To wit:

In music, as in so many industries, Krueger says, the lion’s share of the money now goes to a relative handful of top performers.

“The lucky and the talented — and it is often hard to tell the difference — have been doing better and better, while the vast majority has struggled to keep up,” Krueger says.

Economists point to a variety of explanations for that growing concentration of wealth, like technology and globalization. Krueger highlights the role of luck, noting that for every superstar, there are other, equally talented performers who don’t catch the same breaks.

He notes that Columbia Records almost passed on the hit single that Rolling Stone later called . Lucky for us, Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” was released. And thanks to modern recording technology, Dylan was able to reach a worldwide audience.

Get the full story here. And since you’re already pondering the economy’s great mysteries, consider altering your perception of the traditional risk/reward model.

We think it’s time for that to stop.

The Hired Guns invite you to join Elaine Grogan Luttrull, an expert in helping creatives in every field achieve sustainable and fulfilling financial security, for a free Lunch and Learn session on Wednesday, June 19.

Elaine is the author of the new book Arts & Numbers: A Financial Guide for Artists, Writers, Performers, and Other Members of the Creative Class. She’s also a CPA and the founder of Minerva Financial Arts, a professional financial consultancy for artists and arts organizations. She’s also blogged for us about how to craft a budget, and how the very act of budgeting can you make you happier person.

During our session, Elaine will discuss how creatives and freelancers of all stripes can follow their passions while doing more than just keeping a roof over their heads. Elaine will help you understand how to use various financial tools help you achieve our non-financial goals. You’ll learn how to master the art of budgeting for projects both personal and professional. She’ll also share the best ways to manage irregular cash flow, including the how to determine the “right” amount of cash to have on hand.

Capacity is limited, so RSVP today!

What: Lunch and Learn with Elaine Grogan Luttrull, Author of Arts & Numbers
When: Wednesday, June 19, 12:00am to 1:30pm
Where: The Hired Guns Hive, 33 West 17th Street, 7th Floor (Between 5th and 6th Avenue)

Web 2.0 was about finding, developing, and embracing interactive technologies to engage customers, prospects, and other constituencies. It was about Flash, bells and whistles, and keeping up with the Joneses. Having a cool website mattered.

Web 3.0 was about business results. It was a phase of encyclopedic websites. Governance was split between marketing and IT. The Holy Grail was a fully realized, multi-dimensional, interactive relationship between a brand and its customer base. Metrics, rather than showbiz, finally began to be important.

In the Web 4.0 era, brands broke out of the corporate mold and sidestepped the old rules to create countless mini-sites. Experimenting with one-off efforts to slip away from IT as well as corporate design and functionality restrictions, it was a re-run of 2.0 with more internal conflict and a much broader experimentation with designs, content, and functionality. Video, photo carousels, animation, and games were deployed. Social sharing was introduced. Brands began to orchestrate messaging, traffic, and content between branded sites and Facebook.

Today’s Web 5.0 is about the surgical use of sites to achieve specific marketing objectives in an era of near total mobility. Sites are no longer all things to all consumers. They are built to specifically and immediately achieve discrete business goals. They assume that context and mobility married to established best design, SEO and functionality practices will achieve results effectively and efficiently.

And while everyone thinks they know how to create a 5.0 website, it is hardly the case. That’s why Gabe Shaoolian, founder of Blue Fountain Media is emerging as a Web 5.0 guru based on the sheer volume of sites he’s built and his UX-driven insights.

Here are his six Web 5.0 imperatives:

Start at the End
Determine what you want to the site to do. Then use user experience design techniques to direct visitors to make the desired action. Be rigorous. Eliminate anything that will distract or impede users. Put the most important stuff up front. Avoid too much scrolling. Pre-plan the page pathways, then map them to business objectives.

Use Responsive Design
The Internet has gone mobile. Build sites that automatically stretch to fit the screens they’re viewed on. Given the high rate of smartphone turnover and tablet adoption, responsive design is much easier and efficient than creating separate versions for each operating system and its variants. It will take a bit longer and cost a bit more. But the payoff, in terms of user experience and SEO, will be well worth it.

