Sticker price shock.

In June 2017, I bought a pair of AirPods.

People thought I was out of my mind. They'd just come out, they looked ridiculous, and they cost just under $200. Friends gave me grief. Family gave me grief. The general consensus was that spending that much on headphones was a waste of money.

I didn't see it that way.

I bought them because I knew I'd listen to audiobooks with them. I'd tried with other headphones. Too bulky, too tangled, too easy to leave in a drawer. These I'd wear. And I had a list of over 50 books I wanted to read.

That $200 purchase turned into hundreds of hours of learning. The knowledge from that period of my life is worth far more than $200. I can't put a number on it. But I know it shaped how I think about building a career, making decisions, and creating opportunities.

The sticker price problem

People look at the cost of something and make their judgment there. They don't think about what comes out the other side.

I've mentioned what I spent on golf coaching last year and gotten the same look you give someone who just said something deeply strange. Same reaction when I bring up a good financial advisor, a therapist, a personal trainer. The list goes on.

There's a reflexive skepticism people have toward spending money on themselves. I don't fully understand it. The math usually works out. A good financial advisor pays for themselves. A good coach makes you better at something you care about. A therapist helps you function like a human.

The price is visible. The return is not. So people skip it.

Content works the same way

Writing in public has a sticker price too. It costs time, effort, and the discomfort of sharing your thinking before it feels ready. You pay all of that up front, every post.

The return comes later, and you rarely see it building. Most posts don’t do much. But people are watching. Over months and years, they form a picture of how you think, what you’re good at, and what working with you might look like.

For me, the return showed up in August 2023. I got laid off. Instead of panicking, I posted an honest update on LinkedIn about what had happened and where things stood.

Within 4 weeks, I had more inbound leads than cold outreach had ever generated for me. One post didn’t do that. Years of showing up before it did.

4 weeks after the layoff, I wrote: "It has been rewarding to see how many leads have come out of my network relative to the effort I put into building my network over the past couple years. The ROI on time spent writing and publishing is significant."

Six months later, I had worked with 7 clients. Every single one came from a relationship I'd built before I ever needed it.

Start before you need it

You don't have to be laid off to benefit from this. Visibility pays off whether you need it today or not.

Maybe it pays off when you go independent and need your first clients. Maybe when you launch something and need people to care. Maybe when you’re ready to make a move and want opportunities to come to you.

The people reading this who are still employed are in the best position to start. You have time. There's no urgency pulling you toward desperation. You can build steadily, without pressure, and be ready when the moment comes.

The people who waited until they needed it are the ones who had to scramble.

Pick one and start

Here are a few ways to begin, depending on where you are right now.

- If you have 2 minutes: Find a post from someone in your network you genuinely found useful this week. Leave a real comment. Skip “great post” and write one sentence about why it landed for you.

- If you have 10 minutes: Think about your last project. Write 3-4 sentences about a decision you made, a problem you solved, or something that finally clicked. Post it. Don't polish it.

- If you have 20 minutes: Open your LinkedIn profile and read your headline and about section like a potential client would. Does it say what you do and who you do it for? If it took more than 5 seconds to answer that, update it today.

- If you need work now: Write a plain post about what you’re looking for and what kind of problems you solve. Say what you do, say you're available, and make it easy for the right person to reach out. 5 of my first 7 freelance clients only reached out after I made my availability known.

These sound small. Done regularly, they add up to something you can't replicate in a hurry. A body of work. A network that knows what you do. A reputation that does the selling before you ever get on a call. The designers who had all of that ready when the layoff hit didn't build it in a week. They just showed up consistently, long before it mattered.

One question before you go

If you got laid off tomorrow, what would your network know about your work, your thinking, and what you're capable of? Would they have enough to reach out?

That answer tells you how ready you are.

Talk soon,
Trevor Nielsen

P.S. If this resonated, share it with a designer who might need to hear it. They can find more at discoverabledesigner.com