Mo Ismail:

I'm going to be doing a deep dive with the one and only Chris Do about what he believes to be the five core essentials that you must master to grow your freelance business, especially if you're creative. Let's jump right into it. All right. Now, I've had the privilege of hearing variations of you teaching these concepts, Chris, but I don't think I've ever heard you discuss them all in one go. You're usually doing it in this marathon, seven to eight-hour workshop. So I'm excited to give the audience a sneak peek to this.

Chris Do:

Let me provide some context first as to why we're talking about this. It's been two and a half years going on three years when we haven't been able to be around people, and I do a lot of Zoom calls, and as everybody knows, this is not a news flash for anyone. There's Zoom fatigue. This is a real thing. Despite me being an introvert and not liking to be around large groups of people, I also don't find it energizing to do Zoom calls, speaking to a computer screen and getting no feedback.

So what people don't understand is having taught for over 15 years, the magic of teaching isn't you reciting what you said, it's about seeing where people get stuck and helping them to get unstuck. So I've had this desire and it's been building up for the last three years, and so I took the opportunity to start hosting workshops and this is something I want to continue doing for my own personal growth, but also to help people grow.

And something that my friend and former mentor Jose used to say to me is the best way to learn is to teach, which was a little confusing to me, because say you want to learn how to do web design. Are you telling me I need to teach web design to learn web design? Well, kind of yes. So if you want to be better at whatever it is that you're doing, that could be strategic, communication, teaching, pricing, what you need to do is you need to teach it to someone. Why would I say that? Seems very, very counterintuitive, just hang in there with me.

The reason why I say that is because when you have to articulate what you're thinking to someone else, you are going to have to organize your thoughts into succinct, clear, actionable steps that someone else can do. The easiest metaphor I can think of is this. Let's just say that you are a self-taught cook and you're not one of those by the recipe cooks. You look at ingredients in the pantry and you look at it in the refrigerator and you see what is at hand and what the appetite is, and you start to make things together. And then, one day, somebody asks you, "How do you know how to cook so well?" And you're like, "I just do it. I just do what feels right." Not entirely helpful to that person and probably not helpful to you either.

And then, you decide I'm going to teach people how to cook. Now you're going to take measurements and you're going to be very careful about the process. You're going to simplify things, and then you're going to probably write some kind of "recipe," quite literally a recipe on how to do this. And in doing so, you're able to capture your thoughts to share it with other people and then potentially scale your knowledge and grow what it is that you do with other people, and this is a very powerful thing. We see chefs do this. We don't see so many creative people do this though.

Mo Ismail:

Chef Do is in the building. He's about to give us the five ingredients in the recipe on how to make a very tasty dish. So just to contextualize a little bit more of the discussion so people can follow along, you've kind of titled these five core essentials, which is what's going to be discussed, and I'll list the five and then we'll talk about each one individually. The first one is buying psychology. The second one is sales psychology. Third is pricing psychology. Four is irresistible offer. And number five is attraction marketing. So many of these terms may be interchangeable in our sphere or in business. So let's start with the first one, buying psychology. What is it and what do you exactly mean when you say this is a core essential to growing your creative freelance business? What is buying psychology?

Chris Do:

Well, a lot of people have a problem selling to other people, and probably the reason why they have a hard time selling to other people is because they don't want to really understand why people buy what motivates them, what they're trying to achieve in their life. They think it's about receiving a service and paying a price for it, and they're missing the entire point. Most of us are motivated by different things. Now, I think it's a relatively modern concept that brands exist. And the reason why is because for a very long period of time in human history, we barely had enough. Our main focus was on survival, so we didn't have a lot of choices. If there was food to eat, we would eat it, and we would eat as much as we could because we didn't know when our next meal was going to come.

So fast-forward into the 20th century, now we have industrialized farming and we are increasingly becoming wealthier as individuals. The median income and the ability to acquire food is a lot easier and mass produce goods. And so now, we have a thing called choice. So this is where it gets really fascinating. And so now, when we can choose multiple options, there's many alternatives to what it is that you buy, we start to ask ourselves, why do I prefer one pair of shoes over another? They both will cover my feet, they'll get me from point A to point B, but there's got to be more here. And so, companies started to figure this out, and this has been probably the last 100 years that this has been going on, maybe a little bit longer than that, but I would say in the last 50 years, this has really come to a head because all you have to do is go and search on Amazon, type in the word brand, and you're going to see probably hundreds if not thousands of books with the word branded at somewhere.

So what is it that we're doing? Well, why do we pay more for something when a cheaper alternative exists? Why do we do that? Are we crazy? Because what is happening is when we buy something, it says something about who we are, our beliefs, our values, our preference, our taste, but it's allowing us to join a tribe of other people who buy the same brand and we see each other like we get it. Oh, you're that kind of driver. You're an Audi driver. You're a Porsche driver. You're a Mercedes person.

And so, we're signaling to others with the symbols that we put on our body, the things that we get into and drive and the things that we wear around our neck, our eyewear, our jewelry, all those things signal somebody else, this is who I am. So we're searching for meaning and we're trying to form our identities. And so, when we start to understand that, we might sell a little bit differently. What I'm saying is what you think you know about what motivates people is probably wrong. And when you start to understand what motivates people, how they buy, why they buy, looking at it from the customer's point of view, it'll give you an entirely different insight.

Mo Ismail:

I'm curious, when we understand buying psychology, the way I understand it is there's two sections. There's the internal you and your business, and the external, which is the customer. And you said a lot about why are we motivated to buy? That's on the customer side. I'm curious if I'm a freelancer right now listening and I'm trying to improve my business to attract that customer to be motivated to me, what is one thing that I could focus on whether that's enhancing or improving or studying to make sure that I'm a more appealing business to that buyer and that buyer psychology? Does anything come to mind?

Chris Do:

Yeah, there's a very simple fundamental concept that you need to understand that user experience designers have understood for a long time now, which is each person is motivated to achieve something. So they exist in their current reality and they're trying to get to their desired reality or their desired future state. And there's some tension, there's a barrier, there's a gap between where they are and where they want to be. When you start to understand that, then you start to feel their pain and what motivates them again. So you want to reduce the pain and you want to increase the gain. And if you provide a bridge between their current reality and their desired reality, you'll do really well.

The problem is that many businesses just think about what it is they want to do, and they don't really understand the market at all. They're really good at problem solving, not great at problem finding or seeking. So any solution isn't good or bad. It depends on the problem the person's seeking it. And this is what's really important to understand.

So ask yourself, who is it that I'm trying to serve? And the first step I would say is try not to serve such a big and broad market. You need to narrow it down. And it feels very counterintuitive to say, so to get more business, I have to reduce the possible customers that will buy from me? And the answer is emphatically yes, you must do that because it must be clear in your mind who this person is. And the clearer you are, the more likely you can predict what it is that they want, what it is that they need, what motivates them, where they're feeling a lot of pain and resistance, and where they're going to get a lot of joy and fulfillment. When you understand that, dissolution start to become a lot easier. So we got to train our mind to look for problems.

Mo Ismail:

So two things here. Number one, I thought I was the rapper. You said reduce the pain, increase the gain?

Chris Do:

That's right.

