditional work. It’s that they’re being told to look for “jobs” at all.
We need to forget trying to jump start the economy in all the old ways and start educating individuals on how to make their own tiny resets.
These tiny resets are fueled, not by economic policy, but by the spirit of innovation and a willingness to think beyond the status quo. Why mourn a system that kept so many imprisoned by their own paychecks?
Daniel Pink – curiously missing from the list of visionaries Timberg quotes – describes the greater shift as such:
We are moving from an economy and a society build on the logical, linear, computerlike capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age.
This isn’t a top-down shift. This is bottom-up. That’s why the rest of his book, A Whole New Mind, is dedicated to teaching people how to survive in age that was taking shape. This book was written at least 2 years pre-recession. And yet, it describes in detail the skills need to hoist oneself out of the mire of what would come.
Pink never claims these skills are easily acquired. But he does lay out a framework for adding them to the palette of colors one has to paint their own picture of fulfilling work.
Just last week, Seth Godin also described the difficult work that was required of the creative class:
The future is about gigs and assets and art and an ever-shifting series of partnerships and projects. It will change the fabric of our society along the way. No one is demanding that we like the change, but the sooner we see it and set out to become an irreplaceable linchpin, the faster the pain will fade, as we get down to the work that needs to be (and now can be) done.
Both government and the media get it so very wrong. The focus cannot be on the return of jobs. It must be on the cultivation of skills and the realization of a new mindset for creating work that produces value for others.
We can no longer rely on the old ways of paying bills and putting food on the table.
Creating our own work – and a new landscape for prosperity – is the ultimate task of the Creative Class.
And it’s one we’ve only begun to pursue.
***
Edited to add:
Creating your own work doesn’t necessarily mean self-employment. Creating your own work is more about self-awareness.
What are you truly good at? When do you have the answer that no one else has? What problems are you uniquely gifted to solve?
This is not about creating a go-it-alone economy. It’s about understanding how we work best together.
***
Hat tip to Nicole for putting me to the Salon.com article.
Big Thinking
Last week, one of my current Website Kick Start students wrote to tell me that she had gotten her first job designing another person’s website. She’s only half-way through the course.
This isn’t the purpose of the course – although quite a few have used it that way – and she’s still got a lot of learning left to go. But it was her response to that learning – and the fear that goes with it – that made me literally yelp & clap out loud:
Part of me thinks I should feel nervous but the biggest part of me is excited and knowing I can kick some serious butt! Even if I have to stay up all night every night to figure it out. So happy for the experience and learning curve. Why wait, right?
If I have ever given you the impression that starting your own business is easy, that “making money online” is doesn’t require sweat & tears, that all you need is an ecourse & a few marketing books to make it big, I’m correcting the record right now.
Being in business for yourself means that there will be times when you have to stay up all night to learn the things the hard way. Or to teach yourself the skill you need to get the next gig. Or to write the book. Or to just finish the 57 unread emails that have piled up from just one business trip.
Of course, this isn’t just a business lesson, is it? This is the reality of “getting lucky” or making things look easy. Whatever spit & shine you see on the surface is just that: surface. In the depths of the true experience, there is all the all night. every night. of reality.
It’s the will to do what’s necessary.
Doing what’s necessary means learning hard lessons either through experience or hard-won education. There’s a steep learning curve. Unfortunately, we’ve been given the impression that learning things in adulthood shouldn’t be difficult. Learning things as adults is supposed to be a slow & easy climb towards greater understand.
Bull shit.
Growing into an adult, becoming a mom, building a business, learning new skills – I’ve been in the steepest learning curve of my life for about 4 years. The peak is nowhere to be seen.
And I’m so grateful.
I celebrate this learning curve. I embrace it. I cherish it.
Learning this is hard and I love it.
And I’m willing to stay up all night. every night. to continue climbing.
This is making your own luck. Creating the circumstances for ease. Rejoicing in all that is yet to be learned.
Not everyone sacrifices body & sanity in the realization of their dream. But we’ve all been willing.
Are you?
***
I’m opening up a group coaching program for “fresh” entrepreneurs tomorrow bright and early. Twelve people. 5 weeks. Talking about community building. How can you gather a tribe of like-minded, engaged supporters to fuel your business & your passion? Get an invite by signing up here.
Big Thinking, Business Brainstorm
You didn’t go to business school. You don’t have an MBA. You don’t run a tech startup. The only “C” in front of your title stands for “cook” or “cleaner.”
You’re an artist. You may not use paint or stone or metal. You may not sing or dance or write. But your work is an art and your passion changes people. And you, my friend, have taken this art and turned it into a business.
What could your business – one that’s based on soul stirring, passion inducing work – learn from the science of creating corporations? Turns out, a whole helluva lot.
