December 17, 2004
hire hugh(train)
THE HUGHTRAIN: “THE MARKET FOR SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN IS INFINITE.”
We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary.
We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.
Earlier I started dropping hints about how I plan to make The Hughtrain commercially viable, to myself and others.
Though this is not my only idea, this is a main one:
If you like The Hughtrain, and would like me to help you apply it to your own business, you can now hire me as your very own Hughtrain Consultant.
You pay me a simple monthly retainer fee of $500, for which in return I impart what I know in a way that directly helps your business.
The basic mechanisms for exchange are e-mails, AIM and phone calls. We can also collaborate via private blogs and wikis.
New clients can sign up for a single month– after that the contract can be renewed for 6 or 12 months.
Chemistry and conversation is key to this process. I retain the right to bow out of the 6 and 12 month contracts with one month’s notice.
Before work procceeding or money changing hangs, both parties would be expected to have a pretty clear and mutally-agreed idea of what outcomes and outputs are to be expected. I expect $500 per month to be extremely good value for money, as long as both parties understand the basic parameters. Obviously, I’m not selling this stuff for $5 an hour. But I’ not selling it for $500 an hour, either.
I look forward to collaborating with you.
So, do you think there’d be a market for this kind of service? I’m thinking, if I could help add real benefit, topspin etc to other people’s businesses, they wouldn’t begrudge $3-6K.
Please feel free to leave comments. I think this idea has some potential. Interested to hear what y’all think.
And certainly, if anybody is seriously interested in undertaking this idea/offer, by all means please drop me an email:
hugh at gapingvoid etc.
[UPDATE:] I’m beginning to agree with some of the folks who left comments here (Thanks, Everybody!). I think it would be far easier to find and manage 4 clients willing to pay $3K a month than to find and manage 24 clients willing to pay $500 a month. Perhaps I should raise my fee…
Okay.
I’m in.
Yeah, there’s a market for it. You.
Been studying your site while concurrently developing a wee business. It’s been a great inspiration.
Call your site “Gaping Void University” on my own blog, and I’m matriculated.
Of course you should be paid.
i think you definately have a good USP ready for the take-up. good luck with it fella…
some clever bugger once said ‘there are riches in niches’! i’m sold…
regards and chrimbo cheer
DK
This is absolutely on my list of best ways to use your money to improve your business, be it small or big.
Will recommend to everyone.
There’s most definitely a market for your service. Focus on SME’s that your $500 retainer will appeal to and who are dying for a way to get the word out about themselves. A possible place to find these folks: try getting buddy-buddy with some private equity firms in your area — ones that work with small to medium sized companies. The PE’s are always recommending expertise to their portofilo companies (accountants, lawyers, etc.). Why not you? You can find PE’s through the Association for Corporate Growth (acg.org). I’m a member of the ACG Kansas City chapter.
Hugh, there’s a small group of us inside our ad agency/pr firm trying to do what you’re doing…reinvent our business. We call it “melting the icecube.” I discuss it on my blog, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Send me an email, big man.
Too cheap, sounds like you doubt anyone will really buy it. Maybe a few people who read you here who also happen to be responsible for the petty cash for the biscuit tin in the conglomerate will support you, but I’d advise pricing your service in such a way as to reflect real worth and lack of self-doubt on your part.
Your honesty is to be admired, and I realise that’s part of your message, but when it comes to a business signing on the dotted line this sounds half-cocked and throwaway. A bit like begging. Rethink, reprice, relaunch, expunge this embarrassment. Good advice for free Hugh. (Also get your spelling right when asking for money!)
Jeremy Wright put himself on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5142129647
i would think that the fee would be appropriate if you’re looking to work with small and nimble companies and not necessarily big crusty ones.
I think you are undervaluing yourself. $500 is pocket change.
Dollars? Make it EUROS, dude.
Dollars are the new pesos.
Agree with Josef. This reminds me of your effort to get a gapingblog.com started. Screw blog entries, make a page at:
gapingvoid.com/services
Contract a copyeditor – and if possible, a web designer – and don’t make excuses for your price. (Instead of if ‘anybody is seriously interested’, say ‘email me now to have a primary evalution done (with some reommendations) for $xxx, after which a $500 contract can be arranged.) And of course, after you’re done, get in touch with said designer and make a portfolio/case study.
