Natalie Franke
Today we are talking about one of the most critical components to running a successful independent business. And since we’re on the quest of the science of self made success, it is only fitting that we have an episode on sales, how to book your next client and do it strategically. Today I am sitting down with the one the only Chris doe. Christo is an Emmy Award winning designer, Director, CEO and the founder of the future, an online education platform that is set to support 1 billion entrepreneurs in the pursuit of doing what they love. In this episode, we dig into tactical advice that honestly you can implement right now. No fluff straight value. I’m not even going to say any more in this episode, because I want to just get right into it. I’ll let Chris, take it from here. Hey, everyone, this is your host, Natalie Frank, and you’re listening to the independent business podcast, more people than ever are working for themselves and building profitable businesses in the process. So on this show, I sit down with some of the most influential authors, entrepreneurs and creators to break down the science of self made success so that you can achieve it.
Natalie Franke
Alright, Chris, thank you so much for joining me.
Chris Do
My pleasure, Natalie, thank you.
Natalie Franke
We had a little bit of fun offline, we got called out by Riverside for our RAM for the cameras who were using all the things and it led me it led me to think about the fact that in so much of the work that we do, you know, as independence as for a lot of us creators, creatives, freelancers, in so much of that work, we tend to be surrounded online by like really uplifting, empowering conversations. And yet, oftentimes, it’s the conversations that make us a little uncomfortable that call us out a little bit that talk about things like numbers, which I want to talk about today that actually move the needle forward in our businesses. And it’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show.
Chris Do
Let’s get into the numbers get in uncomfortable conversations.
Natalie Franke
I love that you talk about that. Let’s get into the numbers. Right? No pressure, I gave you a softball right off the start of just saying we’re gonna have some intense conversations. So let’s start there. Let’s really start there. I want to ask you on behalf of every independent business owner, how do we figure out what should we be charging? In the work that we do? How do we stand by charging more than we think we can charge in the work that we do when it comes to numbers? A lot of us want to run the other way. The whole concept is terrifying. Can you give us a little bit of honest, tough love?
Chris Do
Yes. There’s a dichotomy that exists within creative people. That is at odds with who you see yourself as when you ask most creative people. Are you empathetic? Are you creative? Do you care about other people? They will say yes, yes. And yes. Do you do try to be of service to other people? And they say yes, again. So why is it what you charge is all about you, it’s never about them. And this raises a big internal conflict, because we’re taught either by osmosis, or just heard it on the grapevine that what we charge is based on what we put into it, or hours, or tools or materials, and then we present it to the client. And if you’ve ever done this before, some clients don’t want what you got. It doesn’t matter how many hours, whatever tools, they don’t care what cameras you use, what paint brushes, if it’s squash or acrylic, they don’t care, they got a job to do. And in their mind, there’s a price attached to that outcome that they want to achieve. When you truly understand that then you’ll start to understand that you can’t have and should not have one fixed price for everyone. You’re not a bag of rice, you’re not a sack of potatoes, you’re not being traded on the market. And whatever commodity price it exists in the market today. Doesn’t work like that. So we can get under that concept like wow, okay, that’s a different way of looking at this, then we can talk about the more like the implementation that tactics and the strategies, but hey, what the heck are you talking about?
Natalie Franke
I love that first thought when you were saying, you know, not everyone’s going to want to hire you to love the work that you do. And like you can be the juiciest peach in Georgia and somebody still doesn’t like peaches, we know that you can also take that peach and create a multitude of dishes with it, such that some of them are charging hundreds of dollars for a single tiny plate of a dessert with a peach on it, and others are out of farm market stand for $2. So in that range of what can be created with raw materials and in the work that you do, there is a huge range and we see it in all of our markets, most of them being very saturated, by the way, which I think can exacerbate that scarcity that fear that question and insecurity around these rate conversations. But where does someone begin? You know, maybe they’ve been doing this for five minutes or five years. Maybe they’re analyzing their prices for the first time through At more critical lens, how do you figure out if you’re charging what you should be?
Chris Do
First, if we have to start with curiosity, there’s that expression of the quote, it’s like, if the only tool you have all problems look like nails. And that might be you, you’re a photographer, you’re a designer, you maybe you build websites, and that’s your one tool. So everybody that comes knocking at the door, you just automatically assume you must have a website problem, you might have a logo problem, or you might have a photography problem. But that’s a strange way to have a relationship. And to build trust, and to get people to feel like Oh, my God, you see me. So I think it begins with curiosity, by asking the person either because you reached out or that they reach out doesn’t really matter. The conversations the same is, what’s the big problem that you’re trying to solve today. Something that if you can get off your desk would make everything else a lot easier, something that you feel a lot of friction around. And we start there, and you have to be brave enough to ask a question where you don’t know the answer to that might not lead you to where you want it to go. And when you enter into any kind of relationships, and you have an agenda, people usually can feel that in their hearts like, Well, I think you want to take me somewhere, or I think you don’t want to go swimming. And I can tell already, because of the questions that you’re asked. You’re not that good at asking questions that people can’t figure out your agenda. So the best way to show up for people is just show up for people be curious and ask questions. And if it’s something that they need, that you don’t do, be happy for them that they got clarity, and then you are the person to help them achieve that. And then recommend somebody if it’s within your network to do so.
