Tad Hargrave:

Radical Business F.A.Q.

“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 niche-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?”

- Dan McComb, Biznik.com

Q: What is Radical Business?

Radical Businessis a coaching and consulting company that works exclusively with "green", locally owned and operated, sustainable, holistic, life-affirming, community minded and otherwise conscious entrepreneurs who are struggling with their cash-flow, not attracting as many clients as they want and who don't "love" the idea of marketing (even if they love their business).

Q: Why did you start it?

I started Radical Business in the year 2000 out of the frustration of seeing so many of my friends with good hearts, wonderful intentions and big dreams . . . Still broke. I saw that these conscious entrepreneurs often had a lot of concerns and issues around money, sales and marketing and needed help to create a marketing plan that would feel good to them. But i saw that most of the really effective marketing trainings available were insanely expensive. Like $5000 for a 5 day training. Most people i know would never even consider that kind of money - even if it could really help.

Q: How long have you been doing this?

Since 2000 formally, but for about a decade informally.

Q: What is your P.W.Y.C. philosophy?

It’s the idea of allowing people to determine, for themselves, with no external pressure how much they want to pay for something based on what they can afford. And to be able to make that decision after they have received and benefited from the product or service.

It’s a philosophy and practice based on radical trust. It puts the onus on the seller of the product or service to be so good that they inspire people to give generously.

It’s not unlike street performing in that way. People are just walking down the street - they don’t know the busker’s name. They’re not glad they came. It’s the buskers job to stop them, get them to stay through the whole show and then pay them at the end. In the theatre people pay before they see the show. If the show sucks, too bad. You’re still out the money - but on the street you can walk away. I still think busking is one of the most honest forms of art because of this - you determine what it was worth.

Q: Where did this P.W.Y.C. practice come from?

I was doing a training in Fairfield, Iowa but my computer crashed for two weeks right before and . . . A bunch of things happened, the upshot was that nobody had enrolled when i arrived on the Monday. I did an intro and 16 people were there. I said, “look, I’m here until Monday anyway. I’d rather do a training than just sit around. So, why don’t you just come to the weekend. Pay me nothing in advance. And then, at the end, you just pay me whatever you thought it was worth, based on what you can afford.” People were shocked but delighted. I was really nervous that i wasn’t going to get any money but people ended up paying me so generously. I was actually blown away. And i thought to myself, “well, that was easy . . .” So i tried it again. And it worked like a charm. So, I’ve just kept doing it.

Q: Why are you still doing the P.W.Y.C. practice?

In the beginning, it was just an accident and a desperate move to salvage some profit from it. But over time, there’s a lot of other reasons that have appeared. On the personal side, i love doing training. They’re a lot of fun for me. I want to help create a space to see local, progressive business communities weave themselves together. Politically – i have a growing “class analysis”. Poor people aren’t poor because they’re stupid or lazy. I think that “the system” is deeply, fundamentally and irreversibly based on exploitation, violence and coercion. I think it creates and depends on poverty. If i can help those in impoverished situations to get more breathing room – then i want to do that. Most marketing trainers are into getting rich and I’m not. I’m in this to help foster positive change etc.

But i’ve also come to appreciate that there are self-serving professional reasons to continue with it.

The P.W.Y.C. model seems to be an easy, low effort, powerful way for me to identify and build a client base. I’m sure you can imagine how much faster people enroll in a P.W.Y.C. event than a fully priced one.

And, in terms of seminars, what most people forget is that it takes me no more time to have a poor person in my training than somebody who can afford to pay me well. It doesn’t matter how many people are in the room to me. It’s still the same amount of my time. In one-on-one follow up it matters profoundly, but if I’m speaking to 5 people for an hour or 50 people or 50,000 people it still only takes me an hour. But the more people there are, the more money i make.

And, critical to the P.W.Y.C. philosophy is the understanding that, P.W.Y.C. does not mean free. I tell people, “this is not a free event. You must pay something. Attending the whole weekend and paying nothing is not okay.”

