Real craftsmen can pick up any tool in their field, figure it out, and use it. Picasso couldn’t paint with only one particular paintbrush; he could do it with any that was handed to him. However, real craftsmen always have a preferred tool: the trusty old paintbrush whose contours, depth, and subtleties he knows inside out.
Your client or boss will always be wondering if you’re a real craftsman or an imposter. At least until he knows you well. (This could be converse of the Imposter Syndrome: you may or may not feel it about yourself, but your client will feel it about you at first.)
So, one way to give him confidence that you do know what you’re doing is to make sure that you have a weapon (or weapons) of choice, which you have to know inside out.
Just compare these two marketers.
Marketer 1: I’m good at making landing pages, and I’m happy to do so on any platform.
Marketer 2: I’m good at making landing pages, and I’m happy to do so on any platform. However, I definitely have a preference for Unbounce. I know it inside out so I can go light speed on it. Additionally, they just released a plugin last week so that, if our site is on WordPress, as yours is, then the page we’re testing can be displayed as though it is a normal page within your site. This means that it doesn’t require a change of web address, not even a subdomain of difference, which makes the fact that the page is powered by Unbounce both invisible to the user and very Google-friendly for SEO purposes. They actually just released this feature last week out of beta and I haven’t tested it yet, but I’m very excited to test it.
Do you see how Marketer 2 sounds much more capable than Marketer 1? Why? Because he clearly has a preferred weapon, and he clearly knows the weapon inside out.
Now just saying this is very important—so that your boss or client sees your knowledge of the weapon—but that is the easy part. The hard part is actually spending hundreds of hours using that weapon, so you truly become the master of it.
Note also, in Marketer 2’s response, I used a few other tricks. It highlights the power of talking with specificity—Marketer 2 also did that. I’ve also discussed not remaining neutral on any issues related to your work. In a way, having a preferred tool and knowing it inside out is just a variation of that observation. Practice, practice, practice still takes you to Carnegie Hall.