Write for Scanners
Strive for clear concise messaging. Forget about intro pages. Anticipate FAQs. Proactively answer them. Avoid dense copy blocks and use lots of white space. Viewers, especially mobile users, scan. They don’t read. Design headlines and subheads to call out key messages. Use bullets and numbered lists to highlight content. And place big colored buttons to focus attention on your call to action.

Forget Flash
The days of dazzle are over. Use video, animation and gaming techniques to engage visitors and sustain attention and page views. Don’t use music. Be careful when using copyrighted images, video, music or memes. Be wary of image carousels because rarely does a single viewer see all the images.

Accelerate Sharing
Put social media buttons and sharing tools across the site. Create content with search and sharing in mind. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to help you earn added impressions. This is especially important for images, videos and games, which lend themselves to sharing.

Make Navigation Simple
Put navigation across the top of the site so users have a clear line of sight. Left navigation bars, especially on interior or sub pages are distracting and give visitors too many choices. Give users navigational control by using forward and backward breadcrumbs or numbers. The goal is to offer clear sign posts and reduce any friction or confusion.

Web 5.0 promises to be the most productive era so far. Implementing these ideas will yield a site that improves your chances for customer engagement, commerce and loyalty.

All of this made sense as recently as a decade ago, when there was still some sense of job security for those who worked hard and had successes to trumpet. But now, says Allison Hemming, CEO of digital talent agency The Hired Guns, disruptions and volatility in the job market affect even the most successful. The Department of Labor says that baby boomers now hold an average of 11.3 jobs over the course of their careers. That means that we are all likely to experience several cycles of the three phases — and not necessarily in order. To be successful at every stage, Hemming counsels, you must operate as if you’re in the momentum phase at all times — which means never letting skills decay and always looking to add more. “Momentum has to be about both earning and learning,” she says.

Stalk agrees — and has a few suggestions on how to maintain that momentum, based on both his consulting work and his personal journey. One of the most important, he says, is to “keep an open file.” What he means by that is to always have other interests or projects on the back burner. You may not have the time to devote to them, but if you find information that could be helpful, save it and put it aside until that time comes; you’ll never find yourself without a next new project, proposal, or even career.

Another way to stay relevant is to think of your career as a set of skills rather than a specific profession and to network accordingly — not only with your own peers but with younger people as well. This way, if your industry contracts, you can more easily pivot. You have to constantly be vigilant,” says Hemming, and say, ‘what is the job after this job and what is the job after that? If I’m not here, which company am I at?’”

Read the rest here. via Fortune

I wish she’d said what women need to hear, which is, essentially, “Don’t feel guilty.”

Guys don’t tend to have a problem with guilt – or if they do, they keep it to themselves. But women? We have a full-on, all consuming relationship with this wearying emotion. Most men are not constantly obsessing over something they may have said to upset someone at work, or worrying about a favor they didn’t do, and they’re certainly not tying themselves in knots over being away from their children during the working day. But because women are so geared towards relationships, we are excellent at feeling awful about anything that could harm those relationships.

I’m just as, well, guilty as any other woman on this front, but I am gradually training myself not to be. I’ve been inspired in this regard by some influential women, among them Financial Times columnist Mrs. Moneypenny, otherwise known as Heather McGregor. She runs her own headhunting business in London and is married with three sons. She’s also the author of a book called Mrs. Moneypenny’s Career Advice for Ambitious Women.

“I don’t do guilt,” McGregor told me recently. “It eats at your self-confidence and you feel terrible all the time. That drains you of energy to do anything useful, or to move forward in your life.”

And if there’s anything professional women need, it’s time, energy, and the ability to focus. Guilt eats into all three.

Guilt also comes in various flavors. Here’s how to avoid the worst of them:

‘I screwed up’ guilt
How often have you felt awful for unintentionally hurting someone’s feelings, or making a mistake at work? There’s a simple answer, according to McGregor. Accept the blame, apologize quickly, rectify things to the best of your ability, and then move on. Don’t wallow in your error, and don’t say ‘sorry’ multiple times. A female friend recently told me the story of a young man who works for her. He screwed up royally, she reprimanded him, he said sorry once, took the rap, and never referred to it again. She was half-envious, half-admiring. She knew if she’d been in the same situation, she’d have beaten herself up for days.

