Creative Freedom of a Restrictive Economy

The latest issue of Wired has a special feature on design. The subject that they hit upon is one that is close to my heart.  Here is the article. They are designing in a medium that predates embedded video and infographics. It is a blank white rectangle. “At Wired, our design team sees this as our daily bread,” they point out.

The constraint of the page actually inspires more creativity.

It reminds me of a creative writing course in college.  You would think that the most clever and creative work would come from a no-holds-barred approach to expression.  However, that was not the case.   The best work we produced came as a result of placing restrictive guidelines and forcing us to come up with a way to express an idea from inside a cage.  The most inspiring work happened when we had to write in iambic pentameter or rhyme certain lines or begin our stories with some random sentence (I saw the horse in the rain, and I knew I had to leave my wife…who couldn’t write a good story with that line?).

The constraint of the economy can inspire your creativity.

The beauty of our current economic situation is that it forces us to strip down our business into the essential elements.  I am not a neurologist, but it feels like there is a part of my mind that works better under restriction.  Be it real or imagined.

The same is true for many successful companies that I talk to.   They are coming up with ways to still express their value when prospects have less money.  One example is Kuhlmann Leavitt, Inc., a St. Louis-based design firm.  They have spun off a new company, Stax Modular, a mobile display product that can be used for anything .  So far, the response to their new product has been exciting, and they are going to showcase it as trade shows in the Spring.

With markets crashing around us and a breakdown of the financial world, this gives those who have always been on the outside of traditional forms of capital even more reason to innovate.  Small business owners have always had to be creative and design something striking and beautiful out of very little.

The trick now is distilling your idea of what your business is and allowing constraint to design your business better.

THE LIST

Here are questions you can ask yourself to get to the root who your company is:

1. Who would notice if my business went away? List the people, institutions, etc. These folks are your champions.  Get to know them better. Most people cover up when times are tough. People will be more important than ever now.
2. What is it that is valuable about my company? Is it people? Is it a product that is unique? You service. Whatever it is, don’t fall into the temptation to cut it lose for budget reasons.
3. What makes us money or raises our funds? These are revenue streams.  Pour resources to them.  They, as our former commander-in-chief says, “keep food on your family.”
4. What other talents do I or others on my team have that we have allowed to go by the wayside? These are new revenue opportunities. You have good ideas already. Use them now. See the Kuhlmann Leavitt example above.

This is only a beginning to a job that really should not require a crappy economy.  You probably have some better questions.  Now is always the time to continue innovation.

LET ME KNOW

Send me some better questions to distill a business down to its core.  I will send you a copy of the sestina they made me write in my poetry class. If nothing else, it will be a good laugh.

- Jeremy Nulik, Creative Energy Officer, St. Louis Small Business Monthly

Stop worrying about the credit market…get creative

Tom Schlafly is one of the most successful business people (and human beings) I have had the pleasure of talking to. He built the St. Louis Brewery in the town that has…um..you, know… THE Brewery. However, since InBev came to town, Schlafly now enjoys status as St. Louis largest locally-owned brewery.

As Tom points out in his witty column Top Fermentation, “In any discussion of local industry in St. Louis, Schlafly is now The Brewery.” The irony is thicker than the head on one of Tom’s stout winter brews.

The man who:

• claims that he “would never have started his business if he knew anything about business”
• attracts an entire team of people with liberal arts degrees and no business background
• had to change Missouri laws on microbreweries to grow his business
• holds an irrational love for St. Louis
• continues to bring a creative wonder to his business

…is now wildly successful against all odds and in the shrined shadow of a St. Louis darling – Anheuser-Busch.

Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle choice and a way of thinking differently about:

• what it means to be in business
• what it means to have success
• what it means to be professional

Many times at the root of this decision (to rip the employee label off your life and think in this manner) is a very emotional and peculiar drive. As my friend Richard Sacks (author, consultant and entrepreneur) puts it, “most entrepreneurs are on plan B.” They are creative, innovative, passionate people who got ticked off at the way that their industry was working, or feel that some population is grossly underserved.

If there is this distinction between an entrepreneur and a manager or executive, then why do entrepreneurs constantly feel they have to behave like the rest of business world when it comes to financing their business?

I have heard many entrepreneurs complain:

• The banks don’t take me seriously.
• I don’t have the right contacts.
• The credit market has dried up.
• Venture capitalists aren’t giving out money.
• Angel investors are watching their portfolios dwindle away.

This reaction to our current economy is not an irrational response. This is fear-based thinking that will be a secure lockdown to any growth that your business could hope to have.

