last week i booked a workshop series with a company i’ve worked with before.
i can’t say who yet. i will when i can. what i can tell you is that it’s a big fat paycheck haha, bigger than i expected when the conversation started, and the work itself is me talking about things i already know. no new extensive research except for regular updates. no stretching into a topic i’d have to learn on the way there.
just the stuff i’ve been saying for years anyway.
and here’s the part i keep turning over in my head. they did not pick me because i’m the best at this.
i’m not. i can name brand strategists who are sharper than me. i can name creative business owners who have built bigger things than i have, people who would have flown in and delivered a version of this that looked more impressive on paper. any of them could have done it.
they asked for me. specifically. by name.
me being good at the job was a plus. it was not the reason.
now i want you to sit with how annoying that is for a second.
because if you’re anything like me, you have spent the last few years getting better. you’ve done the courses. you’ve rebuilt the portfolio twice. you’ve saved other people’s work into a folder you open when you’re feeling behind. you’ve been up at 11pm watching someone explain a technique you’ll use once.
all of that is real work. i’m not mocking it. i did every bit of it.
but i want to tell you what it’s actually buying you, because it took me years and one uncomfortable conversation to see it.
better puts you on a scale.
anything on a scale can be ranked. anything that can be ranked gets compared to the next thing on the scale. and anything that can be compared can be swapped for something eighty percent as good at half the price, by someone who is looking at a spreadsheet and not at you.
different doesn’t go on the scale at all.
that’s the whole letter, really. but the interesting part isn’t that better loses. it’s why every single one of us keeps picking it anyway. including me. including you, probably even as recent as this week.
nobody puts out a bid for someone they already want
when Nana and i started Brainstorm, this is how we got work.
companies would put out an RFP. a request for proposals. the top entrepreneurs and marketing managers in Accra (and beyond) would announce that they needed something built, and every agency in the city found out at roughly the same time.
then we’d all compete for it. semi-compete, really, because it was never a clean fight. you’d write the proposal. you’d polish the deck. you’d price it carefully, knowing three or four other agencies were pricing the same job that same week, and you’d try to guess how low was low enough without being the desperate one.
we did a lot of those. it was the most normal way to get a project even though we didn’t get much if any. i don’t think there was anything wrong with it, it’s how the industry worked and i’m sure it still does.
but look at what an RFP actually is.
it’s a list.
someone has decided they need a thing, and they’ve opened the door to whoever can prove they’re the best option in the room. which means the only lever you have is being better than the others. better proposal. better case studies. better price.
you are not being chosen. you’re being compared.
then something changed for us, and it did not come from getting better.
we started getting work from friends in the industry. people who knew us. and they weren’t putting out a call, they weren’t collecting three options and weighing them against each other. they wanted me and Nana to run their campaigns because they knew what it was like to be in a room with us. that was a specific thing they wanted, not a service they needed to go source.
nobody sends out an RFP for that. you can’t bid against it. there’s no list to come second on.
and here’s what took me an embarrassingly long time to understand. we didn’t win those by being the best agency in Accra. we weren’t. we won them because there was no version of that job that wasn’t us.
so why does everyone keep chasing better?
i’ve thought about this a lot and i’ve landed somewhere i don’t love, mostly because it implicates me.
“get better” is advice we inherited from a world that had ladders in it. inside a job, better genuinely works. there’s an org chart. there are rungs. somebody upstairs is literally paid to notice you improved and to move you up one. the whole system is built to convert better into more.
then a lot of us left that world. we went freelance, started the studio, we sourced the products and started flipping them online. we went out on our own after the job market did what it’s been doing to everybody.
and we kept the instruction. we just lost the ladder.
so now you’re climbing very hard at something that isn’t attached to anything at the top.
but honestly, that’s not the real reason. the real reason is smaller and more human, and it’s this:
you can get better in private. you can only get different in public.
better is safe. it’s measurable, you can feel yourself improving week to week, and not one person in your life has ever criticised you for working on your craft. it is the most respectable way to spend a year that i know of.
different means putting a thing with your name on it into a room where somebody might look at it and decide it’s stupid.
so we pick the one we can do alone.
it isn’t laziness. it’s hiding. it’s just hiding with a certificate.
how to get off the list
none of this is a rebrand. you’re not going to sit down on a sunday and invent a new personality.
in nearly every case i’ve seen, including my own, the different thing is already there. you’re just doing it quietly and apologising for it.
1. find the list you’re on.
write down the three names a client, or someone looking to work with you, would type next to yours when they’re deciding. if you can’t name them, you don’t know what you’re being compared against, which means you’ve been competing blind this whole time. if you can name them, go and read how all four of you describe yourselves.
that overlap is the problem. everything you have in common is the exact part that gets you compared instead of chosen.
for me, that list is mostly designers and brand logo system designers in and around Toronto.
2. look for the thing nobody asked you to do.
Nana and i talk about tv shows and films constantly. in calls. in kickoffs. music too, which makes sense, because Nana is an artist himself, out there making music and touring the world while we run this thing together.
for years i filed that under unprofessional. the bit that happens before the real meeting starts.
it isn’t. it’s the reason people want the room to feel like ours. nobody ever wrote “must reference pop culture” into a brief. we did it because it’s who we are, and it turned out to be the thing that made working with us specific rather than adequate.
so: what do you do that no client ever requested and you’ve never charged for? that’s usually where it’s been sitting the whole time.
3. name one thing you’ll never do.
difference is more often a refusal than a feature.
mine is that i’m not wearing a suit and tie to a kickoff. i’ll be in a hoodie. if a client needs the suit, it’s on their terms and the number has to be genuinely frightening before i’ll be separated from my sweats.
that sounds like a joke and it’s half a joke. but it’s also a real filter. it tells you what kind of person you’re hiring, and it quietly sends away the clients who would have been miserable working with me anyway.
what’s yours? what have you refused, or turned down, even when it cost you something?
4. put it in the first sentence.
most people bury the different thing at the bottom of the about page and lead with credentials.
credentials are the entry fee. every other name on that list has them too. you’re spending your best real estate on the one part where you’re identical to everybody else.
lead with the refusal. lead with the weird thing.
5. say it out loud to one person and watch their face.
not a poll. not the group chat. one person, out loud.
if their face doesn’t change, you’re still describing yourself in words the other three names could use word for word. go again.
you want a reaction. arguable beats accurate every single time.
i’m not telling you to stop getting better. keep getting better. it’s the entry fee and you do have to pay it.
i’m telling you that better was never going to be the thing that got you picked.
and i think some part of you already knows that. i think that’s exactly why you keep getting better instead of finding out.
— mike
reply and tell me the one thing you do that no client ever asked you to do. that’s probably the whole thing.