‘Saying no’ guilt
Women are really good at feeling bad about saying no. But if you want to achieve a lot at work, and in the rest of your life, and maintain some semblance of sanity, you’re going to have to say no to various requests, from taking on extra work to appearances at your children’s school.

Heather McGregor is pragmatic: “First, acknowledge that you can’t be everywhere. You will just be average at everything if you try to do too much…no one will get proper attention.” She’s missed plenty of parent/teacher conferences (her husband goes to those) and sports events. She points out that you can “say no in a positive way”. If a contact asks her for a favor she doesn’t consider worth her time, she always responds with a polite ‘no’, but also makes a few suggestions that could help the person with their request.

Mommy guilt
A friend of mine — an entrepreneur and mother of two — has heard comments like: “You’re probably too ambitious to have another baby” (she wasn’t). She also said that one of her young son’s friends recently mistook the family nanny for Mom, because he saw the nanny so much more often. This stuff used to bother her, but it no longer does, because she loves working. She also feels she’d be a lousy stay-at-home mom. She doesn’t feel guilty.

McGregor says one way around any creeping feelings of guilt is to communicate openly with your children (when they’re old enough to understand) about why you can’t always be there. Her honesty extends to explaining that she brings home the bacon and that if her business suffers, so will their ability to pay for their house, go on family vacations, and receive a good education. She says women need to look after themselves first, then their children, citing the airline oxygen mask example (put on your own mask first, then help your child). “If you are healthy and breathing and OK, if your career is going well, if you’re earning well and able to provide for your family, your family will be better off,” she says.

Also, remember there’s a whole industry out there to make women feel guilty. Playing on our emotions is what sells products. Don’t succumb.

This is the second part of a three-part blog series by Elaine Grogan Luttrull, CPA, founder of Minerva Financial Arts, and author of

Few tasks overwhelm us as much as budgeting. We worry the budget will be wrong. We fear that we’ll omit some key part that makes it “work” or worse, makes a working budget fail. We cannot begin to summarize our existence in a few key budget categories.

We associate budgeting with guilt. We are bombarded with messages that we “should” budget, track our expenses, and know how much we are spending on our basic needs, our indulgences, and our professional pursuits.

We also equate budgeting with tea leaves. We believe the financially savvy among us can spot hidden savings in a budget, and unlock the key to a happy existence in the mysterious messages. All the rest of us see is chaos.

We assign our martyred bitterness to the task of budgeting. We suffer financially because we are pursuing work we love. Had we sold out to the evil employers among us and sacrificed our integrity for a lucrative paycheck, budgeting would be easy. It’s always easy with more zeros.

We devote more time to lamenting the task and disguising our fear than the task deserves or requires. We have no problem devoting hours to mastering social media or other tools that help our businesses grow. But devoting the same time – or less – to budgeting makes us cringe. We have no problem investing in our education through courses, continued learning, diligent time practicing scales, or sketching basics, but we’re always too busy to budget.

So in the interest of offering actionable tips  — in addition to “get over it” advice — I propose the following five steps to budgeting. And only two of them involve numbers.

Define the Parameters
This curtails the overwhelming feeling the task instills in us. Not every budget needs to cover everything. Some budgets are project-based, meaning they focus on the accomplishment of a singular task. Others are time-based, meaning they capture income and expense projections for a month-long or annual period. Define the parameters for your own budget based on your own budgeting needs.

List the Expenses in Words
All of them. All that relate to the parameters, anyway. What will you need to accomplish your goal, whether it is a successful project, the culmination of a product launch, or breaking even financially for the year? (The first post in this series addressed the connection between happiness and budgeting. Being able to identify and quantify your goals for both happiness-producing and budgeting purposes is a big part of this step!)

This second step should take a while. Once you make the initial list, you should walk away and do something else. Revisit the list a few times and update it as you think of other expenses you omitted (there will be some). The list doesn’t have to be perfect.

Quantify Your Expenses
Use past experience and the data gathered by your credit card statements or bank accounts as a starting point. In the absence of personal information, lean on your colleagues and mentors for information, especially those who may have experience with similar projects. How long did one aspect of a project take? What unexpected costs did they encounter? Leverage your network and the value of experience to enhance the quality of your budget.

