What a Choice Says to the World

Imagine an event planner named Sabine whose website shows every party she has planned. There is a bank’s holiday party, a child’s seventh birthday, a wedding for 200 guests, and a dinner for 12.

Mrs. Varga is planning a dinner for 24 to mark her husband’s 60th birthday. Most of the guests give dinners of their own, and a few of them have a cook. She wants the evening to show them that she knows how a dinner should be done.

On a Sunday evening, she opens Sabine’s website and scrolls through the parties. She sees a planner who will plan any party for anyone, and she closes the page.

Then she opens the website of a planner named Freya. Freya’s page shows four dinners. Under them, one sentence names two of her clients, a restaurant owner and the director of the city’s art museum. Both of them have given Freya permission to name them.

Mrs. Varga can see that people who know dinners hire Freya, and she writes to Freya that evening. The price comes up at their second meeting, and it is not the reason she hires Freya. She does not write to Sabine.

Sabine’s dinners may be as good as Freya’s. Her page tells Mrs. Varga that anyone hires Sabine for anything, so hiring Sabine would say nothing about Mrs. Varga. Freya’s page tells her that people who know dinners already hire Freya. So hiring Freya tells Mrs. Varga’s guests that she chose well.

Some clients choose a professional the way Mrs. Varga chooses Freya. They choose partly for what the choice says about their taste to the people who will see the work. So decide what the clients and the work you show say about the people who hire you. Then stop showing whatever says something else.

Money can be shown by spending it, and taste cannot

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett studies how Americans spend their money. In a 2017 essay, she describes how the rich have shown their position over time. In 1899, she writes, the economist Thorstein Veblen observed that objects such as silver spoons showed who was at the top. He gave a name to the habit of showing position through what a person owns.

Today, she writes, almost anyone can buy a designer handbag or a new car. So the goods themselves say far less about who owns them than they once did.

A well-off, educated group that she calls the aspirational class now shows its position another way. This group values knowledge, builds what she calls cultural capital, and would rather spend on services and education than on goods. These choices, she writes, have become a kind of shorthand that members of the group recognize in one another.

Cultural capital is a term from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In a 1986 essay, he set out three kinds of capital, meaning resources that a person builds up and uses.

Economic capital is money, and property that can be turned into money at once. Cultural capital is what people call culture or cultivation, which is what a person has learned to know and to appreciate. Social capital is a person’s connections, meaning the people who owe them something. Economic capital and cultural capital are the two that matter here.

Bourdieu writes that cultural capital takes time to build. The person has to put in that time themselves. He compares it with getting fit or getting a tan, because nobody can do either for you. Unlike money or property, he adds, it cannot be handed over in a moment, by gift or by purchase.

Taste is one part of what Bourdieu describes, because taste is what a person has learned to appreciate. Here is what that means. A person who has money can show it by spending it. Taste cannot be bought in a day, so the only way to show it is through what a person chooses.

Who a client hires is one of those choices. When a client hires a designer or a chef, people who know that field can tell the client’s taste from the choice. They judge it by the two parts of the professional that a stranger can see. Those are the other clients the professional works for and the work the professional shows.

A dog named Gucci told the street what its owner had spent

Diana Clarke once walked dogs in New York for a dog-walking agency, at $12 an hour. In 2014, she wrote about it for The Billfold.

“The first dog was named Gucci,” she wrote. She added that, as a coworker named Justin told it, the owner chose the name because she “wanted to advertise that she’d spent as much on him as on a designer handbag.”

If Justin had it right, the dog was meant to tell people on the street how much its owner had spent. Anyone with the money could send that message, and it says nothing about the owner’s taste.

So before you decide what to show, look at the clients and the projects you show now, and ask what they say. If they say only that your clients can spend a lot, they say what the dog’s name says: money, nothing about taste.

Magazine art directors hired a photographer who did not shoot weddings the usual way

John Dolan, a wedding photographer who started out in New York, has photographed weddings for more than 30 years. In 2021, the photography website PetaPixel asked him how he became a celebrity photographer.

“I wouldn’t describe myself as a celebrity photographer,” he said. “I get hired by people who love photography (some of them well known).”

