Just Cardboard?
Am I valuable to you?
Is what I bring to the table valuable to you?
That's the question every business owner who sells a service to other businesses is quietly asking. What is my value to you? And I'm going to break it down in the strangest way possible, so stick with me. I am a huge — huge — 33-year-old child who loves Pokémon cards. Charizards especially. And most of you have no idea why a Charizard is worth anything. That's completely okay. Let me show you why it's okay.
A $1,000 Card Nobody Else Can See
The card in my hand and the binder behind it are worth over a thousand dollars. And if that card grades out as a PSA 10, or that binder comes back stacked with PSA 9s and 10s, the value multiplies — five times, six times, sometimes seven.
But here's the whole point: that value is only value to the people who see the value in it. To a collector, it's a grail. To everyone else, it's a piece of cardboard.
Your Work Is the Exact Same Card
That's the thing I've learned about business, and about being a videographer and photographer in this industry. If I don't SHOW my value to my clients — through my productions, through the digital assets I hand them, the videos, the photos, all of it — they are never going to pay me what I'm actually worth.
I can set a price. I can say this is worth $300 ungraded. And someone who isn't a fan will look at it and go, "that's a piece of cardboard, I'll give you a quarter." But someone who sees the value says, "yeah, I'll pay that." They check the centering. They check for scratches. They send it off to get graded, and when it comes back a 10, they turn around and sell it for double, triple, quadruple. Same object, wildly different price — and the only variable is whether the person looking at it can see what it's actually worth.
Show the Value, or Get Priced Like Cardboard
So what does a Pokémon card have in common with a video production or photography business owner? Everything. The business owners I market to are all asking that same quiet question — what's the value here? — and it's my job to answer it before they ever have to ask out loud.
That's the real work!!
Not just making the thing, but making the value impossible to miss.
So here's the question for every creative reading this, and for every business trying to decide what good work is worth: are you going to show them the true value you bring — or are you going to show them you're just a piece of cardboard looking for a payout?