Quantify Your Income
Once you’ve identified and quantified the expenses, you need to fund them. Follow a similar process to identify and quantify your income. First list the relevant sources of income, and then quantify (realistically) what each might produce. For personal budgets, this may include various aspects of a portfolio career. For project-based budgets, this may include one primary source of funding, or multiple sources of contributed and earned income. The income types and amounts will be as unique as the budget parameters themselves.

Make the Budget Work
Make sure income exceeds (or at least equals) expenses. If it doesn’t, reduce the expenses, increase the income, or change the parameters. (Change the parameters of a budget by changing the project’s scope, altering the required timeline, or adjusting the goal.)

By limiting each budget to relevant parameters and recognizing that a budget will almost certainly be wrong in some way, we tackle the feelings of dread and fear that budgeting imposes. By practicing the art of budgeting, we’ll start to see messages in the tealeaves of our own budgets, and we’ll better anticipate problems or shortfalls long before they actually occur.

And once we realize that budgeting is no more difficult – considerably less so, in fact – than plenty of other professional tasks we enjoy, we’ll stop lamenting the necessity of the tool. And most importantly, we’ll understand that the number of zeros in a budget is no guarantee that a budget will work. Even a billion-dollar budget fails if expenses exceed income or if the budget’s goals aren’t met.

These steps are outlined in Elaine’s podcast for the College Art Association and in Arts & Numbers.

Next up: Budgeting for Cash

Lewis Schiff would like to tell you how to build your personal wealth, and we think you should probably listen. His new book,

Currently Executive Director of Inc.’s Business Owners Council, Schiff is also the author of The Middle Class Millionaire: The Rise of the New Rich and How They are Changing America and The Armchair Millionaire. He’s a busy guy, but he was kind enough to make time for us.

The Hired Guns invite you to meet Lewis (and us!) at our Business Brilliant Book Salon on Thursday, June 13. Find out more and register here.

What’s Business Brilliant all about?
Depending on your point of view, Business Brilliant is either a “how-to-get-rich” book or a “how-to-survive” book. We all know that entrepreneurship is not right for everyone. Some of us would prefer to give our loyalty to a company and be part of a bigger team. Others want to build their own empires. Here’s the thing: no matter which type of person you are, you have to start adapting the techniques of really successful entrepreneurs.

Why? Because the old arrangement that we’d like to believe in — get a good education at a good school, find a good job at a good company, work hard for many years, and be rewarded with a secure financial future — is dead. Trading conformity for loyalty is no longer an option. Therefore, we are all free agents now, whether we want to be or not.

Business Brilliant is a roadmap to succeeding in the new economy by deconstructing the behaviors and attitudes of those who have already shown themselves to be well-suited for our increasingly risky world.

Who should read Business Brilliant?
As the book has been out for 2 months now, I’ll tell you who should read it, and I’ll also tell you who IS reading it. I have gotten scores of comments from older people saying: “I should have read this 20 years ago” and “I’m sending this to my kids in college.” So, young people should be reading this book. But unfortunately, many of them still believe that they’ll be able to get by just because they studied [insert useless major here] and got a good GPA. Or they just got a job at [insert name brand company here] and they love the opportunity to work for a large company.

So, the older folks know something that the younger ones don’t: those majors and degrees from good schools and those large, name brand companies only get you so far. At some point, you have to learn how the really successful people got that way, and it’s not by waiting to receive the treasure and prestige you deserve at a big company.

That said, Business Brilliant is a book that challenges people to step out of their comfort zone. One of my favorite sayings is this: the best time to plant an oak tree was 30 years ago. The next best time is today.

What are the most important things for your readers to know about the new economy?
The new economy can be described as a risk-shifting economy. Whether it’s making our own healthcare decisions, trading tuition debt for workforce skills, managing our own pension funds, or creating our own employment roadmaps, we must now assume the risks we once looked to our employers to manage.

It’s interesting to note that we now have the same GDP as a nation that we had before 20 million people lost their jobs. This means there are fewer jobs available and the skills required to earn and keep one of those jobs is more redolent of what entrepreneurs do than what loyal, technical experts do.

In other words, determining what skills you need to be successful are as blunt as this: how can you help your employer succeed? Given the wide access to skills and tools that make us more productive, the answer better not be: “because I am a better widget maker than the next guy.”

