The Pricing Paradox
Most creatives are trapped in a paradox. The better they get, the faster they work. The faster they work, the less they earn. This is the fundamental flaw of charging for your time.
It’s a model that punishes expertise and rewards inefficiency. In what other professional transaction does a client desire a solution to take longer? When a pipe bursts in your home, do you want the plumber who takes six hours or the one who fixes it in 60 minutes? When you’re waiting for a ride from the airport, do you want to pay more for a longer wait? The answer is obvious.
Speed is value. Yet creatives consistently default to selling units of time, a metric that works directly against their and their client’s best interests.
The Futur's Chris Do explains that there are three primary pricing models: time-based, project-based, and value-based. “I consistently still use all three pricing models,” Do admits. It’s not about finding one magic bullet, but about using the right tool for the job. Hourly rates can make sense for projects with truly variable and unknowable scope. Fixed-fee, project-based pricing provides budget certainty for the client.
But for transformative creative work, both models leave immense value on the table.
This is where value-based pricing comes in. “It’s the most difficult one to understand and to implement,” Do cautions. “It’s also coincidentally, ironically, the most fair pricing model.”
Fair because it directly ties your fee to the result you create for the client's business, not the hours you clock. This requires you to shift your entire frame of reference. You are not selling your time. You are not selling a deliverable. You are selling a business outcome. As Do puts it, you have to “shift your focus from the time spent to the value provided.”
Stop Selling Your Time. Sell Theirs.
The mental block for most creatives is the false equivalency between time and quality. They argue that more time equals a higher quality product. But quality is subjective and, in the open market, often irrelevant to price.
Do challenges this thinking with a simple observation from the art world. “Are those [Renaissance] paintings more valuable than a Picasso painting which seems like it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to draw or to paint?” he asks. “Is it worth more than a Jackson Pollock painting?”
In the contemporary and modern art markets, works by artists like Picasso and Pollock, known for their expressive and rapid creation, often shatter auction records, far surpassing the value of meticulously rendered classical paintings. The value is not in the labor. It’s in the idea, the novelty, the story, and the artist's brand.
So if your time is the wrong metric, what is the right one?
Here lies the critical reframe. You should be selling time, just not your own.
“What you’re doing is you’re selling people’s time back to themselves,” Do reveals. “The more valuable the person is, the more they’ll pay you to buy back their time.”
This is because time is the only non-renewable, perishable resource. You can always make more money. You can never make more time. High-value individuals and successful companies understand this better than anyone.
Consider two scenarios:
- An electrician is called to fix a faulty oven hours before a high-profile dinner party. The host, facing social embarrassment and logistical chaos, places an immense value on resolving the problem immediately. Their time is incredibly valuable in that moment, and they will gladly pay a premium for a rapid solution.
- An e-commerce company needs a new website to launch before Black Friday. Every day the site is not live represents thousands, or even millions, in lost revenue. A developer who can deliver a high-quality site in half the time is not just saving the client a few weeks; they are creating immense financial opportunity. Their speed is directly convertible to the client’s profit.
In both cases, the value is created by compressing time for the client. The service provider's hours are irrelevant. The client’s hours, and the opportunity cost associated with them, are everything. “The condition is the person must value their time and what you do must solve their problem,” Do clarifies. “And if you can do it faster, you’re more likely to get the gig, but you should be able to charge more.” This is the principle behind rush fees and the entire industry of expediters who navigate complex bureaucracies to get plans approved faster, saving developers millions in holding costs.
The Diagnostic Dialogue
To sell a client their time back, you must first understand how they value it. This is not achieved through guess-work or generic proposals. It is achieved through a specific type of conversation: a diagnostic dialogue.
The goal is to shift from a vendor who takes orders to a trusted advisor who uncovers the real problem. You must become a detective, not a clerk. “The answer is the question,” Do states simply. “You just need to know how to ask the question.”
He proposes a simple but powerful framework for structuring this conversation, which can be remembered with the acronym ICE.
- I for Impact: What impact will it have on the business if this problem is solved? This question forces the client to articulate the value in their own words. It moves the conversation from cost to investment.
- C for Challenge: What is getting in the way? What have you tried in the past? Why didn't it work? These questions uncover past failures and hidden obstacles, revealing the true nature of the problem.