Mo Ismail:

That just fire. That just fire. Reduce the pain, increase the gain by knowing your audience specifically very well, and then finding the problem that you can best solve. I'm going to take a rabbit hole here because I already know that the listeners are probably fuming at something you said, because even early on in my career when I first started being mentored by you, this concept of making your audience smaller as a multi-hyphenate makes me just pissed off. And I understand the importance of it. The less people that I can serve, the bigger the problem I can solve for them, and the more clear I am in presenting myself. What can a person that's listening right now do to overcome this limiting belief of I'm not going to make a lot of money if I don't serve a lot of people.

Chris Do:

I have a simple response to that. If you're listening to this, it means that you want to improve your business, you want to work less and make more money and spend more time with family and the kids if you have some. And if it's working for you, you probably would not be listening. You'd probably be where I'm at, which is teaching. So if it's working, don't change anything. A lot of people get upset at me because they're like, "No, Chris. You don't know what you're talking about." I'm like, well, what evidence do you have that what you're talking about works? And all you have to do is look at your balance sheet. You got to look at your progress, the team that you have, and the amount of joy you have in your life.

Now, if everything's going great, you don't need to change. I say that seriously. I'm not trying to throw any shade on anyone. So for the rest of the people who are like, "You know what, I've hit a certain plateau in my business. I did $200,000 last year and the five years before that, and in fact our profit is shrinking because my costs are going higher. What is happening, Chris?" Okay, I'll give you some simple analogs for you to see if you can follow the logic. I try to be very evidence-based in my thinking. So there's this gut that tells us what to feel, and oftentimes we mistake that gut feeling as logical evidence-based thinking, critical thinking, if you will.

Let's just say you're trying to help me out and you are an executive assistant, a highly paid one, and I say, "Go to the store and get me something to eat. Literally, go in that Bristol Farms or Gelson's or Erewhon, whatever supermarket and go get me something to eat." And yeah, cool. You run in there and then you start to realize there are too many options. Salad bar, soup bar, rotisserie chicken, steak. You don't know if I'm vegan or dairy, maybe I can't have nuts. And you think maybe let's grab some snacks. And then you walk down just the aisle with water and there's 45 different kinds of water, alkaline, neutral, smart water. There's just too many different types. And now, you're exhausted and you're like, "Oh my God, it's my first day on the job. I'm going to get fired."

And why is that? And this could have been avoided had you just stopped instead of running into the store like most people do and saying to me, "Chris, what is it to that you're in the mood for? Are you on a diet? Are there any allergies or any preferences for food? Are you on a calorie restriction? Is this just for now or for later? Does this need to be refrigerated? What is going on? Tell me some of your preferences. Tell me some of things that you just cannot have because it's going to send your body to shock quite literally."

So we start to understand this, and if I start to get very specific with you, what happens is you're reducing the kinds of things you're going to explore and you're going to be able to narrow it in really quick. I might say to you, "I'm looking for something fresh, something very light, and I need more greens and fiber in my diet with a little bit of clean protein. I'm lactose intolerant." And now you know, you can eliminate 99% of the store and go straight to probably the salad bar and put something together for me. You can see that, right? And even in the salad bar, if it's a good one, there's a lot of options out there.

So we understand this now, and I used to do this with my students. I used to say in my storyboarding class, "Class, go out there and get a leaf for me and we're going to draw a leaf." And they would just run out. I'm like, "Where are you guys going? What if the leaf I want you to draw doesn't even grow in California? What are you doing?"

So the instinct, the instinct, and I think if we're to find fault, is a byproduct of the education system that most of us grow up in, which is we're rewarded for answers, we're not rewarded for questions. Whoever raises their hands first gets the gold star, moves up in the class, sits closer to the teacher, has the better grade and even gets a little note, "Little Johnny or Mary participated, was first to volunteer. I love this. Good job." And look at who gets punished. "Teacher, I'm not clear about the instructions. Teacher, why do we do this? What is going on here? Can you explain a little bit more?" I don't have time for that right now. It's a great question, but the class is over in an hour, we got to get through this. So over time, we're tuning our mind and our thinking to give answers really fast, and that's a problem. I hope that makes sense, Mo.

Mo Ismail:

It does, and it's flaring up just if I can share something that you've had to almost pound into my brain over the past four years, and I'll use the acronym that I think you develop for focus, but follow one course until successful. I remember the first three years of the business, my shiny object syndrome as I got exposed to you of like, "Oh, I like branding. Oh, I like graphic design. Oh, I like logo design." But I was originally a video production company and now we're a video content marketing company, so similar niche, just a different way of executing on it. But I remember just the challenges even operationally as a business outside of just your ideal audience person of just every time you jump, you're almost having to create new processes and systems on how to do this one thing.

So this argument of not being focused even inside of your business creates complexity, and I don't know who coined this, but simplicity scales, fancy fails. So this ability to really know who you're talking to and being able to go to that supermarket and be like, "Here's what they need, and here's the problem that I solve," makes a lot of sense. It took me way too long. So I'm excited for those that are listening to maybe don't fight the fight. Chris always tells me, "Just do what I say and do it with faith and full belief." Not the best at it, admittedly. So be better than me if you're listening right now.

And I'm starting to realize, Chris, that these, maybe they're not linear, but they seem to follow into each other. So you started talking about the process in which you're having to ask somebody a question once you know who you serve and the problems you're trying to find and solve, which I think leads us pretty smoothly into sales psychology, which you touched on a little bit. So what is sales psychology? What do you mean when you say that term? This is the second core essential.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Before we go in there, I want to do a couple different things. One, I want to credit who I heard it from, who didn't invent it either, but the person who said focus is follow one course until success is Aaron Pearson. And he told me that I think six or seven years ago when we first hung out, and it's a great way to remember the word focus, but focus is about eliminating distractions. It's about concentrating your energy, your power, your mind into one little thing.

And I don't know about you, Mo, but when I was a kid, I was marveled that a piece of glass can set fire. It can create a fire literally by harnessing the power of the sun. And my young mind could not understand it back then. My adult mind can understand now. So I'm standing out in the sun, but I'm not catching on fire, but under a piece of glass that looks just like every other piece of glass, for some reason I can torch an ant if I wanted to or I can burn a leaf or a piece of paper and quite literally set it on fire, and what is really happening there?

So we take the power to sun, which is very powerful, and we concentrate the light energy that is transmitted to us on a daily basis. And we focus, literally quite focused that power of the light into one small surface area. We concentrate that energy. And by doing that, we're able to start a fire. And so, in Allan Dib's book, he said that 1,000-watt light bulb will illuminate a room, that's a very bright light, but 1,000-watt laser will punch a hole through steel. So this is the power of focus. And something that I've learned in my life is that whenever I get an open creative brief, which we all dream of having where the client says, "Do whatever you want," until you actually start to do whatever you want.

Because then there's a myriad of options and you're like, "Oh, well, I'll do something photographic. No illustrate something modern, no something classical, maybe modern classic is what I want." And you wind up spinning your wheels and it's very stress-inducing, versus a client who says, "I want a clean modern design that's not figurative. I just want it to be purely type-based and my favorite typeface is Helvetica, and let's only use three colors." And you might first hear that and you're like, "This is terrible. There's too many parameters. What if I wanted to use Castle on or some other typeface?" But in fact, as a designer, having such a clear brief allows me to focus my energy and explore things that fit those parameters and allow me to play.