Your business is here to prove something.
Maybe:
- that great writing changes lives & leads to more sales.
- that elegant jewelry boosts your self-confidence and takes the pain out of the morning routine.
- that quality materials & craftsmanship really are worth the big bucks.
- that creative expression saves lives.
- that great design tells a story that words & pictures alone cannot.
- that a well-decorated home keeps a marriage happy & healthy.
- that a New Economy can be built around artist-business owners.
Yes, indeed. Your passion comes from your undying determination that part of your worldview is a Truth for many others. Your productivity comes from the resolve to share that with as many people as possible.
But, like any hypothesis, it’s not simply enough to state it. To deem it so.
Your business hypothesis must stand up to scrutiny, experimentation, analysis, and… dun dun dun… customer feedback.
Your hypothesis isn’t an excuse to put on your dreamer hat and sit in the corner while the MBAs play at profit. Your hypothesis is what gets you into the trenches and compels you to do business.
People don’t by WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
— Simon Sinek, Start With Why
In starting businesses, we are most often concerned with what product we’re going to sell or what service we’re going to offer. It’s easier to understand the transaction when you know what’s changing hands. But it’s not the particular service or product that creates crowds of loyal fans. It’s not the product or service that spurs us to innovation & creative thinking.
It’s stepping outside the this-for-that exchange and stepping into something bigger & more powerful: our vision for the world.
Startups also have a true north, a destination in mind: creating a thriving and world-changing business. I call that a startup’s vision.
— Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
Business starts with a vision. The vision inspires a strategy. The strategy ends with the product or service being sold.
You can’t know what you’re selling until you know what you’re trying to prove.
To prove your hypothesis, you must experiment with a plan. Build, measure, learn.
Eric Ries, author of the brand-new book The Lean Startup, explains this process in depth. It’s a constant cycle of innovation & iteration that has at its goal creating a product/service that works to prove your hypothesis and achieve your vision while serving your customers.
This is true startup productivity: not just making more stuff, but systematically figuring out the right things to build.
— Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
How do you test the hypothesis? How do you figure out the right things to build?
Eric suggests the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. That’s a fancy (or not so!) way of saying: do it, discover what happens, and figure out what it means.
Build
Sadly, the first step is where so many get stuck. Without a clear hypothesis, it’s hard to know what to build. Of course, “knowing what to build” is truly overrated.
The first few times through this loop, it’s not your job to know what to build. It’s your job to learn what to build. So we start somewhere.
Back when I started growing my business in earnest, the first product I created was 52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion. It’s an ebook with 52 blogging prompts. Not fancy. Not overly sophisticated. Just a response to what I perceived as a need.
I didn’t stress about making the most comprehensive product or making the snazziest design. I built a product it and I shipped it. That’s when the real work started.
While you’re “building” consider:
- Am I wasting time on details that don’t enhance the benefits of the final product?
- Am I wasting energy on making the product more comprehensive than is necessary to test my hypothesis?
- Am I wasting attention on tangential pain points that are unrelated to the product I’m currently building?
Measure
In the tech startup world where The Lean Startup was first developed, there are loads of customized metrics and formal experiments that can be run with the data from the first (and subsequent) product builds.
I would argue these sophisticated methods of measure are a distraction to the microbusiness owner.
Forget the percentages, click thrus, and dollars, and focus on what your customers actually tell you about the product. Consider not only the specific feedback but the tone of their words, the setting of their usage, and the community of users.
After releasing my 52 Weeks of Blogging, I got customer feedback. It was good. But it’s not enough to just revel in good feedback. Ask WHY? I probed deeper to find out how people were actually using the book and what questions remained for them. That process then lead to several other books and a course.
Measure the effectiveness of your product by considering:
- How is the customer using my product?
- What results is she achieving?
- Is she closer to believing in my greater hypothesis?
- What themes are emerging about the product I’ve built?
Learn
Learning is all about figuring out what you’ll do differently next time. If you thought building your product was the end of the production phase and the beginning of the promotion & PR phase, boy, were you wrong!
Production is constant. Learning helps you know what to produce next. What tweak to focus on. What features to improve. What about-face to make.
Each time I build a new product, I learn so much about the people who purchase it. I learn things from the metrics, of course, but I also learn from their reviews. Their frustrations. And their questions. I build those questions & frustrations into subsequent products, blog posts, and emails.
I engage buyers via social media and create conversation around these areas. I build a bigger & bigger picture from my learning so that I can act & produce based on what I’ve learned.
Learn about your product or service by taking the feedback you’ve gathered & measured, comparing it to your initial hypothesis. Contrast your actual customers’ reaction with the way you thought they would react. Compare their concerns with what you feel to be true.
And then build again.