- E for End-goal: What is the ultimate outcome you want? It’s not what they want you to make, but the result they want to achieve. A client rarely wants a website; they want to sell a product, create awareness, or generate leads. The website is just one possible vehicle.
This is what Do calls being diagnostic in your dialogue. You are surfacing the deeper issues before ever discussing a solution. This approach is detailed in books like Kevin T. Daley’s Socratic Selling, which argues that no amount of pre-call research can replace the information gained by speaking directly to the decision-maker.
While some research is necessary, especially for junior creatives, Do warns against becoming a “know-it-all.” Showing up with a pre-baked diagnosis is arrogant and often wrong. “Don’t start the party without the client,” he advises. Ask open-ended questions that invite them to paint the full picture. The goal is to build a conversation rooted in curiosity and empathy, a skill explored in depth in Do’s guide on How to Ask Better Questions.
Only after you have a shared understanding of the problem can you begin to discuss potential solutions. By presenting two or three options with different pros, cons, and investment levels, you empower the client to choose the path that best aligns with their risk tolerance and resources. You transform the sales process from a pitch into a collaborative strategy session.
The Unselling: A Masterclass in Action
Theory is one thing. Practice is another. In a live roleplay, Do demonstrates how to apply this diagnostic framework to a common creative request: a new brand identity.
The client, “Mo,” believes he needs a new logo and visual system because his current branding feels misaligned, cheap, and isn't attracting the right kind of leads for a new product launch.
Instead of immediately agreeing and starting to scope a design project, Do begins to gently dismantle the client’s assumptions. He starts by challenging the core premise. “Do you think by changing the identity that that’s going to do anything?” he asks, then follows up with a more direct probe: “In the real world do you buy products that you love from companies that are very valuable where their logo and identity system is trash?”
The client reflexively mentions Apple, the gold standard of integrated design. But Do presses further. He points out that for every Apple, there are dozens of highly valuable companies like Hilton, Marriott, and Norwegian Cruise Lines whose logos are unremarkable. “The world is ugly,” Do says later, explaining his thinking. “It’s run by people who have no taste who hire people have no taste to make things that are tasteless.”
This isn't an argument against good design. It's a logic test. Do is forcing the client to confront the reality that a new logo, in isolation, is not a guaranteed driver of new customers. He’s deliberately “unselling” the project to see if there is a more substantial business case beneath the surface-level request.
“I would hate for you to spend money building something in hopes of achieving a certain result when that’s not likely going to happen,” Do states. This single sentence shifts the entire dynamic. He is no longer a vendor trying to win a job. He is an advocate for the client’s business, protecting them from a potentially poor investment.
Through this process of Socratic questioning, a deeper need emerges. The issue isn't just about attracting customers. It’s about two other things:
- Status and Feeling: The client wants to feel proud of his brand. He wants the external perception to match his internal ambition. This is a non-quantifiable but powerful emotional driver.
- Repositioning: The company has outgrown its old identity and needs a fresh start to signal a new direction and launch new products. This is a strategic marketing function.
Now, a new logo makes strategic sense. It’s not just a cosmetic fix; it’s a tool for internal morale and external repositioning. Having established the true purpose of the project, Do moves to the next critical phase: testing the client's commitment.
The Logic Test of Commitment
A premium experience requires a premium investment across the board. A brilliant logo on a poorly designed website or cheap packaging is, as the saying goes, lipstick on a pig. Do knows this, and he needs to know if the client understands it too.
“Premium logos and experiences don’t come cheap,” he states plainly, preparing the client for a conversation about money. After the client suggests a budget of “mid five figures,” around $50,000 to $60,000, for the brand identity, Do delivers the logic test.
He explains that the identity is just the beginning. “I’m going to do a ballpark estimation right now,” he says. “On top of the 50 or $60,000...we’re looking at another at least quarter million to $400,000.”
This figure isn't arbitrary. It’s based on the litany of other touchpoints that will need to be redesigned to create the cohesive, premium experience the client desires: the website, social media assets, video content, packaging, and more. A top-tier identity demands top-tier execution. This is a difficult but essential part of managing client expectations, a topic Do and author Blair Enns cover extensively in their masterclass on budget conversations.
The client is shocked. “Way too much,” he says. The roleplay appears to break down. But this is the entire point.