And most people who teach design understand this. A great brief requires checklists and parameters, what it must do and what it should be within. Too many checklists, and it becomes stifling. Too open parameters, and we don't know what to do and everybody comes up with something wacky and different. So it's a combination of that. Dr. Holtzman, who I hired periodically to consult me to teach better said it's like a parabolic lens. All the energy that goes in gets redirected back out in one general direction, and it's a pretty awesome thing to see. And so, this is the power of focus. We can predict what people want, we can write copy, we can choose the right tone of voice and speak about the right benefits to the person, versus trying to figure out what everybody wants.

Mo Ismail:

I remember hearing this from you, it was years ago, but it served me really well. To establish focus with the client, if they say, "Do whatever you want, be as creative as you want," I remember you said, take a pause and say, "You mean if I do anything, you'll like the result that I make?" And that puts them in this critical thinking position where they're like, "Well, not anything." And I take it a step further and say, "Well, if I do anything, so if I did..." And then give them some ridiculous idea, and then they start to be able to really articulate their thinking around, "Well, here's some of the parameters that I'm thinking. By the way, here's my brand. Here's the way that I move in the space. We want to do this, this, and that." And that served me really well, so that's a little bonus tip there.

Chris Do:

Yeah, when most clients say, "Do anything you want," it's not because they are literally giving you carte blanche do whatever you want, it's because they currently do not have words, time, or energy, or desire to describe to you what they want. So it's kind of a lazy way of saying, "I don't know right now. This is not a good time to talk about it." And so, when you hear that, I would first smile and thank them for giving that kind of trust and then help them to find the words. One of the biggest frustrations that designers share with me is, "Oh, I wish my clients could just tell me what they want." Well, guess what? It's not your client's job to tell you what they want, because they don't have the language of training and the exposure and experience that you have, and be careful what you wish for.

Would you really like a client to say, "I want you to use 27-point Helvetica Thin, not the Helvetica Neue cut, but the Helvetica Now cut for monotype. And I want you to use the display version, not the text version." At that point, I want to jump off a bridge or shoot myself. And so, people say that because they're not willing to learn how to speak about design in a way that connects with other people, how to build rapport and not to make them feel dumb because we do one of two things generally speaking when we talk about what we do with others. We either browbeat them unintentionally by overwhelming them with overly nuanced and specific language, or we go the opposite way. We're like, we don't want to talk about it at all. And it's just like, let's just avoid the conversation.

Obviously, both ends of the spectrum are not great at building rapport. Somewhere in the middle, depending on who you are and who your audience and your target is. If they're more educated in design, do a little less explaining because then now you're design explaining. And if they're not really versed in design, do a little bit more, but try not to use super technical language. Find that middle ground. Building rapport is about finding that middle ground, a language that both you and I understand and analogies or analogs are just perfect for that.

Mo Ismail:

It's funny because I feel like that's the creative's curse. It's like you don't want to be so parameter to the point where you can't express your genius so you don't want the client telling you exactly what to do, but at the same time, you're somewhat scared to not have them explain it to you. It's like, I'm upset if you give me too many parameters, and I also don't want to just show off that I may not be an expert by asking you to help me focus. And that's such a weird dichotomy when I heard you explain it from just an emotional level. It's like, I don't want to be micromanaged, but I also don't want to show that I'm not an expert. Can you speak to that a little bit? And I've heard you say this before, what it actually means to be an expert versus this limiting belief of if I ask questions and why the hell are they hiring me then?

Chris Do:

This ties back to the way that we're educated in this country in that we're rewarded for answers. And so, we then associate, if I'm an expert, I should have all the answers and not questions, because doesn't asking questions mean I don't know what I'm doing? When in fact the opposite is true. Now, let's do another analogy here. When you go and talk to someone who's been in the field for a long time, who knows what they're doing, who've probably spoken at international conferences, who've written books on the subject, who are the leading voice in the industry, what happens?

Okay, so let's just say you're going to see a doctor. You notice how a doctor works. You first fill out a questionnaire. Most doctors work this way. You tell the receptionist, the assistant, the nurse, why you're here to see the doctor. So you're narrowing the field right away. It's like, I'm hungry for this kind of food. So it's a pain that I'm feeling in my legs. So they're not looking for cardiac issues, at least initially. I'm not a doctor, maybe that's a problem. So they're looking for a problem. Well, how long has this been going on? Is this new? Have you changed anything recently? Are you doing more rigorous physical activity? So they're limiting a lot of things in the questioning, and that's just from the nurse or assistant.

When the doctor walks in, they usually do two or three quick tests, and what's happening there is they have a hypothesis as to what might be wrong, but what they don't want to do is start surgery right away. What they want to do is they ask very smart questions or diagnose. They put a little pressure, they see range of motion, and they start to figure it out based on all their experience, it's probably one of three things. In a rare instance, it might be this really weird thing that very few people have, but they're going to immediately test these things and you don't really understand what they're doing, but they're eliminating those variables and they go right into it. So that's their form of asking you questions and you feel more relaxed, more confident, and assured that this person knows what they're doing.

The opposite would make you really scared. Imagine if you came in to see the doctor, no one asked you any questions at all, and they just started to throw you into a gown and saying, "We're going to get this problem taken care of." You're like, "Wait, wait, wait. What are we doing here?" And the latex gloves get snapped on like, "No, don't worry. Count back from 10 to 1 for me." And the mask goes on. You're like, "Wait!" It sounds crazy if this is what you do. By asking questions, you reassure the person that you know what you're doing because you're engaging them in dialogue and helping one another to find out what the real problem might be so that we're going to be able to solve it together. You're also signaling to them, I have a process, this is how it works, and this is why I'm successful. It kind of works like that.

Mo Ismail:

Is it safe to assume that what you just described is the second core essential that you've termed sales psychology, which is this asking the proper questions to diagnose the problem, or am I assuming incorrectly to not repeat ourselves and get to the juice?

Chris Do:

Yes, there are overlapping concepts that if I do this well, I lead you from one concept to the next and it smoothly transitions. It's like having a 12-course meal that's been thought through from beginning to end. So one note continues on the next, and there's not these abrupt breaks.

Mo Ismail:

Beautiful.

Chris Do:

And I can only do this in a large chunk of time. Typically, when I'm teaching, they give you 30 minutes to speak. If they're being generous, they'll give you an hour. And so, I begin helping people understand the problem. I point to the solution, but then they don't get anything done. So the next part of this is what is sales? We all have the wrong concept of what sales is and is not. What I found helpful to people to remember, sales as an acronym: service, ask, listen, empathize, and summarize. Notice in sales, the word sales is not in sales at all. It's not pitching, it's not convincing. It's not giving a big old presentation. It's not manipulative. It's none of those things.