Natalie Franke
I have so much I want to double click into in regards to questions. So the first thing I hear all the time, people are afraid to ask questions, because they’re afraid it’s going to make them look like they’re not the expert. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like if someone feels hesitant and asking questions, is there another way that they should be thinking about it?
Chris Do
Yes. What if we have a belief if we want to practice critical thinking, I suggest that what we do is we challenge your own thoughts. When we say I’m afraid we’re not looking like an expert. If I asked too many questions. Where in our life, have we seen an example of that outside of what it is that we do? So when you go to a doctor and you walk in to see the doctor, and the doctor is like, you need surgery? like wait, I do, we didn’t get a chance to talk yet. And that’s what a lot of creatives Do they just start prescribing solutions. And then there’s an expression, a prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Okay, when you prescribe a solution without first diagnosing the problem, then you’re committing, in this case, something that goes against the oath that you’ve made. Okay, so we’re talking about doctors, forget about doctors, let’s talk about a lawyer. I’ll go through every professional practicing to see a pattern of thinking that goes against that thought that by asking questions, you’re not going to be seen as an expert when, in truth, the opposite is true. You go to a lawyer, let’s say you’ve been accused of something, let’s say it’s murder. And then I know how to defend you like but you haven’t talked to you don’t know what’s going on yet? No, no, I’ve seen 1000 of you. I know you need this defense. We’re going to use the blame it on the ex wife or ex husband strategy. Like no, that was a thing on the practice to the TV show. I’m not interested in that. Okay, let’s go to the next thing. Let’s go to the accountant. Hey, I’m being audited. I know how to defend you again. The mechanic, the butcher, I got no what cuts? You know, I don’t eat meat. No, I didn’t know because I just assume that you want that top sirloin cut. It’s like, this is what we do all the time. And it’s infuriating. If you just put yourself in the other person’s shoes, and is that the kind of relationship you want to build to irritate people? Know, I think what you want to do is you want to ask questions. Now, not all questions are created equally. So the fear is from someplace and the fear comes from us probably being like just, you know, in grade school, when the teachers like, who knows the blah, blah, blah. And you ask like, oh, what’s the state? And the kids laugh at you? Now can ask kind of a dumb question. Or, you know, why are you wearing that hat? Because it’s not relevant. So what we have to do is we have to learn how to be questioned ologists to ask big, beautiful, open questions that lead the person the prospect towards gaining clarity to the problem, or to the goal or to their challenge. That’s what we’re trying to do. So you have to learn how to ask better questions.
Natalie Franke
For anyone that wants to nerd out on the neuroscience of asking questions. I want to give a shout out to an earlier episode we did on the show with Elon yen. Elon talks about the worst sentence you can conclude an email with and it’s let me know if you’re interested, basically arguing that instead ask a question ask a very good question that leads them forward in their experience with you. We dig into neuroscience of asking questions. Spoiler alert, it transforms the brain. If you ask someone a question. It really does. It changes the entire dynamic. I love that. I want to kind of take a little bit of a detour based on something you said initially when you were going down this train of thought around questions. When you essentially alluded to the fact that when you ask these questions, you might uncover that a client isn’t the right fit for you, you might uncover that you actually can’t meet the problem that they have, or, you know, your style doesn’t align with what they need, or whatever the multitude of reasons why it’s not the best fit. Can we talk about that for a second? Because I also think that’s a fear that people have, if they dig a little bit too deep, are they going to find that it’s not the right business for them, and therefore, they’re going to want to or have to let go of that business? There’s, there’s fear wrapped up in all of that fear of scarcity. If I let this client go, I’m not going to find another one. Can you speak to it, I really would love your take on, you know, when you do uncover that someone’s not the right fit. And then you have to take that next step. What do you do? How do you feel? What would you encourage someone to, you know, do in that scenario,
Chris Do
I have to ask this kind of rhetorical question, which is, are you a self centered person? Are you a selfish person, and if you are, then the strategies, I’m going to tell you are not going to make any sense to you whatsoever. If you’re a generous person, if you’re a caring person, if you want to help and serve other people, then this strategy is going to work. So here’s the thing, we know that if you try and sell something that they don’t need, you’ll get the sale, probably, if you’re very good salesperson. But at the end, they’re gonna walk away not feeling great about the experience and having the exact same problem again. So what we do is in sales, is we’re doing change management, what kind of change are they after? And so they’re going from their existing current state to some kind of future desired state. And if you don’t ask questions, if you’re not able to illuminate the future desired state, you’ll give them something there’ll be an illusion towards that. And then two, three weeks, four months later, they’re nowhere closer to that state that they wish like, well, we redid the website, we don’t understand why the customer experience is not better. We’ve not sold any more units, or our social following hasn’t grown. Why isn’t the website solve this problem, and you know what it is, you’re on to the next client. It’s a hit and run strategy. And it’s very short term thinking. If you want to be in business for 1020 30 years, with clients that still call you up in 30 years, which I do have clients who do that, you have to make sure you’re there to serve them. And you’re looking at it on a long term basis. So if the client presents a problem that you can’t solve, don’t want to solve isn’t a good, perfect fit for you, you recommend them, or you just be really honest, and say, That’s a beautiful problem. It’s one on one, I feel confident I can serve you, and you deserve the best fit for this. So I wish you well. And if you ever need logo design, or you need a wedding video produced, I’m your person. And what happens is you’ve earned trust, and they might not be the right fit. But next time you run into somebody that that needs that logo design or that wedding video shots, like I met the most remarkable person, I was chatting with Natalie two months ago, and she she didn’t want to take money from me and she thought I would be better off working with someone else, you might want to call Natalie, and she’ll help you out. This is what we’re trying to do. Seth Godin talks about this, whoever can play the game, the longest wins. It’s called playing the infinite game to be able to play it forever. Right. So if you’re here for the quick turnaround, there are expressions I can can use in polite company, if you’re just in for the quick transaction, and you’re off to the next thing. There’s a term that people call you. I’m in it for long term relationship. I’m okay with giving away the sale today, to build a relationship for tomorrow.
