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Build It – And They Won’t Come!

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Why are so many ‘entrepreneurial’ workspaces so empty?

I have visited many recently. Those that pursue sustainability through membership fees and rentals are often the emptiest. Or full of people from out of town who can recognise a bargain when/if they see one. Those that recognise that local people often cannot afford to pay and therefore offer their services for free seem to have customers literally queuing up. However these are written off as ‘unsustainable’. Investing in the development of people – ‘Obviously unsustainable’!

The symptoms are obvious to the semi-expert eye. Tired signs saying ‘under offer’ for months without new tenants materialising? Acres of untouched hot desk space. Continual assurances that we were busy yesterday. Caterers that come and go – because the footfall that they anticipated has not materialised.

Promises lying broken.

When we build these places – WHY DON’T THEY COME?

This is an important question. And one that we CONSISTENTLY fail to address.

Why do those charged with developing a more enterprising culture believe that building catalyst centres, managed workspaces, incubators and other spaces will somehow change the psychology, the prevailing beliefs of a community?

Why is the “build it and they will come” mentality so prevalent? And so successful in unlocking the wallets of planners, politicians and commissioners alike?

Why in the face of refurbished or newly built, but largely empty, buildings do we insist on building yet more? Is it in the name of job creation?

We develop a more enterprising culture when we tell better, different stories. Stories of hope, aspiration, potential and achievement. Stories of progress, passion, skill and learning.

When we provide respect, encouragement and transformational relationships built on trust and wisdom. When we engage people as individuals and help them to clarify and achieve their own goals – not those pre-defined by some policy maker.

When we listen to them talk about their hopes and dreams – not tell them about the great deal we can do them if they take rent our workspace.

We don’t transform a culture by providing people with access to whitewashed vanilla workspaces and the chance to use a shared laptop with a keyboard dirtier than a toilet seat.

It is not just the waste of valuable resources that is so galling when we see buildings refurbished just because they can be. It is the ongoing waste of money as we try to cover up our mistakes in a futile effort to make them work. As commissioners cover their backs and hide behind and fall back on the recession as an excuse for their failed investments. Buildings don’t change cultures even in the good times. They don’t narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots even when the economy is on a roll. People do.

Now I hate to see a beautiful building falling into decay just as much as the next man. But I hate to see the talent and potential of people being wasted even more. Those buildings were a by-product of a vibrant, creative and enterprising community – not the cause of it.

To develop a more enterprising culture we first have to stimulate the demand side – get more people wanting to do stuff. Believing that THEY can do stuff. That they have a right to succeed or at least try – and that they will be supported with care, compassion, competence and creativity.

Only when this work on the demand side is underway and delivering tangible results should we invest in the infrastructure that they need – because then we have a chance of making an investment in something that people really want.

Something that might just fit.

Something to which they will come.

NB Of course if you build high quality entrepreneurial spaces in places that are already enterprising then they fill quickly.  Anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

Word of Mouth – Marketing that Works

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There are at least three major challenges in marketing our enterprise services:

  1. More than 90% of the population does not see what we do as relevant to them – when it comes to enterprise they are pre-contemplators
  2. Getting our messages through – what are our key messages and how to we get them where they can be heard – by the people that matter?
  3. Giving people the confidence, conviction and commitment to act on the messages – to give us a call, to come to a workshop, to make an appointment, to have a conversation

Now the default setting for the VAST majority of enterprise projects are these:

We won’t worry about the pre-contemplators – we will target those who already have ideas they want to act on or already have the belief and the conviction that they can make progress.  This makes it easier for us to hit our numbers.

Our core messages will be:

1.  we can help turn your dreams into reality (if you don’t have dreams don’t call us)

2.  We can turn your business ideas into reality (ignore the fact that the ‘Dragons’ mash up and humiliate most of the poor saps that go to them – with our help you can’t fail)

3. It is quick – and relatively easy – (if you haven’t got the skills we can teach them to you) – you can be up and running in just weeks or months.  10 000 hours to master a field – forget it – who is Malcolm Gladwell anyway? 3 half day workshops and a bit of one to one on the business plan will “see you ‘reet”. (Glad no-one is measuring survival rates on our projects!)