So let's begin at the beginning. Serve, what does it mean to serve someone? It's to temporarily put on hold your own needs and wants and be of service to others. And when we think about this, there's some element of self-sacrificing here. If you think about people who have served, we think about the military where you're literally going to put at risk your life for a bigger, more noble cause. And if there's great pride in saying, I served with this unit, or thank you for your service, and what that means is you're going to spend the time to learn what it is that your clients want, where they failed before, what it means for them to succeed, what's at stake if they fail. These are very important things for you to think about before you even begin to take any action whatsoever. So when you adopt a servitude mindset, it's going to first of all relax you. And when you're relaxed, you'll speak at a different pace. Your tone will be different. The words in which you select will be different. And this is very, very important.

This will lead us to the next letter, which is A, and that's ask, the best way to sale is to ask really smart calibrated questions to use Chris Voss' language and never split the difference. And I want to ask an open-ended question, but the open-ended question is directed at a specific problem. And so, in Kevin Daley, he writes about this in Socratic Selling. He calls it the Socratic Open, which is to ask a question that primes your prospect into thinking about what it is they want to achieve. And there's many ways to frame this, and one way is to say, "So what's on your mind?" This is a Michael Bungay Stanier opener, what's on your mind?

And you might think, isn't that so generic? It's like saying how's the weather. And on the surface, it might appear that way. I had that reaction too. I'm like, "What's on my mind? There's a lot of things on my mind." What you don't understand is when a prospect agrees to meet with you, they have something on their mind. If you're a marketer, if you're a video production content creator, if you're a logo designer, well, it means what's on my mind is I think you have a solution for potential problem and I'm trying to find a fit.

I'm not going to ask you for recommendation for dog food. That might be on my mind, but I'm not going to because I've realized something. My time is precious. And for me to give it to a potential vendor and potentially spend money, I already know I have a problem, and I already know that only by spending money can I make the problem go away. I'm just wondering if I have the right problem for you, if you have the right answer for me, and if I should spend this money with you. So what's on your mind?

A different way of phrasing this, and this is what you all want to work on because you don't want to sound like a robot. You don't want to sound like a person that's reading a script or doing something that's very templatized. You could say something like, "Let me ask you this question. Why are we having this meeting?" And then, they'll tell you what's on their mind.

There's other questions that you can ask. What is a big problem in your business that you haven't been able to solve that you'd help with? Now again, you think this is too open, but it's not because they've already agreed to the meeting, they've already self-selected what they think the problem is, so you want to be able to ask. When they give you a hint as to what the problem might be, resist the compulsion. And I say it's a compulsion to immediately solve the problem. Well, you don't know yet is they've just presented what they think the problem is, and like that good doctor, we got to put our finger on the pulse a little bit and take their temperature and see what's going on like your heart. Well, okay, I'm feeling a little heat here. I'm seeing some other symptoms.

Before we get into the solution, let me just ask you a few more questions to make sure this is correct. So by asking these questions, you're going to help the client do something that's very difficult and it's going to shock you. It's very difficult to think. And by doing this, you're walking them through their own thought process and they're going to arrive at a place. So instead of you can convincing them, they're going to get clarity on what the problem is and what the potential solution might be.

We've lost this art form, the ability to have conversation with people, to be genuinely interested in other people and what they're going through. And so, we don't know how to ask questions anymore. We think to be smart, we must speak. And the more you speak, the fewer pauses and gaps that you have, the smarter you must be. We've convinced ourselves of that, and this is why it's called sales psychology, because first of all, we have to clear out what we believe this to be and start clean, clear slate, now we can begin. What is your problem? What is it that you want to talk about? What's on your mind? Why are we having this conversation? There's a lot more questions that we can ask once we start to understand the underpinnings of why we're asking these questions.

Mo Ismail:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Bobby Oliver:

Have you ever wondered how some of the most successful businesses you see in your everyday life got started? Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart. Each company has its own unique origin story. I'm Bobby Oliver, host of the podcast Business Origins. I explore these stories with you every week, and each episode is less than 10 minutes. Find Business Origins wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4:

It's the Jeff Ward show.

Speaker 5:

The two oldest presidents in history coming back for round two. Shouldn't we be proud? One is drooling on himself and the other is the pied piper of the nut jobs and the pied piper of the nut jobs is going to win. For the people that are sincerely worried about fossil fuels, these kids with mullets, I'm going to say, are not helping you. They're hurting. So shut up and go vape.

Speaker 4:

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Mo Ismail:

Welcome back to our conversation. I feel so honored that I've been able to have this conversation with you in different seasons of my life, particularly different seasons of my business, because in the beginning of my business, 100% I was green behind the ears, and this concept was very sexy to me, which leads you down the rabbit hole of value-based pricing. And people come to the conclusion of like, well, I can charge more for my services, which is true. But I want to add a caveat here that I was challenged with at the beginning in early in my career, and which made the conversation during sales feel very inauthentic or disingenuous. Your ability to achieve the A in sales, which is ask these questions that help the client to think is 100% predicated on the first S, which is serving and putting your needs on hold.

Because my reaction used to be, well, I do video. Surely the foregone conclusion is that the solution to the problem that you're presenting me is going to be video. That's not putting my needs on hold. That's not self-sacrificing. Because at some point, to ask good questions, and then as Chris goes through the L, the E, and the S, one thing that I had to become very okay with was the solution that I helped them come to or that we believe is best fit for what they're trying to do, may not be me, may not be my service.

And I think in the early stages when hearing these concepts and teachings that you talk about, because you talk about sales in a very different way, it's like it's very hard to wrap my head around, well, they're on a sales call with me, they need what I have, but the more I ask them questions like, "It seems like you need something else even before working with me." How can someone combat that feeling to not force the sale if they're really good at asking these questions and they recognize I may not be the best suited solution for what you need right now?

Chris Do:

You have to ask yourself what kind of person am I? What kind of company do I want to run? How long do I want to play this game? And if you're committed to doing this only for three to six months, well, you're going to get as much as you can and you're going to run, it's going to be a smash and grab situation, and you're going to rob your client. You're going to give them something they don't need that won't solve their problem, and ultimately not serve them at all. And you can do this, in fact, many people do do this, and then they wonder why they don't have a business in seven, eight months. You didn't solve my problem. You sold me something. And we've all been sold things before.

And I'll give you a little story here. Okay? Real story. I'm shopping at this clothing store called Scotch & Soda, they're a Dutch company, and they have a shop here in Pasadena. I don't typically shop here, and it's a brand I'm aware of, but I've never bought anything before. And I spot something cool like a nice shirt or sweater. It's got an interesting pattern and it's right around the holiday so I know a sale's right around the corner. So I'm looking at this thing, I'm thinking about it. It's like, I'd like to buy this, but I don't want to be an idiot with spending my money. So I asked a sales clerk, "Are you having a sale soon?" And they give me a funny look. They're like, I want to tell you there is, but I don't want to because I would prefer that you buy. But I also don't want to lie to you because you asked such a direct question.

So what came out of their mouth? I'm just reading this expression and I read expressions well, I think. What they say to me, is a very nice lady. She goes, "I would recommend that you check the website. For some reason, corporate doesn't tell us what is going on, but I think you might want to check it." Okay, so she gave me a middle of the road answer, Mo. Okay, let me tell you there's two other ways she could have told me. She could say, "You know what? I don't know if there is or not, but this sweater might not last because I only have two left. And if you wait, I can't guarantee it'll be here tomorrow." That sounds like a sale, right? It's not serving me, it's serving them.

