When I was in high school I worked at a place called Donutland – yes, that’s right – Donutland. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

I don’t really want or need to go into detail about that. Let’s leave it at this – it was a short stint.

[sidebar – For you non-Americans, I’m not sure you all even know what a doughnut is. I’m hoping this wikipedia entry on donuts can help.]

I was visiting my inlaws one weekend and my mother-in-law had some donuts available for our breakfast. It turns out, those donuts were made by my old bosses (Bob and Bonnie) who have since left the retail donut business and gone wholesale.

In retail, you produce what you think the market will purchase. In Donutland’s case, they filled their donut cases as full as they thought they needed to be to sell a day’s worth of donuts – but they never knew exactly how many they would sell each day.

In their new wholesale business model, Bob and Bonnie only produce after they have received orders. So there is no wasted production. The sale is made before they even have a finished product. Granted, they have proven themselves to the market prior to orders.

Applying Retail vs. Wholesale Mentalities to the Pursuit of Dreams
When it comes to pursing our passions (and especially for creative people) some believe the wholesale route is the way to make it. That is, you create a sample (demo tape or maybe a few chapters) and hope to find a market (publishers or record companies) to buy before actually creating it all. In the retail model, you would simply create and hope to find someone to buy it after it’s created.

In business, I like the wholesale model because it mitigates risk. It’s safe, you know how much to produce and you already have the orders before you invest in the production.

In Life and Pursing Passions, I like The Retail Model
In life and pursuing passions, I’m leaning the other direction. Sometimes I think we let the market dictate whether we do what we are good and passionate about.

That would be the position of the so-called realist.

I’m a bit of a realist, but a realist who dreams and has faith in the purpose behind your gifts and passions.

I don’t believe you should let the existing market (or the markets you are aware of) be the sole dictator of whether you pursue your passions. Sometimes markets open up that were never possible in the past. You could not have known or predicted them. I believe the Internet has afforded many of us creative folks that opportunity.

Five years ago, maybe seven, I told one of my good musician friends that “the Internet is going to open possibilities for independent musicians like never before.” He disagreed and pointed to the entrenched music distribution model, record labels, etc. I believe he even said, “That will never change.”

iTunes blew that theory out of the water and continues to. Brilliant. (See the link under my blogroll for a catalog of online music distributors.)

Furthermore, just the other week, in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Buck from REM (I think it was Peter) commented on how broken the traditional system of music distribution is. Interestingly enough, that article was on how artists are leveraging the Internet to create hits without the corporatized, sanitized, and sterilized format of traditional radio (I should point out that, obviously, the lyrics of most popular music aren’t exactly “sanitized”).

Beyond iTunes, the music genome project (www.pandora.com) is another great example of how the music market is evolving.

Keep Creating, Keep Your Eyes Open and Be Ready

I’m going to explore and expand on some of this more in the future, but for now let me simply encourage you who are creative to do your best to keep creating – work out your craft, your niche in whatever art form you excel at and enjoy.

And keep your eyes open. Markets move.

When a market specific to your craft and your unique approach hits, will you be ready?

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