Are you creative? That’s not enough anymore. Are you a good lawyer? Not enough anymore. Are you a loyal team player? Not enough. You must be able to bring a unique skill set to your employer and find an employer who needs just what you can deliver. And don’t expect your employer to tell you what that is. You have to figure it out for yourself. That’s what the Business Brilliant do.

If your readers only take one thing away from your book, what do you hope it is?
Two things: first, questioning the beliefs you’ve grown up with is not only something you must do, it’s something you can do in a measured, incremental process over time, and develop new attitudes that position you to succeed in our fast-changing world.

Second, you don’t have a choice. There’s plenty of evidence now that “lifelong learners” are the ones who do best. Whether it’s about your job, your bank account, your most important relationships in your life or your own health, the idea that one can complete their educations in their twenties and then apply what they know for the rest of your life is false. Each year should be measured by how much change and positive progress you enjoyed. If you end the year with the same wisdom that you started the year with, you just wasted time that you’ll never get back. Now is the time to plant that oak tree.

This is the first in a three-part blog series by Elaine Grogan Luttrull, CPA, founder of Minerva Financial Arts, and author of

I wish the secret to happiness or professional success was simply budgeting. Wouldn’t that be easy? I mean, it wouldn’t be fun or exciting, but at least it would be clear.

But as it turns out, professional fulfillment, creative liberty, and technical satisfaction in your career isn’t something you can solve with one task (even one as powerful as budgeting).

Once upon a time, the idea of a starving artist was etched in stone (long after the actual stone-etchers who were both artists and well-respected professionals, by the way, were no longer etching). The idea of a Renaissance person who mastered technical, intellectual pursuits as well as artistic ones had given way to starving artists, who were beholden to patrons to support their artistic pursuits. The patrons dictated the terms of their work; if the artists didn’t like those terms, they lived in poverty. The relationship between financial security and creative liberty was clear and linear. An increase in one meant a necessary decrease in the other.

Some of my students still cling to the romantic notion of a starving artist: the idea that a true artist has to suffer through some financial purgatory, a purifying fire of sorts, in order to emerge with artistic credibility and a sense of self.

I tell them they are ridiculous.

How Much Does Happiness Cost?
I have no problem with following creative dreams without using financial matters as motivation. I certainly did. But I did so with my eyes open, knowing full well what I was willing to sacrifice (a doorman, lunch at Jean George’s) and what I wasn’t (a financial safety net, excellent scotch). And I never deluded myself into thinking a precarious financial situation was a precursor to happiness. I knew how to define my happiness, and it had very little to do with money.

Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton reported in Don’t Indulge. Be Happy. in the Times last July that the average Americans need about $75,000 to be “happy.” Apparently that is the amount that supports our basic needs, offers security and stability, and allows for indulgences and life changes. But as our incomes increase beyond that amount, the incremental amount of “happiness” we feel isn’t commensurate with the incremental amount of income.

Plenty of people have quibbled about the amount. To my students who face entrepreneurial dreams, increased competition, and mounting student loan payments, $75,000 could change their lives. For a dual-income family living in an expensive city, $75,000 barely covers taxes and child-care.

So instead of focusing on the amount, let’s focus on the “happiness” part. As we age and mature, as we hone the parts of ourselves that we love, and as we refine the parts that we don’t, we naturally develop a better idea of what makes us “happy.” Some things are inherent: autonomy, professional fulfillment, travel. Others change with time: family, nature, the pursuit of social causes.

By identifying the roots of our own personal happiness and making career decisions to support those roots, we’ll probably be pretty happy. And those decisions may (and should) change over time as our own general aspirations change. But that type of happiness (the self-actualization, personal fulfillment kind) is only part of the equation.

The rest of “happiness” comes from meeting our basic needs for existence and security. And that’s where the budget comes into play.

Budget Honestly
By budgeting (such a dirty word!) and maintaining an awareness of our needs in financial terms, we will have set our own walk-away prices. We’ll know what our minimum housing expenditures must be, after factoring in geography, co-habitants, and amenities we can’t live without. We’ll know what our minimum consumption expenditures are each month (based on our own awareness of what makes us happy: extravagant meals out, farmers’ markets, organic produce, or simple nourishment). We’ll know whether splurging on designer clothing or handbags is part of our basic needs, or something that interests us not at all. We’ll know whether we can live with temperature swings and open windows, or if we favor the comfort of high utility bills. We’ll know how often we must visit doctors for routine exams for our eyes, our general health, or a chronic disease.

