the importance of education

What role can education play in a design-based bicycling advocacy business? Seth Godin offers some insight in these two recent posts.

In Taking the time to teach, Godin writes:

"What we do in the long run, over time, drip by drip, affects the market so much more than an angry reaction or urgent event.

Smoking a pack a day for twenty years is a great way to be sure you'll die early. Far more likely, in fact, than getting hit by a car. And yet it's so easy to talk to our kids about cars...

Delivering out of the box remarkability day after day counts for far more than one hit or one misstep. When we teach people about our story or our industry or about making connections, the teaching lasts.

Teaching people not only impacts the market, it changes the world. Teaching about connection and community and science, a little bit at a time, can heal our world in the long run. It doesn't happen as fast as we might like, but it works. Emergencies fade, and in the long run our teaching lasts.

The challenge is in responding with education, not reacting with anger."

The theme of education continues in Flipping abundance with scarcity:

"I think it's dangerous and often fatal to put free on top of an existing business model. Things fall apart.

People look at the free revolution and say, "oh, that could never work. If I gave x, y or z away for free, I'd fail." They're right. They will fail... If they keep the model the same and just give away stuff for free.

The way you win is by reinventing the model itself. So, for example, lululemondoing giant free yoga classes in New York. The more people come, the more clothes they'll sell... it'll become a movement. Or Crossfit, publishing their insane work outs online. The more people do them, the better the scarce part (private coaching, etc.) does.

We spent a generation believing certain parts of our business needed to be scarce and that advertising and other interruption should be abundant. Part of the pitch of free is that when advertising goes away, you need to make something else abundant in order to gain attention. Then, and only then, will you be able to sell something that's naturally scarce.

This is an uncomfortable flip to make, because the stuff you've been charging for feels like it should be charged for, and the new scarcity is often difficult to find. But, especially in the digital world, this is happening, and faster than ever."

In the first post, Godin highlights the import role of education in advocacy. In the second, Godin demonstrates how giving something away for free (in his example, free classes) can accelerate other areas of a business. I think it also points to an advocacy-based business model, where some services are free, but can help drive other, paid products or services. This is almost the reverse thinking of a more traditional model where products or services help fund advocacy efforts, but I think it can be a two way street. Each can feed the other.