And what's going to happen when I buy this sweater and two days later it's on sale? I'm like, "God, dang it. I feel like an idiot." And then I get angry at myself and I'm like, why am I angry at myself? Most people don't take responsibility. They blame other people. They'll say, "Well, why didn't she tell me this? Why didn't she tell me this?"

Okay, here's another option that she could have done. She could have said, "Most definitely this will go on sale. I'm not sure by when, but if you can wait a few days, this will go on sale probably for about 20 or 30%. If that matters to you, then I would wait. And here's what I can do for you right now. Okay? Buy this today. Leave it here in the store. Come back in three days when it's on sale. I will refund you the difference. Take the sweater then. This way no one can buy it, and I got you."

Mo Ismail:

Damn.

Chris Do:

Now, we have three options here on the table, three options. She did not say that. Let me tell you something as a customer, what she doesn't realize is I'm an extremely loyal person, because I have a little bit more discretionary income. I would spend more on things because I like people. And had she done that, I would've said, "What is your name?" And in the future, every time I came in that store, I would've said, "You know what? Is Sarah Beth here? Is Molly here right now because she's helped me out last time?" And then they'll say, "Yeah, well, she comes back at 2:00." I'm like, "I'll wait till then. Thank you."

Mo Ismail:

So good.

Chris Do:

You see what I'm saying?

Mo Ismail:

So good.

Chris Do:

Well, but this isn't how people think. They think in the short-term. Maybe she's thinking I'm not going to be here at six months because this is a holiday job and it doesn't matter. So your mindset determines your actions and your actions determine the relationships you're going to have. When we talk a lot about customer service, what we don't understand is what customer service really is. You're creating a memory for a person. That is customer service. This is why Nordstrom's is still in business today, because they have one of the most generous return policies anywhere, that they don't prioritize lower prices, they prioritize better customer service. This is why Zappos was sold to Amazon for $1 billion when they sold a commodity with fairly low profit margins because they prioritize customer service. What is the memory that you're creating? How are you delivering delight? When you can understand this, your relationships with the people that matter in your life, your friends and your family, with your parents, with your teachers, with your students, and especially your customers will change. It's a mindset thing, Mo. It's why we call it sales psychology.

Mo Ismail:

I'm putting myself in the shoes of a person who's just starting out, hungry, needing to make money. And some of this may feel conflicting. I was like, "Dude, I need to make some money." Everyone talks about closed mouths don't get fed. You need to sell. I really feel like you were creating a paradigm shift. The filter you need to ask yourself from my understanding of what you just said, even if you're early on, it's like, who do you want to be? You just said that. What business do you want to run? Because as you grow, you may not be the one on the frontline selling and the foundation, the values, the experience that you set is going to permeate throughout all of your sales reps, throughout your team, and then how they run the company, whether you be a visionary, whatever that may look like is going to translate to the end consumer.

So I just really, really love, don't think in the short-term, and that can be challenging, and I think the best way to find yourself looking really far ahead is asking that, which I think is a tough question. Who do you want to be like? That's philosophical and big, but I think that's the first step in you really developing not just what kind of business you're in, but the values that your business honors. I'd love for you to move forward with the rest of the acronym unless you feel like you've covered it well.

Chris Do:

No, no, I'm not ready yet. Let me tell you a couple other things.

Mo Ismail:

Please, yeah.

Chris Do:

It sounds like it's a difficult decision to make, but it really isn't. What is the point of having ethics, morality, core principles and core beliefs if you don't ever act on them, I'm not asking you to be someone else. I'm asking you to think about who you are as it relates to who you want to be. And we know this, how you act if it's consistent with who you are, brings you joy.

Mo Ismail:

Yes.

Chris Do:

What sends you into the land of guilt and shame is when you act out outside of who you think you are. This is a really critical thing. Jordan Peterson talks about this. He says, "Every time you're asked to make a decision and you feel weak, it's a sign that you're going to do something that's against your core beliefs." So he says, "Find the courage to act in this moment of weakness."

I was talking to Michael Ventura yesterday on a podcast. He said, we were having this conversation about you will die someday, right? Neville Medhora says he's done some math. He says for men, it's about 87 years old. And for women, it's a little bit longer. Women tend to live longer than men. So he's like, "Go look at them end of your life and look at the days that you have between now and then." He goes, a friend of his can read about 15 books a year. So he says, "By my math, I can only read this many books." So it makes him choose the book that he's going to read more carefully because he is like, "I can only read 80 more books and I love reading books." And so, we kind of have to look at it like that. It's not really that hard.

What kind of relationships do you want to have 10, 20, 30 years down in the life cycle of your business? Now, you may be shocked to know this or to hear this, I have relationships and friendships with businesses that exceed two decades. I work with someone today that I met when I was in my early 20s, when they were a tiny little eight-person company and they're a 400-person company today, still have a relationship, call each other on the phone because it began from a place of mutual respect, professionalism, understanding, and something that grew beyond just this is a transaction and this is really important.

Let me say one more thing here. You may have seen a video of something like this, and there are many videos like this, and it's a social experiment to see how people behave. So a person pretends to be in need of money. It's like these TikTok, Instagram Reels, and they ask people who have money to give them some money for food. And what they see is that the people who have means give them nothing, and then they walk over to a guy who's like homeless or something, and the homeless guy digs into his little hat to say like, "Here's seven bucks, brother. Go buy yourself a meal."

And of course, the setup is he takes the money and then he says, "I don't need the money. Let me give you $500. I just wanted to see who would be generous so I can give this money to." And then the person takes the money, and these are very tear-inducing, heartstring-pulling kind of thing. And the person's like having a moment and they hug them. They're so grateful. And you know what they do? They go into the grocery store and they buy a whole bunch of things. They come out with six bags of groceries. You've seen these videos, and they walk over and they go to the next homeless person. They give them one of the bags.

So this is one of these things that keeps giving. And so, we say to ourselves then how we judge people, here's a normal middle class, high class high earning person and how they behave. And then, there's a person who's like really has nothing but their heart is full of generosity and giving. Assuming this is not a setup, it says a lot about the two people that we just looked at. I want you to look at your company through that same lens. Are you going to be a service to other people? Are you going to be self-serving?

If you can get number one right, all the other ones fall in line. If you screw up this idea of servitude and being of service to other people, the questions that you ask will be different, how you listen will be different, you won't empathize at all, and you won't even think about summarizing because you don't even understand the other person's problem. So first is to nail down the serve mindset, to be of service to people. Follow it up with asking open calibrated questions. Really spend the time to understand, and there's more questions you're going to need to ask. You don't just open and then walk away.

The next letter is L, and it's for listen. And active listening is very different than how we see people listen today. Most people just stay quiet long enough so that they can formulate what they want to say next. And you've experienced this. You and I have experienced this. When you're talking to someone and their eyes drift a little bit, and you can see that they're not really here. They're not here in this moment. Physically, they're here, but they're not present. They're thinking about lunch. They're thinking about a smart follow-up. They're thinking about saying something that's going to impress you instead of just listening.

