Photographers (basically) giving their work away on Groupon. Wedding planners offering their services for next to nothing on Gilt Groupe. World famous photographers offering a chance to win a portrait session for a “like” on Facebook. Every vendor under the Sun giving it all away to be part of the Kardashian free-for-all. These are radical statements designed to put the world on notice of how far you are willing to go to get people’s attention. I am no marketer and maybe this strategy will create sustainable business traffic. However, from my naïve eyes, it looks like bubble gum – super sweet for five minutes and then forgettable forever. And from a business perspective it seems, well, best case, silly, worst case, a recipe for implosion.
On the other hand, going radical with the very fabric of your creative business is an awesome notion. Think about Craigslist.com. It has about 30 employees (mostly techies) and does over a $100 million per year. Not flashy, no marketing, no desire to “scale” bigger. And because it consciously chooses to not push the envelope it turns the traditional model of growth for growth’s sake on its head. Not to say that always going radical with your business is the best move. Just look at Reed Hastings and his (now scrapped) idea to split Netflix into two businesses, streaming and DVD. Pissing off your core tribe by telling them you just do not see a future with them will not win you a lot of love when you try to raise your prices to the moon. However, going radical with your underlying business model, win or lose, is its own reward. It tells the world that you are your own duck and comparing you to “competition” will be fruitless. Better to evaluate you on the merits of what your creative business, and your creative business alone, offers.
Closer to home, there are creative businesses out there that have chosen to scrap the tried and true and go it their own way. For instance, I have spoken with a wedding planner/designer that charges a fee (not radical) and then produces all of the décor (save draping) at cost (totally radical). If she pays $10 for flowers, that is what her client pays her. Everything she makes is in her fee. Oh, and her average wedding is north of $150,000 with décor budgets of $30-50,000 (her cost). Translated – she is providing for $30,000 what most other designers would charge $60-$75,000 for. Crazy? Yep. Except it works. She has no desire to run a big business only do big events. Her fee is large enough so that she gets what she needs (both in number of events and dollars) to sustain her business. Her fee will go up only in that she wants to get bigger events. However, the premise will always be that the larger the budget, the cheaper she will get (but, ironically, if her fee is too low relative to budget, she will be too cheap and will face serious trust issues — i.e., too good to be true). By definition, her business is unscalable. The moment she adds layers of infrastructure, the more untenable it will be for her to live on her fee. But who cares? She is the Craigslist of her market and her radical business model wins her business on its own every day.
The idea that your creative business can go radical should be fun. Restaurants, yoga classes, etc. that are pay what you will; auctioned anything; dining clubs are other examples of creative businesses gone radical. It might work and it might not. Your commitment and faith to the value of the model is what matters. I, for one, would rather do business with a creative business owner that is constantly searching for the best way to provide both of us with the most value than one that is willing to literally give it all away just so I will stick with the tried and true. Dare your creative business to make sense only for itself. Figure out how to be the next Fab.com, not the next Fab.com offering.
