Today's Price is Not Yesterday's Price... 3 Lessons in Value

Value ages like a fine wine, the price goes up in time

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• The Most Underrated Form of Intimacy is Telling the Truth

• Money Isn’t the Most Valuable Resource… Time Is

• Your Purpose is Not UNCERTAIN, You Are

• It’s Never Perfect… Publish It

• In Most Cases the Answer Isn’t More, It’s Less

I want to talk about value and how utterly important it is for you to welcome more of it into your life… interpersonally and professionally.

What and whom we place “value” on determines more about how we value ourselves…

• our growth and experiences

• our time to learn, understand and experiment

• our personal development

• our craft and dedication to our field(s) of work

• our spiritual, emotional and physical well-being

Typically, the longer a person is immersed in their journey, the more he or she values their experiences…

…in part because time has given them many lessons, and in part because time has forced them to invest in substantially more education, resources & tools.

So, when it comes to a person’s work, skillset or talent, the more time they’ve spent learning, the less you pay them a price and the more you pay for their value. (Read Price is What You Pay, Value is What You Get, below)

When it comes to a person’s skillset or talent, time beats the standard market price because “the advanced” are fewer than “the majority” who are average.

Translation, the longer the mastery in any given field or craft, the less time it takes for execution, the higher the quality from repetition and the larger the price they can charge.

Value is value is value.

We all know it.

We all feel it in what we consume.

And where the provider of it struggles is the perfectionist in them.

Meaning… because a person cares so deeply how their work is received, they often see the flaws or imperfections, which in turn may devalue their final output.

Don’t do this.

Speaking as a “recovering” perfectionist, I implore you to NOT DO THIS.

Two fundamental truths:

1. Your imperfections are still far better than their amateur output

2. Your field, craft or industry is limitlessly changing, and so are you, therefore you are paid for your commitment to staying on top of your game. Anyone else who doesn’t stay on top of their game gets paid 2nd and 3rd tier.

While there are many value providers out there, I want you to consider these 3 types:

1. The Artist - Spends years acquiring knowledge and expertise in their field and creates in fractions of time for their work because of that experience.

2. The Specialist - Dedicated their time and energy to very specific focuses that make them uniquely distinct from all the rest and they’re in a league all of their own.

3. The Realist w/Boundaries - They’re studied. They know their value and they know that value may not be understood so they plan and operate for it.

Let me explain all three in more detail.👇🏼

An Artist Spent Years For You to See the Outcome in Minutes

Let me start with this…

Pablo Picasso was at a Paris market when an admirer approached and asked if he could do a quick sketch on a paper napkin for her.

Picasso politely agreed, promptly created a drawing, and handed back the napkin — but not before asking for a million Francs.

The lady was shocked: “How can you ask for so much? It took you five minutes to draw this!”

“No”, Picasso replied, “It took me 40 years to draw this in five minutes.”

When we look at value, what can be learned by this:

1. Experience leads to proficiency, proficiency leads to ease, ease leads to fractions of time to produce works of art.

2. What one person saw as time only measured in the present… she did not take into consideration the previous 40 years of time, energy, dedication, money, focus and commitment. Picasso invested in himself for years and now he benefits on the returns.

3. A person who is recognized for their work is recognized for their work. That means their reputation precedes them and their value has already been established.

Now let’s look at the specialist👇🏼

Price is What You Pay, Value is What You Get

The “Specialist”

You know their work because they have a very specific style and unique way of delivery that makes what they do special, efficient, timely and worth every penny.

Like the “Artist”, they’ve spent years learning their craft and gaining enough experience that they inevitably know how to dissect every situation.

As Jack Butcher so eloquently posted to his Visualize Value Twitter account…

VV @visualizevalue

Price vs. value.

A “Specialist” does two things… the action needed to resolve the issue and knowing which action to take to resolve the issue. The action is price; the knowing is priceless (value).

Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

A “Specialist” will deliver value time and time again.

If you don’t get value, go back and look at the price you paid.

👇🏼

It’s Not Us, It’s You

As an digital agency owner (retiring from my agency), I would start by telling clients the following:

I mean this in the most respectful manner. It’s not us, it’s you.

We find that clients can slow the process of delivery and finalization of the project for several reasons:

1. They came to us because they could not do it. However, sometimes they still feel the need to insert themselves into telling us how to do it.

2. Part of the reason they couldn’t complete the project previously is because they didn’t know what they want. Yes, it’s our job to figure that out… and we do, but after we do and build in a particular direction, they proceed to halt the progress out of doubt.

3. They are overthinking everything even though they are paying us to sort out the details, strategy and thinking for them.

SIDE NOTE: This is not all clients and my good ones know who they are. This is just a collection of notes based on 20 years of doing my work.

I saw a great post on Instagram the other day that accurately depicts what I’m speaking to…

Let me explain:

1. We design everything - fraction of the time executed from our expertise.

2. We design, you watch - more time is added… scheduling, observing, needing to see everything

3. We design, you advise - even more time is added… your input causes us to make more changes than probably needed.

4. We design, you help - even more time is added… your help causes us to schedule more time, energy, resources and we make more iterations than usual.

5. You design, we help - you’re a novice and you need our consulting and guidance, but you take even longer which prolongs our time, hence more expensive.

6. You design, we advise - we’re hands off which means even more time and energy from our end… the hours stack and so does our invoices.

7. You design, we watch - we watch and observe you. This pulls us away from us earning a living from anywhere else. The end result will be that you bring us the project anyways (out of default from not finishing) and we’ll have to make corrections to do it the right way.

8. You design everything - revert to #7 only instead of us seeing what you did wrong along the way, we now have to go in ourselves, dissect everything you did wrong on our time, see if we can salvage any of it, and then reconstruct the whole thing to be done how it should have been done in the beginning.

Any questions?

At the end of the day, I believe it comes down to the following fundamentals in any client / provider relationships… respect, transparency, communication and alignment. If you have those from the start, you have lifelong clients and possibly friends.

If you don’t have that, gently decline and move on.

TL;DR

• Today’s price is not yesterday’s price.

• What and whom we place “value” on determines more about how we value ourselves

• When it comes to a person’s work, skillset or talent, the more time they’ve spent learning, the less you pay them a price and the more you pay for their value.

• When it comes to a person’s skillset or talent, time beats the standard market price because “the advanced” are fewer than “the majority” who are average.

• The longer the mastery in any given field or craft, the less time it takes for execution, the higher the quality from repetition and the larger the price they can charge.

• The Artist spends years acquiring knowledge and expertise in their field and creates pure out in fractions of time for their work because of that experience.

• The Specialist dedicated their time and energy to very specific focuses that make them uniquely distinct from all the rest and they’re in a league all of their own.

• The Realist w/Boundaries is studied. They know their value and they know that value may not be understood so they plan and operate for it.

Simplify, Multiply, Diversify below…👇🏼

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SIMPLIFY…

Experience leads to proficiency, proficiency leads to ease, ease leads to fractions of time to produce works of art.

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MULTIPLY…

Time multiples your value. Be willing to play long enough to master your craft that the world in which you operate shrinks but your possibilities expand.

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DIVERSIFY…

Diversify your knowledge and skill stack so that you become priceless in more than one thing. This ensures market adaption, unique differentiation and higher gross income.

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