How do I know this? I'm interviewed a lot for podcasts, and someone will ask me a question and I can almost always tell they have 14 questions they need to get through. They'll ask that question. I'll say something that I think you might want to follow up on this, but what do they do? They just move on to question number four. And I think, okay, so you're really not here to listen. You're just here to ask questions and to get things off a checklist because you think this is how you have a conversation with someone.

Let me contrast that with the way that I do podcasts. I do some very light initial research about this person. Depending on who it is, I might have to do more research because I want to have some understanding of who they are. I ask them to introduce themselves and to tell a little story. And then so the conversation begins. And I might have a whole list of questions I want to ask them, but most of the times I never even look at them again, because whatever they're about to tell me is the clue to me what is important to them.

So why did you tell me this story about how your mom was the teacher, or your dad was a bus driver? How did that impact you as a kid? I mean, were they your heroes or were you ashamed? There's an emotion there and there's a reason why you're telling me this. And then, one answer leads to a follow-up question. And if you ever look at my notepad after a podcast interview, you'll see there are like eight pages written on both sides, words, rabbit holes, things that I circle, like things I draw an arrow to just say follow up on this, or that's a good hook. Underlining something, bulletpointing it. And what I'm doing in that moment is I'm trying to relive the emotion with them. This leads us to empathize.

So yeah, you ask good questions, you listen, but if you are a robot and you don't feel this with them, there's going to be a sense of disconnect. In Socratic Selling, Kevin Daley says this, "In order for us to get to the future, we must go to the past first." Despite the name of the company and the podcast, we do need to revisit the past because what we're trying to do is we want to close a sale in the future. We want their money in the future. And we rush to it and they feel rushed and they feel like you're not listening, rapport is not being established, trust is not being built, it's being eroded right now. So when you empathize, it means like, tell me how you failed in the past and what did that do to your business? And what the client's doing is they're reliving the painful moment with you once again in horrific high fidelity rendering. And they feel it and you feel it. So what you're doing is you are highlighting the pain that they want to avoid this time, and you're getting valuable information.

The last time the person promised this, and didn't deliver. Last time when I called them, they were nonresponsive. Last time they promised three solutions, they gave me one. Last time I thought I was talking to the people who were going to do the work, but then the B team came in and actually did the work. It was a whole bait and switch. So those are all clues to you. This is what they care about. This is what they assigned to the failure of the project. It would behoove you to present to them a solution at some point that addresses all of these concerns. Here's how we're different. If you do this three or four times with one type of client, you actually will know ahead of time how to address this before they even get on the phone. And this becomes your marketing copy. Tired of this happening and this and this and this, being promised three things and getting one, getting on the phone and waiting a week for response. We don't do that. Give us a ring.

So now the clients come pre-qualified to say, "We already understand each other." This is the power of listening and empathizing. So there's only one thing left to do. It's the last S in sales, and it's not to sell. Chris, when are we going to sell? When are we going to pitch something? You don't have to if you do this right? The last S is to summarize. Here's what I heard you saying. Does that sound right? Is there anything else? And once you get a complete understanding of the problem and the potential solution, you're going to close with a hypothetical question. And it works something like this. If you saw a proposal that did X, Y, and Z in X, Y time for Z price, would you be interested in moving forward? And at this point, if you've done your job, it should be a smooth, effortless, yes.

Not to get too gross, but it's like you had a lot of prune juice and it's just effortless, clean.

Mo Ismail:

That your movement.

Chris Do:

Movement, right? So at that point you say, "Well, if I put a proposal in front of you at the close of business day, is there anything else that would give you pause in terms of moving forward?" And we ask this question because you might have done a really great job and they might have felt really good, but people get into this thing called buyer's remorse because there's so much rapport building and they feel so guilty to say no, this is another opportunity for you to address the ghost in the room. It's a brilliant question because it activates their imagination, and they're going to start to think about, "Well, is there any other reason why we wouldn't move forward? Is there a manager or boss type of person, an executive who sits above me who's going to have a concern?" Then they would bring it up. "Is there a partner that needs to consider this? Are there payment options that they need to talk about?"

And then, they'll bring this up to you and is a brilliant way for you to say, "Okay, I see. Before I go do the proposal, you need flexible payment terms?" And there's still one nagging concern that somebody else is going to bring up and it's this. And then you can explore that conversation with them and they'll say, well, they'll still be concerned about X, Y, Chris. And that's when you say, "Okay, so what might be a solution to that?" And you activate them to help you solve this. "How might we solve that?" "Well, my wife's always wanted to do this, or my partner's always wanted," and then they designed a solution with you, and sometimes you can't deliver and that's okay and it's good to know. And sometimes you can.

If you can't deliver, you need to ask another question. "Is this a deal killer? Is this not happening contingent on someone being able to say yes to this?" And then if they say yes, it's a deal killer, then you should say, and if you can't deliver, "That's unfortunate. That's the one thing I can't give you. And if that's really true, I'm going to wish you luck. I don't want to waste more of your time. There's no point for me to send a proposal."

So I'll point out right now something. Most people hide behind a proposal. They're not willing to have this conversation upfront, so they do a lot of work on the backend to prepare incredibly well-crafted proposals that the clients, A, don't read, skip to the bottom line and say, "This is not going to work for me." So to quote Blair Enns, "The proposal isn't the document that you send, it's the words you say." The document is just a receipt for the words. But if you do this, even if you don't close as often as you'd like, you've at least now saved yourself a lot of work and heartache. One of the most difficult things to do in most enterprises that provide highly bespoke custom services is the proposal writing process. So at least if nothing else, I've saved you some time from doing unnecessary work for clients who are not ready to buy, and I think that's worth something.

Mo Ismail:

There's so many rabbit holes. The first one is I'm wondering now if this first half, if I did a effective job in actually listening versus trying to go through my outline. So that's a great reminder for me and it's allowing me to be even more critical of myself in this moment. What I want to take this, even though we have, there's more things to discuss, something in line with the listening piece.

You told me a long time ago, "Mo, I think and process really slow. That's why I am able to slow the conversation down intentionally to then be able to listen effectively." The issue I have is I feel like I'm the dog on up sometimes, even still in sales calls where I'm just really excited and there's energy. Sometimes I wonder if that's a you thing because of your upbringing. I know stories about you being the younger brother and having time by yourself or is this a learned skill? Can you elaborate a little bit about why you're so damn good at the listening piece? What's that thing that a person can do to really stay in the pocket during that conversation and not just jump the gun to the next thing or the next thing? Is there something there?

Chris Do:

Yeah, I think we're wired to have predispositions, tendencies. Our brain chemistry might be a little bit different. The culture in which we're raised is probably different, Mo. I think in the things that I know about you and your culture growing up in America and the south, predominantly Black and brown folk, it's like you want to put on a show. There's a lot of entertainment in your genes. It's like you got magic hands. And in my culture, usually it's dominated by a couple loud voices and that puts the rest of us into listening mode. And there's a lot of wisdom in the elders. We were taught to respect our elders. Even if they say wild and crazy things, they've experienced something in their life and they have something to share. Maybe not always right, but they have something to share.

