Please don’t take this as an endorsement. This is simply a showcase of friends and their professions. Full Disclaimer here.
My friend, Mia Casal, is a potter. I want to talk more about the process by which we came about her Value Proposition since it may give you ideas on how to work on yours. I like patronizing the work of people who really love their craft. You just know they’re going to keep working on it and keep getting better. I have since scheduled a pottery class as our team building activity for Issho Genki and ordered a special tea set for 10. Why 10? For my folks, my brothers and their partners, and me and my future partner.
Think ahead. Always think ahead.
Anyway…
I first met Mia with a group of friends from New York but our interaction really started when I told her I’d help her organize herself into a business. Now a business doesn’t have to be formal or big right away. It can start small. But it has to be deliberately managed and grown to meet the goals set. I find many people wanting to start a business without even knowing WHY they want to, and usually, the answer is: money. Money isn’t a bad thing in itself but it is an empty goal. Financial freedom and independence are better goals, and to deliver value to others in your chosen field is even better.
Isn’t that the same thing?
No.
Doing business to make more money means that the more money you make the better no matter what it costs. Doing business to be financially free means the more freedom you enjoy the better, of course that means making more money, but it also means learning contentment and being grateful. It’s a small difference in outlook that produces a totally different lifestyle. Delivering value means that the priority is to offer something that really meets the needs and/or desires of people and working on getting people to appreciate that.
From my conversations with Mia, I realized that she’s really an artist, which includes all the crazy ideas artists have. She’s definitely crazy about her craft, which is a good sign. I like working with people who are nuts. It just shows you they’re in love. Have you seen anyone in love who wasn’t nuts?
The challenge many artists have, especially the purists, is how to make money on what they do. They know they need the money, but the last thing they want to do is to peddle.
But arts and crafts can make money for the artist. Remember that money is simply a container of value that can be exchanged for other things of value. Art, when done well and presented appropriately, is actually a container of value itself that people may be willing to trade money for.
So Mia and I had to work on refining her value proposition in a way that would convey the value of her pottery.
Here are a few things that came out from the exercise:
1. Her pieces are special and handcrafted – not mass-produced, so all her pieces, even the ones from the same set, are never completely alike because they’re handcrafted.
2. Her materials, time, and labor costs are high since the pieces are individually made.
3. Part of sharing her love for pottery was not just about selling pieces but also introducing people to the activity of pottery itself by teaching.
It’s very important when conceptualizing your value proposition that you factor in who you or your organization is. By this I mean factoring your passions, your capabilities, your limitations, and your goals. Many times we unrealistically conceptualize what we want without taking into account how we are going to bring about. It’s important to think this through as you work on your value proposition, and see how you can achieve your goals. If your goal is to make something of quality don’t sell-out to make money initially. If you must make a small compromise to survive, limit it to a minimum, but beware you may have a difficult time reversing the effects of this.
Your target market or customer segments should also be taken into consideration. Because of who Mia is, because of her passions, capabilities, limitations, and goals, the direction of her value proposition is really towards that of an artist, and more and more, that of a teacher. Value propositions are customer segment specific, not everyone will like what you have to offer. (Case in point: my hair.) But by knowing who exactly you’re offering your value proposition to you are able to refine the communication, the delivery, and the actual proposition.
Is Mia’s path the most economically feasible? Only time will tell. But at the very least it achieves some of her goals, which is to create wonderful works of art from dirt and share her love of pottery. We won’t be able to achieve all our goals right away. And like I said earlier, money is ultimately an empty goal. It’s important, but empty on its own.
Success is not instant; it’s not a straight line, or a sure thing. It’s the product of a different process for everyone. I guess it’s like pottery that way; there are principles and techniques but not two pieces are ever the same.
Unless of course you’re mass-produced. But those are cheap.
If you’d like to know more about Value Propositions and my Business Dashboard class please email Jenny Yrasuegui at jenyrasuegui@gmail.com.
