A lot of indie business people fail to distinguish themselves by trying to be everything to everybody - that is, everybody who they think can afford their services. Tad Hargrave doesn’t have this problem. He’s a living, breathing, kilt-wearing example of how nich-marketing yourself can get your customer’s attention, and hold it. How does he do it? Well, for starters, he works only with “green, local, sustainable, holistic, life-affirming and otherwise conscious entrepreneurs.” And then there’s the kilt he wears while teaching seminars. And the fact that his seminars are “pay what you can.” Intrigued? Tad will be sharing his marketing wisdom to a Seattle audience November 17-19. I interviewed him recently to learn more about his approach to marketing and what anyone who attends his event can expect to learn.
Q: Your Biznik profile lists your job title as “marketing consultant to hippies.” Can you elaborate?
Sure. Basically, it means that I work exclusively with businesses that are some combination of locally owned, community minded, conscious, green, ethical and sustainable. I carefully screen my clients - even for workshops. The more radical they are, the more I like them. What I found was that there were no trainings or services out there for these folks. And I think they’re needed. I mean, there’s a lot of ways to talk about it but basically we live in what I call the “Suicide Economy” and we’re trying to shift over to a more “Conscious Economy,” you know? But that’s a hard transition, especially for business owners. And there’s not much help. Most of the marketing training available are incredibly, incredibly expensive and also very . . . how to say it - they’re aggressively capitalist. I found it a distraction. But at the Radical Business Intensive weekends it’s only hippies. It’s only business owners who embrace the notion of a triple bottom line of not only financial profit, but also people and the planet. It makes the events way more exciting, safe and open.
Q: Tell me about your upcoming event in Seattle.
I’m getting really excited about it.
The Radical Business Intensive will be happening in Seattle Nov 17-19. It’s being sponsored by BALLE Seattle and run in partnership with Biznik member and marketing genius Dominic Canterbury.
It’s a weekend-long training where conscious entrepreneurs can meet each other, have some space to reflect and wrestle with some of the tough issues of marketing their businesses effectively. We focus on the basic, core fundamentals of marketing.
I guess there’s a few main things about it that I think are particularly cool.
First, nobody pays a cent to me when they register. No credit cards. No cheques. No cash. People don’t pay me a dime until the last 7 minutes of the weekend.
Second, in those last seven minutes, people only pay me what they thought it was worth. I work on a pay-what-you-can basis, based on what you can afford philosophy. You like it a little? Just give me a little. You like it a lot? Then you can give me a lot. People still have a hard time believing this, that there’s no big catch, but there really isn’t. I even have people pay with three cheques so they can break the payment up to make it easier on them.
Third, people get like 331 pages of grounding materials worth more than $500 before they ever arrive. And the materials are really, really good.
Q: How successful have you been with your “pay what you can” pricing strategy? I have to admit we’ve had limited success with that approach on Biznik so far.
It’s gone really well. I’ve learned a lot about how to do it and how not to do it. I think they jury’s still out on it in some ways but I’m young and single and this is the time for me to experiment, you know? But it’s gone well.
Here’s the main lessons I’ve learned:
1) You’ve got to be clear that pay what you can does not equal “free”. It must be clear that paying nothing is not an option. I think even if somebody just gives me a dollar . . . there’s something about respect there in the ritual of acknowledging that an exchange happened. You must pay something.
2) You must make clear to people how much they would be paying for this anywhere else. Most people will have no idea what to give. They might not know that I’ve gone to 5 day marketing seminars that cost $5000 (not including accommodations). They might not realize that the average weekend seminar would cost about $1693. So, it’s important to help people understand the value that they’re receiving. It’s so important to really communicate this again and again. To take it seriously.
3) Multiple cheques. In my situation people used to just pay me with one cheque. And I can’t tell you how many times people said, “Tad, the weekend was amazing. I want to give you more but . . . this is all I can afford . . .” They felt so ashamed and I was like, “Dude, I don’t care.” but they did and I realized that this same person would likely now avoid me in the future because they felt like they owed me something. It was odd. So then I started making it mandatory for people to pay with three cheques. Not only did it almost double the amount of money I got but I stopped getting the “I wish I could pay more” responses. It felt more . . . comfortable for both sides.
