What do people want?

It’s a poser at any time, but for entrepreneurs looking to profit by answering a need or satisying a desire, the question has never been more urgent or baffling than right now. Business experts have started acknowledging that the economic recovery everyone’s hoping for will be extra slow to come because we’re all cutting back drastically on purchases in order to weather the recession. 

So what can you sell when no one’s buying? 

Well, entrepreneurs are not creative for nothing. They come up with great ideas all the time. But this scenario will challenge even the most imaginative.

I’ve been trying to analyze what’s going on in order to boost my own business, so maybe if we walk through the mental process together, we’ll identify some useful trends, if not specific products and services.

First and most obviously, big luxuries are out for the overwhelming majority of average consumers. So selling some kind of necessity is our best bet. But what counts as a necessity in a global population of so many different tastes, backgrounds, occupations and problems?

Food, of course – but not fancy food. Basic clothing, housing, fuel, transportation, medical care and supplies, education and job training. Certain kinds of equipment, such as computers, home-maintenance items, kitchen stuff (since we’re not eating out). Insurance. Legal help.

Those are things people need and must get somehow. Businesses that provide them will probably survive this slump. But that still doesn’t answer our question. In a time of great uneasiness and growing hardship, what do people want? 

Money, most of all. Jobs. Investments that regain their value. Not that too many entities are capable of providing that stuff right now, but if any could, what would having those things give people? Peace, security, confidence, optimism, comfort – right? 

Emotions. States of mind. Hmmm. If we can’t offer the actual means of achieving security and comfort, maybe we can offer something that makes people at least feel a little better. Inexpensive treats or reassurances of some kind.

Okay, not sweets and junk foods. There’s way too much of that trash available already. And I don’t know about you, but I would never sell tobacco products, booze or similarly addictive stuff that ends up damaging and killing so many people. So ix-nay on the ice-vays. We want to soothe and comfort, not enslave. 

How about access to information, markets, guidance, solutions? When people feel helpless, nothing cheers them up more than discovering they have the power to find answers and take the right steps.

How about groups? We all feel safer and better when we have a group to belong and talk to – a club, support organization, religious center, online community or neighborhood gathering spot where we can believe we’re not alone in our troubles, especially if we don’t have family to rely on. 

How about stories? During the Great Depression, lots of people managed to scrape together a nickel or two for a movie now and then, especially for glamorous, lighthearted escapes from reality such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers flicks.  Books, music, dancing, drawings and interesting objects – the arts in general – brighten people up, too.

 And what about light and warmth? After all, it’s winter in half the world, and cold, dark days make the economy and life seem even crueler and more dangerous than they would in lush summertime.

Maybe some entrepreneurs out there (you? I?) will come up with new, creative, inexpensive products from these categories that revitalize people’s crushed spirits so magically they prove irresistible. And maybe if buyers feel helped, comforted and reassured, confidence and hope will return. 

Talk about doing well by doing good ….

Rough selling and sailing ahead

The people who analyze such things have predicted a dismal holiday-buying season for retail businesses. Stores and online outlets that sell non-essentials, especially high-priced and luxury items, will likely take the worst hit. 

And, yeah, guess what I sell? Too bad you can’t eat art or fill your gas tank with it.

On the other hand, far too many people assume that art is non-essential when they wouldn’t go a day without watching a movie or a show, listening to music, reading a book or looking at pictures and objects. We all turn to such things for fun and stimulation.

But we also turn to them for solace, diversion and uplift when life isn’t going right. And life sure isn’t going very well for a lot of us right now. 

So I continue to hope that many people will want things – however small – of beauty, creativity and meaning to cheer themselves and other people through these unsettling times.

From a business point of view, I’m trying to sail around this economic Cape Horn by diversifying the merchandise in The Geniocity Shop, including the price levels, and targeting the consumers I think likeliest to keep purchasing what I sell. As a social entrepreneur, I’m also hoping to contribute to the survival of talented artists. Like so many other working Americans, a lot of them have no financial margin at all – they have to live sparely at all times and an even a few months of high prices and little work can mean disaster.  

So I take it as a personal and professional responsibility to try to help artists, inventors and our whole society by informing readers about the importance of creativity to our lives and economy and increasing the chances that original work will be bought from gifted makers and enjoyed by appreciative owners.  

