On a recent trip to the library the writer picked up the book Everything I Know about Business I learned from the Grateful Dead by Barry Barnes PhD, published by Business Plus 2011. The Grateful Dead was a very successful musical band from 1965 to 1995. The Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream flavour Cherry Garcia was name for lead singer Jerry Garcia. singer. This column continues will 3 more lessons:

4. Share Your Content – the Power of “Free”  In the creative business, familiarity rather than scarcity creates value. The more people that know your work, the more ways there will be to make money. An example the band had to deal with was fans taping the shows. What to do about them? After some time, a decision was reached to have a spot in the concert for tapers. The reason for the decision was to increase the size of the pie. The tapes brought in more fans who bought tickets to the shows, more records, more merchandise and equally important the fans shared with others to create an even  bigger marketplace.

5. Create a Business Tribe – Collaborate with the audience. As the audience increased, the Band wanted to have multiple methods to contact them. One method was to ask for an mailing address and send material, not always to sell something. For example the concerts sold out quickly, a solution was to allow the mailed addresses fan base to buy before the general public. The fans within the scope of the spirit of the band were allowed to do what is considered right. Another of the many examples was some of the Deadheads sold merchandise at each show. This allowed them to pay the expenses to go to the next show, The Tourheads were encouraged to be part of the concert scene.

6. Insource  – do-it-yourself. In source means to control or do it better in terms of creative control in an effort to keep customers happy resulting in greater profitability. There is no magic answer to do things in house or outsource them for there are benefits to both methods. It is often better to do it in house, if you are trying to do things differently than the established rules. To do it in house means learning opportunities, but if control stays within the organization’s values and with proper execution, the organization can make more money.

There will be more rules in tomorrow’s column and you can see if your organization follows these rules or is open to them.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions