David Parrish is an international management consultant and trainer focusing on the creative industries and organisational development. Inspired by a conversation at a book launch, David decided to write his own. He told MAiLOUT that it is 'a business book for people who don't read business books'. Intrigued; we spoke to David to find out more.
The first thing that we asked was 'what qualifies you to advise creative businesses?'
David's background is in the creative industries: "when I was about 20 a group of us got some funding from North West Arts Board to set up a community book shop in Bury. I was quite anti-business at the time in the sense that it was a community project. I learned a lot about business from all the mistakes you could possibly make I learned about cash flow because of not being able to pay the bills we had to deal with. From there I went to work with Commonword in Manchester and then to run Password Books, a book distribution company for small publishers working nationally and internationally. I was part funded by the Arts Council because we were dealing with small press publishers who couldn't find distribution elsewhere. We had a foot in both camps working in the arts world but also in the commercial world with bookshops who were after a discount. I learned most of it from experience and being in the difficult positions you find yourself. I was 35 when I first went to University and did my MBA, got letters after my name and learned about the theory of business. It was experience first and theory second.
"A lot of people in the arts and creative sector are a bit like I was, anti-business and think that art is the most important thing. They are reluctant to do businessy things like pay t or have a marketing strategy Sometimes there is a feeling that if you start making money out of your art then you're selling out. I think that I thought like that and enjoyed the martyrdom ot low pay. If you play your cards right you can have the best of both - be creative and be a successful business. I don't see that there is necessarily a conflict between those two things."
So who is T-Shirts and Suits for? Is it just the dynamic entrepreneurs or...?
"It's kind of what I learned in business and what I learned in business school distilled into a readable format. I've tried to write it in such a way that people can dip into it and find what they need and find the stuff that's useful to them. It is useful for people who are starting up in business and for people who have been at it for five or ten years and are quite successful. They may be reminded of something they'd forgotten or get new ideas perhaps in terms of leadership or a new approach to marketing.
"Mike Carney, who did the design, has done a really good job dealing with the cross references. People can flick about. Somebody's even said it would be more suited to a website with hyperlinks than to a book in linear format. I thought people might start from the beginning, but what people have told me is that they can flick through and pick a picture which might well be a case study, get reading about that real business and that then links them into business ideas - they can break into the circle at any point
There is a whole business advice industry out there - enterprise agencies, Business Link etc. How useful to creative enterprises do you think these agencies are? Interesting question! I think that they're very useful. The fundamentals of business are pretty much the same anywhere whether you're working in the creative sector or manufacturing. You've got to have a product or service that people want to buy and are prepared to buy at a price that makes the enterprise viable. In some ways all businesses fit into fundamentals, even in the arts funded sector. If you regard the funder as a customer, you've got to supply what the customer wants: outputs, policies, strategies so the same principles apply. The creative sector is a bit different in some respects. Ideas and intellectual property tend not to be tangible assets against which you can borrow money from a bank which makes it more difficult to obtain loans. I think at a different level o there is a conflict of perception and understanding. For example, when a middle aged man in a suit from Business Link walks into a little office where a couple of graduates are putting together a website and working into the night he may have a lot to offer but It's a matter of style. Creative businesses would be attracted to something that was tailored to them and someone who can relate to them. You could say that for any industry."
You say in the book that the principles apply to both commercial businesses and social enterprises, these are very relevant to MAiLOUT but it is one of those fashionable buzz words. Do you have a quick definition?
"Paraphrasing the official definition, it's primarily a business (not a club, or association, movement or campaign) with aims that are social rather than motivated purely by profit. I set up a workers co operative community bookshop in 1980 which would now qualify as being a social enterprise but we didn't have that terminology at the time. There is a lot of confusion about what it means, it could be a charity which does a bit of trading on the side, other people see it as including pretty substantial and hard nosed businesses that, in the course of what they do, achieve a social benefit. There's plenty of room for argument and debate about whose selling out; doing a good job; who's making too much profit and if you're making a profit then bow can you be claiming to do a social job. I've been through that kind of argument and frankly I'm getting weary of it,"
Do you think that participatory artists see themselves as creative industries?
"Creative Industries is a term that's used more by bureaucrats, politicians and support agencies than people who are doing it. It you asked somebody in the pub what they do they would say graphic designer, sculptor or community artist they would not say they were in a creative industry. It's a term that was adopted by politicians in 997 so it's a bit unreal in that sense. I think that people who are in a participatory field are very passionate about their arts and a lot of it has been and will continue to be funded because it's good art, The emphasis tends to be to get on with the art and make sure we get the funding, rather than constructing it as a business with a particular market in mind. But you've still got to make sure the books balance, stay on the right side of the law, pay taxes and your employees.
"It's useful if people have decided they do want to change. I'm doing a consultancy at the moment with an organisation who recognise times are changing, funding streams are changing, the big world out there is changing around them and they've got to change with it. It people have decided they want to take advantage of modern trends, technology and funding then 1-Shirts and Suits will help them. It people are not willing to change and are stuck in their ways then I'm not sure the book would persuade them that they need to.
" T-Shirts and Suits is a book and a web site. Why both and what is the difference? When I first started writing it I thought there would be room for several different appendices, for example people ask me "who do I go to for business advice?", so I thought I'd have an appendix of several pages of business advice agencies and addresses. Also people were asking "What should be in a business plan?", so we could have had another appendix with essential ingredients but we realised that every time you add a page to a book, you have to add l6so it's expensive, some of those appendices could be on a website elsewhere. Also when you start putting in addresses, sods law - it changes next day, or a new one sets up! The website is a living appendix to the book. It can be updated with new ideas and information. I'm intending to add new case studies so it becomes an extension and expansion of the book. In the future it will be a place where people can participate, send in their own ideas, maybe with discussion groups. It would be interesting to see how people have used ideas and get feedback from what worked and didn't or how ideas have been used and adapted creatively in different circumstances.
What's next?
I continue my work with the creative industries and running training workshops and consultancy which I do as a day job. I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing the book in particular the case studies: going to meet businesses and seeing what their success stories are. As for the book I'd like to write another one at some stage, perhaps an extended version ot it or another version for a particular market. That won't happen soon but I'd like to think what I've written about can be extended into other publications.
T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity
Published by Merseyside ACME
December 2005
ISBN 0-9538254-2-6
www.t-shirtsandsuits.com
David Parrish MBA MCMI AIMC MCIM MIBA
david@davidparrish.com
www.davidparrish.com
T-Shirts and Suits (MailOUT article)