Transcription
This is a trap that'll take away your ability to charge more. It'll take away your competitive advantage and just take away your focus in general. So it's so important.
This video is aimed at artists and designers, but the concept is so general that I can really apply it to any kind of knowledge worker. So if you're at a crossroads and you're not sure of what path to take, stick around. My name is Martin and I run a site called RareViz where we feature the best artists in the world so that you, as a budding artist or a novice, can stand on the shoulders of giants and get to where these amazing artists are. I've been a designer for 15 plus years. I've been a hiring manager in Silicon Valley, worked for a bunch of different tech companies, and I feel like I have a good handle on the business of design. And today, we're gonna talk about a superpower: focus.
First, let me illustrate the problem from a general point of view. As a hiring manager in Silicon Valley at a big tech company, I was tasked with finding great designers to join the team and help us accomplish some of the tasks that we were assigned on a daily basis. So, being a hiring manager in Silicon Valley, I'll just explain right quick how that goes. Is you have a need on your team, you need to find somebody to join your team, you've been granted budget, and now you just want someone really good to join the team to help you accomplish the tasks and finish the the projects that you're doing. So you get a login for this HR portal, internal HR portal, where you log in and then recruiters from other companies, recruiting companies, headhunters, pool together their databases and go out and find new designers and put them into the HR system so that you can easily browse through them. Easily. It's, it's kind of a mess.
So you get this list of hundreds of designers and you're just trying to look for some signal. The filtering options are few and far between. There's not really much you can do to narrow down that list. So really, what you end up doing is you end up going to each and every one of those designers' portfolio sites. Sometimes there's not a portfolio site. Sometimes people send along a PDF and then it's a little bit like, "What are you doing? You don't even have a web presence? Give me something to work with here." So you're browsing websites and you're trying to find the signal. You're trying to find good previous work that can signal, "Hey, that this person knows what they're doing."
Hiring a new person in a in a tech company like that is super risky because you really want this to work. You really want to find somebody that really can just hit the ground running. Often times, oftentimes, this is not about filling the position for somebody that can be taught how to do the thing. You're looking for somebody that can actually do the thing right from the get-go. So you're looking through hundreds of portfolio sites just looking for a signal and you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and you're seeing the worst the design world has to offer. So just seeing somebody that's decent is like a breath of fresh air. As you're scrolling through those portfolios, out of maybe a hundred portfolios, maybe five of them are pretty good.
The point I'm trying to illustrate here is that you're gonna look through a lot of stuff that's not really good enough. You're gonna find a small percentage that's okay. And really, what you're really looking for is that great person, the person that has gone deep on a subject, that knows what they're doing, that that shows previous work that is really good, that is able to demonstrate their skills. You want someone that has gone a little bit deep, deeper than the surface level of the skill that you need to showcase, "Hey, I actually know what I'm doing." And looking through hundreds of portfolios, I can tell you that no one goes deep. No one has a focus. Everybody's a generalist putting up small, tiny projects that don't really showcase real skill.
So the problem is that everybody is a generalist with the surface-level knowledge and skill level in every kind of design field, and no one goes deep. When you think of the best in the world, when you think about the Ash Thorpes, the Marcus Eckharts, the JR Canests of the world, the reason why you hold them in such high regard is that they've gone super deep on their respective fields. They don't have the most projects in the world, but they have the best ones. Their skill set doesn't span the widest in the world, but it goes deep. The world doesn't need any more generally okay artists. They are a dime a dozen.
So if you're at a crossroads, if you don't know where to go, if you don't know what to do, if you're seeing a diminishing amount of clients coming in, if you're seeing your ability to charge more diminished, here's what you do: you be you. No one can be you like you can be you. Figuring out what is in uniquely you, what is an expression of yourself, is a source of competitive advantage and upping your pricing power. I'm talking about the things that you've been super passionate about in the past, things that just come natural to you, that doesn't even feel like work, it just feels like play. But it might feel like work to others. Doing things that feel like play to you is also a source of motivation because you'll do it no matter what because it's just play. It's not forced work. You're doing you're doing this because it's fun and because it's you, and you're going deep on your unique ability. If you want to get to the level of your design heroes, of the artists that you look up to, then you need to go deep. And the only way that you're going to be able to go deep is if you go deep on what is uniquely you.
So the solution becomes, how do you find what is uniquely you? Here's a couple of methods. The first one: ask yourself, in which ways am I insane? In which ways are you a little bit kooky? Are you a little bit different than other people? These might be things that you've in the past been a little bit ashamed of, but you need to cherish those things because those things are uniquely you. Dig them up. Ask your friends, ask your mom. Sometimes it's really hard to see what is uniquely you just from trying to think about it, while other people will know what is uniquely you. So ask people around you, ask your mom, ask your friends, I ask your family. They'll know.
Another way is to compile different areas that you're super passionate about and then combine them. And here, I'm thinking actually combine them with some kind of word combiner online because you'll see connections that you didn't really think about before. And just brainstorm really deeply on those areas, even if you don't see the connection right to begin with. Like, I love dogs and 3D animation. Just put those two together and see, like, "Hey, is there any kind of other company that's doing something a little bit similar? Does it remind you of anything that you've seen in the past?" Just go deep on these things. Go and do the word lists of actual combined words to see if anything pop up pops up. Maybe ruminate about it a little bit. Maybe maybe keep it in the back of your mind just to see if something comes up down the line.
By finding what is uniquely you, you gain a couple of huge advantages. All of a sudden, you're not just a single artist or designer in a sea of the sameness of me-too work, of of just copycats. You are specifically you. And if clients want some of that, they are going to have to go to you because it can't be had anywhere else. That ups your pricing power. That lets you be able to charge more because you're the only one that's providing something that's so distilled, perfectly uniquely you. What comes to mind is the latest project by Ash Thorpe, which is his Batman project, where looking at the whole case study, it feels like only Ash could have done this project this deeply. And then he's just a one-man show, and he's doing Hollywood-level CG assets and renders, and he just has gone so deep on his love for cars and the whole Batman universe and the atmospheric quality to his windows that I don't think that anybody else could replicate that. It's just so uniquely distinctly distilled him.
In conclusion, I urge you to look at the points here in this video as to why being a generalist and a me-too designer artist is not the way to go. I urge you to figure out what's uniquely you. Even if you've done the exercise condom in the past, redo it again with the word combiner to make sure that you're really getting to the heart of it and finding connections that nobody else in the business can find because you're unique. It's only you that has these crazy idiosyncrasies and weird passions and things that you're interested in. Combine them and see the magic appeal. Please let me know what you think about this general concept of being more of a focused artist and designer and less of a generalist. And see you next time.