PoolHouseRed

I just finished reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It is very good, and very quotable. Take this for example:

A good storyteller speaks something into nothing. Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. he doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into the new story he is telling.

So, there is a lot to learn from that little quote. I think it says something about how to change the world. But, it also seems to say something about how we market things, have conversations in politics, and how we relate to competitors.

Sometimes, the best way to change something that is wrong is just to start doing something different and better. If it’s really a better way of doing things people will follow, soon the last holdouts will have no choice but to consider your idea.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you have to stand up and say enough is enough. Im not talking about those times. But on a lot of things just tell a better story and invite people to come along.

Here is a way to evaluate your plans and actions. First, ask “what?”. What are you doing? What are you planning? Then ask why. This is the hard part. You have to really dig deep into the why, and be honest. Your internal conversation might be like this:

“what am i doing? Oh, im planning to send a brochure out to this nice mailing list”

Why? “Well, we need more people to come to our camp/church/class/event/etc.”

Ok, let me jump in here for a second. Thats not a why. That is the result you are hopping for, but its not why. Back to the conversation

Why are you sending the brochure? “People need to know about the event”

Ok, there are lots of ways to tell people about the event…so why a brochure?

“Its the best way to communicate.”

Now we have to start digging into some assumptions. Why is it best, why a brochure?

“well its what we did last year”

Now we are getting somewhere. When you start stripping away all the layers if your answers start being stuff like “thats how we do it around here, or thats what the boss wants, or its safe”, then you  have a problem. If your whys are good, then your whats are a lot more likely to be successful.

It’s of course good to find examples of good ideas and try to learn from them, here are a few:

RockMelt

RockMelt is a new browser (well..its a version of Chrome to be exact) that has really deep social media integration. To be honest i did not really like it. I tried if for a few days, but it did not work for me. But they did something interesting. They made getting the browser by invite only. Thats fairly common, its a good way to develop some scarcity and control growth. RockMelt gives everybody who signs up from an invite 6 invites to give out. But then they did something interesting. When i sent out an invite that was actually used I got two new invites. All of a sudden I felt like I could earn some sort of scarce resource by sending my invites to people who would actually use them. It would be interesting to see what there invite sent to invites used conversion rate is compared to other systems that don’t have this little twist.

Richmond Book Drive and Pomplamoose

This is a great little equation. Donate a book to a school library, get a free download of an album. The payoff for the school is clear, they get books. The payoff for Pomplamoose is less clear, they dont make any money. But they get seen and heard by a lot of people. And it goes a bit viral, it goes out past the immediate community of Richmond. It works really well for Pomplamoose because they have a really quirky and engaging personality that makes people want to seek out more.

Hall of Shame: That shopping comparison site that tricks you into spamming your entire google contact list? Yeah, they are not doing much to help themselves out.

On Market Place Money today there was a report about a guy who bought round trip plain tickets. He decided he did not want to use the first leg of the trip, only the second. In order to do this he had to pay a cancelation fee, buy a new, more expensive, ticket, and not get a refund for his old ticket. So, he ended up paying hundreds of dollars to use half of what he had already bought. Now, you can say this is crazy, but in the end that was what the contract said. He did not read the fine print of course, but that was what he agreed to when he bought the ticket.

This seems like a sign of an industry that is scared. A hot new start up that is blazing a new trail would never do this. They have to hold onto every customer they can. They need good word of mouth. But the airlines are not hot new startups. They are entrenched industries that are being pushed from all sides by a lot of different forces, they are really focused on the bottom line. So they take every opportunity they can to make a dollar, hoping to hang on one more year. This is of course short sited, but if your just reacting to a changing world I can see how that is where you end up. The crazy thing is that it is just a mindset. All it would take for the airline to change how round trip tickets work is a few lines in a policy manual and a few lines of code, send out a memo and they are good to go. But it takes a radical change in thinking before that can happen.

Its easy to pick on the airlines though…I know i make silly choices based on fear, you probably do to.

…”we will manage the business of your business” company.

There are lots of small business owners out there who have a familier refrain: “Im not good at business. I just want to X.”
There are also lots of companies that sell “let us take care of your Y(accounting, website, etc) so you can focus on what you want to do: X.”

