In the industrial world it was easier to justify the value of our work. Very often there was a physical thing at the end of the labour cycle. Something we could touch or feel, it was the proof of the labour at hand. It was easy to see and understand the effort that went into the final output – the craftsman’s table or chair, the grooves in the 33″ plastic record we’d play on the record player, or the effort that went into many mass produced items like a production line Ford.
One of the biggest challenges for internet entrepreneurs is how we justify the value of what we have created in the absence of physical evidence. The irony of this is that the true value has never been in the physical output. The 33″ album record gave us the perception of value because the technology looked intriguing – yet the truth is that the real value was in the hours, months and years that went into making the music, not how it was distributed.
What we need to do is to educate our audience of the value we are creating – regardless of the physical evidence. This may sound superfluous and redundant in a tech savvy world, but when everything is digital and can be duplicated, one of the few things that can’t be re-purposed by others is the story attached to what we sell.