Natalie Franke
And shout out to Seth Godin book infinite game, I love big fan as well of him. And one thing I’ll say, you know, I in my career as a wedding photographer, there were several times where I had to refer out clients, not always because they weren’t the right fit. Sometimes I was booked and I didn’t have a team at the time I was a solopreneur. So I’d be booked for a wedding. I couldn’t take their work, I’d refer them. One thing I found as well. And I just want to highlight this for anyone listening. You know, when we talk on this podcast, we talk from the lens of community investing in others being of service. It also goes to supporting other people that do what you do. Shifting your mindset from that zero sum game, my competitors cannot be a part of my community, I cannot support them to what set talks about you talk about this infinite game meant mentality of No, no, no, if they do what I do, they’re not necessarily my competition. They’re my colleagues. Building a community where you can actually refer out business can also build that trust with the client when you can’t meet their needs and serve them. 10 years later, I still have clients that I never booked, that come up to me I live in a little hometown of Annapolis or write on the Chesapeake Bay. It’s not a big city, we all know each other, right? Like, it’s pretty small. And I will still run into people all the time and say, you know, you were booked and you couldn’t photograph my wedding. But you connected me with so and so. And she was extraordinary. She was the absolute best. So you know, then I sent my best friend to you but you did get to shoot her wedding because you were available. And that lens of trust, right? It can be so transformative. And so I want your take On that I want your take on when somebody else does what you do, you know, have you found a path forward and building relationships with other business other owners, other entrepreneurs, other creatives? Do you have advice for folks that, you know, are ready to make the shift? They have the service based mindset, I would say most of the folks in this community are deeply rooted in joy of service. That’s what makes him successful, you know, as an independent as they love to serve others. But applying that to the relationship space, like have you found a way that works, and really cultivating those relationships, as you’ve grown, or as you’ve referred business out to other people, or things that you’ve seen work? Well, for somebody that wants to have that type of network around them as they’re scaling in their business? Yeah,
Chris Do
we’re always looking up or not often looking sideways, and very rarely are we looking down? So let’s, let’s unpack what what I mean, when I say this, is that you would love for a more successful version of you to give you their overflow work to recommend you. And we think like that all time, because we’re super selfish that way, right? Like, why does an XYZ company or further their overflow work and they can’t possibly do and all this work doesn’t make any sense, then you don’t look sideways, you don’t look down and you don’t think, Well, someone who’s less fortunate than me, who is just beginning on their journey, they can use a hand. And it’s a lot of this comes from this scarcity, zero sum mindset that a lot of people have. So when I was starting out, way back in 1995, I struggled to get clients, I didn’t know how to do conference calls, because I didn’t really work for anybody long enough to learn how new businesses done, how to do the sales game. And so after like losing so many jobs, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, mind you, I’m like, this is demoralizing, I need help. So I called a couple of competitors. And they literally laughed at me and hung up the phone, I’m like, oh, because what they didn’t want to do is they didn’t want to give their competition, a helping hand. That’s fine. And so if you’re in a position to help other people, you’re not going to come across really great people all the time. There are people who have goodness in their heart. And there’s some people who are very selfish in their own nature, and they never think of anyone else except for themselves. So what I want you to do is first, in order to attract the kinds of people that are generous, and gracious, you have to become a generous person and a gracious person first, it starts here. It’s always like, we want other people to change. We don’t want people to do things for us, but we never do it. The thing first, it begins with you, what will happen is your energy, your vibration, your frequency will radiate out. And people like gosh, now he’s an awesome person, like she’s always positive about things, wanting to help other people and never asking for anything, you’re going to start to attract different kinds of people to you. And so you can build a coalition of people. Now, here’s the one thing that I try and teach people to do. Not all of them do it. But the ones who do will call me up write me a message like, I finally listened to you seven months later, they did it. And I can’t believe the results. I’m like, Oh, really, you can’t believe the results, the thing that I told you is going to happen, you couldn’t believe I’ll say, take a bigger competitor out to lunch. It takes them guts to call a bigger competitor out to lunch. And so you know, I have admired your work. It’s incredible you’ve been able to do. I’m here to humbly ask if you think my work is good enough. For anything that’s not a good fit for you or something that it’s just for scheduling reasons or budget reasons you don’t like I would appreciate the referral. And I’m willing to pay you a finder’s fee for it. And I just also want to make sure like, we can break bread and just have like the beginnings of a relationship. It’s all and if I can serve you in any way, please let me know. And people do this and all sudden they get leads. It’s kind of weird.
