Storytelling Your Value Into Existence

Something I've been thinking about this week, especially in reflection of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is how we—America—got here to this moment. A moment where all of our past sins seem to be converging and collapsing on one another in one grand boom of imperialist explosion. An extinction burst, as it's called in social science.

I think about how in the Reverend's short 39 years of life, just six years older than I am now, he went from anti-Jim Crow (a regional position) to anti-racism and white supremacy as a global construct, to anti-imperialism as a global construct, to his final state as an anti-capitalist—which is the positioning the empire found most harmful.

People often describe his ideological journey linearly, as though he was moving down a line of discovery toward what the true issue was, the true thing keeping folks oppressed. As though each position led him to a more insidious, but bigger and more important other thing.

I see his journey more circularly, though. The sentiments he shared at the beginning and end of his life occupied the same space. It simply took him traveling the world and coming back home to realize: there is only one snake, one long, large, hefty, muscular snake. And the head of that snake, globally, was America and Europe's original sin—the mass human trafficking, mass rape, mass forced birth, and mass dehumanization of African people, 500 years ago.

The day we turned the capital in capitalism into human capital. The day we separated America's most skilled workforce from seeing any dividends from their highly important, needed-for-our-nation's-survival labor.

We do not get to the Jim Crow South—the system my father was born into—without the gross and intentional devaluing of labor. But not just labor. Creation. The devaluing of the creation of enslaved African people and the Native Americans who inhabited this land originally.

This summer I took my once-a-presidential-cycle trip to the National Smithsonian for African American History in DC. Two things stood out to me:

First: Most of Europe was close to collapse before the wealth from the slave trade created the "superpowers" we know today. The empire was built on stolen creation, stolen value, stolen labor.

Second: African laborers were highly skilled and worth top dollar to farmers and plantation owners. Depending on the crops that needed to be grown, there was a system for assigning value to that work—to ensure that difficult-to-grow crops like rice received the most brilliant and skilled labor from the continent. And that labor was worth more. The enslaved weren't just bodies. They were engineers, agricultural scientists, craftspeople, artists. The value was always there. The system just ensured they'd never see a cent of it.

This is the blueprint. This is how it all works.

Dr. King knew, in 1968, how we got to that moment. And I'd bet if he closed his eyes, he could predict the one we're in right now. Because the moment we lost this ship was not the first Trump term, or Reagan, or any specific moment in modern history. Each of these moments is a buildup from the last, a snake's link all tied to the original sin: Black bodies as capital.

And in order to make this whole thing work—to ensure the Black bodies that created value in this country never saw a red cent from that value—the system required the creation of the middleman. The loads and loads of people and institutions and systems created to separate the creator from the sale of their creation.

We see it in every industry. It started in farming and agriculture, but it's been applied everywhere since.

In music, someone reaches to heaven and brings a song to earth, and that song (until recently) had to be taken, packaged, and sold to an audience using a very specific set of tools that the creator did not own and often didn't have access to. A writer, a painter, a student athlete building a personal brand while their school siphons every dollar—the owner of the creation, the creator of value, has to leverage tools they cannot control to receive value from that thing.

This is all intentional. It stems from the original sin of slavery and has seeped deeply into our culture and psyches.

There is no Donald Trump—a man who was 20 years old before Black people had the legal protections of voting, who spent his life siphoning the rewards from every employer, contractor, partner, and worker who ever made money for him, who was one of the first to realize a name could be licensed and sold as long as the world perceived you as adding value, whether or not you could produce any evidence of that value—there is no him without the American-as-apple-pie system of devaluing labor. The things we can create and make with our hands, our minds, our bodies, our souls. Without the original sin. Slavery.

Everything.

Learning to see, articulate, story, and sell your value is a revolutionary act. It is an act that is inherently anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and a direct challenge to the system designed to keep creators separated from the rewards of their creation.

Yes, we are still under the duress of the tools at our disposal. But the thing we know about history is that the tools change.

I watched this happen in real time in 2020. I was working at OMD managing branded entertainment partnerships for PepsiCo—a brand that relied heavily on live sports and in-person events. When COVID shut everything down, we had to transition millions of dollars in media spend overnight. No stadiums. No concerts. No festivals. The tools disappeared.

What did we do? We shifted to the new-to-market TikTok, virtual concerts, gaming, streamers—new media that could reach audiences where they actually were. The measurable result wasn't just engagement metrics. It was sustained relevance. When the stage disappeared, the only brands that survived were the ones that had built real, honest relationships with their audiences.

The lesson: When the tools disappear, the honesty in your story is all you have. You have to be YOU in every medium. The brands that treated their audiences like commodities died. The ones that grew with their people, responded to their needs, built loving two-way relationships—those survived.