The way I would put it is like this, all skills can be learned, it's just the question of the student and how they show up. I don't know how to play any musical instrument at all, but I've convinced myself that if I wanted to learn, I will. And the day I decide to play an instrument, I'm going to go all in. So you just have to make that decision today because it will determine who you become tomorrow. This is really, really important.

I'll give you another example here. I made the decision this year to be in the best shape of my life. I'm 51 years old. I want to be more fit than I've ever been in my life. And I want to see what length can I go in terms of achieving prime physical performance. Now I know that time is against me. I know that my testosterone level is lower than it's ever been, but I've hired a personal trainer. I'm on a very strict diet. I'm eating certain kinds of food and not eating certain kind of foods and I'm exercising. My body's really sore right now just talking to you. It's because I made that commitment. I made the commitment to select a teacher. We'll call him a physical performance coach, a personal trainer. I put my faith in this person. The person says, "Eat this, don't eat that. Move these things. Don't move those things." And I just try my best to do it.

So when we're talking about entrepreneurship, how to sell higher ticket items, how to sell higher ticket services to close more often for a higher price, you just have to ask yourself this question, do you really want it? And then here's what I'm going to say. This next part's going to trip up a lot of people. Select a coach, select a teacher you vibe with. It doesn't need to be me. I'm not saying I'm good for everybody. Actually, I'm only good for a few type of people. Pick your coach, pick your mentor and do whatever it is they tell you to do to the best of your ability.

Now, here's the one thing I notice with some types of people. When you're given instruction to do something, they immediately start to change the instruction and say, "Oh, it'll work if I do it this way." That's not the way way you want to do this. I'll give you an example. I was given directions on how to cook a protein pancake. These are the ingredients, this is the process, and this is how you do it. So my wife does most of the cooking in the house. Actually, she does all the cooking in the house and she does most of the grocery shopping. So when I gave her this list, she goes, "You don't need that. You don't need this, and we can do it this way, and you can eat it this way." I'm like, "Honey, do you know how this works?"

And you know what? I don't disagree with her. The body doesn't care how the ingredients get into your body. They just care that you have the ingredients. But my first rule is do as I'm instructed to the best of my ability to every single letter. And my mom's the exact same way. I remember that when we were younger, she would make Italian food. We're Vietnamese, just very different. She'd make spaghetti and she'd bring out the fish sauces. I'm like, "Mom, I'm pretty sure in Sicily, they don't have fish sauce. So what are we doing here?" She goes, "They need some salt. Why don't they use salt?" What the Sicilians or the Italians might use. So there's this culture to improvise and change, and then we wonder why it doesn't taste quite right, why it doesn't feel right, and why the results don't work. So what we do is then we escape personal responsibility because it can't be me. It can't be me, Mo, it's got to be something else.

Mo Ismail:

It can't be me.

Chris Do:

We say the program doesn't work, the recipe is flawed, the model doesn't fit because we started to improvise and we started to change. So what I would do is, and do what the Renaissance masters have done for a very long time. They tried to copy the masters and they become very good at it. So good they become a master themselves. So here's what we know about people in human behavior and human psychology. When you're given a difficult problem to solve, it feels painful. You'll try to find your way out. One of the ways out is to change the parameters to skip a couple of steps and not wind up with what it is you're supposed to have. How many people buy an electronic equipment like a DSLR camera? Never read the instructions, never dive into the menus in every single button.

My son is like that. I said, "You need to go off the auto mode." He goes, "Dad, I bought this camera for that." Now I know in three to six months time, he'll be like, "Dad, so now I know how to do this manually," but we resist see? I know this. So I taught myself photography. I took 10,000 really horrible photos. And then, I started getting into the menus and understanding how it really works and the exposure triangle. Most people never get to that level. And that's why most people aren't successful. And there's a quote here, I don't know who said this, but if you want what you don't have, you're going to have to do something you've never done.

Mo Ismail:

That's right.

Chris Do:

And if you want what most people don't have, you have to do what they don't want to do. That's the problem. Nobody wants to do the difficult job, and I'm glad. And I'll tell you why. Because difficulty creates barriers. They're natural barriers. Very few people can summit Everest because it's difficult. Actually, you can die. You can lose limbs that many people have. So the amount of people who can say I've summited Everest are small relative to the human population. It makes it worthwhile. It makes it remarkable, worth remarking about.

I want to do something few people want to do and can do. I want to do the difficult work. It means there's less competition. It means there's a premium that's going to be placed on what it is that I do. If you want to be average, be average. I want to be exceptional. And that's why when we say do this, you have to make a choice. Do you want to do it or don't you? Do you want to listen? Do you want to slow down, be present, ask calibrated questions to empathize and to summarize? If you don't, that's fine. Do it your way.

Mo Ismail:

So damn good. So when you say the third one, the third core essential out of the five is pricing psychology. So at this point, you understand the persona that you're serving under buyer psychology, you understand how to handle the sale, and we are easing into what I would assume is what's the investment. So what do you mean when you say pricing psychology and what do we need to know about it?

Chris Do:

So there's a lot of debate around how to price and why we price the way we do. A lot of it comes from an old model. I think it's an industrial model where there are factory workers in an assembly line making stuff, and we measure the amount of value based on the time or effort that we put into something. And these are very old concepts. It's labor theory of value, which is things in the free market, it should be only priced as much as the necessary labor to create it. And that's kind of usually closely associated with Karl Marx, Marxism. And so, people who look at Americans with disdain say, "You're a capitalist, and this is peer greed because you're charging more for something than the necessary labor to produce it." But it doesn't explain human nature and why we pay more for a Fendi, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton bag or pair of shoes. We don't understand that.

There's a gentleman on TikTok, he sounds European, maybe even Eastern European. What he does is he buys luxury wallets and bags and then he goes to deconstruct them all. He rips them apart because he's a leather craftsperson. I don't know what the terminology is. I'm sure I butchered that. So he'll say, "This is a good top-grain leather. This is really horrible. I hate this coating." And then he burns it. He does all kinds of things. And then he says, "Okay, based on the components, this leather is worth this amount." He tells you what the market price is for it, and then he tells you how much was the necessary labor to produce it. And then he adds in a little bit extra for profit.

So he says, "This wallet sells for $3,500, but really the fair value for this is $275." So he's reinforcing this concept that the leather only costs so much and the labor is only worth so much. And if you can only add in a certain amount of profit, why pay more? This is a fundamentally flawed concept because what he's done is he's failed to understand buyer psychology. This is why we do it in this order, Mo, is because when I buy something, I start to form my own identity. Anne Lappe talked about this. Where you spend your money is a vote that you cast on the world you want to live in.

Mo Ismail:

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Say that one more time. I'm going to pull the church thing. Just say that one more time. That was very good.

Chris Do:

Hopefully, I'm saying this right. Anne Lappe said, "How you spend your money is a vote you cast for the world you want to live in."

Mo Ismail:

So good.

Chris Do:

Okay, let's understand this now. I'm going to pick on an easy target. Let's talk about fashion. Most people think it's cars that are destroying the world. There's plastic bottles or other kinds of things. It's true, those things are hurting the world. But the number one polluter in the world now, or about to be the number one is the fashion industry. So I watched the whole piece that says, on YouTube, about why you should not buy another piece of clothing. So it used to be in ancient times, I'm just talking about like 150 years ago, you would probably only own a few pair of clothes and you'd wear them all the time. You'd take good care of them, you'd clean them, and if it broke, you would fix it.

