Discover how the legendary rock band, The Grateful Dead, influenced Barry Barnes to devise a transformative business model that demonstrates how to consistently provide a superb experience for customers.  Let’s go ahead and dive right in: How did this group of anti-materialistic hippies create such a powerful business model and such a long-lasting career? Improvisation and hard work, built over time. When they band first got together in the mid-60s, the music business hadn’t really “started” yet. There was no concert touring to speak of; big bands and symphonies would play, but there wasn’t any “rock and roll” as we know it today. The San Francisco, New York and LA scenes only came to be in the late 60s; that was when the record companies finally started to realize that rock and roll had something to say; and that music and artists could be commodified and capitalized on. That’s when record companies got busy signing artists. The Grateful Dead resisted that until 1968 when they signed with Warner Brothers—but they were never happy with Warner Brothers for the length of their five-year contract. They didn’t think Warner Brothers understood who they were, what they were doing, why they were doing it, … Continue reading How The Grateful Dead Transformed Customer Experience