The Writer’s Coin

I am a huge fan of Billy Beane (author of Moneyball) and lately of Kevin Towers. I’m a guy that roots for the underdog and so I admire the strategy these two men use to get ahead in their industry with the limited resources (comparatively) they each have to work with. Their strategy is to take something that is undervalued, figure out a way to use that to your own advantage, and then become the best out there at exploiting that “glitch” in the system. For Beane it was a baseball statistic based on walks called On-Base Percentage. For Towers it’s finding relievers on the cheap based on some qualities no one ever really thought were useful (quirky deliveries, great control, good arms).

They’ve had success with their strategies and ever since I read Moneyball (if you’re not a baseball fan, it’s revered today as the baseball book to read) it’s always been in the back of my head because it’s such an interesting, useful, underdog strategy.

So as I’m out there trying to put my book together and get a job in the advertising world, I’ve noticed that some things that I’d usually just gloss over and move on are making me stop and really think. Think of all the times you’ve gotten certain advice over and over and over and because you’ve heard it so often it just kind of sinks into the background and becomes noise instead of valuable advice.

For me, it happened with submitting writing pieces for publication: I never read an issue of a literary journal or magazine before submitting to them. I just made a huge list and submitted to all of them. I’ve written before on how bad of an idea this is. But still, it’s one of the things you hear everywhere when editors are trying to give tips to new writers. And still they don’t listen.

This is an opportunity to be a contrarian—to take advantage of an undervalued piece of information by using it for your own gain. If you read an issue of a magazine before submitting to it you will have an edge because you’ll know whether or not to submit and you’ll know which story of yours is a good fit for that particular publication. Just like that, you are Billy Beane.

So back to advertising. Same deal. Know where you are interviewing so you can get an idea ahead of time if it’s a good fit or not.

Another nugget of undervalued information that I found came from rereading Pick Me: Breaking into Advertising and Staying There. In the section on building a great portfolio, the author adds at the very end: “Throw in some radio scripts while you’re at it.”

This triggered my Beane-radar because it’s something I had heard before in another book whose name I can’t remember right now. The author of that book was saying that a lot of junior creatives don’t like to do radio in their portfolios, that there is very little (and even fewer good radio spots) of it, and so he/she likes to see some radio in there to see how the writer/art director (but especially the writer) handles the limitations of no picture and all that dialogue. So the tip was to “include some radio.”

It’s true: no one really think of doing radio in their portfolios.

Guess what I’m working on?

This is the great thing about being interested in several different things in life: you’re exposed to different topics that can indirectly help you in whatever endeavors you are working on. It also helps your creativity by breaking up the routine.

Anyone can apply this concept of undervalued information to what they do in their own lives, it’s just a matter of finding that parallel and then doing the work to find out what everyone knows that they aren’t paying attention to.

Tags: billy beane, moneyball, undervalued information