And then something happened. There was an ample supply of cotton mostly coming from the southern plantations in America, so cotton was cheap. And so now, they can make more clothes. And then what we do is we fast-forward to today, and we have something called fast fashion from brands like H&M, Zara, and others like it. And what they do is they churn over an incredible amount of goods that are being transported from country to country for fabrication because it's the cheapest way to do this. It's not only using arbitrage to underpay people to make goods, but it's also creating a huge carbon footprint. The cotton is grown in one country, it's shipped another country to be processed into fabric, and then it's shipped another country for fabrication, and then it's shipped another country for delivery and for sale. And so, we're talking about a lot of things moving around in order for you to have a shirt that's $8, and an $8 shirt as I witness falls apart almost instantly in one wash.

And so, they don't really care. And the price of goods now have become so cheap, it's actually cheaper for you to buy the new one than just to have it professionally cleaned, which is ridiculous. And this is not to mention the amount of clothes that they don't sell that just go into the garbage dump. And I don't want to get more into this, but you understand the concept. So now what we are asking ourselves is why do we want to buy this versus why do we want to buy something that's made really well, a high quality garment that's going to last that we're going to wear more than eight times. That's the average amount that people will wear a garment, eight times, I believe, as quoted in this report, some never.

So if we're able to buy something that lasts longer, we'll reduce our footprint, but we'll have to pay more for it. Back to what Anne Lappe said, which is where we spend our money is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in. Let's get back to the whole goods and pricing psychology here, which is what you don't understand is people want to pay more for something. You just need to give them a reason to. This is fundamentally going to upset a lot of creative people because we think, well, what we have is a commoditized service.

And you'll see in the comments on the logo video how people are so quick to jump on their own grave and say, "Screw that guy for doing the logo for $18,000. I'll do it for $400. I'll do it for $25." And it's a race to the bottom because they think people are motivated by the lowest price. But what we need to do, because I'm like an evidence-based thinker, is to go and look in the real world to see how you spend money and to reflect on that so that informs how you should sell. As you can tell, I'm nearsighted, Mo. Are you?

Mo Ismail:

I actually don't know. I don't think so.

Chris Do:

You do you wear glasses?

Mo Ismail:

No.

Chris Do:

Okay, so you're not. You have good vision then?

Mo Ismail:

Yes. Unless it's blue light glasses when I'm filming.

Chris Do:

Right. So I'm undecided. Okay. That means I cannot see far, and now I'm getting old. I can't even see near either, so we've got all kinds of problems. Welcome to midlife.

Mo Ismail:

Midlife, baby.

Chris Do:

Midlife, here we go. So if I want to have corrective surgery like LASIK, I have many options to choose from. I can go to the mall and get it done. I can go to another country, South America, I can go to somewhere else, or do I want to trust my eyes to some place that is reputable, that's clean, that might be more expensive than the discount? And I keep thinking about this. Do I want to buy discount bottled water or do I want to buy premium bottled water? And the list goes on and on? Do I want to buy discount clothing or premium... You just keep doing this. And yes, you might say, "Well, easy for you to say. You're in a place of privilege." And I accept that I am, full disclosure, I have more discretionary income, so I'm going to choose certain things.

And so, what creatives often don't understand is when you price something low, it signals to the client something, and we can get into that. And when you price something high, relatively speaking, it signals something totally different. And I'm going to give you some of the answers now. If you meet with two firms, or let's say three firms, one has a high price, one has the mid price, one has the low price. This is why things are triple bid, because we look at context. Oftentimes, we will not buy the lowest price. We will feel like the highest price is too premium we don't need, we'll pick the one in the middle. It's like choice architecture. So we understand that, right?

When you go into Apple site, do you buy the most cranked up MacBook Pro or the most cranked up version of the iPhone? You usually buy the one in the middle. I don't want the baby one because I'm better than that, but I don't want the extreme pro extra large with 2,000 gigabytes of memory either with the M2 Max Pro chip or whatever they're calling it these days. That's too much. So we usually pick the one in the middle, because what we understand at this point is we're contextual thinkers. It's very hard for us to make a decision absent context. Is this room hot? I don't know, go outside. Oh, it's really cold outside. This is not that hot. It's actually really comfortable. It's the Goldilocks syndrome. Goldilocks doesn't know which bowl of porridge to eat until she tastes three bowls of porridge and said, "This one's just right." Goldilocks has to go into the bedroom of the three bears and say, "This mattress is too firm. This one is too soft. This one is just right."

So what you're trying to do with pricing is to be just right. So one of the things that we're going to explain to you is why you should provide three options. If you want to make more money, just provide three options. You craft a three-option proposal, a low cost, your ideal cost, and a premium cost. And there's way to structure this. So by doing so, you no longer invite the client to bid someone else. If you give them one price, if we are following the logic here, there's no context. So I'm going to call two other vendors. And I do this myself because I just need to know, is this too much or is this too little? Is this a good deal or is this too expensive? I need to know. And we'll get into all these concepts and we'll unpack it for you and help you to understand a key concept.

There's no such thing as a commoditized service or product. There's just a lack of imagination. There's a quote from Hayao Miyazaki, one of the most celebrated Japanese directors who directed Spirited Away, which is reality is for people who lack imagination. So what we're saying here is, if you believe you're a commoditized service or product that you're selling, then you just lack imagination. That's from Ron C. Baker, his book, Implementing Value Pricing. And there are examples of this.

Alex Hormozi talks about this in his book, $100M Offers, where he's like, what are the uses of a brick? We can go to one of those home improvement stores and buy a brick, and bricks are not expensive. It's like 69 cents a brick maybe, give or take. And if we say, "Well, we have a supply of bricks, what can we use it for?" You can use it as a paperweight, you can use it as a doorstop. There's a lot of different things you can use a brick for. And you go through this exercise in Hormozi's book, you understand how you brick determines the value of the brick. And not all bricks are created equal, so don't be a brick.

Mo Ismail:

Don't be a brick.

Chris Do:

Yes.

Mo Ismail:

Reality is for the people that lack imagination. So don't lack imagination, use that imagination to put yourself into these three lessons that we just talked about to elevate whatever stage you're at in your freelance business. And we are then going to leave you on a cliffhanger for number four and number five, which is irresistible offer and crafting it. So crafting an irresistible offer and then attraction marketing. So I'll let you do the sign-off because you do it so beautifully and you integrate the company's name.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I want to say I would love for you to join us. We'll talk about crafting an irresistible offer, one so good that people would feel stupid to say no, to borrow Alex Hormozi's line. And we'll talk about how to market in a way that attracts people to you so you don't have to chase them. If you enjoyed this episode, if you've gotten value from this, first of all, thank you for listening. Bottom of my heart, thank you. Share it with a friend. It costs nothing to do and let's together educate and inform the people. And I want to remind you of one message. You're not defined by your past, the future's what you make it. And on that note, I will see you in the future.

Stewart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do, and produced by me, Stewart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sanborne for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better.

Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris, and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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