It’s nearly Halloween, a holiday that combines three excellent things: Candy, parties, and costumes.
I remember once I went to a Halloween party where people took the costume thing really seriously. So a woman who had had a difficult year with medical issues came as a doctor, and spent the whole night giving people bad medical advice.
(Whatever. I went as a sheep, because I’d made a cool set of papier-mâché horns. Not sure what that said about me, but it probably wasn’t anything good.)
This is an interesting time of year to think about the costumes we wear and the games we play.
Rosamund and Benjamin Zander (she’s a licensed therapist and business coach, he’s a classical music conductor) wrote a book called The Art of Possibility, and one of their key ideas is, “It’s all Invented.”
Money, work, music, art, relationships, business … they’re all invented by human brains.
And one benefit to looking at business as a game that someone made up is that we can decide to make up something different.
So today, I thought it might be fun and useful to look at the games and costumes that we’ve constructed, and how we might upgrade them for something that’s more fun or interesting.
Business, like most things, is a game
One thing the pandemic showed us so clearly was that certain “hard rules” of business turned out to be a lot less rigid than we’d assumed.
Businesses that had diehard “no remote work” rules suddenly found all kinds of ways they could work around that, for example.
One of the things that makes an organization a “business” is the way that it keeps score. And that, of course, is with a social construct we call “money.”
Businesses that make more money make more points in the game.
And then individuals within the business can turn those points into real-world things like groceries, housing, and cute shoes.
If you work for a business in order to get money, whether you’re an employee or a freelancer, it’s smart to know the game they’re playing.
And it’s also smart to wear the right costume you can play that game for more points.
Let’s start with one of the game rules:
Cost centers vs. profit centers
Cost centers and profit centers are accounting terms that define business functions in terms of whether they directly generate profit or not. (Remember: profits, in the game of business, get counted as points.)
HR and accounting are “cost centers,” and sales and marketing are “profit centers.”
It’s the job of a “cost center” to control their costs and stay within the budget they’re given.
Not coincidentally, the cost centers in organizations tend not to necessarily be the functions that get the most love from the executive team.
I liked Black Freelance’s article this week about value and business.
Intro to Value (read this even if you’re employed … especially if you’re employed)
It’s obvious on one level, but also easy to overlook:
The “value” we have in our work lives is largely based on the points (profits) we generate for organizations.
And that’s true even if we’re not in a traditional for-profit company.
That’s why it’s so important to get yourself into that “profit center” category. If you’re in the same bucket as insurance, taxes, and the electricity bill, you become something that companies spend time thinking about how to pay less for.
Those of us who write content for other people’s businesses need to be very careful about which category we get put into.
Content is not a “soft” skill
I wrote about this here: No, Content Marketing is Not a “Soft” Skill
If you write blog posts for companies, you may find the rates are … not too exciting.
That’s because too many businesses are incorrectly categorizing blog content as a cost center … something they have to pay for, and that doesn’t directly make them profit points.
(Support is another function that tends to get lumped here, and it’s just as incorrect.)
A business that pays bottom dollar for blog posts is a business that is playing the wrong game, and probably one you should stay away from.
In the article I linked to above, I talk about conversion content marketing.
That’s a way of looking at content that turns it from a cost center into a profit center. It’s playing a different game with content — one that scores points, instead of costing them.
Upgrading your business costume
Business is also a game that revolves around costumes.
There’s your real human self, and then there’s the costume you wear to the game.
If you write content for a living (or you want to), you can upgrade your costume, and become eligible for more points.
That helps good clients think about you differently, just like “Fiji” on a plastic bottle makes people think differently about the H2O that’s contained inside.
An upgraded costume includes:
- A polished website that makes potential clients feel smart about signing on with you
- A smooth, professional process for onboarding and managing clients
- Third-party validation like guest posts on prestigious blogs or articles written for solid publications
- Testimonials that speak to your value … especially your ability to score more profit points for this business
- Rates that are neither too low nor too high, given what you’ve conveyed about your ability to bring profit points
If you’re a freelancer looking to play the game for more points, you might find this article useful — I wrote it for Copyblogger to give freelance writers a useful third-party message to send clients.
5 Situations that Demand You Hire a Professional Copywriter
And if you want to give your own website a serious upgrade, think about joining me for my upcoming workshop on upgrading your website and improving your path to great clients.
So … how can you translate your skills into points for the game?
If we aren’t used to thinking of ourselves in these terms, there are probably a lot of skills that we’re overlooking.
- Your ability to write something interesting that stands out in a cluttered environment
- Your ability to write material that nurtures the 95% of prospects who aren’t ready right now (but could be later)
- Your ability to write content that encourages repeat and referral business
- Your interest in strategic topics like the articles written on Copyblogger or in The Fierce
- Your commitment to hitting your deadlines (so you’re not wasting money with scrambles and project delays)
You might not have all of these today, but you do have skills and abilities that have a cash worth … that can generate more points for your company or your clients.
Wearing the right costume shows you take the game seriously. Focusing on how many points you can score for the organization shows that you should get more points in exchange, in the form of a better salary or higher fees.
By the way, invented things can drive real outcomes
We can say money is “invented,” but we still like to sleep indoors and eat food.
One of my favorite videos ever was a dog in a spider costume causing genuine terror among helpless citizens.
The more the friendly dog chases after people for a fun game, the more people flee in horror as their very primal urge to escape a predator gets triggered.
Eventually they realized that dog-sized spiders were not a real thing. But not before their body had some serious physical fight-or-flight chemistry happening.
Revisit that one here:
Happy Halloween!
Sonia