While in the learning phase, consider:
- What assumptions did I make that proved false?
- What surprised me about the customer feedback?
- What could be eliminated from the initial product?
- What needs to be added to the product?
Just as scientific experimentation is informed by theory, startup experimentation is guided by the startup’s vision. The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision.
— Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
Bottom line: to effectively change and grow, your business needs to be plugged in to your vision for the world and the hypotheses you hold true.
Forget discovering what to sell and who to sell it to until you’ve got those details ironed out.
Big Thinking, Business Brainstorm
By the beginning of this year, I had achieved each of the big goals I had set out to achieve with my business:
- Earn enough to stay at home with my daughter.
- Earn a full-time salary.
- Earn enough to allow my husband to quit his job.
- Earn $100,000 in a year.
The first two goals always seemed doable. By the time I started working towards the third, the outcome was already in sight. Frankly, the fourth one crept up on me without my noticing its tip-toe steps.
When I reached that point, I felt a little lost.
Overwhelmed.
Out of my element.
Fearful of stagnation.
Not to mention, those are all earning goals and – whilst I love making money beautifully – there’s more that I want to accomplish with my business!
Sure I could keep producing, keep earning more bit by bit, keep serving my clients… but what was I working towards?
Ease? Elegance? Comfort? Yes.
But I suspected I could do that and still work towards something bigger than I’d ever dared to dream of before.
I posed this question to several of my business models & mentors in the first quarter of 2011:
How do you set new goals when you’re completely outside the realm of your experience?
The people I asked – Danielle LaPorte, Marie Forleo, Amanda Steinberg – they all offered solid answers. But still, I felt lost.
I could feel my power tingling like magic on the tips of my fingers. But I didn’t know where to channel it, where to cast the spell.
How do you move forward when your goals are behind you?
As a solopreneur, my business relies on ME for its vision & execution. My experience is all I have to go on. My brain, all I have to rely on.
That’s limiting.
What I really needed was a team to hold my vision and push it all around the edges, expanding it to the point – maybe, past – of bursting.
But a team full of employees, a physical location, a list full of others’ needs… that’s limiting too.
What I created was a whole new (to me) approach.
Instead of either trying to go it alone or hiring a team, I created relationships – both formal and informal – that could hold and expand my vision without weighing me down.
Carrie, formerly my “virtual assistant” is now exercising her own expertise as my personal Business Manager and Assistant Editor for Scoutie Girl. We “meet” weekly to discuss my ideas, work out systems, and discover new ways to execute my mission. She’s working on everything from scheduling to communication management to event planning.
I’d say she offers me the use of an extra brain – but it’s so much more than that since she brings her own outside perspective to this business.
She believes in what I’m trying to accomplish and knows that she’ll be better off in her own business the more I’m able to achieve in mine.
I’ve also been busy cultivating informal relationships. My bubble-bursters include other entrepreneurs, thinkers, and activists who want me to succeed every bit as much as I want them to succeed. I suppose, really, we’re mutual bubble-bursters. We help each other push past what is on the surface to more fully realize our complementary visions.
These are not just people I rely on to promote my products or retweet my posts. These are people I trust with my mojo and momentum. I trust them to challenge me, not just stroke my ego.
I’ve met my bubble-bursters through Twitter, my blog, random emails, conferences, and referrals from clients. Potential bubble-bursters are all around you but you have to do the work to build trust.
If you struggle to find your voice & vision outside your beginners’ bubble, it’s time to sure up your relationships with those in & outside your business. Make sure they understand your passion and the change you want to make in the world. Ask them to push you when they see you settling – and sometimes, even when you’re not!
What can you do today? Set up some Skype or coffee dates with people who you already consider in your circle and just talk shop. It’s not so much about asking for advice as it is becoming aware of how your bubble-bursters react to your ideas & concerns. It’s about allowing someone else to hold a bigger dream for you than you can imagine – and creating big dreams for your friend in return.
Are you ready to burst your business bubble?
Big Thinking
Nothing stifles your creativity like doubt.
Think you can’t? You won’t.
What separates you from those who succeed is not a staggering difference in ability; it’s the know-how to set aside uncertainty and embrace personal power.
What outside influences are you allowing to have sway over your ability to commit to your creative impulses?
What past experiences are holding you hostage?
Are you directing your inner monologue to keep you offstage?
You can’t hide when your business is powered by the “thing” you love.
Passion-driven businesses are built on the awareness of their own fanaticism.
Customers are attracted to the power you draw out of your own enthusiasm. Friends, too.
And when you’re comfortable with your own zealous tendencies, you’re more comfortable creating.
Create more: stories, branding, content, service, products, opportunities, relationships, wealth.
Personal power fuels your creative power.
It’s a beautiful cycle.