While these service are good and helpful they dont really make it so you dont have to worry about whatever they are taking care off. (I appreciate LessAccountings honestly in this area. They dont claim to make accounting fun and easy, just less terrible).

But what if somebody started a company that really did take care of everything but what you do. So, if you are a photographer they would do everything except the actual photography part. I dont know exactly how this would work. It would probably have to be base on some sort of revenue sharing, and you would have to really get to know a client before you took them on. You would have to have matching philosophies in a lot of areas. It would sort of be a snap together business…a client (the photographer) plugs their talent into an existing infrastructure and has all the part for a full business.

I am slowly learning how to throw pottery on a wheel. It’s a lot of fun, and I am slowly getting better. But that is not what this post is about.

I was talking to Jeff,  the owner of the studio where i am learning. He is a cool guy, and has created a really unique environment in his studio that allows people a chance to be creative, learn, and be part of a community of artists. Somehow marketing and promotion came up. He does not really do much promotion of his studio, or the store that goes with it, im sure there are lots of reason for this, but one of them is classis: “i dont have enough money.” Part of me loves to hear people say this because that is a big part of why I like hiring myself out to small organizations, i like being able to help people who feel like they can’t do something figure out how to do it.

But really I kind of cringe inside when i hear people say this, especially people who are running organizations doing something unique and important. To survive organizations have to make money, and to make money they have to find clients, and to find clients they have to connect with the right people somehow.

So, here are some no to low cost ideas and thoughts, which may be good or bad, for 3rd Street Clay Works:

Leverage Existing Fans (people like me)

• Give current students some money off (say $50) their next 8 week session for every new person they bring in who signs up for classes
• Give us store discounts or credits to give to our friends and family who are looking for Christmas presents
• give us incentive to talk about what we are doing in the studio on social sites (say for example, a monthly drawing for a small prize, you get entered by posting your latest work to your facebook profile.)
• Feature a different student each month on a blog/website/facebook page/etc. Perhaps a short video, a little write up, some pictures of recent work, stuff like that. The hope is for that person to tell their friends about the profile.
• Do a show or two a year for everybody. Most of us (like me…) will probably never show our work publicly, so it would be kind of fun to get a chance to. Make it a lot of fun (demos, a band, let people try making some stuff, have good food) Invite lots of people.

Social Media

There are of course opportunities in social media. A blog might be interesting, it could have instructional articles, reflections on life (I think Jeff could probably write some great reflections on life!). A web site would probably be helpful also, just s simple one so people have a place to get contact info, class schedules, stuff like that. I think though that the low hanging fruit is on facebook. There is already a facebook page, but its not very active, stating to post constant content there would be a great way to get students to start taling about what they are doing at the studio. A few ideas:

• post pictures of students recent works
• short video demos
• real time play by plays of opening the kiln after a fiering
• links to interesting ceramics stuff online
• links to new music
• contests (give away a mug or something like that for doing something that might create attention, like posting a picture or link)

Groupon

I actually think that groupon could be an effective tool. Giving people their fist 8 week class for 70% off would be a great way to get some new people in the door and hooked.

Its not for everyone

This is actually a really important realization. There is not exactly a mass market for learning to throw pottery at 3rd Street. FIrst, it is very local, people would not be willing to drive very far. People in Siloam Springs, Chicago, or Tokyo don’t matter to that part of the business. Second, not everybody wants to play in the mud, or even cares about how to form a pot. Third, even of those who do want to learn to throw only a small part of them would fit in at 3rd Street. There is a specific style of teaching, atmosphere to the studio, and group of people who come that would not appeal to everybody. So, you have to figure out the characteristics of those people and figure out where they are and how to connect with them.

Because of this it would be interesting to see what would happen if 3rd Street was really exclusive. What if they only way to get into classes was to get an invite from somebody already in a class. Suddenly classes are a hard to get into club, and you have to fit the profile to even be considered.

Tell Stories

Jeff has created something unique at 3rd Street (I might write more about that later). There are stores of people to tell, there are stores of a place to tell, and it will attract people to it. Stories like this:

The Big Picture on Vimeo.