This isn't metaphor. This is pattern recognition from 11 years watching millions of dollars move between brands and creators.

Here's what I've learned watching Fortune 500 brands, independent creators, and everyone in between either capture value or lose it:

Can you explain what you do and why it matters in one sentence? If you can't, neither can your customer.

Bad: "I do social media management."
Good: "I help luxury service providers turn their expertise into authority content that drives appointments and product sales."

The difference is story. The second version has a character (luxury service providers), a problem (expertise not translating to revenue), and a transformation (authority that converts).

Every project is evidence. Every client is a case study. Document the transformation, not just the deliverables.

When I worked at Coinbase NFT establishing creator partnerships, the brands that succeeded weren't the ones with the most followers. They were the ones who could show: "Here's what I made. Here's who it's for. Here's what happened when they bought it."

Before/afters. Client testimonials. Screenshots of results. The story of how your work changed someone's outcome.

The brands that survived 2020 had real relationships with their audiences. The ones that didn't, died. This isn't optional anymore.

Building relational capital means:

This is a loving relationship, just like any other. It requires attention, reciprocity, and genuine care.

This is the difference between $300 and $3,000. Not what you do (services), but what becomes possible (outcomes).

What you do: "I'll audit your social media, create a content calendar, and set up your TikTok Shop."

What becomes possible: "You'll go from posting inconsistently with no sales to having a system that turns your expertise into authority content that drives both appointments and product revenue every month."

See how the second version paints a picture of the after-state? That's what people pay for.

Ask for what it's worth. Build the muscle. You'll undercharge at first. Do it anyway.

This is where most creators get stuck. Not because they don't have value to offer, but because they're learning to trust that their knowledge, skills, and experience are worth something to others.

I'm learning this too.

Last month I sold a 3-week digital strategy session to a small business. A pedicurist in Charlotte with a weak social presence and custom foot care products that weren't being sold online.

Here's how it happened: I walked in as a customer. Got the service. Noticed immediately what was broken—incredible expertise, premium products, zero digital infrastructure. I told her how I could help. She said yes.

I charged $300. I should have charged $500, maybe more. I was testing. Testing my pricing. Testing whether I could deliver value. Testing whether anyone would actually pay me for what I know.

What I delivered: A full content strategy deck. Platform focus (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn). Content pillars tied to business goals (appointments, product sales, partnerships). Monthly execution plan. Conversion system connecting social media to bookings and e-commerce. Luxury brand positioning guidelines.

The client was thrilled. I learned several things:

One: I definitely undercharged. Not because she didn't get value—she did. But because I didn't trust yet that my 11 years of experience managing millions in digital media for Fortune 500 brands, building creator partnerships at Coinbase, and directing award-winning branded content campaigns translates into legitimate value for a small business owner. It does. I'm learning to believe that.

Two: Relationships are value too, not just money. I gained a client who's now referring me to other small business owners. I built the muscle of servicing—scoping work, delivering on time, translating corporate strategy into something actionable for an independent operator. That's valuable even when the money feels off.

Three: Everything you do is a lesson, a story to tell, a way to prove your youness. This pedicurist project is now a case study. It's proof I can take what I learned at VaynerX and OMD and make it accessible to creatives and small businesses. That's the narrative clarity I needed.

I'm doing this again. Next client, I'm charging what it's worth. I'm building commercial courage one uncomfortable conversation at a time.

Learning to sell your value isn't about becoming a guru or a salesperson or commodifying yourself. It's about refusing to let the system continue separating you from the rewards of your creation.

When you story your value—when you can name what you do, prove it works, build relationships around it, articulate the transformation, and ask to be compensated—you're reclaiming something that was stolen 500 years ago. The right to profit from your own labor. Your own creation. Your own brilliance.

We're still operating within capitalist structures. But every time you charge what you're worth and keep 100% of what you earn, you're chipping away at the original sin. You're rewriting the story that says creators don't deserve to see the dividends of their creation.

That's not hustle culture. That's not toxic productivity. That's reclamation. That's revolution.

Here's what I want to know:

What's the thing you do that people should be paying you for, but you've been giving away for free?

Reply and tell me. Let's start naming our value out loud.

Next issue: How to own your audience when algorithms are designed to steal it (or: email list building for people who hate email marketing).

P.S. - If you want help building your narrative clarity, proving your value, and creating a digital strategy that actually converts—I'm taking on new clients. I undercharged last time. I won't make that mistake again. You can schedule a consultation through my [Calendly]. For more on my background, check out my [LinkedIn].