Tag: success

Changing the model

Posted on by philipdodson

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.

Freedom

Posted on by philipdodson

Day 3 in Hvar and the final day of the Ouishare summit before the island tour tomorrow, oh and the party tonight. It’s been a tough assignment!

There were many great sessions today, connections and knowledge sharing, which is what I love about these events. There has been another collective inspiration gained that having so many people doing super cool stuff brings. However, the standout conversation was on terrace with Matija and his super cool Mum.

Matija is freelancer and he also organises Freelancer Week, which is in October, an open event to bring freelancers together all over Europe. We discussed together the ins and outs of being a freelancer.

Firstly, being a freelancer is not this cool nirvana of owning a shiny MacBook, consulting with Microsoft and working part of the year on beach. It’s a hand to mouth struggle for many all over the world, who have often become a freelancer because their previous job disappeared forever.

Second, many freelancers are isolated, depressed and struggling to find help.

Thirdly, they are living in the shadow of the glitzy over-hyped startup circus.

The conversation centred on what can be done to highlight these issues, to connect freelancers and to look at how we can change the understanding of what being a freelancer really is and how collectively we can help each other.

Freedom is something that a freelancer aspires to have but many are hooked up in replicating what they previously did for their former employer in a never ending race to the bottom where they find it harder to sustain themselves. Their rights that they enjoyed as an employee have also gone.

We need to unite and find a way of bringing a greater focus and understanding and to realise as AI gathers pace we may all find ourselves in the shoes of a freelancer or unemployed.