Blair Enns - Pricing Creativity

May 18, 2023

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Guest Blair Enns gives us a look behind the scenes of creating his new book Pricing Creativity.

Blair's Bio

Blair Enns is a 25-year veteran of the business side of the creative professions. In 2002, he launched Win Without Pitching, which has worked with thousands of creative professionals in numerous countries through direct engagements, seminars, workshops & webcasts. Blair is the author of "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" and the forthcoming "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour"

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Jonathan:

Hello and welcome to The Business of Authority. I'm Jonathan Stark.

Rochelle:

And I'm Rochelle Moulton.

Jonathan:

And today, we're very excited to be joined by guest Blair Enns. Blair is the founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching and the author of the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and the forthcoming Pricing Creativity: Guide To Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Did I get that right Blair?

Blair:

You got it right Jonathan thank you.

Jonathan:

Stressful :-) I am very excited and I [00:00:30] know Rochelle's very excited to have you on the show. We have just a lot in common, I've been following your work for years, we've read a lot of the same authors and we're super excited to talk about how you've taken this big idea, which to me started with the Manifesto, perhaps it had its roots before that, and turned it into a consulting business and then later a training business, and now hopefully, fingers crossed, a bestselling author.

So, could we start off by just [00:01:00] giving folks a little bit of background about who you are and what you do now and then we can sort of delve into the history?

Blair:

Yeah, sure. And thank you to both of you for having me on the podcast. I'm really looking forward to this and happy to be here. My name is Blair Ends, the company is Win Without Pitching and I founded it back in 2002, early 2002. At the time, it was a consulting practice, a new business development, sales or new business development consulting to creative [00:01:30] firms, typically independent creative firms, and I had come out of about a dozen years of working in advertising agencies and design firms and thought I'd launch this consulting practice.

So that was the first iteration of Win Without Pitching. And then over the years, beginning in late 2012, and I'm sure we'll get into this, I decided to shift the structure of the company from a solo consulting practice to a training company. So that's where we are now in late 2017, [00:02:00] early 2018. Win Without Pitching is about five years into its current incarnation as a training company. And for a few years; 2013, 14, it was both as I kind of played with training and had to make a decision about going one way or the other.

So we've been a pure training company for about three years. It really feels like this business is about three years old, but really it's more like 16.

Jonathan:

Wow. And [00:02:30] before that, you were from the agency world, you were inside the agency world, yes?

Blair:

Yeah, I worked for some of the world's largest advertising agencies and some of its smallest design firms. I was a suit, I don't own a suit anymore. Although my latest social media profile pic has me in a suit. I had a borrow a tie from my 18 year old son for that photo and I own one jacket. But I was a suit for many years and then I moved to this little mountain [00:03:00] village in the middle of nowhere where we live now when I started the consulting practice. So there's this kind of shift in the personal life that was the impetus for the business change.

And I had a Hugo Boss bonfire when I moved out here, got rid of all the suits. But I was a suit doing account services and new business at a very young age in the first ad agency I ever worked. When at I was 22, I was handed responsibility for new business. I wasn't great at it but I did have some natural skills at [00:03:30] it. So yeah, I came out of the account management and new business side of both advertising and design.

Jonathan:

Okay. So, how do you go from there to writing the Manifesto?

Blair:

Well, the Manifesto I wrote I think in late 2005, early 2006 so I had been running the consulting business for three or four years at that time. And the name, I think the of the business is kind of a fluke and I've been [00:04:00] told by some of my closest professional friends that, "Yeah, Win Without Pitching is a stupid name, you need to change the name." On some level, I think it is maybe not an appropriate, maybe not the appropriate ... There's something about the name that can sound a little bit schlocky maybe, like some sort of false promise, but on the other hand, that name has driven me to ...

It's really a great label for how I've always thought about new business, [00:04:30] and it's forced me to come at the subject matter from that perspective that is really true to me. And I think that's really been the difference, whether it's been a consulting practice or a training company or a book that I've written, i's always coming from that win without pitching perspective. So the name came first, the business came first.

And then in, I think it was, yeah, it was late 2005, I think early 2006, where I [00:05:00] was writing a piece. I've published an article, a blog post for years, for 16 years, either somewhere between weekly and monthly. And at the time, I think I was publishing closer to monthly. And I wanted something for the end of the year. So I tried on, I had this idea of like just wrapping up all of my philosophy into a few short pithy statements. And I was also trying on tone of voice. I'm a huge fan of Manifestos, [00:05:30] and I kind of collect them and I've read most of the big ones. I think the biggest, most important book ever written and religious people will be horrified at this, I think the most important book ever written might be the Curtis Creek Manifesto.

And I won't say anything more about that, people can go look at it and think, "Huh? What are you talking abut?" Order it, give it to every 12 year old you know and you'll change the world. I was writing a blog post and it was trying on [00:06:00] a new voice, I was trying on a Manifesto voice. And at the time, and even for a few years after, it was the riskiest thing I'd ever written, just because the tone was so different. And I thought it was going to be taken as too over the top. Like it's almost the biblical [inaudible 00:06:14] We shall, etc.

It's 12 proclamations, it's not chapters I imagine Martin Luther nailing something like this to the church door. So I was quite nervous when I hit publish. And then the response was really gratifying and inspiring, [00:06:30] because people were telling me that they had ... some designers that actually typeset it and put it on a poster and actually put it on their wall. And I kept getting feedback like that for a long time. So when it came time to write a book, and if you want to be seen as the expert in your ...