4.  To get people to take action we will lure them in by hinting at the availability of money, childcare, bouncy castles and food.  We will even pay them the bus fare (yes, it costs a lot to administer but – what are we to do…?)

5.  We will spend a lot of money on marketing collateral, leaflets, web sites and e-mail marketing campaigns (digital exclusion! – you mean some poor people don’t have e-mail accounts – never mind they could never become proper business people anyway – they are not our target group).

6. We will attend every possible event and push our services hard – just like those guys who sell SKY TV and Credit Cards in the Merrion Centre – “You mean we shouldn’t be selling enterprise like any other commodity?  Why not?”

We know that these approaches:

  • are expensive
  • have very low hit rates
  • attract a whole load of people who just want to get the money without putting in the work
  • attract people easily seduced by the idea of a quick fix – rather than composing a life and a livelihood
  • elicit more suspicion, frustration and cynicism than enthusiasm and engagement
  • provide us with very high customer acquisition costs.  (interesting that most entrepreneurs are very interested in this number – yet most projects funded to support entrepreneurs don’t worry about their own cost per customer acquisition at all – ‘We are below targets – lets throw some more money at marketing then!’).

What about looking at marketing approaches that work.

Word of mouth.

Reputation building, seeking referrals and recommendations – based on the fact that we are bloody good!  That we do inspire, transform, care and coach.  That we are more than interested in people and their passions.  That we are with them for the long haul.

Worrying more about what every customer says about us to their mates, in the pub, in the clubs and on the streets, rather than some abstract and easily manipulated percentage that represents ‘customer satisfaction’ – YUK!

Being the kind of people and the type of service that our customers can’t wait to recommend to their friends.

Once we start to spend time and money on developing marketing and enagement strategies  based on:

  • reputation management
  • referrals
  • introductions
  • social networking
  • gatekeepers, and
  • the needs, interests, cultures and values of the communities we serve (rather than policy goals and outcomes)

we would start to see the basics of our own businesses transformed.

  • 10% of customers influence the purchasing decisions of the other 90%
  • 91% of customers are “likely” to buy off of a recommendation
  • 92% of customers “prefer” a word of mouth recommendation

Helping People to Exist or Become?

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I have been banging on about enterprise as being a process for the emergence of identity for a long time now.  Enterprise provides the (nearly) perfect vehicle for us to explore our talents and passions and have the results of our efforts judged in real time by real people.  When you are enterprising honest feedback is always available.

But I have been nowhere near strong enough on this.

Enterprise is a process for creating and shaping lifes – NOT for increasing the start up rate.

This was brought home to me again last night listening to Frazer Irving at the Leeds College of Art.  Frazer told us the story of his journey from schoolboy geek reading (and loving) comics to becoming a professional illustrator and artist working on some of the top comics in the world and providing artwork to support advertising campaigns for blue chips.

Key elements in his journey were:

  • lots of study – school, college – taking every opportunity to develop his talent and passion – and having the strength to survive crass and damaging teachers – “Frazer – don’t waste your time on comics – when I was editing Women’s Weekly we sold 4 million copies every week – how many copies do comics sell?”
  • lots of ‘suffering’ – crap jobs, dole, survival – but still developing the passion
  • persisting long enough to ‘get lucky’ with some breaks – (funny how years of practice and development of his craft finally got him the ‘luck’ he needed…)
  • a real and enduring passion for his work – talking about the importance of ‘the muse’

Now just imagine Frazer had come to you as a young graduate (2:2), currently holding down a string of temporary jobs (selling sex toys, security guard, office work etc) and told you that he wanted to become a freelance illustrator, not just working for top comics like 2000AD, but providing his own innovative style of illustrations.  Doing HIS stuff – that at the time no-one was publishing.

Would you have the type of service that could really help him with what is inevitably going to be a long journey?

Could you support a journey measured in years, possibly decades, rather then weeks or months?  Will your funders let you?  Do you have the ability to support that kind of relationship?