But for me to carry out my mission, my business has to stay solvent. (Yours, too, huh?) That’s going to get even trickier over the next few months.              

Shorten sail...

Stormy weather

Somewhere in our nation, a little guy with a spear and magic helmet must be waving his stubby arms around and shouting “Storms! North winds bwow! South winds bwow! Typhoons! Huwwicanes! SMOG!”

Whoever that little guy is – and I could name a name – he sure has turned American life into a not-so-comic opera. In his dim quest to “kill de wabbit,” he and his cast of cartoon sidekicks have brought down disasters of every kind on the unprotected heads of those they were supposed to serve.

And that’s us.  So what have we been through? The rise of a feudal economy as the unchecked privileged grab away the few resources of the poor and middle class. An invented, pointless war with thousands of killed and maimed. The fanning of our enemies’ hatred and our friends’ anger. Our nation indentured to Big Oil.  The environment in a death spiral amid an official culture of defiant ignorance. A major city drowned and destroyed through ineptitude.  Our infrastructure disintegrating.  Our money devalued. And now, a tectonic shift in the banking industry as its own greed and foolishness dissolve the bedrock it was built on.     

Earthquakes and huwwicanes, indeed – literally and figuratively. The flick some of us way-inlanders got from Ike’s tail in the last couple of days was like a physical reminder of how vulnerable we all are to catastrophes that once seemed exotically unlikely.

So this is where we stand:  in more desperate need than ever of courageous, innovative people with the skills to think and experiment our way out of this deadly fix.  The problem with crises is that they make so many people want to just stay down and stay put. They’re terrified to try the very thing that could save them. And that thing is creative risk.

Though there’s little optimism now and less money, we have enormous opportunity - and we simply can’t waste it.  The definition of “entrepreneur” is someone willing to take risk in order to reap profits, to have the guts to reach for the glory, but it can’t be limited to business. It has to be about everything in our lives. And the ideas have to come from all of us.

We have to imagine and we have to try smart new things. And when the story about the little guy in the magic helmet concludes with the question, “Well, what didja expect in an opera? A happy ending?”,  we have to say: Yes! 

And then create one.

What kind of dough gets your vote?

Barack Obama had some words for me last night.

He said, “We measure the strength of our economy, not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business.”

A little later, he spoke to me even more directly. “And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business or making her way in the world, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.”

He was speaking to you, too. For eight years now, we’ve all seen our economy turn into a feudal system where the resources and the future belong only to a tiny number of extremely wealthy, privileged people.  These people – the heads of major corporations, scions of rich families, big donors and personal friends of the politically powerful - have gotten richer and richer from insanely outsized salaries, golden parachutes, enormous bonuses, stock options and personal and corporate tax breaks while millions of ordinary people have tumbled into financial uncertainty or poverty.

To George W. Bush and his cadre, it has been more important to indulge the pathological greed of already moneyed people than to help the working poor and middle class keep their jobs and be able to afford food, heat, transportation, medical care and education.  This policy, if you can call it that, doesn’t make sense even for the rich – who will work in their industries and provide their services if everyone but them and their friends is too sick or unschooled or immobilized by gas prices to hold down what jobs remain? 

Obama has it right. The vitality and success of America come from its grassroots, from the creativity and initiative of its individual citizens. And all that has been largely ignored and neglected for eight years in which catastrophic wrongheadedness and decline have brought America to the brink of what, with all the home foreclosures and bank failures, has looked at times more like the coming of another Great Depression than a recession.       

So when Obama says he wants to eliminate the capital-gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups that create the high-paying, high-tech jobs that offer one of our nation’s best hopes for a prosperous future, I don’t just hear an idea that would help me keep Geniocity.com alive and growing. I hear a change in the wind, a hint that everyday Americans may once again, in time, be able to thrive and realize their best ideas and dreams through their own hard work, no matter who they are or how modest their circumstances.

For two terms now, Bush’s actions have said “let them eat cake.” John McCain wants to stay that course. But Obama wants to make it possible for each of us to make a better loaf of bread and own the bakery that produces it.

Can we afford to vote for anyone but him?

End this failure of imagination and courage

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. – My feet really hurt. So do other parts of my anatomy, including my brain.

I’ve been traveling around the Northeast all week by car, alternately staring out the window of a blessedly fuel-efficient hybrid car at our national network of interstate highways and walking until my shins throb through New York City, Providence, Boston and Hanover, N.H. 