Doing a P.W.Y.C. event in no way precludes me offering a paid event, developing products or other backend services like an “advanced level” workshop”. In fact, i almost certainly will. Most people at the free intros won’t be match – they will self select, some who come to the weekend will be a better match for me, some of them will want to work with me, some will turn into regular clients of mine, high paying ones – all for very little effort on my part.

Plus, it’s an experiment. I’m still not convinced that P.W.Y.C. is the best way to go. I figure I’ll try it out for a few years and evaluate if it’s worth it. I’m young – i have no wife and no kids. I can afford to experiment.

Q: Why do you do this work?

Because i think that a core of the solution to our problems is the creation of local, living economies. I’m particularly inspired by the work of balle - www.livingeconomies.org in this.

With the situation so dire in the world - we need successful alternatives like never before. More and more people want to create healthy and sustainable lives and are desperate for alternatives (that’s you!).

But this means not only creating the alternatives - it means telling the world about them. It means presenting the real value of what you do in an attractive, competent and compelling manner. It means spreading the word. It means getting people to try them out.

In a word - marketing.

Q: What are the biggest mistakes you see your types of clients making?

Where to start? I think there’s eleven big ones that stick out. And the funny thing is that very few of them have to do with “marketing skills”. But everyone assumed that this is what they need: more information. It usually isn’t.

They’re in the wrong business - they don’t want to build it up.
They aren’t willing to take full and total responsibility for their marketing.
Marketing is not a priority.
They have no marketing or business goals.
They don’t think marketing works: they feel like they’re flushing money down the toilet.
They don’t know how.
They don’t think they’re worth it.
They have conflicting beliefs about marketing.
They have no systems for marketing.
Their business is unattractive to them.
They’re caught in crisis (or worse yet - a crisis mentality).

Q: What if someone isn’t suffering from any of these problems? Is it possible that they still might not be getting the results that they want?

Yeah. Absolutely. Those six are sort of my first glance at an entrepreneur’s situation. They’re sort of the most basic problems. Before you deal with fancy marketing moves, you’ve really got to deal with those. They’re like the rodents gnawing at the roots of your marketing tree, you know? You’ve got to deal with them first. They’re like the deer, rabbits and gophers that keep getting into your garden and eating your stuff. They’re like the leak in your bathtub. The answer isn’t to plant more or to turn the faucet on higher to keep more water flowing in. The best approach is to put up a fence or patch the leaks.

Once you’ve handled those “survival issues” then you can start to look into critical strategic questions. And, I really want to point this out, 99% of businesses I meet do not have strong, compelling answers to the following six sets of questions:

Vision: What are you trying to build? What’s it all about for you? What are you overall goals for your business?

Ideal Client: Who are your ideal clients? Who is your target market? Which communities are you best suited to serve?

The Problem: Why are your clients buying from you? What is the problem they’re trying to solve? What’s the self serving result they’re trying to produce that has NOTHING to do with you?

U.S.P.: What is the irresistible offer you’re making to the marketplace? Why should I buy from you vs. your competition?

Brand: What’s the overall vibe of your business? What colours and fonts do you use? Do you have a logo? What are ten adjectives that best describe your business’ tone?

The Wall of Risk: What do you do to reduce, eliminate or even reverse the risk inherent in the transaction? What do you do to make working with you a ‘risk free’ proposition?

Q: And what happens if you already have or your develop really solid answers to these questions?

Besides being eligible for business sainthood?

Seriously, I consider it a minor miracle when people have a clear answer to all six questions.

The first thing they realize is that they now have their foundation set for any marketing their business will ever do in the future. They are strategically set forever. Or at least a good long while.

The second thing that happens is they immediately start making more money and attracting more clients just due to the level of clarity they now have. They notice that their current tactics work better. And they realize that they have now given themselves a powerful foundation from which to develop new and better tactics.

Q: What are the core tactics?

There’s five of them and they should be considered in the following order.

