Retainer Model Discussion

I am in a position whereone of my clients, who'ssort of 80% of my revenueis selling the companyand it's going to be soldin the next few months,and I don't necessarilyknow they'retalking about hiringme directly to foreseethe transition, et cetera.But ultimately, I have notbeen hired for 10 yearsand as an employee, and I kindof quiver at the thought so.So I'm kind of like, I'mcompletely out of touchwith my lead Gengame, et cetera.And I thought based onsome basic research,that it would benice to try and getsome basic retainerclients involvedand kind of go down that route.But, you know, maybeyou'll sway me.Well, I think you'relooking for some stability.It sounds to me likethere's something in playright now that along time client thataccounts for a large portionof your buildings is leavingor there's change coming, right?So you're like, I gotto formulate a plan,otherwise I'm in deep trouble.So this is good.This is good foreverybody that whenyou have a certainpercentage of your business,I would say more than50% held by one customer,you're in jeopardybecause basically,if that customer walks, blowsup, goes out of business sales,you're going to bein deep trouble.So you want to diversify.You want to have morecustomers holding a smallerpercentage of your business.Believe it or not,some large companies,when they send anRFP to you, theywant to see yourfinancials because theywant to make sure they don'trepresent more than 20%of your total businessthat year because theysee that as exposure and risk.I've seen it.They sent it to me,I'm like, wow, OK.That says a lot, right?So you need to diversify.And I your mainmotivation soundslike I need a different sourceof income and the retainerthing feels like it.What you can do, though, isyou can set up different kindsof projects that soundlike retainers, but aren't.For example, you canset up a project thathas a very finite start and endwith a very specific scope thatis broken up acrosseight or 10 payments.But there is an end andthere is a deliverable,so it's not up in theair as to what they getand what they don't get.OK OK.Burns and I havetalked about thisbefore, the retainers don'twork because eventually eitherthe client resents you or youresent them, they resent youand thinking that you haven'tdone enough work for themand you resent them for givingyou too much work to do.It starts off fineand then it winds upin one of these twopositions eventually.And that's why I don't liketo start things knowingthat they're going to fail.And it almost alwayshappens like that,and you wind up spending alot of time generating reportslike, we did this for threehours, we did this for 16 hoursand you're essentiallyselling time.And I don't likepaperwork, and Idon't like getting into thingsthat I know are going to fail.So you're mostly just lookingfor a different clientor getting referrals,so this is justtrying to now getback on the horseand find morepeople to work with.So that, if and whenthis thing happens.And the work dries upfrom them, that you'regoing to be covered.Yeah, very true, right?So can you ask themfor some referrals?No, it's a very interestingrelationship, actually,because ironically, it fits inwith all the non-compete typestuff, is it?I, you know, although I'venever signed any paperworkto the effect, it's, youknow, if I even remotely tryto work with another companyin the same industry,it would be like slayingthis firstborn or something.So it's in thatmarket or a globally.Oh, Yeah.Anywhere in like anyor literally anything,in fact, to the point where Istarted doing some social mediaoutreach for lead Gen stuff.Really, I'm reallynew to OK, I get it.I get it.So but this relationship'scoming to an end soon, right?Well, it's yeah, it's Iwould yes, I think so,it's pretty much a done deal.Yes so it's goingto come to an end.So you have some monthsto prepare for this.So what you wantto do is you wantto get maybe your pressrelease or case studies,your social media posts already.The mini is like Craig.See you later.Good luck with your life.Boom, you're out.And then all these things aregetting posted and shared.It actually is quite newsworthy.Then you can say I'vehelped this companyfor this many years, and nowthey're no longer doing this.And so my servicesare available.Yeah, you can use that asnews and pivot pretty hard.But right now, I wouldtell you to start lookingfor other kind of clients.OK OK.It fits in withthe nation becauseat the moment at theway that I generatedbusiness was saying Yes andthen figuring it out later.Yeah on let's do it.So so we it like in a moment,I've got animators workingand we've got front andback and developers working.And so it's, you know, I'vealways said Yes to stuffand I figured it out later.So but all of those.So even all my guys,essentially, they'reall working on major projectsand have been for years.And now it's, you know, soI've got a big responsibilityof finding somebody who's thissort of open wallets with, youknow, no expense spared.I feel like I've got thisweird, perfect clientand I've got these in existence.So, yeah, when youfind that, whenyou share that with all ofus open wallet clients whohave unlimited resourcesto do creative fun things,let us all know what you.Yeah I want to saysomething, and then I'mgoing to jump to an more andmore people are reaching outto me to help themwith their projects.There's a person who I haven'tvetted said, you know, Chris,will you go in onthese projects with me?I'm getting these really largereps for 70,000 projects,and I'm used to getting10,000 on projects.So he's really excited.He doesn't feel like he hasthe expertise to take this downhimself, becausenow we're talkingabout seven budgetsthat are seven times asbig as he's used to.And I told him, I don't do that.That's first ofall, not what we do.That's too little money.If it's a $2 million,we'll talk, but 70,000.I'm not getting outof bed for that,but I do know a lot of peoplein this group that mightbe interested in doing that.So you guys, let's trythis one more time.Let's try this.I'm going to put mynice voice on, ok?So I'm sitting here thinkingwhich one of the pro membersshould I recommend?Think about what'shappening there.Which one of thesepro members should Irecommend somesearching in my mind?Like who would bea great compliment?So I need to know who you are.I need to know whatit is that you do.Oh, but so manyof you guys are sobusy being allthings to all people,so I'm not goingto remember, youremember what I said before,usually out of positioning,I can remember onething about you.Just one thing.This is the problem with Xerox.You know them forphotocopies, so whenthey get into other kindsof technology and spaces,you still think of themas the photocopy company.Same thing withGreyhound bus greyhoundis a company doesa lot more than.Then having buses runacross this country.But now people haveassociated with that,and they're notmoving from that,so they're much better offcreating a parent brand or subbrand or somethingelse and offeringdifferent kinds of servicesbecause for now moving forward,we're not going to be ableto get that out of our mindas soon as a Greyhound.Goes across the freeway.That's what you rememberevery single time.