But you knew this. I’m just pushing the point.
$50,000 for a collection of original sketches on the back of business cards?
$500 for a month of Hugh Train consulting?
You might do well to move some zeros around.
But what do I know? I’m as tapped as you claim to be.
Hugh -
I think there’s a market for “Inspirational Words to the Lost-At-Sea Middle-Managers of Corporate Culture”.
But as someone who has seen the most basic screw-ups occur when outside consultants, especially in the IT industry, are brought in to bring a “New Way of Thinking” via a “New Way of Working” promoting “A New Way of Being” into an established business culture, you’re staring down the double barrel of the most basic of issues.
While there are generalisations to be made about systems, it’s the multitude of exceptions that describe the realities of an individual system.
It takes time, a fair whack of time, involving many points of views, especially those views of people who ARE NOT the ones at the top of the food chain to begin to understand what is actually going on behind an organisation’s facade. Much of it will be historical, much of it will be to do with personality traits, most of it will be unsaid — but understood by those within the company.
And being on the end of a telephone, email, SMS, system, whatever, means you’re out of the loop. You’re not only out of the loop, you’re probably talking to the wrong person. And that person may well be part of the issue that he or she is unwilling or unable to discuss.
Going for the Distance-Learning route may seem neat and low-maintenance for the ad man who’s been getting everyone to come to him so he can use them as a very large sounding board, but it’s not the way to solve the problems of the companies you are claiming you are going to help.
ACTUALLY I’ve just had couple of interesting ideas and after re-reading you initial posting maybe you’re already there with one of them. It’s all about focus and who’s involved in the conversation. The way I see it you couldn’t do the thing for $500/a month. You’d do it in a far more concentrated time scale and for more money… mail me Hugh, if yah want to know if we’re thinking in the same direction.
I’d say that the Introductory Offer of $500 would be a great first month, so long as you can place limits on the amount of time you dedicate to any one client…
plastics.
I can do better than this. How would you like to earn $24 a month for each one of your readers? Respond to my email from 12/16 and we’ll talk about it.
It’s a tried-and-true business model for startegic-thinking consultants who want to offer consistent value-added services to a client, and one I much favour. Why ? Because it allows a consultant and a client organization to grow together and make real the old saw of “understanding your business and culture”. It’s also put up against the always-larger “I’ve got the solution for you” consulting, which is 90% of the time a big fat lie but easier for many to wrap their heads around and buy.
I think the whole point is that a relatively easy-to-swallow retainer fee for real and ongoing value makes a lot of sense … tho’ I agree with your other readers that $500 is too little … won’t be taken seriously. $2000 or $3000 is still approximately what it would take on a monthly basis even to hire temporary admin assistants … the whole key is to find people at or near the top of organizations who value creative and strategic thinking … the Hughtrain stuff … and who will allow you the consultant the access, time and openmindedness to provide insight and question-based value … for approximately as much as the basic admin support the company receives. Those clients who honestly do understand how this other or additional perspective can be extremely valuable should be your targets.
3 or 4 clients at 3,000 per month will keep you in rice, lettuce and Jagermeister, and keep you out of the rain, I imagine.
Hugh I was chatting to these people the other night http://www.cambridgematrix.co.uk/ they may well be interested in your services — contact rend at their url
If a company is clued in they won’t need you.
If they’re clueless, they won’t want you.
You need the half-clued.
And if you’re half good, they’ll be clued-in quick.
So, yeah raise your fee by half. 15K. Work with no client for no more than three months. 5K per. Clued-in in 90 days or fuck off and die.
Plus eliminate the phone calls. NONE! Unless you plan on recording them, for quality or fucking amazement purposes.
Keep it all in text/wikis. Pressures people to think. Hold all meetings,when and if and only when necessary, at a zoo or an art gallery.