Do has exposed a massive misalignment between the client's stated desire (a premium brand on par with Apple) and his financial preparedness. He explains the math. A $40,000 website, a $40,000 video shoot. Suddenly, the quarter-million-dollar figure seems not only plausible but conservative. A $60,000 logo is disproportionately expensive if you’re only willing to spend $5,000 on every other touchpoint.
“If you actually hire someone like us to design your identity system but you cheap out or you cut corners on the production...I think you’re wasting your time and your money,” Do says. “And I don’t want to do that to you.”
The conversation ends not with a signed contract, but with the client needing to go back and rethink his entire strategy. From a traditional sales perspective, this is a failure. But from an advisory perspective, it is a resounding success. Do has prevented the client from making a costly mistake and, in doing so, has earned a level of trust that no slick sales pitch could ever achieve. The client might leave the meeting, but he is more likely to return later, with a more realistic budget and a deeper appreciation for the strategic thinking Do provides. This is the foundation for moving from a freelancer to a high-value consultant, a journey essential for anyone wanting to build a seven-figure agency.
The Mindset of a Master
This entire approach is impossible without a fundamental shift in mindset. It requires business maturity, self-confidence, and a radical detachment from the outcome. The reason Do can “un-sell” a $60,000 project is that he operates from a position of abundance, not lack.
“You have to do what’s right for the client,” Do explains. “You may lose the business today, but you’ll win the game tomorrow.”
This is the posture of a therapist. A therapist’s job is to listen, to question, and to hold up a mirror so the patient can see their own thoughts more clearly. They don’t have an agenda other than helping the person in front of them find the truth. To do this, you must start with a position of professional skepticism.
Assume everything that’s said and presented to you is untrue.
This isn't about being cynical. It’s about being a critical thinker. “Clients are busy,” Do says. “They haven’t formulated all their thoughts and theories on what they need to do...they ask for solutions they don’t even know are connected to real results.”
Your job is to help them connect those dots. You must act as an advocate for their business goals, not as an advocate for your own services. This is a level of business maturity that counters the default setting for most creatives, which is often driven by insecurity and neediness. Those who struggle with this often suffer from a form of imposter syndrome that makes them hungry for validation.
When you go into a meeting feeling like you *need* the job, your tone changes. Your questions become leading. You become an order-taker, desperately trying to say whatever it takes to get a “yes.” If the client hesitates on price, you immediately offer a discount, signaling that your numbers were arbitrary to begin with and eroding all trust.
The alternative is to believe so strongly in the value you provide that you are completely comfortable with hearing “no.” Do relates this to a social experiment by Jake, a jeweler from TraxNYC, who tries to give away bars of gold on the street. Most people refuse, suspicious of a catch. The jeweler isn’t offended; he’s relieved. He knows he is offering pure value, and if someone doesn't want it, that’s their loss, not his.
“I don’t think we internally believe that what we’re doing is valuable,” Do reflects. “So...when clients have just one pause, one moment of hesitation, you crumble.”
The key to breaking this cycle is to genuinely care. It is not a tactic. It is a state of being. “How do you show people you care?” Do asks rhetorically. “Here’s the dirty secret: because I genuinely care. It’s that simple.”
When you care more about your client’s success than your own sale, you are free to ask the hard questions, to challenge their assumptions, and to walk away from a project that isn't a good fit. This is the ultimate power position in any negotiation. It’s how you stop being a vendor and start being an invaluable partner. It’s how you stop charging for your time and start getting paid for your mind.