The more these stores can be told through all of the ideas above the more real this place becomes in peoples minds, and the more they might be interested in what happens there.

There is a place in Oklahoma that has had a huge impact on me: New Life Ranch. I met my wife there, worked as a counselor, was a camper, had my first full time job there, and many of my closest friends are there.

There is one building at camp that i spent a lot of time in. Its called Wagon Inn. It sits in the center of camp. Over the years it has served many roles. One room in particular served as my cabin as a camper and a counselor. It later become my office. Lots of people have lots of memories in that building. Now its gone:

It was without a doubt time for it to go. Wagon had served it’s purpose well, but it was way overdue to be torn down.

It has been interesting listening to people talk about their sadness in seeing it torn down (some of which I share). People don’t like seeing things that are special to them change. The year after YOUR last year of camp is never as good. This all makes sense, we want good things to stay good, and who knows if the change is good.

Camps (and really any organization) need people to have strong emotional connections to what they do, but you run the risk of alienating people when you start changing. So there are lots of challenges in this here are a few:

• how do you include people in change so that they understand it and support it?
• Stagnation is never good. How do you decide it is time to change no matter how it alienates people who’s vision of your organization is in the past?
• How do you communicate that changes in how you are doing something (a new building) does not change the why ” To proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to equip believers for ministry”
• How do you cut people loose when they are unwilling to accept the change?

Change is good. In a few years nobody will remember Wagon Inn, and everybody will be excited about what takes its place.

I got a new camera yesterday. My trusty d70 is dead, which makes me kind of sad, so i just added a few zeros and have a d7000. Im not really a very serious photographer, but i appreciate the upgrade. And I am excited to be able to shoot video as well. I shot some pictures downtown last night:

dSLRs with video are a great tool, I know NLR shot all their summer video on a canon t2i and it worked great. So, if your camp does any video work they are worth considering over a more traditional setup. I am just starting in this brave new wold, so I cant say a lot about it yet. I do know that its going to take some time to get used to the SLR form factor for video. Im having a hard time keeping the shot steady, so that is going to take some practice. But i love being able to shoot video that looks like a moving photograph with narrow depth of field, good lenses, etc. I ran across this post the other day that gives some good thoughts on dSLR vs camcorder for video that is worth reading.

I kind of feel like I am going through freelance bootcamp. There is a lot to learn:

• say no: i took on way to many projects to start with, and I am still paying the consequences. I don’t feel like i have served my first set of clients well, and a lot of that is a direct result of taking on projects I should not have.
• get your own stuff in order first: I dont have business cards, much less an way to keep track of invoices and money, I should have gotten that stuff in place first.
• take deposits: For some reason I did not ask my clients to pay deposits of any sort on jobs. I should have. Partly as a matter of buy in in their part, but also cash flow. I have about $30 in my account and real expenses and bills to pay.

There is more of course. And those are not complicated things to learn. I knew they were true, but its always different when you have to learn something yourself.

I think the biggest thing I am having to learn is is how to work for clients instead of an employer. I have to learn how to be able to challenge people to think about new things and ideas, to really evaluate problems and come up with solutions. This was a lot simpler at NLR…I guess because i had a long history of establishing trust. With clients now they only sort of know me. I don’t have any history. Part of this is just a matter of confidence and practice. But I also have to learn a new way to approach this. I have to educate my clients about process (at NLR i had already done that…or i just did the process), and help them see the value.

You know how there are some people who come into a new situation and start throwing down ideas like crazy? Perhaps your trying to solve a problem and somebody comes up and gives you 10 solutions without asking you a single question. I have to admin

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this.

I think that getting lots of ideas out on the table is critical to solving problems. The only way to find the best solution is to come up with a lot of potential solutions. And sometimes not having a full understanding of a situation will let you get outside some contraints that that might not be real….it lets you be a bit crazy…if you don’t know where the box is you wont think inside it.

The flip side though is that if you don’t know and understand the problem it’s really hard to evaluate ideas, to come up with solutions that really get to the nuanced root of an issue. How can you solve a problem you don’t understand?

I know i tend to go way to far to the second side. I feel like i have to define every last variable before I start coming up with solutions (i am INTP after all). It would be healthy for me to find a way to combine the best of both worlds.