How do you price creativity?

Hey

It’s been more than 200+ days since I wrote my 3rd newsletter and then ghosted all of you. The problem with me is that till the time - I don’t feel like my words impress me, I don’t publish. The typical perfectionist circle.

But people like Hitesh - kept asking about why I stopped. It gave me a reason to resume this again. And after 200+ days, this is my 4th newsletter.

Thanks to Hitesh for that message - you’re one of the reasons I restarted!

Now to today’s story - one thing that I have been wondering for a long time

Pricing!

After 7+ years of leading products and speaking to hundreds of PMs, I have understood one thing:

‘Product Management is a combination of a lot of things. It’s both science and art’

Being a PM is so much more than doing user surveys and making Jira tickets. A great PM knows this. They blend research, tech, behavior, observation, psychology, and sociology.

But the one thing that stands out to me is creativity

PMs are the modern-day Da Vinci and Michelangelos.

Sure - they don’t create Mona Lisa or David, but creating a world-class product is nothing else. (OK, don’t hate me for this, but you get the point)

So, the question is: how do we price creativity?

Michelangelo was paid 400 floris to make David. (~$8000 in today’s money)
It was a 3-year job.

Pricing creativity becomes difficult because different people value art separately.

The Starry Night may be worth 💰💰💰💰

But, for Pranav from Mangalore, it’s only a painting of the sky.

This makes pricing creativity incredibly hard.
And much harder for a PM to convince an org on how much he/she is worth.

Few people advise you to provide stats from your last role.

Sure, saying, “Onboarded 100k users and increased repeat order value by 30%” will, of course, help your case.

But stats also don’t paint the complete picture.

How do you convincingly say,

‘The idea behind the strategy, which led to an increase in repeat orders by 30%, struck me while I was hogging pani puri in Chandi Chowk, and the bhaiya gave me a free sukhi-puri.

So the next time I was in Chandi Chowk again, I went to the same bhaiya again’

I’ve made many attempts trying to ‘price’ creativity, but nothing solid.

If you’ve been successful in your attempt to put a number on creativity - please help a friend out. 🙏

Would love to hear your thoughts (or frustrations)

Also, please note that I wanted to end this email here, but my team will 100% bash me if I sent it out without a plug - so - If you’re an aspiring PM or know someone who wants to become a PM, do check out what we have to offer.

We have folks from McKinsey, Bain, Jio, Builder & other notable organizations in our current Cohort who want to level up their skills.

You can, too!

Upto you. No pressure 🙌

This was it, did you like reading this?

Do share your feedback with me so that I can keep on improving and share you insights like these ❤️

Would be super grateful

Until next time 👋

Rohan