Joshua Bell and the Washington Post Experiment

This story about Joshua Bell and the Washington Post is very much a positioning story. In 2007, The Washington Post did a bit of a social experiment. They had Joshua Bell, who's a world-renowned violinist -- he plays a three-and-a-half-million-dollar Stradivarius violin -- he played with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and for an hour, he gets paid about $60,000.

The Washington Post did a bit of a social experiment. Before a show, they had Bell set up as a busker at a railway station. For an hour's work, he got paid $32.

He played the exact same set that he played at the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. In one scenario, he made $32. In the other scenario, he made $60,000 -- the difference being positioning.

If you're positioning yourself as a street busker, then you get paid as such. If you're positioning yourself as a world-class performer arriving at the place where people really value what you do, then you're going to get paid accordingly as well. A lot of the time, people will appraise you at your own value.

Having said that, you can't cheat. You can't just say, "Hey. I'm a world-class performer," and then you get out your instrument and you can't really play at a world-class level. Obviously, you have to have the skills according to how you're positioning yourself.

A lot of the times, you'll see people who are just amazing, but maybe they have low self-esteem, or for some reason they position themselves much lower than they really are. Having that difference of positioning -- that can make a world of difference to your income.