To survive the slowdown and the limited access to capital, you must see this fear, name it and move along on the path.  You must be irrational. (For more on this see Dixie Gillaspie’s article on moving through fear.)

You are an entrepreneur…be creative. Here are some practical steps that I have seen the best entrepreneurs take to make long-term financial goals. (All of these steps were taken assuming that you had the right attitude, have had solid business ethics and want to grow your business.)

• Get skin in the game. This is a battle. If you can’t stomach a big personal loss, you may need to find a job. While it does not sound pleasant, I have yet to meet a financial backer who is comfortable taking on all the risk. Collect up your capital and what you have of value. If it was a comfortable process, then everyone would do it. Two retailers I know have doubled their business in the last year by leveraging collateral to get credit.
• Negotiate and make terms with your vendors. Make it as simple as possible. “Hey, things are slowing down for me. Can I pay you $x amount per month?” Most folks will allow you some latitude.
• Find easy ways to monetize what you do. This is dangerous because you may end up going down sales paths that can distract you from a primary purpose. What do you do already do that adds value and you can easily charge for? This could be scaled-back versions of a larger service for a reduced rate. However it looks, find new ways to make money at what you are already doing.
• Find like-minded folks that share your vision. They may not be instant sources of money, but you can certainly find advise, empathy, friendship and accountability. The monetary value of true friendship is immeasurable. The most successful people that I know found and inner circle that they went to in good times and bad. You start finding these people by becoming an approachable person.

It may seem as though the universe is conspiring against you, but take a look at Schlafly’s situation 17 years ago. You do not face nearly the odds that he did. He made it. You can too. It may not look the way you thought it would, but your company will be better for it.

And, if you are a St. Louis-based entrepreneur, then you have access to at least 49 growth opportunities that are unique to your city.

TRY THIS ONE ON:

If you wanted to hear what it was like for a passionate, eccentric business owner, then read Tom Schlafly’s book, A New Religion in Mecca. There is a great deal of hope in there. It seems that Schlafly contends that the universe conspired to make his business successful, but, someone who knew what she was talking about once said: Luck is the residue of rigorous, persistent action.

- Jeremy Nulik, Creative Energy Officer, St. Louis Small Business Monthly

A framework for innovation

As a species, it is in our nature to adapt. That, along with the whole opposable thumb thing, has lead to incredible creation and innovation.

However, there are people like me stuck in today’s world of rapid innovations that constantly find themselves saying, “I don’t get it.” If my brain has any “elasticity,” then I am feeling it stretched to the brink.

This pain point is an awesome opportunity for entrepreneurs to design ways to interpret this constant innovation.

I ran across an article in Seed magazine that discusses the importance of elasticity and design as it relates to creativity in today’s culture (I know it’s a bit long, but, dammit, it’s worth it):

Adaptability is an ancestral distinction of human intelligence, but today’s instant variations in rhythm call for something stronger: elasticity. The by-product of adaptability and acceleration, elasticity means being able to negotiate change and innovation without letting them interfere excessively with one’s own rhythms and goals. It means being able to embrace progress, understanding how to make it our own. One of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people deal with change. Designers have the ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores and to convert them into objects and ideas that people can understand and use. Without designers, instead of a virtual city of home pages with windows, doors, buttons, and links, the internet would still be a series of obscure strings of code, and appliances would be reduced to standardized skeletons of functions.”

What does this mean for leaders of businesses and organizations?

To thrive in today’s marketplace of ideas – entrepreneurs, leaders and professionals need to understand the importance that design language plays in relation to innovation and creativity. The sheer amount of innovation is too much. If you can offer people a framework through which they can view, categorize and better understand it, then you will thrive.

I don’t think that this means that we need to run out tomorrow and become “designers.” What this means is that the framework is actually equally important to the content of innovation. Teach someone how to interpret all this data in a different way that helps them solve problems or achieve greater success, and you are bound to succeed far better yourself.

Great companies that I talk with have an interesting view of change. They understand its importance in sustainability, however, even more importantly, they had a purpose – a clear design – that allowed for change to be interpreted. The struggle is in making the design clear and understandable – making it sticky enough so it can be applied.

HOMEWORK

If you want to see someone who is really shaking things up with visual thinking, then check out XPLANE CEO David Gray’s blog. Through visual thinking, people are given a framework to interpret change. My friend, Matt Homann works there are well and doesn’t do such a bad job at blogging either.

************

Jeremy Nulik, Creative Energy Officer (CEO), St. Louis Small Business Monthly