Natalie Franke
Now that’s some good homework. It’s human. How human is that? How human is that? And how far have we often strayed from that simple humanity of saying, let me take you out to lunch. And let’s just have a conversation and ask from a place of humility and a place of generosity and is it again, we become a world where it’s let me pick your brain not let me treat you to something. Let me say thank you for the impact you’re making in our industry. Let me you know, go above and beyond to first show up in service before asking for something in return. It’s always the email that’s asking, Hey, can you send referrals my way not dating first romancing first, you don’t get down on one knee and propose the first time that you see somebody. I mean, you could and maybe that does work for some people. But for the most part, right, a relationship takes time. And it often works best when you show up at that mindset of service, which I love. I absolutely love. I want to dig back into the numbers for just a second because I do have a question. Let’s say we want to raise our rates. Or let’s say we have a sneaking suspicion that we’re not charging enough, we maybe know a competitor is charging more, or we just have a feeling that it might be time more often than not. By the way, when we look at the data, we see things like you know, and again, we will link this in the show notes to the episode if folks want to go and it’s a little bit outdated. I’d love for us at honey book to rerun this dataset, but we’ll find even amongst certain cohorts of independent business owners, women in particular They charge less than their male counterparts who are doing the same work with the same level of experience. So pricing continues to be an area where any sort of insecurity or fear that we carry with us translates into how we’re showing up, what numbers we’re putting down, so on and so forth. And every time and I’m telling folks that are listening to this right now, every time one of Chris’s videos comes up on my feet, and he is talking about figuring out pricing, he’s talking about charging more for what you do, or why certain people can charge more for what they do. Like what goes into charging more. It challenges my own thinking on this, and I yet again, feel like a student. And so I just, I guess I’m asking you on behalf of all of us who struggle with putting numbers to our work and standing behind it, and maybe for a lot of the women listening that, you know, we’re in that percentage that are charging 30% Last or whatever that number is for the industry when we broke it down within those industries. How do we charge more? How do we know it’s time to charge more? Help us there? Help me there? I’m asking for a friend but like also asking
Chris Do
for a minute that you almost like Princess Leia, like help me Obi Wan Help me.
Natalie Franke
Help me Help me. You’re giving more of Yoda moment. This is more of a Yoda moment.
Chris Do
Oh me Yoda. There’s a couple of things. When it comes to when you know, it’s time to raise your rates is pretty obvious to me. If you get no pushback when you say it’s gonna cost $5,000 to shoot your wedding. Okay, I don’t want another baggage like, No, you’re good. You’re drastically under market because you’re even lower than the low price that they had in their mind. Okay, so that’s how, you know, if people say yes, see too often. That’s another way. It’s like, gosh, I’m getting no friction at all, no pushback. And my general rule of thumb is if you get three yeses, it’s time to raise your rate. So now, you know,
Natalie Franke
I hope everyone heard that herb. That one’s getting highlighted. We’re building that Haley, Podcast Producer, Tyler bolt balding. Keep going, I want more. Okay, I need more.
Chris Do
No, this is a mindset change here that there is no limit to what you can charge, there’s just a problem that needs to be aligned with someone who values that problem. So when you run into a thing, where somebody’s like, well, we can only charge $1,000. And everyone in this market can only charge eight, it’s because they haven’t found a person who has that same problem, who values their time and their outcomes more than 1000. So here’s what we know, the person on the other side has a problem that they’ve already attach a price point to, they might not be able to articulate it, but they do. And the bigger the problem as perceived by that individual, the more they’re willing to pay for a give you some examples. Okay, I have two boys, one of them used to play a lot of games on his iPad. And he wants to use real money to buy tokens in the game. So it can advance in levels and have a different suit of armor, or just an avatar. Adults do this to other way. And the way that the game is engineered, yes.
Natalie Franke
parent with a four year old boy.