I think it works well for one time things but I really question its applicability for long term situations. Like pay what you can monthly coaching? I can’t imagine that working.
And I think you have to be ready to only receive a fraction of what you would if people paid full price. But that’s the trade off - you get less money per person, but you get WAY more people because there’s so little risk.
Q: How do you define your work as “radical?”
What’s not needed right now is to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The idea of trying to patch up the Titanic or just “greenwash it” to make it look prettier and more sustainable misses the point so profoundly.
We need another boat entirely. Abandon ship.
It’s similar with the greenwashing that major corporations are doing today.
On my website I list the values of Radical Business as:
“Fair trade not ‘Free’ trade, alternative education that nurtures the whole child, not just reading, writing and ‘rithmetic’, a maximization of relationships, not of profits; honesty and transparency, not more lies, hype and manipulation; naturalness, not pretense; the growth of consciousness and creativity , not brands and market share; democracy and decentralized ownership, not concentrated wealth; a living return, not the highest return; a living wage, not the minimum wage; a fair price, not the lowest price; sharing, not hoarding; simplicity, not luxury; life-serving, not self-serving; partnership, not domination; cooperation, not competition; win-win exchange, not win-lose exploitation; family farms, not factory farms; biodiversity, not mono-crops; cultural diversity , not monoculture; creativity, not conformity; slow food, not fast food; our bucks, not Starbucks; our mart, not Wal-Mart; a love of life , not a love of money.”
But to me it’s really coming from this deep sense that we need large not small changes. We don’t need a “more sustainable” Suicide Economy. I think that whole focus is bullshit.
I mean, God bless all work to decrease the violence and damage that groups like The Natural Step are doing at all levels, but the idea of “greening the Suicide Economy” as a goal? I feel horrified and disgusted by that. As a means? Possibly. As an ends? No way.
Plus, the idea of talking about making the Suicide Economy, Empire, the Corporate Global Economy - whatever you want to call it - MORE sustainable is misguided at best because that presupposes that it already IS sustainable and now we’re just making it more so, you know? The Suicide Economy is NOT sustainable. It is violent. It can be made less violent but . . . is that it? Is that the extent of our vision? To decrease violence?
No.
Our ends and our means must both shift - not a little but a lot. We don’t need reasonable and conservative changes - we need radical change. We all feel it. We need to find a way to meet human needs and the needs of all life without imperiling future generations. Hell, without imperiling THIS generation.
So, I’m constantly pushing people to consider what more we can do as entrepreneurs.
Q: What role do you see business playing in making positive change?
A major one. I think that one of the most powerful, practical and most easily embraceable things we can and must do is build up local, living economies. There are more radical things we can do, but this, to me, is a major priority. There are things that business owners can do that non-profits simply can’t.
We need to rebuild and renew locally, even as we work to dismantle global systems of oppression. We need to grow our food locally again. We need to get to know our neighbors again. We need to support locally owned businesses again.
Here’s two articles that go more deeply into this:
http://www.tadhargrave.com/index_html/Welcome
http://radicalbusiness.blogspot.com/2006/09/as-radical-as-we-wanna-be.html
Q: What’s the biggest mistake you see indie businesses people making?
The first thing I’d say is that it’s different for each business. I’ve actually seen eleven major problems that crop up and I created a really simple diagnostic tool - a quiz of sorts - that entrepreneurs can use to pinpoint where they’re strong and where they’re weak on a general level. I get raves reviews about it:
www.tadhargrave.com/Virtual_Workshops/horriblehundred
But to answer it directly, I’d say the biggest mistake is not making their marketing a priority. They put it off. They just don’t handle it. And I can’t really blame them, up until now there haven’t been many trainings or books or consultants targeted to a conscious, green, local business. What this often creates is a strange incongruence in a business. The inner reality is wonderful. The products and services kick ass. But . . . no one knows about them.
Tad’s Radical Business Intensive is coming to Seattle on November 17-19. It will be held at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center in West Seattle. To learn more, visit www.tadhargrave.com/RBI
