[With today being Memorial Day in the US – I just want to quickly mention thank you if you, friends, or family have chosen to serve, especially if they’ve been lost. Those choices weigh on my heart heavily, and I appreciate you.]
If you’re a freelancer or you’ve ever run a business then you’ve come across the acronym “USP” before.
For those of you who haven’t, it stands for “Unique Selling Proposition”.
It’s business jargon for why someone pays you instead of your competitor. Or, from a consumer perspective, why you drink Coke instead of Pepsi as an example.
To be in business and stay in business, you must have a USP. You must have a unique reason why people pick you to work with. The better you understand your USP and can both convey it to customers and find customers in need of the unique thing you bring – the more success you will find.
And, if you’re just looking for a job and you think this doesn’t apply to you – you’re incredibly mistaken.
Why Me?
One of the numerous reasons people seek me out is because I’m me. That feels a little silly to write, but it’s true. Nobody but me has my background, my story, my expertise, my experience, my personality, and my abilities – except me. You might find someone close – but they are not me.
When I spell this out precisely, companies employ me for reasons such as:
- My technical programming capabilities
- My extensive audio experience
- My ability to cultivate cross-discipline synergy
- My assertiveness, eagerness to assume responsibility, and confidence
- My ability to remain collected in high pressure situations
- My generally positive attitude
These are vague descriptions here, certainly – but in context these traits have been invaluable to me. So, let’s add a bit of context, point-by-point.
- I have the ability to program tools, and speak the language of software developers
- I have over a decade of audio experience in a lot of situations
- I make people who don’t like or understand each other, work together well
- I rarely say “that’s not my job” when it should or could be my job – I just get it done
- When others freak out and complain, I usually help cool things down. I’m also out for the good of the team when we’re trying to make a deadline.
- I don’t often moan about work, and I usually walk around the office and pep others up
These skills – mixed with the quirks of my personality – form my “unique selling proposition”.
No potential employer needs all of these things. Often, they only care about one – so that’s where we meet in negotiations and then they get all of the added benefits later as long as they apply.
So, that’s fairly straightforward – right?
But how do you go about finding out what applies to you?
Your Uniqueness
My sister had a poster growing up that the term “uniqueness” always brings to mind. It was a picture of a pile of cute kittens all surrounding a very large, very confused looking dalmatian.
I don’t remember exactly what the poster said – I wish I did, this story would be way better – but the gist of it was that sometimes it’s best to stand out in a sea of copycats. In that case, literal copy “cats” – all the cats looked exactly the same.
Lesson one of your uniqueness comes straight from that poster – because to “find” your uniqueness, it’s required to be different.
Being Different
The dictionary definition of “unique” is being the only one.
This means standing out like that dalmatian in a crowd of your peers.
On one hand you may be thinking…
“Yeah Adam! That’s exactly what I want! I want to stand out and look awesome!”
..and to your credit, some of you are pretty likely to have experience with this. I bet plenty of you were picked on, called a nerd, or stood out in some other socially “negative” way when you were younger. If you’re anything like me, then for a period you turned that and made it a badge of honor.
It’s not that difficult to stand out. In fact, it’s so simple that I can sum it up in three words –
Have an opinion.
See? If you subscribe to the axiom “opinions are like @#&holes…” you realize this isn’t so hard. The trick to executing those three words well and not becoming a massive nuisance is realizing you don’t always have to share your opinion.
Even though you don’t always share it, you can feel free to have one. This is so straightforward I’m going to help you practice it right now –
- Never really liked Zelda games? That’s fine.
- Don’t drink? Awesome.
- Think a certain kind of music is dumb and you don’t get it? Great.
- Think tacos are disgusting? Super.
- Have an undying love of pro wrestling? Wonderful.
- Can’t get enough yoga and Bob Ross? Sweet.
- Love pro sports to death? Amazing.
You can feel negative or positive about anything you want. You’re free to do that, right now – nobody can judge you.