Chris Do
And the way that games are engineered is that the new suit of armor or the the new avatar, it gives you zero performance enhancement, right. So it actually doesn’t do anything to help you in the game, but you’re willing to pay real money for this. And for some people like myself, I’m like, That’s the dumbest thing ever. And for some people, I want to pay $200, because I don’t have to go on 44 missions and collect 17 coins, to be able to do this unlock disarm, I’ll just pay for it. And so what we’re starting to realize here is that everybody looks at their time, and assigns a different amount of money to it for all different reasons, emotional reasons, status reasons, solving real problems, all kinds of stuff. And so what we have to do is say like, alright, if you’ve hit a ceiling, and you can’t raise your rate, it’s not because that is the real ceiling. It’s that’s just a ceiling for that person or that group of people. So what you want to do is consistently expand who it is that you’re speaking to, such that you find people with really, really big problems. Right. So here’s another example for you. Well, about a year ago, I moved from the Pacific Palisades to Pasadena and my wife was calling up several moving companies and there’s one who stood above all others she didn’t talk to them because even look too expensive and she’s like I’m not doing this. I think they’re called Greystone even sound expensive with the name. They sent over this beautiful packet. It’s like ornate, there’s like, like a crests. It looks like from an old family, and they get into the celebrity clients. And instantly my wife is like, okay, there’s no way we’re gonna afford these guys. There’s too much. So for her, she didn’t want the bargain basement college boys who will move us because she’s concerned about that. So there was kind of like the porridge in the middle. It was not too hot. It was not too much. It was just right for Goldilocks. And what we want to do is when we’re trying to find where we are in the market, is we can Don’t assume that group of people we’ve met is the top. Right because Greystone exists and they have clients, celebrity clients, international people who can’t deal with this, who have very expensive things that if lost or broken would be more than the entire moving expense they want to be taken care of. It’s also the reason why sometimes we’re in the mood for some down and dirty, fast food. And sometimes we want fine dining. So what you have to do in order to be able to raise your rates is to find the people who put a lot of value on their own time and see that the solution you provide will save them that time soon and sense. Yours selling people’s time back to themselves.
Natalie Franke
leaning into the concept of time, this could be a hot take question. I could be getting in deep here with a spicy one. But I want to know, what is your take on hourly rates? Oh, what are your thoughts on having an hourly rate or putting out an hourly rate? I want to give us the real real on this, I think somebody needs to hear some advice.
Chris Do
Okay, before I can tell you how I feel because it’s gonna sound super judgy, I’m not going to do that just yet. I’m gonna tell you, there’s many ways to figure out how to price your products and services. hourly rate is just one of them, where it’s, you’re going to charge people for your time. And the materials that you use, sometimes in construction, it’s called TNM bid, which is time and materials bid. Okay, let’s just put that aside. That’s one model. And then there’s the next version of that is when we say, we don’t care how much time and materials we use, we’re going to charge you a flat fixed fee. Not saying one is better than the other, depending on what you’re doing, that they all have their purpose. So instead of saying, it’s gonna take 77 hours to build you a shed in the back. And this is the materials we’re gonna say, Well, given the drawing the dimension or conversation, I’m gonna charge you $15,000 to build that shed, and you get in then you do in two hours, you leave, you’re done, everybody’s happy. The third one is, in the evolution of this value based pricing, which you have a conversation, you’re like, Well, do you really need to shed and like, no, no, I really do need to share. Why is that because it’s going to be a place where my aunt and my cousins can come by and live in that. So we want it to be really nice. And so then your pricing based on the clients sense of value of what that shed is going to do for them. Quite difficult to do. There’s even one beyond that, which is the riskiest, but in in business, all profit comes from risk, which is a performance based model, which I’m not gonna charge you anything to build a shed, every time you rent out of Airbnb, or whatever it is that you’re going to do, I’d like to get 4% or 5%, or 10%, whatever the negotiated rate is. So if they do well, you do well. And that has unlimited potential to earn. But if you build all of your pricing models based on the performance one, you could be broke. So a healthy portfolio and investment as in pricing includes a diversified approach. So you could do really well in your life, just doing hourly pricing, but you have to learn how to do that properly. What a lot of people do is the mistake that they do, they use a fixed fee model based on hourly pricing, which is the messed up way to do it. And I’ll explain, okay, they think they’re doing hourly pricing, but they’re actually using a fixed fee model. So you can say, well, how much is it going to be? To to book you to shoot my wedding? And you’re like, well, it’s $50 an hour, let’s say, I’ll say $100 an hour, because the math is easier. And the wedding is going to be like 10 hours long with some setup, right? So 10 hours, times 100 is 1000 bucks. That sounds like hourly pricing. And then as you approach the day of the wedding, that your client says, you know, we need to shoot some stuff in the park, we need to do some pre stuff, we need to do some father bride groom has whatever it is, we want to do that and you’re like, Okay, it’s still 1000 bucks, right? And then you’ve agreed to do for 1000 bucks. So you’re actually not doing hourly pricing. hourly pricing is not even a bid. It’s just an estimate. I estimate it’s going to be this amount of time. So if it’s eight hours, you owe me $800. If it’s 20 hours, you owe me $2,000. So what people think they’re doing hourly pricing, they’re actually doing fixed fee based on hourly pricing with no margins, no padding, nothing. So this is when you realize 100 hours into this, you’re now working $10 an hour, you’re like oh my god, I hate the client. They’re terrible people. No, you set this up and you agree to it. And so we need to understand when to use each pricing model. You can go in and say look, I’m going to shoot the wedding, it’s gonna be 2000 bucks, it’s going to include these things. If you want anything extra that’s not included. It’ll be an hourly rate of 100 bucks an hour. So that’s a hybrid model. You could do a hybrid value based pricing model or performance based model where I will charge you a flat fee of $1,000 to set up your website, and for every order in which we’re able to improve, I want to capture 3% of sales of gross sales or net sales, whatever it is. And so we both win. That feels very
Natalie Franke
Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank. The performance. Does Yeah. And I, I doesn’t I, I love it. I love it. Okay, I want to lean in to a slightly different question. I want to talk about common mistakes that you see business owners making freelancers making in 2023. What are some of the big mistakes that you see? If you could kind of have a magic wand and just educate our listeners on something before they walk away? Like, what would it be? What’s a mistake that you’re like, we need to stop doing this? We got to correct this right away.
