I often tell a story on stage about the brilliant comedian and actor, Patton Oswalt. I first heard Oswalt tell it himself in a video clip, and I’m working from memory here, so a detail or two may be slightly off. But the core of it, and the lesson, are right.

Years ago, as Oswalt’s fame was rising, he got a call from the head booker for a large casino chain. She said they were in a bind. That Friday, three hundred of their highest rollers were flying in. The casino wanted to throw a big party, but they had no entertainment lined up. Would he come perform? Oswalt said no. He wasn’t a casino comic. He played clubs and theaters.

Then the booker quoted a fee for a single appearance that was so enormous it would pay for his daughter’s private school for a whole year. “OK,” Oswalt said. “I can’t turn that down. I’ll be there.”

He flew in and arrived just before showtime, went straight backstage, and found the booker. “How long do you want me to do?” he asked. “I usually do an hour. I can do two if you want.”

She said, “Fifteen minutes is fine.”

That made no sense to him. Given the money, fifteen minutes felt absurd. “I’ll do an hour,” he said.

“Under no circumstances do an hour,” she replied. “If you must, do thirty minutes. But I promise you, fifteen minutes is more than enough.”

“OK,” Oswalt said. “I’ll do thirty minutes. I won’t go a second over.”

When his name was announced and he walked onstage, he immediately understood why the restriction. The audience was drunk, loud, and running around. Holding their attention for even a short while was going to be tough. And when they recognized him, they completely lost it.

For the next thirty minutes, Oswalt couldn’t tell a single joke. That was because of the audience’s hysteria. For thirty straight minutes, they screamed the names of his credits, King of Queens!, Ratatouille!, Parks and Recreation! They quoted his lines. They shouted his résumé at him, as Oswalt later put it.

When the half hour was up, he thanked them and walked off — to a standing ovation.

Backstage, Oswalt was uneasy. He hadn’t told a single joke. Not one. Surely the booker would be angry. Maybe she wouldn’t even pay him. Instead, she was thrilled. “That was great,” she said. “I have fourteen more properties just like this one. Can you do that fourteen more times?”

End of story.

Oswalt it seemed thought his product was jokes. To the casino booker (aka the economic buyer) it wasn’t. Jokes were just one possible vehicle for creating an audience of euphoric high rollers who would then gamble millions of dollars in the casino. How he got them into that overjoyed state was immaterial. He could have told jokes, told none, juggled, performed a magic trick, recited a soliloquy, folded an origami crane. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the outcome; not the mechanism for how he got them there.

There are many ways to interpret that story. The one that matters most to me is this: We routinely create forms of value we do not recognize, cannot measure, and would never think to claim. And yet those forms of value are often the most consequential ones.

Take Tim Ferriss. The original title of his first book was Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit. He ran a small supplements company and joked that he was a drug dealer. When he looked at the value of the book differently, when he reframed it around what readers were actually searching for and longing for, he changed the title to The 4-Hour Workweek. Same underlying work. Radically different perceived value. Millions of copies sold.

I see the same pattern constantly when I interview my clients’ clients. They tell me stories about moments my client barely remembers. A phone call that saved a business. A comment made in passing that shifted someone’s confidence. A small practice that quietly became part of a company’s culture. When I relay these stories back, my clients almost always say the same thing. “Really? I didn’t know.”

Of course you didn’t. The person creating value is usually the last person to recognize it.

Which is why the most useful stance isn’t self-doubt or endless recalibration. It’s assumption. Assume you’re in the dark and are creating more value than you can see. Bank on it. Don’t question it. That assumption is almost always correct.

Then go looking for it. Ask better questions. Interview downstream. Pay attention to what people remember instead of what you intended. Notice which parts of your work travel or get retold when you’re not in the room.

The Oswalt story isn’t about lowering standards or coasting. It’s about understanding that value is contextual and often invisible from the inside. You don’t get to decide what mattered. Your clients and customers and audiences and markets do. You only get to discover it later.

So assume there’s crazy, unexpected value there, and then go find it.