The current model is we make, create, offer a service and seek to be paid for it. When we seek we often sell, manipulate, in some extremes it’s almost coercion to get paid.
We fix a price and we build our whole business model around an expected return. Businesses go out and seek investors to spend money marketing their offering to people to get money to ultimately pay back the investors.
There is a huge amount of money, time, effort and resources that go into this model of how do we make people pay.
What if we changed the model and created, then gave away our services and let people pay what they thought the value was. So if they felt there was no value then they wouldn’t pay.
What if we focused on creating something amazing knowing that the right people would value it and would pay for it? Sure there is a huge risk, but risk creates an impetus to ensure we create something valuable.
We could be surprised that they would often pay more than the fixed price we’d imagined we could make them pay.
The other thing that would happen is we would all have to focus more not just on creating something valuable but on creating trust and better human connection.
What could a business built on trust, offering value and focusing on human connection offer that a business focused on ways to make people pay couldn’t?
Perhaps it’s time to be brave enough to change to a different model and see how it might make a difference.
After all surely the act of allowing people to choose to decide what to pay is better than making them pay.
Philip Dodson 