Before you set a rate or negotiate a salary, there's a question most people skip: what is the buyer actually buying?
It sounds obvious. They're buying your work. Your skills. Your time. But that's not quite right; and the gap between what you think you're selling and what the client is actually paying for is where most creatives underprice, or worse, price themselves out of the room entirely.
The brand assets are seen. The strategic framework is not.
A few years ago I worked on a branding project for a small fashion app. They were lean, budget-conscious, and needed a lot of hand-holding through the process. What they thought they needed was a logo. What they actually needed was a framework; a way to evaluate every future design decision through the lens of their goals, their audience, and the promise their brand was making. The logo was the output. The framework was what I was actually delivering.
I tell clients in that situation something that usually reframes the whole conversation: if you need a logo, you can find someone on Fiverr. If you need a cohesive, strategic brand that serves your business for the next five years, you hire someone like me. That's not a pitch. That's a distinction. A logo that looks good but isn't philosophically aligned to a company's future; one that doesn't hold up across applications, doesn't scale, doesn't resonate with stakeholders and customers in both the rational and emotional registers; is just a logo you'll redo in two years.
So yes, they get a logo. But what they pay for is the logo and the strategic intentionality that makes it worth keeping.
That principle doesn't just apply to brand directors. It scales across every track creative professionals operate in.
The Business Outcome Side
Before you think about rates, salaries, or compensation packages, you have to understand your industry from the business outcome side. This is part of crossing the chasm I wrote about in Your Portfolio Alone Isn't Enough. Most of us got into this because we loved making things. The craft pulled us in. But when that hobby becomes a career, you're dropped into an economic reality nobody fully explains to you; and the lesson that takes time to crystallize is that what we do has direct, measurable consequences for the businesses we serve.
Once you internalize that, the way you think about your value changes entirely.
If You're a Freelancer Working on a Rate
When I was freelancing in LA early on, I had work that could justify a strong day rate. I had the reel. I had peers telling me to charge more. And for a stretch, I listened. But I was only hearing from one or two agencies, weeks and sometimes months apart, and the inconsistency was grinding.
So I shaved my rate down slightly. Not dramatically; just enough to feel more favorable to the studios I wanted to stay booked with. My booking cadence picked up. I covered my costs, netted more revenue across the year, and stopped losing sleep between projects. That tradeoff; less per day, more days; is worth far more than the pride of a higher rate that keeps you sitting idle. This isn't the advice you'll hear everywhere, and it's not a permanent strategy. It's how you stay booked while you build toward the rate you actually want; but I think it’s better being booked at $500 a day for 60 days than $800 a day for 20 days.
The feel to develop over time is staying at a rate that keeps you booked as much as you want to be, while incrementally raising it every three to six months without letting the cadence drop. It's a calibration, not a ceiling.
If You're Full-Time Negotiating a Package
There's generally a harder cap on compensation in full-time roles; companies have a number in mind before you walk through the door. But most people don't realize how much room exists within that range, and how much leverage they're leaving on the table.
When I negotiated my last full-time role, I knew two things clearly. One: the position was primarily brand design with motion as a nice-to-have. Two: I could do both, produce all the video assets, and organize and close the work without significant oversight. That capacity reduces their headcount, reduces their vendor spend, and matures their brand faster than someone who can only do one thing. That's the leverage; not just your craft, but the operational burden you're removing from them.
I also pulled equivalent job postings from competitors to anchor my ask in market reality. Not as a threat; just as evidence that the number I was walking in with wasn't invented. And that's the broader principle: your strongest negotiating position is never one of need. Market data helps. Competing interest helps more. Even the implied possibility that you have options changes the temperature of the conversation.
If You're Working Direct-to-Client
Your value is determined by two things in conversation with each other: your perceived craft expertise, and the client's realistic return on what they're paying you.
A company expecting $20k in annual revenue cannot justify a $50k brand package. That math doesn't work for them; and offering it signals that you don't understand their world. But a company with serious stakeholders, high scrutiny, multiple revision rounds, and a campaign they expect to generate multiples of what they spend? That company can easily justify a premium engagement; because the outcome justifies the risk of the spend. The specific numbers matter less than the logic: what is success worth to them, and does your fee make sense relative to that?
You're not pricing based on hours alone. You're pricing based on your costs, your expertise, the complexity of their problem, the urgency of the timeline, and your read on what success is worth to them. The more clearly you understand their world, the more precisely you can price for it.
Your rate isn't the point. The point is understanding what makes you worth the engagement to the specific person across the table; and having the clarity to say so.
What track are you on right now? Reply and tell me where the uncertainty lives for you. I'll write toward it. Next week, we’ll talk about living generously.
👉 One more thing
I'm building a curated job board inside this newsletter. Motion design roles, art direction, creative leadership. If you want to see them, you have to opt in here - https://tally.so/r/aQ0KZq
See you next week
– Joash ✌🏽