Chris Do
There are as many answers to this question as their hours in a day. So you’ll have to stop. Yeah. Now, since I’m not rehearse is not prepared, I will just rattle them off as I think of them. And I won’t go too deep unless you ask and then we’ll stop them when we feel like it’s too much. Okay. Cool. Keep going. I’m small business mistake number one is chasing new clients, instead of servicing the clients who already have better, it’s much easier to keep your current client than it is to get a new client. Plus, we’re in that revolving door model, again, that we don’t want to be in. So people underestimate this, it’s hard to get a new client. So once you get that new client, I think most creatives say the work is done, I’ll do what I need to do, and I’m on to chasing the next client. But what if you really worked on delivering an exceptional client experience that delivers the light, where you go above and beyond? When I say above and beyond? To clarify, I don’t mean to give them more of of what they didn’t pay for. But to do the little extra touches that don’t cost money that make people feel like you care. This is really important, can be a conversation, it can be a handwritten note, it could just be making the person feel really special. And you’ve been very clear towards the 75% mark of when you’re done working on the project. prior to delivery, this is really important to say like, Have I done everything to deliver the light to you? Is there anything I can do to improve your experience with our service? And they say, you’re amazing. Allah, you’re amazing. Oh, my God, I love you. You know what, our business mostly exists on positive word of mouth? Are there two people that you know that you can refer me to that would benefit from the service that I provide? And to make it easy if you just give me their contact information? I’ll reach out and said, I talked to Jenny or I talked to Bob? Direct? Yeah, absolutely, you should talk to what’s happening here is you’re capturing them at the highest emotional state that they’re going to be in, which is prior to delivery. And if you’ve done your job, then that should be very high. You’re also saying I’m gonna make it super easy, and tap into people’s nature to want to help other people, it’s human to want to help. They’re gonna sit there and scramble their brain like, Oh, my God, who do I need to refer you to? And they will access somebody. And the last thing you’re doing there is you’re taking any extra work away from them. They don’t have to write the intro email. They don’t have to do anything. You just like, okay, email, one phone number. And I’ll just mention that we’d spoke if that’s okay. Agreed. So that’s the first thing that you need to do if you’re a small business owner that you’re not doing. Number two, be clear about what you do and who you do it for do something that matters. To people who care to borrow line from Seth Godin. Again, the mistake that people make is they’re worried that they don’t have enough opportunity. So they do the thing that is counterproductive to what the result that they want. They say, Well, I do wedding styling, I do flower arrangement. I do photography, I do videography. I do social media, I’ll build your website, and they just like offer a whole buffet of services. Well, we do know that there’s a couple of problems here. Number one, is it’s the it’s the choice paradox. The more choices I have the hardest is for me to make a decision. Plus, here’s the real problem. You confuse people, like, what does he or she do? What I don’t get it? Are they a photographer because I was looking for someone to do like flower arrangements. And I just don’t feel that confident. Whereas when they bounce onto the flower arrangement person, and they have just pages and pages of examples, they’re super clear. So in most cases, not all cases, the specialist usually when when the job’s important to the buyer, they usually command a higher price. And in some instances, that command a premium for which they have no replacement for because you want the flower arranger or use when any flower arranger, so we kind of have to sort that stuff out. That’s another mistake. Mistake number three, and I’ll stop here is that you don’t actively participate in any kind of formal process of marketing your services. So you expect the universe to just to give you work with that you’ve been working on it. In most companies, most companies will spend 10% or more of revenue on marketing. So if it’s a million dollar company, they spent $100,000, on marketing, because it’s important for you to be top of mind to build relationships with your prospects, and to make sure people know you’re not dead, and that you’re still relevant. You do need to spend that time and energy. You can’t just sit in the back like, Gosh, darn it, why aren’t where anybody calling me? Well, because you’re not doing anything.