TRANSCRIPT
hey what's up beautiful people it's me Chris doe here on the channel and guess what surprise surprise we have another video about pricing and pricing strategies cuz my friend MO says we haven't done this enough kill me now already but here's the thing I promise you if you watch some of our other
videos about pricing strategies and you're still left confused well guess what we're going to go deeper we're going to go high we're going to go low we're going to do role plays and I'm going to give you some clear actionable steps and none of this will work if you're not in the right
mind space but the first thing you do is open yourself up to learning this and then thinking through it to see how you would apply this in the real world I know all of you who are watching this are a little suspicious as to why I'm making content for free and laying all
my cards on the table unlike so many creators that you see out there who are keeping the good stuff behind a gated pay wall I want to ask you for something my team has told me that less than 50% of the people who watch these videos actually subscribe to the channel and it's
one metric that we care about and it's a measurement of value to you so do me a favor go ahead and hit subscribe right now and then enjoy the rest of the video I want to get right into it um I'm going to give a brief summary of some of the things that
I've personally learned from you and what I've seen you teach so people have context to exactly what we're talking about many creatives when they get into the business there's usually three scopes of pricing and you guys can go to this video that he breaks down each pricing type but there's time based pricing
which is basically charging for your time Project based pricing where you're mapping out how much a project is going to cost for you internally and then giving the client a rate that has some buffer for you to make a profit and then there's value based pricing which is pricing based on the value
that you are creating for the client or respective Prospect Chris you've been a huge advocate of value based pricing over hourly raids I want to understand why you say or why you advocate for creatives to transition to Value based pricing there's a specific line that you said and I'm literally quoting you from
a video you said you have to to shift your focus from the time spent to the value provided how has this approach impacted your business and why are you such an advocate for it I'm an advocate for using the right pricing methodology for the for the task and so if we were like
I only have one Ty phase I would use one Tye phase for the rest of my life and then you're limiting yourself to whatever else you need to express and this is just a challenge of expression there is a time and place to charge hourly there's nothing wrong with charging hourly except for
when you when that's the only tool that you have for all itions I'll tell you when that makes sense when you have fixed scope with variable scope and you don't and you can't for whatever reasons you can't determine what the variable scope is going to be so you can come up with a
fixed fee and what when we describe Project based fees it's not figuring out what your costs are and then doing a markup a fixed fee bid or Project based thing is basically I'm going to guesstimate my cost my profit and some value to the client but basically I promise to deliver a product
project under this budget or on this budget and it can have a relationship with a time spent or it can have no relationship whatsoever but it's basically saying I guarantee this deliverable based on this price unless you change scope and there's a time to use that as well and so in my career
and I still do to this day I consistently still use all three pricing models so I just want to put that out there in case people are like well easy for you to say or it doesn't work for all things no one solution works for all people at all time so it's good
for us to know when it's advantageous for both us and the client to change the model based on the problem at hand value based pricing is the most difficult one to understand and to implement and there's a reason why is because you have to have a business dialogue with your customer each customer
is different they value things differently it's also coincidentally ironically the most fair pricing model because it could mean that you're going to price something a lot more and something a lot less because the pendulum swings both ways so we need to understand that right when you understand that then then you can say
like well designers creative people who create transformative experiences for people who can actually increase the value of a product because it's designed well the packaging of it looks good it connects with its core audience then that is a value that you're creating beyond the materials and the timing which you put into it
and so in this way if we're going to use an hourly based pricing model when we know what the scope is going to be we're going to limit our earning potential and we're not capturing some Fair percentage of value created and that's what we need to focus on you mentioned something in the
middle of that where depending on the problem that you're solving you have to decide if you need to Pivot the current pricing model that you're using what are some of the indicators that you look for for deciding what pricing model to choose if if I'm if I'm like a designer that's trying to
figure this out like what should I pitch or what should I discuss with this person what are you looking for there to be able to make those decisions you can ask yourself a couple different things what are you really selling what units will we use to measure Effectiveness are we saying we're selling
time and some things make sense to sell in units of time are we selling in units of product when we do Project based pricing that's what we're talking about are we going to sell units of value what is a value to the person and depending on the scenario the situation of what you're
trying to do the answer is going to be very different most people that we know in the creative space default to selling units of time when time is not a good measurement and I'll give you some several examples let's let's ask our audience this question Mo in what situation where you desire a
solution where taking longer is worth more to you because that then it would make a lot of sense to sell units of time in what situation is it worth more to you for something to take longer when you desire a solution I can't think of too many so for example I'm at at
