Simon Mainwaring

In a world added to each day by a new technologcal marvel, it is too easy to assume that all original thought comes attached to a piece of code or a microprocessor.

Simon's tweet, and the compilation put together at Toxel.com demonstrate three things.

1. Technology connects us in new and increasingly powerful ways
2. What it connects us to is more important than how
3. The most powerful connections are the result of simple truths and shared experiences

In support of which I offer you a representative sample of the logos from the Toxel collection. I encourage you to look at the entire set, complete with individual accreditation to the designers and companies in question.

Proof, if we needed it, that there is as much value in innovation as invention.

And further incentive to relentlessly challenge how we look at our own businesses.

A focus that motivates both parties to work on creating more.

It is the difference between negotiating a price. And negotiating a deal.

A difference that recognizes that profit is only minimally affected by how well you save your money.

But massively affected by how well you use it.

The underlying theme to both pieces is that how we value something depends on many things.

One of which is not whether it actually exsts.

A thought to ponder as you think about how to improve your business.

Dennis' post is here.

My post from Boards is here.

Or here.

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Make a product. Provide a service. Exchange them for money.

The foundations of commerce.

Except on the web. Where new definitions of value are throwing traditional models under the bus.

In 2009, Lady Gaga sold more digital music than any other artist. 15.3 million tracks. She also gave away hundreds of millions more. On MySpace alone her songs were played 321.5 million times. All for free.

Today, many see her business model as a blueprint for the future. Give away the music and sell concert tickets, merchandise and anything else that the artist’s brand associates with. In Lady Gaga’s case this includes Polaroid and Estee Lauder. The high rent district indeed.

The magazine and newspaper industries, by comparison, look like scruffy kids playing stick ball in a derelict neighborhood. If you’re wondering what print real estate is worth these days pick up a copy of Time and feel for yourself. A business illness created by the willingness of those industries to jump in to the digital revolution before they understood what it meant to them. And proof that innovation is a kissing cousin to professional suicide if you don’t understand what makes your business valuable to your customers.

After all, what any of us are willing to pay for something is defined by two criteria. Its price. And our perception of its value.

When the price is zero, are we really going to argue the seller is wrong? That they have underestimated the value of what they are selling. More likely is that we will come to believe that our perception of its value was misinformed. That in the future we should expect more for less. Else we be taken for fools.

Value is a delicate balance. One that readers of Boards are involved with articulating every day. Choose this versus that because...? Take your pick. It works better, looks better, feels better, defines you better, is priced better.

Indeed, every piece of marketing ever created has been an articulation of value. A statement I invite you to challenge.

The problem comes when we ourselves undermine our own value proposition by letting others define what our stuff is worth. As 41 production companies who signed the P&G Preferred Vendors agreement recently discovered when P&G then hired someone else to shoot their Winter Olympics opening Anthem spot.

Or by giving away our stuff for free without a plan to make money on the back end. A problem that some in the print industries are now trying to correct.

Subscribers to The Wall Street Journal are mostly unwilling to pay for the newspaper’s web-based version. Since a lot of it has always been free, they don’t see why they should now pay for the rest.

By contrast, few have an issue paying an additional fee for the smartphone version of the Journal.

Because they were never told they could have it for free.

The perversity of this is that we expect that the medium in which the Wall Street Journal works best - desktops and laptops, complete with screen sizes and bandwidth that optimize the experience - should cost nothing.

But reduce the type to 4pt helvetica, and the download speed to the vagaries of AT&T and Verizon’s wireless networks, and we’re only too willing to add $4.99 a month to our bill.

A definition of value based entirely on perception.

Indeed value is so much about perception that if we limit our own company’s pricing structure to simply cost plus profit, we define ourselves as a commodity based business long before our customers see us that way.

Enduring business models are based instead on the understanding that people make buying decisions that are subjective. That is, as consumers we are motivated as much by how a purchase makes us feel as by an analysis of how efficiently it fills a need.

Which explains why in 2009, in the midst of economic catastrophe, U.S. consumers spent more than $1 billion on virtual goods and services.

Virtual, as in they don’t exist. Except in online worlds. Like FooPets, where you pay to adopt and care for a virtual pet. http://www.foopets.com/

FooPets has four million members. And is adding 20,000 new members a day.

Which is great news for Purina.

After all, they sell bags of virtual Purina Puppy Chow for $3.

That’s three real dollars. For digital dog food. Eaten by digital dogs.

So the next time you wonder why your customers want to pay you less, consider this.

Is it their perception of the value of what you’re selling that’s the problem.

Or yours?

The differences between average, great and once in a decade companies are many.

But they are summed up by a Benjamin Franklin quote that is often abbreviated and adapted to include only the first two thoughts.

It is the third that changes the nature of the business you are building. And the life you are leading.

"Tell me and I forget.

Teach me and I remember.

Involve me and I learn."

Benjamin Franklin

Which seems to miss the opportunity to apply one of the few constants in the life of an entrepreneur. The absolute inevitability that there will be an end.

Some entrepreneurs love what they do so much that they want to die doing it. Others want to capitalize on their success by selling their business one day. In either case, leaving behind a legacy of all the effort, thought and personal investment becomes increasingly important to owners over time.

Many business owners treat the end as an issue to be avoided until their own enthusiasm starts to wane. By which time their ability to affect their own outcome lies somewhere between limited and non-existent. We see this particularly in creative companies, whose founders have a difficult time separating their own value from that of the business.

However, it is the ability of an owner to ultimately make themselves irrelevant to the success of the company that creates the most dynamic future for any business. By empowering the employees left behind. Increasing dramatically the value the business has to potential buyers, or a new generation of owners. And ensuring the DNA of its founders lives on in the soul of a business long after they have ceased to be its daily heartbeat.

In Jerry’s blog yesterday he describes the decision to hire Lisa Margulis as his replacement as, “a conscious choice on whether to remain a life style business or build a company that lasts beyond the partners.”

This is the essence of Plan The Last Day First.

And the key word is conscious.

Every business owner makes a choice about the future of their company every day. Many times they don't recognize it as such. But in all aspects of life, the absence of a conscious decision to do something is an unconscious decision not to.

Deciding to take control of your future requires that you be willing to give up some control of the present. By involving others and helping them to grow. A win-win on a thousand levels.

I don’t know Lisa personally. But I suspect that she will enjoy working at Epoch a great deal.

Both because it is a company filled with extraordinarily talented, inquisitive, genuine people.

And because its owners are building a business that is committed as much to her future as it is theirs.