Expertise is the Answer
Your negotiation power and your leverage come entirely from what you can do for others. When they need you — and only you — you have all the power you need to be successful.
Truly great creatives, from Michelangelo to Steve Jobs, spent their lives improving their expertise. Practice, as they say, makes perfect. The difference between being good and truly standing apart is that focus on expertise. And it’s usually the result of years of work.
The better you get, the more you will be in demand and the less you will be expected to negotiate. It’s simple: they need to meet your needs if they want your talent.
But this is problematic.
As creatives, we do our work for the love of doing it. When we’re “in the flow,” we’re achieving the happiest mental state that humans can achieve according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and coined the term “flow” to describe the pleasure we feel when we’re engaged in our creative passion. Being “in the flow” is addictive. I know because I’ve been there. I love to draw, write, and tell stories through my work. It’s a wonderful feeling, one in which I lose track of time and feel boundless energy. I’m also always drawn towards the next thing I’m going to do.
When I attended the 2014 HollyShorts Film Festival in Hollywood, I learned that only 8% of the hundreds of short films shown earn enough to cover their production costs, let alone a profit. These films, produced with sophistication and professional polish, are created for love not money. The filmmakers are in the flow of doing something they love.
This isn’t unique to film shorts. I’m willing to bet that all of you have had the experience of working for free because you love the work. I certainly have. But, I’ve also made a small fortune doing the work I love. And I did it by building my expertise.
Yes, we can lose ourselves in the pleasure of doing the work, but if the work isn’t economically viable — if no one wants to pay for it — no matter how good we are, the money won’t come.
To get people to pay for you to pursue what you love means that you need to find a niche that that people will pay you for. And that’s not simple or easy.
Step One
Identify a commercially viable area that your creative passion could be part of.
I was passionate about drawing and lettering and how, together, they influenced people. So I went to art school and studied advertising, design, and illustration. I honed my skills through a wide variety of school projects and got detailed feedback from professors and peers. It was in art school that I learned that advertising agencies and design firms hired creatives like me.
Step Two
Get into the professional world at the highest level your skills will allow. Find your way to the best possible position for advancing your skills and for building a reputation as an expert. Having the motivation to develop a formidable expertise is critical in this early stage.
I started by creating executive presentations but quickly moved to a position with a small but sophisticated identity design firm. Once there, I got to work on local and national assignments and got lots of thoughtful feedback on my ideas and work. I freelanced in advertising on the side and saw that I didn’t have the moxie required, so I focused on design. Using design to move people felt intoxicating. I worked at it every day and dreamed about it most nights.
Step Three
Analyze what the best people in your field are doing and know why it’s considered good. Learn and apply these insights to your work.
For example, I studied the leading thinkers in advertising, design, and branding, including Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, Walter Landor, Mary Wells Lawrence, Al Ries, and Jack Trout. I also took classes in persuasion and negotiation. I attended seminars on related subjects. By now I had my own firm and many of my clients became my teachers and mentors. They helped me advance my expertise with advice and feedback on my work. With time, my work and the work of my firm got better and better.
Step Four
Develop your own way of explaining why you do what you do and how it helps others.
I began to give talks on how brand messaging helped people experience how products, services, and companies were good for them. The process of preparing for a talk sharpened my thinking and refined my message. Later, I wrote articles on the ability brands have to persuade and move people to action. As a result my writing improved, public speaking became easier, and my expertise grew.
Throughout this portion of my professional life I constantly practiced my craft, explained my methods and results, sought feedback, analyzed the results and steadily improved.
Step Five
Tell the world.
I published articles, entered competitions, attended seminars, gave talks, and generally told as many people as possible why my firm’s work and methods were effective.
The result was that clients came to us for our insights, advice, and recommendations on how they should brand their companies, products, and services. Although they may have asked for reduced fees or changes in deliverables, they fully expected to pay what we asked because of our expertise. They believed that we were the only ones who could help them achieve their goals. That is the power of expertise.