The same level of self-awareness and authenticity we exercise in identifying the root causes of our happiness comes into play as we develop our budgets. We’ll know where we are willing to sacrifice, and more importantly, where we are not. And just as there is no linear prescription for happiness broadly, there is no linear prescription for budgeting expenditures. One budget’s basic needs may be another’s lavish indulgence, but as long as both choices are made thoughtfully – and funded – they can co-exist in the world of numbers.

As our lives change, the minimum number required to meet our basic budgetary needs may change. It may always hover around $75,000; it may be considerably higher; it may be considerably lower.

But it is our own number, and it is right, as long as it was calculated – and recalculated, and recalculated – honestly. We may wish we didn’t want to indulge in a $400 ticket to attend a NKOTBSB reunion tour concert, but pretending we prefer Mozart and spending money on opera tickets and classical music we never listen to while sacrificing our own happiness at seeing Mark, Danny, Donny and Jordan doesn’t make any financial sense. Or any life sense. We may wish our partners earned enough to support all our financial needs, but we value passion and authenticity in our relationships more than simply security, and choosing otherwise doesn’t make any life sense. Or any financial sense.

There is an inextricable link between budgeting and happiness: self-awareness. Self-awareness is the first step to building a realistic budget and a fulfilling life.

And just as evaluating the sources of our happiness is an ongoing exercise, so is budgeting. Our budget needs will change and they will be wrong at least as often as they are right, and that is okay.

Happiness is personal. Budgeting is personal. Both may kindle new ideas, ignite our passions, and wane in importance as our lives unfold and our needs and desires evolve.

So maybe budgeting is one of the keys to happiness, after all. And maybe it is the key we’ve been missing for all this time. That’s not so hard after all.

Next up: Budgeting for Those Who Would Rather Not

Sachs Insights is her sandbox to channel her curiosity, try out research techniques, and collaborate with an amazing group of colleagues and clients. While discovery is exciting, Tammy’s favorite part of each project is telling a story with the voice of customers to ensure their perspective shapes experiences that matter. She was kind enough to share the five skills she uses daily while helping clients uncover new ways to improve their products.

1. Practice Active Listening and Playback
People rarely mean what you think they do.  So asking very open-ended questions and giving them the space to really share is invaluable. Then ask why what they said is important to them. Ask about the context, the environment, and the situation. Find out who the stakeholders are and what each of them want.

Then play back what you heard to ensure you understood what they said or meant.  We often feel misunderstood or not listened to. So, the sheer fact that you heard what they said builds trust and rapport. It also identifies gaps between what you heard and what they intended. Often in product development, clients will insist on a method, market, or strategy that doesn’t seem to make sense. The first inclination is to tell them the five reasons why you have a better idea. Before you do that, ask what the situation is. This provides a context with which to offer the solution that best addresses their needs.

2. Develop A Thick Skin
This comes with time. Clients may sometimes say things that at first seem aggressive or offensive, especially when operating under time pressure or when the direction they’ve been given is vague. Taking any of it personally is not useful, as it is rarely about you or intended to offend.

The more even and non-reactive your voice, the faster you get to the source of the issue. I teach our staff of consultants to trust their gut, and to approach the situation based on what feels right.  Here are some options:

Empathy: “Wow, that sounds like a really challenging situation. I don’t know how you handle it. It must take a lot of patience.”

Humor: “This sounds like a great reality show. Who should we cast?”

Direct Acknowledgement and Engagement: “This is a difficult situation. It is no wonder there are conflicting opinions. You are taking on something no one has done before, so there is no template. How can we collaborate to create a strawman for the team so they can each give us feedback on how closely our solution addresses their goals?”

3. Use Positive Framing
Most of us, when very close to a situation, can become myopic. We have been looking at the same problem for a long time. We’ve probably lost perspective. What could be obvious to an outsider isn’t obvious to us. All this often leads to is identifying issues, problems, limitations, etc. It isn’t conducive to thinking outside the box.