Other than that, I haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re talking about, to be honest about it, other than understanding that people are basically psychotic, so there’s a basis for a conversation there, I suppose, but I really don’t want to have a conversation about the shit I buy, and I wouldn’t have to if everything thrown on the market wasn’t beta quality in the first fucking place. I’d be fucking amazed if everyone stopped presuming that I want a relationship. I don’t. Any more than I want messages. I want anonymous sex. No talking. It’s always amazing and renews my faith in our species more than any product and or service, and if you and the business model Train set don’t get this, call me and we’ll talk.
Please forgive me: I’m not in marketing or the non-technical type of consultancy. Worse, I have a pretty bad impression of these fields (old-skool and new hipster types as well). So my comments will no doubt seem stupid but that’s never stopped me before.
Firstly, I’d agree that $500 / month is too low. Furthermore, I’m sceptical as to how you can from the outside really change the culture within as someone else pointed out.
However, $500 / month doesn’t sound a huge expense for an information source that could lead to more specific or entrenched consultancy roles.
Think of it as premium content gapingvoid if you like where you educate the corporate culture by putting in a dialogue within the company. A lot of these ‘hughless’ companies have or want an intranet that goes beyond contacts and top-down intra-news.
You could provide something more valuable than just your words of wisdom, case studies, problems / answers or whatever other content considered useful. You can provide a point of interaction where the entire corporate foodchain is invited, encouraged, cajoled to interact with each other AND ultimately with their customers. You can act as cheerleader if they’re getting it or problem highlighter if they’re not.
This would be a mash-up of premium content by you (and your minions), private but useful play areas / tools (wikis, blogs, forums, whatever) and public (customer facing) areas (group edited blogs?).
An ASP model for customer dialogue services if you like… without the bland, faceless corporate entity they mostly represent and encourage.
I guess if you’re going to change culture you will have to embed yourself within the daily lives of your clients not just give them pep talks. You’ll also have to replace the processes, structures and tools that they currently use but fight this evolution. You have to really change what CRM means to a company.
So what my long-winded rant is saying: Don’t just tell they need to converse, make them and provide the tools (and processes) they need to do it. Positive reinforcement etc.
Sayed, I totally agree:
1. $500 is too low. I’m rethinking to $2-3K. We’ll see.
2. “Don’t just tell they need to converse, make them and provide the tools (and processes) they need to do it. Positive reinforcement etc.”
Agreed. Which is why I’m currently talking to a tech company about co-building “deliverables”.
You’re right– pep talks aren’t enough
I’ve just been keeping kinda quiet about the deliverable side till I’m more ready to go public.
Thanks =)
“We are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary.”
Hugh, buddy, seriously. If this is the station from which the Hughtrain departs, I’m forced to suggest $500 might be a wee bit exorbitant.
I think you’re swell, really, and it is true that the dipshits and scumbags that populate Corporate America will pay absolutely ass-puckering quantities of cash for anything that gives the slightest hint of ‘enhancing shareholder return’ or ‘maximizing ROI’ or ‘helping to keep darkie down’, and any attempt to hokuspokus some lucre out of them is admirable, but crikey!
“We humans want to believe in our own species. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so.”
Well, no. Or maybe maybe.
How about this, instead? We humans don’t want to die. We don’t even want to think about it. And we want people, companies and products in our lives that help us to fool ourselves that we won’t.
I’m not sure that that’s even true, entirely, but it’s as true (well, more so, I reckon, of course) as the one you offer.
And I’m givin’ it away for free, with more where that came from. Hell, took me about 12 seconds to come up with it! All free for the taking, thanks to the everylasting goodness of my chickeny heart.
No, wait, 750 Euros a month! That’s the ticket. ’cause those cashed-up corner-office bastards don’t value anything unless it’s got a fucking price tag attached.
So hop on the Wonderchicken Express, kids!
And help pull my sorry ass out of poverty.
How does branding really happen? (1)
Among the comments on one of Hugh’s posts I found this gem from Ben Wharton (who doesn’t seem to have a website)(My emphasis)As someone who has seen the most basic screw-ups occur when outside consultants, especially in the IT industry,…
Hanging Skepticism
What do we know about stories? We know that they are not true…that they are lies. We know this and yet we spend most of our lives listening to them. Telling them. Believing them. Why? Because we need them.