Natalie Franke
Proof of Life marketing as a source of proof of life. I love it. I absolutely love it. Looking forward into the future. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that we’re going to face? When we talk about it doesn’t have to be far in the future? Let’s say what are the biggest challenges we’re gonna face in 2024? As business owners? Do you see challenges changing? Are they pretty much the same?
Chris Do
There’s going to be challenges. We already know this globalization, the internet isn’t a great thing, it’s made the world a lot smaller. That means that it used to be very difficult to find someone in India or somewhere else to do the work for you. And now it’s super easy, because they’re available online. And also, there’s, I guess, Creative Market spaces, that broker, a buyer and a seller of services. And so it’s becoming way more competitive, and it’s becoming a lot easier. And if anything, the pandemic accelerated that because before, people were a little sketchy about, I don’t know, if I want to work with somebody remotely, I need to see them, I knew they need to be in my neighborhood. And for about two and a half years, we learn how to work with people across the street or across the world, and it feels exactly the same. And so you’re going to realize that if you don’t specialize, if you can’t position yourself to be different and unique. You’re competing with every single person. And then what happens is people then will choose probably based on price. Number two, the elephant in the room is AI, generative images, video, Tex stills, we need to learn how to incorporate these tools into our workflow. So that we can give our clients the very best creative output that we can. What’s one, I’ll give you one example. Okay, with generative fill built into Photoshop, the whole idea of aspect ratios. And backgrounds is like an old concept, like overnight, it just changes like that. So you just select the background, and you’re like, you know what, put this in a forest, and I’ll just do it. And this has happened to me a lot where I have a great photo, like the expression is perfect for my kids, or, or my wife or my my parents, but then their bodies cut off in a weird way. So I can take a full body shot, but just have the right expression. Or I can take this now the old ways to stitch two photos together a lot of mesh warp, and a lot of relighting is like what a pain in the butt that is. Now I just expand the canvas, degenerative fill, it just figures it out. And so it’s kind of wild to be able to do this, not merely just to fix things, but to reimagine how we how we create, and how we can retouch images. And so this is just a little baby example on the tip of the iceberg. So I’m telling you right now, a lot of creative people are very scared, don’t be scared, incorporate the tools, otherwise, you’ll get wiped out by the wave that’s coming. It’s already here. By the way, it is here.
Natalie Franke
I find it really refreshing when someone shares about AI from that lens. And that vantage point. Because I, I think you know, anything that is unknown can generate fear, we know this. However, one of the things that I’ve uncovered, even in the last six months, eight months year, is it feels as though the rate of change is accelerating. The fact that the future is always changing has not right, like that’s how it has always been. But the rate of change the point from which we’ve gone from very little AI to now it being embedded into Adobe products, for example. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but it has felt see almost overnight, it has felt almost overnight. And so to hear from someone that is saying, Look, embrace it, figure it out, we have to learn to live with it, because it’s it’s not going anywhere. It’s refreshing. Do you have any other advice for someone that maybe you know, has been watching from the outside looking in when it comes to things like AI or any sort of technological change that you could impart in terms of wisdom to help them take that leap? Give it a try? Maybe it’s a mindset shift? Maybe it’s a tactical bit of advice?
Chris Do
Yeah, I think we should not take our focus off AI because there are things that people are doing today that I hear about read about that are just mind blowing to me, the need for software development might be over pretty soon. And then the need for certain skill sets are going to be completely wiped out. Like if you want to create a game you can just tell the AI what you want and they’ll start to make it for you. So we’re living in a new world, the War world of ideas and of taste. So this is kind of important. Okay, so the tastemakers, the historians, the people that idea people will probably do really well in the age of AI because it’s taken a whole stack of like production and just squash it down and compress the timeline and the resources that you need. Why does taste matter? Well, if AI can spit out 100 scripts for a short film, which one’s a good script, you have to have taste, if AI can generate different designs for clothing, again, is like, which one is good? We don’t know. And so this is where I think people who have been exposed to a lot of material who are well rounded consumers of content and stimulation can then sit there and say, Well, this is good, this is not good. And not only can they say that, they can say this is how you make this better. And then they can articulate that to a machine or a person and say, like, here’s some art direction. This is why it’s not working, and then get back multiple ideas very quickly. So all those times in which you were sleeping through art history, through music history, through history itself, it’s going to come back to bite you in the ass. It really will. So you know, if you’re guilty, oh, no, no, no, you might want to start looking back into this. Here’s the other thing. When I was first playing around with mid journey, the results I got were pretty bad. And I couldn’t understand why there was so much hype around this. And if you’ve poked around with any AI engine, and you’re like, No, it didn’t write a great sales letter. For me, it didn’t write great code, or it didn’t produce a really cool image. It’s because you haven’t learned how to speak to it. You just didn’t learn how to speak to it. And then I had a friend who was like, Chris, my images suck, what am I doing wrong? And I had not even invested that much time into myself and like, let me see. So I jumped into the machine, I started typing in some, some words, and I quickly realized these words on work, these words do work. So you’re learning the language of AI. And then sooner than later, I was able to pop a bunch of images and said here, check these out. And they were just blown away. So they’re like, What words did you use? I use words and terminology that I know from shooting video and photos. And from cinematography and teaching design, and in motion design. So I would say I wouldn’t dappled lighting, I wouldn’t shallow depth of field, maybe from this type of lens, I want to open the aperture, I want the foreground to do this in the background. And I describe it as best as it can as if I was describing it to cinematographer, so that they’re like, Hey, Chris, I know what you want. So if you don’t have that language, because your point of reference is fairly limited, oh, that’s going to be a challenge for you.