Building your uniqueness starts with sharing some of your opinions publicly and politely as possible. You probably already have a vast and varied amount of opinions, and there’s a good chance you share them on social media – so I’m not too worried about you.
But, when you turn these opinions into personality quirks and axioms for the way you work – then you’re getting somewhere in business.
Taking me as an example, again –
I’m of the opinion that I can’t compete as a sound designer with people 10 years younger than me, so I’m not a brilliant sound designer.
I’m of the opinion that I’d get paid better if I pursued audio through software development instead, so I’ve trained in software development.
I’m of the opinion that teams work better when differing disciplines collaborate, so I push that.
I’m of the opinion that most people care more about what they are doing than what others are doing, so I don’t expect anyone to care about my audio – I make an effort to care about their work first.
I’m of the opinion that people who choose to take on responsibility and act accordingly are usually worth trusting and respecting – so I do, and I try and take plenty on myself.
I’m of the opinion that people who complain instead of taking responsibility are usually difficult people and bottleneck teams – so I try not do to that as much as possible.
I’m also very opinionated about BBQ meat and sauces – because it’s fun, funny, I know what I like, and it’s a conversation starter.
But, for each one of those things I have opinions about and act on – there are people who disagree with me. Sometimes, those are people I work with, or I’m very close to.
That brings us to the second lesson of uniqueness.
Peer Pressure
While it’s not difficult to stand out, it is sometimes difficult to stand out publicly.
Because standing out among your own crowd will inevitably engender backlash of some sort, right?
Most of make friends based on factors of similar location and similar likes/dislikes. It’s one thing to disagree with a total stranger – just take a look at social media today – but it’s a completely different thing when you disagree with someone you respect, trust, or have otherwise softened your heart to.
We’ve all had this sort of conversation –
“I… don’t really like <insert type of food here>”
“Really?! You don’t like <aforementioned food>, how come?! It’s great! How could you not like it??”
Nobody wants to be confronted and judged like that. But, uniqueness requires us to learn how to conduct ourselves well in that kind of situation.
The best way I know how takes time, and literally nobody is perfect at it. It’s just this –
Don’t take it personally.
When you share who you are and act on your beliefs – you’re not going to win over everyone. Hopefully you don’t anger anyone to the point of major confrontation, but it’s entirely possible that you could.
Usually though, disagreement in real life is encountered as in the conversation above. It usually comes with that real sharp “Really?! YOU like THAT??”
You might be surprised to find out that those words aren’t actually saying what you think they’re saying. You hear that “Really?!” as “Eww how could you?!” when often it’s actually this –
“You like/don’t like XYZ?! What does that say about ME?!”
For example, back when I didn’t drink at all it took me a while to learn that when I told people that – they thought I could be judging them because they choose to drink. As if I either viewed myself as better than them (I don’t) or they saw me as more together and controlled than they are (also questionable).
If you’re crazy into anime, weird avant-garde heavy metal bands, or any other socially acceptable subculture – people who aren’t into that are going to decide what it means for them to stay friends with someone who likes the weird thing.
At the end of the day, some people are cool with sticking around – others feel judged (even if they’re not) or find associating with you to be weird now (even if nothing actually changed).
The outcome where you lose people – your audience, friends, or clients – totally sucks. It doesn’t feel good emotionally. But, it brings you closer to your real audience, friends, and clients very naturally.
How?
Because being public and comfortable with what makes you unique causes others to respond “Oh! Me too!” and love you more. The rest might dislike you, but they weren’t really your people in the first place.
Putting it Together
You can begin to work on this today. It isn’t crazy difficult – it’s just 3 things.
- Know that standing out and being unique is important for your work
- Your uniqueness starts with your opinions, which inform your beliefs/axioms
- Acting on your uniqueness requires dealing with the opinions of others – good and bad
You can do this – just don’t go crazy and remember the whole point of it is to care for others. Bring value, and the work and money will come.
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