The best thing you can do as a consultant is to reframe the situation as an opportunity, rather than a challenge. We all know that the glass can either be half empty or half full:

“Wow, it looks like anything we do is going to result in a positive uptake in acquisition”

“This is exciting – you have two challenges that are really compelling. It would be great to identify a solution that addresses them both. It’s like a twofer!”

“This has never been done before. It would be awesome to be the first to crack this opportunity.”

These approaches provide a different lens that is far more liberating and conducive to creativity and ideation.

4. Know When to Join the Resistance, Instead of Fighting It
This is a variation of number two. Clients will sometimes say, “Gee, I’d probably be better off hiring so and so (as in not your firm).” First, don’t react. Ask why they feel that way. Is it a safer choice? Is it one management is more likely sign on for? Is it just cheaper?

My take goes something like this: “I certainly hear you, and if that is the decision you opt for, I completely understand. Why don’t we propose our best alternative; we’ll come meet you and your team in person and walk through our approach. Then, if you feel that the other firm is a better fit for whatever reason, I’d go with them. Your gut is always right.”

What we never do: say anything negative about another company. What we do is mention is how our strengths align with the client’s priorities. This identifies what differentiates us most effectively from other companies in a positive way. It also affirms our integrity and builds trust, both of which are invaluable assets for a consulting firm.

5.  Demonstrate the Power of Passion and Authenticity
As researchers, we are insatiably curious. Any situation has some unique angle that makes it exciting. It could be the 15th e-commerce site you’ve tested. However, there is something about the brand, the market situation, the customer base, and the opportunity for growth that is new and different. By keying into this, you reignite a client’s enthusiasm for the project and create positive momentum.

For example, a client recently came to us when building a new e-commerce site for shoes. The site was designed to appeal to two very different audiences: hipsters and hardcore construction workers (think steel toe). The idea of shaping an experience that would engage both and justify a high price point based on the value prop to each was incredibly interesting. Keying into what is fascinating and different about a UX project infuses the entire team with energy. And we are all, as a team, entering a new terrain that provides borrowed interest to what is essentially another homepage, browse experience, buy flow, and check out path.  Thus, everything old becomes new again.

If, however, you Google “numeracy foundation,” there are barely 3.5 million results. The first page is filled with curriculum-based results, rather than organized charitable efforts to help people actually understand math. Thinking that perhaps few people use the word “numeracy,” I checked “math literacy.” This gave me a healthy 28 million results. I had hope — briefly — until I noticed that not one single result on the first page was an organized effort to promote such.

I mention this because I am afraid innumeracy is going to bring us down.

I can’t tell you how many otherwise educated, competent people I’ve worked with (no, not you, of course) who can’t manage basic mathematical concepts, nor identify an outlier in a list of numbers. Here is a real-life example: I had an employee in a METRICS position, for goodness sake, who was completing a report on site traffic sources. A list of visits per month for a specific referrer went something like this:

500 – 500 – 500 – 500 – 500 – 2,000,000 – 500 – 500 – 500 – 500 – 500 – 500

The list was submitted without comment. When I asked, “Hey, what was up with that 2 million number?”, the answer was, “ … what?”

I don’t think it’s asking too much to suggest that if there’s an outlier that extreme, that it occur to you that it is either a really interesting event to investigate or, um, user error. If you are just going to plug-and-chug numbers, well, my 8-year-old could do that. (In fact, Business Insider recently ran an excellent piece on teaching your child to love math.)

It’s not just that people don’t see the simplest of patterns. The trouble goes far deeper. I have been asked over and over again, by the same individuals, how to calculate basic marketing metrics like CPM (cost per thousand), PP/V (pages/visit), and CTR (click through rate).

Think you can go into a field that doesn’t require numbers? Think again. Editors are now tasked with knowing the traffic patterns and referral sources for their content. Sales reps have to figure out avails and CPMs, and know how to address performance reports, CTRs, etc. Marketers have to test and track EVERYTHING. Product folks have to figure out ROI, usability test results, and more. In short, “I’m Not a Math Person” is no longer an option.

Full disclosure: I am an English major turned metrics wonk. I had a boss once who could run several-step math problems in his head, and I fully admit I could not keep up.  But you don’t have to have mad STEM skills. You just need to get rid of the “I’m-not-a-math-person” block and embrace the concepts, and let a calculator do the rest!