PetaPixel also asked how he got started in weddings. His goal in the 1990s, he said, was to be an editorial photographer, the kind who shoots for magazines. “Along the way, I ended up getting hired by art directors and photo editors who did not want a wedding photographer,” he said. “They just wanted me to come to their wedding and shoot it like a story.”

PetaPixel’s introduction says that his wedding clients include “magazine art directors and editors,” as well as celebrities.

At a magazine, art directors and photo editors choose photographers for a living. Those people hired Dolan for their own weddings. So a couple who hires him too can take the choice as a sign of their own taste in photography.

In his answer about celebrities, the people who love photography come first, and the well-known ones come in parentheses. So when you choose which clients and which work to show, start with the ones people in your field would respect.

Why answering a taste question with a price goes wrong

Imagine an interior designer named Perrine who meets a new client, Mr. Castellanos, about his living room. His wife’s book club meets there once a month, and two of its members collect paintings. He asks Perrine, “Whose houses have you done?”

Perrine has had a long day, and she reaches for her biggest job. “Last year I did a 10,000-square-foot house on the lake,” she says. “The budget was about two million, and the owners let me buy everything, down to the glassware.”

Mr. Castellanos thanks her and says he will think it over. The next week, he meets a designer named Idun and asks her the same question. “I did the house of a potter on Elm Street, and she has told me I may mention her,” Idun says. “We built the room around her own pots, and two of her friends have come to me since.”

He hires Idun.

Perrine answers a question about taste with a price. What she tells Mr. Castellanos is that her clients can spend two million. Hiring her would tell the book club that he paid a great deal, and nothing more.

Idun’s answer tells him that a woman who works with clay for a living trusts Idun with the room she sits in. Hiring Idun tells the book club that he knows good work when he sees it.

Perrine’s mistake is an easy one to make, because the lake house was her hardest job and she is proud of it. So when a client asks whose houses you have done, name a client that people in your field would respect. Name that client only if they have given permission, and leave the budget out.

Showing fewer jobs is not throwing good work away

Taking a job off your website can feel like a waste of good work. It can also feel like turning away the clients who would have hired you for that kind of job.

The job is still yours. The clients you did it for still have your name, and you can still take any job that comes to you. What changes is what a stranger sees first.

The signs that a client is choosing for what the choice says about their taste

One sign on its own does not tell you much. A few signs together are a good reason to guess that the client is choosing for what the choice says about them.

Here are the signs to listen for:

The client asks whose houses, dinners, or weddings you have done, and wants to hear about particular jobs.
The client asks where your work has been seen, such as a magazine, a house tour, or an exhibition. A question about results other people will see is the sign of a client who is hiring for status.
The client talks about your field the way someone who knows it talks. The client names a maker, a chef, a photographer, or a style.
The job will be seen by people who know the field. They might be guests who give dinners of their own, or friends who collect.

Even with a few signs, you are still guessing. So let your guess shape what you show and what you say, and keep the guess to yourself.

How to make the clients and the work you show agree on who hires you

When a new client gets in touch, listen for the signs. Afterward, write down what the client asked about.
Open your website or portfolio as a stranger who knows your field. Read it for a minute. Then write one sentence saying what the clients and projects on it say about the kind of client who hires you. If your sentence comes down to “anyone hires me for anything,” the page says nothing about your clients’ taste.
Decide what you want the clients and the work you show to say instead. Keep it to one sentence, so that you can say it aloud when a client asks whose houses you have done. For example, a tutor might write, “I teach the children of families who talk about books at dinner,” and a private chef might write, “I cook for hosts who cook well themselves.”
Stop showing every project that says something else, even the good ones. Then look at what is left as one set. Keep the jobs that show the work you want to do next and the clients you want to be known for.
Name a client only when that client has given permission. Show a job only when the client has given permission. If you have not asked, ask now. For example, a coach can ask, “May I say on my website that I work with you, with your name?” If the client hesitates, leave the name off and describe the kind of client instead.
When a client asks whose houses you have done, answer with the clients who fit your sentence. For example, the private chef can say, “I cook for two hosts who trained as chefs themselves, and for a family that keeps a kitchen garden. One of them has said I may give you her name.” Leave out the budgets, the biggest job, and the other kinds of work you can do.
When the client asks about the work itself, talk about the work. Say where you buy, how you build, or what you taught. Then let the client judge.

Next: You will see why a true limit, stated as a fact, often moves a client more than a promise.