Natalie Franke
I find that to be incredibly inspiring as well, though, because what I’m hearing is that there is still so much immense value to the human creative mind in making those decisions. And being discerning in you know, crafting something, we’re almost potentially going to be stepping into our creative director era, perhaps with these tools, I find it it’s I truly find it exciting and your approach to it refreshing. I could talk to you all day. And I want to be respectful of your time. So there’s a final question that I ask everyone on the show, and there’s no right or wrong answer. But I think it’s always an enlightening way to uncover your thoughts on business ownership. And the question is this. Chris, what do you believe is the biggest differentiator between the businesses that succeed and the ones that fail?
Chris Do
This is a multi part. This is like he asked me, I didn’t question I had to peel peel back some of the layers if you don’t mind, we love a good onion. Number one, I think is focus. businesses fail because they’re not focused there. They have a case of the shiny object syndrome, and that squirrel, okay, that’s cool, I’ll do this. And I’ll do that. And they lose track of their core business. And this happens, especially in this age, when we have so much distraction available to us. And the next big idea seems better than the current idea. What we need to do is we need to figure out what we want to do. And we need to commit and this will be my third and last reference is Seth Godin, in his book, The dip, he talks about this, and there’s a little graph, right. So when you start out, you get results right away. And it’s really fun and exciting. So the results are high. The effort and time is limited. But what happens is you start to hit it peak, and you go into the trough of this curve, you’re entering the dip, where you know what, I was messing around with tennis, but now it’s like it’s a chore. I don’t want to learn how to surf on backhand socks, and my foot placement is all wrong. And it’s like it’s just too much work. And I’m not seeing the same kind of progress and fun. So what people do is they quit, they quit in the dip, because it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of time. They’re not seeing that same return on investment of time. But here’s the thing. This is what’s that talks about. So in the dip, you have to have the courage in the commitment, the determination to get through it because it’s difficult to get through. And then you put in your 1000 hours or 10,000 hours of practice. You hire a coach, you go to workshops, you read books, you watch videos, you train As you level up your skill up, and you start to climb that steep ascent, and it starts to get good again, until you get to this very rare place, we’re only a few people exist, the masters, the experts, the thought leaders. So instead of looking at the dip as your enemy, look at it as your friend, because difficulty creates natural barriers to competition. And it creates scarcity. If only a few people can become a doctor, if only a few people can be a brand designer for global companies in the Fortune 100, that creates value, because you’ve reduced the competition by just going through the dip. So maybe there’s a couple of things to unpack here, you need to focus and commit, you have to put in the work, you have to find joy in the difficult because if you don’t, it’s going to be really hard to get through it. And the last thing I’ll say is, and I put this on a tweet recently, you have to be kind to yourself when you fail, because every journey is full of failures. And what happens is we hear the voice of whoever is most influential in our lives, oftentimes one of our parents, when we mess up, when we lose a job, when we totally effed up when clients yell at us, we’re like, All right, we’re in our mind, just destroying ourselves. And the thing is, you’re going to need that resilience, to bounce back up and to wake up tomorrow, full of determination, say, You know what, instead of just dogging myself on this, I’m going to ask myself this question, what was the learning opportunity here? What was the teachable moment, the thing that the universe sent to me to learn, and knew that I had the strength to get through, because if I don’t learn that lesson, this will be all in vain. And I’m almost destined to do this again. And I’ve had many failures in my life. I don’t code them in my mind as failures. I just look at them as learning opportunities. Sometimes they’re very expensive learning opportunities. And I want to grow because I don’t like making the same mistake and failing again.
Natalie Franke
Chris, thank you so much. There were so many mic drop gold moments, just throughout the entire conversation, I have no doubt that our listeners are going to want to follow along and continue learning from you. Where can they do that? Where do you recommend they find you on the internet?
Chris Do
You can find me just about anywhere on social media, at the Chris doe and DOS about do I have a website I try and teach and help creative people just like you are listening to this with all kinds of tools and resources, many of which is free, some of its paid. I gotta pay the bills. And if you go to the future.com, F ut you are there’s no E and then somebody asked me where did the ego we dropped the ego. That’s why we do. It’s just the future or the couture.com.
Natalie Franke
I love it. Thank you so much.
Natalie Franke
That ends our episode of The Independent Business Podcast. Everything that we’ve discussed today can be [email protected]. Head to our website for access to show notes, relevant links and all of the resources that you need to level up. And if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss our future content. Drop us a review and leave our guests in love on social. Thanks again for listening.