Crafting Irresistible Offers to Existing Clients: Your most valuable asset as a business is your current customer list. Most people think of marketing as something you do to find NEW clients. But the best and easiest marketing is often to make really good offers to your existing client base. They already love you!

Up-Sells, Down-Sells: This one is so easy but so few businesses do it well. It’s the “do you want fries with that?” question. It’s asking yourself, at the point of sale, “is there anything else that this person will need to get the result they’re after?” If there isn’t, you say nothing. If there is, you offer it.

Referral Systems: How can you get your own clients to actively be sending you business? I’m not talking about passive word of mouth, I’m talking about active systems you set in place to make it very easy and compelling for your existing clients to be sending their friends to you.

Joint Ventures: Are there other businesses you can partner with? There are some businesses who likely already have a list of your ideal clients? You target market already buys from them. If they endorsed your product or service directly to your list - you could make a small fortune.

Direct Response to Prospects: Finally, are there other lists or places you could advertise where it’s highly likely your ideal client would be focused? Notice, this is what most people think of in terms of marketing. It’s their first thought, but I’m putting it as the very last step.

Q: Where do you suggest that most businesses start?

With a marketing practice.

Hands down, the #1 thing that will forever transform a businesses marketing from mediocre to masterful is developing a consistent marketing practice just like they might have a regular yoga or meditation practice, or a regular exercise routine. They need that for their marketing.

It’s more important than reading a book. It’s more important than going to a workshop. It’s more important than hiring a coach. It’s the basis, the foundation of everything they will ever do in their marketing.

Specifically, i recommend that most businesses start with simply one hour per week. One hour on non-negotiable time that they spend each week working on their business instead of in it. They can spend more time if they want to, but not less time. This isn’t time to read stuff, this is time to work on stuff. This is time to think big picture, to strategize, to work with the basics. At first it will seem like it’s nothing, but over time it adds up.

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 progressive and community minded folks. 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 the Radical Business Intensive.

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? Many groups have had limited success with that approach 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:

Also included are 70 other pages of free marketing insights.

You can get it free by signing up on the left hand side of my website. That will also sign you up for my email newsletter which will give you updates on when I'm in your area and also regular marketing insights.

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.

Q: What is your overall marketing philosophy?

I think I can best sum it up into four key elements.

PHASE #1: Identifying Your Niche. Who are you choosing to target? The ‘niche’ is the basis of the whole weekend. Everything we do will be built upon it. During this phase, you will be invited to identify a niche to work with over the weekend. You will get individual, focused coaching from me on the creation of this niche. Much of this is covered in the Niche Workshop you now have access to.

PHASE #2: What is your Irresistible Offer? In this phase we will look at what you could offer to your niche that would be absolutely irresistible. Most people make the critical mistake of designing their product and service first and then plunking marketing onto the top of it.

Instead, we need to start with marketing and ask ourselves questions like, “What do they want? what don’t they want? What’s most important to them when buying what we sell? What’s important not just about the product or the service but about the experience that surrounds the purchase? What frustrates them about our industry? What risks do they perceive to doing business with us?”

Here you will learn the elements of what makes a great offer including 12 “offer intensifiers” that can be added to any offer to make it more compelling.

PHASE #3: What are your hubs? Where can you find your niche? People always ask me where they should be advertising. But the answer depends 100% on who your niche is. Luckily for you, finding out where you can reach your target market is pretty easy. In fact, there’s only really 7 kinds of hubs and there’s 9 criteria of your ‘perfect hub’.

PHASE #4: Word of Mouth Strategies - how do you get your current prospects and clients spreading the word about what you do. If you do the first three strategies, then you are well ahead of 99% of your competition. You are set up to market yourself in extremely low to no cost ways. This final step looks at the age old question of word of mouth and referral marketing. You will learn the difference between active and passive word of mouth and also the 4 mains strategies to achieve it.

You can download a free 90 page ebook on this just by signing in on the left hand side of my website.