creativity: the currency of innovation
As an entrepreneur, and owner of a small business, I constantly have two questions floating in my head. First, how do I get more clients? When I get an idea, the second question always seems to stump me: how am I going to pay for that?
Small businesses seem to have a ridiculously high burn rate, quickly eating up any revenue that comes in. Startup capital costs, coupled with ongoing expenses will strain budgets and cause headaches, to be sure. Surely that’s what people mean by “growing pains” of business! But, hey, no pain, no gain, right? With good planning and execution, hopefully, the balance between expenses and revenues will quickly shift to a more favorable position.
So, how does that balance get shifted? I know there really isn’t an easy answer to that. Entire books, businesses, and academic programs have been created to address that very question! Unfortunately, most of the solutions that they present cost money, and many times, lots of it.
The reality is that for most small businesses, including mine, money is a very limited resource! What’s a small business to do? Well, I believe the beginning of that answer can be found by remembering two principles:
Challenge Your Thinking
I opened this article by posing two questions:
- How do I get more clients?
- How am I going to pay for that?
I often find that to challenging someone’s thinking is as simple as changing the question. The answers to questions are quite different when the questions are reframed. Let’s apply that to our first question:
- How do clients choose my business?
This changes the question by shifting the point of view to something more client-centric. Instead of finding new ways to reach people, we’re begin finding ways to become more attractive to our people. People who find your business attractive will be more likely to choose your business. People who find your business attractive will also be more likely to tell others to choose your business.Of course, this idea is not new. In fact, there is a big push in large companies today to “enhance the customer experience.” And, of course, large companies put their much larger wallets behind this thinking. This is where I belive the agility of small businesses can help. Small business owners generally have more ideas than cash, and because of their organization’s size, those ideas are much cheaper to implement and much faster to deploy. It’s a powerful thought, but as always, with much power comes much responsibility. This brings us to the second question.
- How do I not pay for it?
Perhaps the answer is as simple as not doing it! Sometimes what you think is worth investing in, isn’t the best place to spend your money, because, quite frankly, your potential clients just won’t care about it.A logo change, for a small business is a relatively small cost, and while we may care a lot about the deep symbolism in our new logo, unless we can get people to care enough to learn about it, maybe not doing it is the best decision when trying to gain more customers. However, if you’re trying to shift existing negative perceptions, maybe that’s a great thing to do, and well worth the cost, because it may increase your attractiveness to more people in the long run.The alternative is, of course, doing it differently. Inc Magazine recently wrote an article titled, “How Lack of Capital Can Drive Innovation,” where the author gave an example of how a cash-strapped company found success by some creative thinking and using non-traditional selling methods.As an example from the photography world is a change in the way I process my photos. This change has little to no cost, but If I begin leaning towards a particular color or change the way my black and white photos look, I can be sure that those changes will affect my attractiveness to potential clients. It will attract some and repel some.These examples are powerful because the thought processes behind them force you to relieve the money pressure by exercising your creativity. There are many ways to become more attractive to clients, and our job is to find the best approach, with the best results, at a reasonable cost. To me, that’s an encouraging thought, because creativity is free! I can afford free!
Creativity Before Capital
So, putting on that creative genius mindset that will save you some money, ask yourself:
- What simple changes can I make to make my product/service more appealing…
- in positioning
Do I want to position myself as a price leader, a value leader, or a status leader? - in quality
Everybody wants better quality. How do I improve on the quality of my products and services? Do I need to do that now, or later? - in appearance
In the photography business, appearance is everything. How do I present my products in a better light? Does my product exude beauty? When people think about my work or my business, how do they feel? If they feel nothing, you’re not trying hard enough! - What are the specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable steps that I need to take to
- make the improvement
To improve, you need a plan to get you through to the end - communicate the improvement
…and once you get there, you need to figure out how to tell your potential clients that you’re the one!
In the end, the decision to change or to revert is up to the business owner. It’s empowering, though, to know that making your business more attractive can be possible with more creativity and less cash.