Perhaps to those who inhabit those places on a regular basis, the signs of our current economic malaise are manifest. To me, coming from what Forbes magazine recently called one of America’s fastest-dying urban areas, each of the East Coast metropolitan areas looks like a new and shining Emerald City compared to Cleveland.

I’ve been thinking and writing about Cleveland’s failure to thrive for nearly 17 years now, both as a journalist and as an artist. Along with countless other Greater Cleveland citizens and civic leaders, I’ve hypothesized and analyzed and admonished and prescribed until I’m blue in the face and spirits. I’ve even started a business in hopes of changing both Cleveland and the world for the better. 

And still my adopted hometown continues to crumble and sink, in spite of many people’s nearly superhuman efforts to find or make solutions to its appalling problems. The trouble is, the Clevelanders with imagination and guts generally have little money or power. And most of the ones with money and influence have greed in place of vision and guts.

They care only about controlling their little patches of turf, about getting re-elected, about promoting their own enterprises, even at the expense of the public good. Politicians or philanthropists, tycoons or trustees, they’re all too busy protecting their personal empires to embrace bold ideas, make bold decisions and bring about big change. 

We get the leaders we deserve, right? Whether by ballot or by civic indifference. So Cleveland, I have to conclude, simply lacks the will to alter its doom. Depressed, dulled, fatalistic – whatever. We give up.

Can that be true? Are there really only a few fighters in this city willing to try something vividly new in spite of the political do-nothings and stick with the struggle until the new thing really happens? Do the rest of us have the courage to elect the kinds of leaders that have transformed Chicago and New York and Providence in recent years or decades and then support them? Can we say no to the cartel of old, traditional power-brokers in business and party politics and take control of our own welfare and future?

We can. And what we need first is to look around and see who we are – the individual citizens with the brains and heart to see a better future and to insist that we reach it. We need a summit.

All of us - employees, small-business owners, family people, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, laborers, union members, techies and scientists, office workers, retirees, even leaders dissatisfied with where the current leadership has dumped us – need to come together to meet and hear each other, choose a few ideas that will change Cleveland significantly and commit to making them happen. Starting now. Right now.

The lakefront? The educational system? The reuse or resale of foreclosed homes and the repair of infrastructure? Whatever you think must be done to turn Cleveland around right now, post your ideas in comments on this blog or send them to carolyn@geniocity.com.

Enough of aimless talk and shrugging defeatism. The wrong people have been charting our course. All of us need to revolt against this terminal inertia and spinelessness and despicable self-interest and save our city. Wake up. Stand up. Write in.

Creative Nerve: What It’s Really Like to Start a Business

Riding it out. As the economy gets grimmer and grimmer, I’m moved to wonder by what brilliance of timing it was that I decided to start a business in 2008. Investors are zipping their pockets shut; consumers can barely afford food and gasoline; companies of all kinds have slashed their budgets.

Hardly a great time to be selling advertising and creative work such as art. 

And yet, I may have less cause for worry than many business owners. At only six weeks old, Geniocity.com hasn’t grown enough yet to require much overhead: no rent, no full-time employees, few regular monthly costs. Our big expenditures tend to be somewhat elective - design work, legal fees, promotional stuff.

I believe my company can get through these bad times by being extremely careful about the rate of our site development and retail expansion. We may suffer somewhat from our inability to grow as fast as planned, but I don’t think we’re in any real danger. With our bare-bones budget, Geniocity.com should to be able to hang on until policy, politics or the sheer passage of time cures our national financial crisis.

But that doesn’t mean the crisis doesn’t scare me. And we all have more to worry about than our individual enterprises – from bank lending practices to weaning ourselves off oil, there’s an awful lot that has to change before the economy can truly recover.

So what I’m planning to do to help Geniocity.com survive is basically what I would have done anyway, only more so: Take things slowly; stay within my means; choose next steps very carefully; and rely on my own legwork and creativity. The next few months aren’t going to be much fun for any of us, but like any challenge, this economy will force us to think and invent our way out of trouble.

By the time things turn around, we may find that we haven’t just survived – by coming up with creative solutions to our problems, we may actually have leaped past our original plans and expectations. 

And no matter how incrementally Geniocity.com has to evolve, we’re planning to be your source of news and ideas on all that innovative thinking and leaping.