This week, my blog on The Campbell Academy Business blog will be my thoughts around pricing (at least the start of my thoughts around pricing).
As I mentioned yesterday, I will be talking about this type of subject in Muscat, Oman, on Friday of this week, and so it seems quite current, quite pertinent, and quite in vogue.
As is always the way with these things, and as I mentioned to my wife this week, it seems like Seth Godin is watching me, watching my busy weeks, watching my trials and tribulations and writing me letters and messages to help me through or to help me along.
And so, in the week where I was considering pricing for the business blog and pricing for the ITI Middle East Education Day in Oman, Seth wrote a blog about pricing.
If you're in business, you should definitely read it. This blog is not about plagiarising what Seth says, but he has been talking about pricing for way, way longer than I have, and I have tried to consume many of the things he's written about.
His recent blog this week about pricing brought extraordinary insight at the very end.
"Mastery of a craft does not guarantee its commercial viability."
This is particularly pertinent, it seems to me at least, in dentistry and for dentists.
I have met many, many extraordinary dentists who are able to produce the most beautiful work and to generally collect that work in photographic terms, wonderfully curated on a Friday night over a bottle of wine or, more likely, all of the weekend as the nurse and nurture their photographic catalogue.
I've seen it all across healthcare. My friend and one of my very early initial mentors in surgery, Phillip Hollows, a brilliant head and neck surgeon, catalogued much of his work in photography and 35mm slides. No one will ever look at that work, and he will be unable to pass it on.
As I think and as I write this and then as I speak it, I'm reminded of another head and neck surgeon who I knew who sadly and tragically died too young quite recently, whose father was a minister in the church.
His father collected religious pamphlets and publications of all types and sorts, and he had an extensive curated library of all this material in his house.
I remember speaking to said maxillofacial surgeon after the death of his father, and he effectively said, "What the f*ck am I going to do with all this stuff?"
He couldn't find anyone to take the life's work of that individual; he couldn't find anyone who would have it for nothing, who would take it into another museum archive or someone who would treasure it the way his father had treasured it.
And there is a lesson in this, isn't there?
His father collected that work for himself, not for anyone else, it was his expression of art.
Phil collected his cases not so that he could present them around the world, make lots of money and buy a fancy watch or car but because it was his art, his gift to the world, even though the world was unlikely to ever see it.
Collections of work like this are a little bit like writing a secret diary, one that no one else will ever see
But what it means is that it is absolutely worth mastering your craft, it is absolutely worth being the very best that you can be, but unless you consider the commercial aspect of the work that you are providing and, who it's for and why you're doing it, there is no guarantee that it will ever make you a million and nor should it.
Often, work designed just for the individual, the art, for the individual, the art, for the person, never makes any money.
If you want to make money, set out to make money; if you want to make art, be brilliant, but don't count on commercial success.
Blog Post Number - 4007