Could your service help him to persist, survive and develop as he worked his way around Europe developing his experience, style and technique?

Would your relationship have had the strength, compassion and faith in his potential to endure while he became something TRULY excellent?

While he served a REAL apprenticeship (this was no government scheme designed by employers – this was real self discovery) that gave him a platform to become excellent – could you have maintained your support?

Or, in a possibly unconscious pursuit of quick fixes dictated by funding streams and service design, would you have tried to persuade him that his passion was OK as a hobby- but never really going to turn into a lucrative career?

“Do you know how many illustrators send their portfolios to 2000AD every week?”.  “Now let’s talk about how we can increase your sales of rampant rabbits.  Have you ever thought of setting up an e-bay shop?  We have a one day workshop….”

Frazer was lucky.  He knew what he wanted to become and he held onto that dream for long enough for it to become a reality.  Many of our clients stopped dreaming a long time ago.

So my questions are:

  • Should enterprise services be designed to provide short cuts to economic survival, or, to help support the long term development of human potential?
  • Which of these will create greater value in the long term?
  • What are you trained, and your services designed, to achieve – REALLY?

Time for a policy, strategy and service redesign anyone?

People really are our greatest assets and we are often not investing in them well.

Free Start Up Space!

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If you are trying to engage start-ups then this is what you are up against.

Free start up space for 6 months and then cheap rates.

Plus specialist niche equipment that you won’t find in a Vanilla Workspace!

Here in Leeds we have lots of empty work spaces at a range of prices and I believe that there is more planned to come on-stream soon.

If we are trying to develop an enterprise culture ‘premises’ are rarely, if EVER the barrier – though they are often the excuse.

The barriers are more likely to be lack of aspiration, vision and self belief.  Once we have developed these then premises will ALWAYS be found.

Fighting the Recession – ‘Buildings and Others’ or Social Capital?

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So Dundee is looking to get an outpost of the V&A museum, housed in a  new £42 million building – with a business plan that suggests it could feature local strengths in illustration, comics, animation, interactive media and computer gaming.  So much for  jam, jute and journalism.

It appears to be part of a longer term strategy that the city has been following based on the thinking of Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class).

Florida suggests that urban regeneration depends on a city attracting enough of the right kind of people – the creative class – to create businesses and jobs.  And the way to attract the right kind of people is to have the right kind of buildings – good housing stock, excellent public parks and other amenities. At its hearts appears to be a belief that if a city is failing it is because it does not have enough of the right kind of people.

This is an expensive strategy, and there is a real risk that it widens the gap between the haves and the have nots.  There is a reliance on trickle down and a hope that some of the magic pixie dust of these creatives will rub off on the locals.  And even if it doesn’t? Well they constitute a ready made supply of willing labour for the creatives – its better than nothing

I got to visit Dundee several times in recent years as I helped the Sirolli Institute to set up an Enterprise Facilitation™ Project in the City.  The project had a relatively modest investment requirement.   The investment was in building social capital, a group of local people who believe in the potential of local people and the power of enterprise as a process and a discipline to help them to transform their lives.  They recruit and manage a person centred coach whose sole job is to facilitate the hopes and dreams of local people.  To hep them make progress on their projects on their own terms.  It is based on a belief that the City already has all of the resources that it needed to manage its own regeneration.  It is an approach that recognises that the best hope for a good economic and social future lies in the long term development of local people – not in attracting outsiders and depending on them to deliver a better future.

Yesterday I got the chance to visit UrbanBiz in Leeds.  They have a small, poky office on the main road through Chapeltown.  Poorly designed and basically equipped; it is hardly a ‘signature building’.

Yet it was jumping!

People waiting to use computers, to talk with advisers to make something happen for themselves.  The centre may not win any design awards – but it is convivial.  It is ‘of the people’.

Regeneration does not depend on buildings to attract outsiders.  It depends on the engagement and sensitive but powerful facilitation and co-ordination of local people. On the development of social capital.

Losing the fixation with buildings and others – and knocking a couple of noughts of regeneration budgets (the people focused approach is so much cheaper) might just be the way forward.