the airport I'm waiting for my ride ride share Uber lift something like that a Yellow Cab do I feel like I should pay more for waiting or pay less for waiting and if you're like most rational people and and it's evidenced by the app itself the ones that pick you up faster that
get you there in luxury and style will cost more and so if you say okay well I want to order something I bought a new pair of sneakers I wanted them to get here will I pay more or less for it arrive here sooner will I pay more or less to jump the
line at Disneyland will I pay more or less to jump the line at a hotel or a restaurant so in those instances if you sell units of time then you're going backwards it doesn't make sense I'm actually having a hard time when I desire a solution where I want it to take longer
and I'm saying this very earnestly like Mo can you think of a time when you want a solution and you want it to take longer not off the top of my head right now because if I'm somebody who's looking for a solution that means I'm in a state of pain and I want
it resolved and the more time I spend in the pain the more suffering I experience so I rather have it done faster yes there is one instance I can think of for a couple say quality time you want to spend time with your boy that's a solution or an outcome you desire and
you would rather spend higher quality time and more of it with your with your child that's just the way it's going to work so there's certain things where it's not the outcome it's the journey that matters and for the things that the Journey matters we would prefer to take longer here's the example
I want to get on Disney's latest theme park attraction ride I want that that result I don't want that ride to last 10 seconds I want it to last three minutes or 30 minutes or however long you want it to ride and so there are things that we enjoy the process of doing
more than the outcome so are you saying that if you are selling an experience and that experience has a positive quality to it in the experiencing of it that's when you should think about okay time is your friend here but when we're talking about it in a business sense as you've mentioned if
you're solving a problem depending on what it is that you're selling it's probably in your best interest to eliminate time as the metric of how you're pricing your situation yes I would even put in the word business because there's a lot of things that are not business related when the outcome is important
for us that we want to pay more for a faster result I'll give you an example if your plumbing explodes or you're without hot water you want someone to come out that's not a business that's just a personal human thing I'm in a state of discomfort I would like to have a remedy
for this and if you can get here sooner I pay you more so here's the problem though logically we've had this conversation many times on this channel people can understand this now here's what they think there's a false equivalency to more time equals higher quality and so now what we're saying is we're
selling quality not outcome but quality is really debatable and it's highly subjective and we also know it's not 100% true because if an artist takes longer to render a painting does it make that painting more valuable than something that takes less time of lower quality if that's the argument and let's look at
it you've probably undoubtedly seen a bunch of Renaissance paintings beautiful oil paintings that are rendered looks like it's done by a master trades person an artist if you will are those paintings more valuable than a Picasso painting which seems like it doesn't take a whole lot of time to draw or to paint
is it worth more than a Jackson Pollock painting in the free market now I'm no art historian but when we start to look at postmodernism abstract expressionism we're going to find that the those tend to actually get more money in the open market than these Renaissance style paintings unless it's from someone of
note but even so I think the things that break records are the things that aren't measured by units of time or quote unquote quality but based on other factors like Aesthetics or notoriety or specific technique or newness novelty they think that just because they're spending more time on it that naturally that's going
to make it of higher quality and then they're basing the high quality as the only unit of value for the other person it seems to be that that's the case and that's the argument that people will make it's it's not a strong argument but that's the argument they make so what should a
creat native who is currently pricing their work actually be looking at to measure the value of what they do relative to the person that they're serving okay and and here's the answer it's going to seem strangely like hypocritical you should be selling time you're wait wait wait what what did I just miss
something yeah you should be selling time you've been measuring time in the wrong way you're measuring time in which you work on it not time for the client so the person who buys a service or a product they have some abstract value of time so let's take it to the real world again
so here I am I'm about to have a dinner party and have a bunch of guests coming over and for whatever reason the oven or the stove isn't working and I need an electrician to come out and fix the problem for me right away given the added urgency the importance of Who's Coming
to Dinner the social standing I have within my family or with my guess all of a sudden my time becomes really important now and I'm starting to stress out now if I happen to be a well-to-do person well-off person then the electrician who can come here and do the job is going to
get a better tip and I'm willing to pay more double triple their normal rates that's the time that matters let me give you a different example let's say I want to launch a product and I need an Ecom site built I know that for every day it doesn't launch it costs me in
terms of loss opportunity if every day from now to like say Black Friday or Christmas or New Year something like that I'm losing real opportunity to make money so if you're web developer a designer and you can deliver a high quality product that serves my needs but can do it in less time
it's worth more to me and if you say I'm going to deliver the exact same site same level quality and conversion but it's going to take me six months that's worth less to me so what you're doing is you're selling people's time back to themselves the more valuable the person is the more
they'll pay you to buy back their time because they also know that time is a non-renewable perishable resource you can make more money but you can't make more time and then in this case time is money I want to encourage anyone who's listening whether you're cleaning around the house right now and you're
listening to this this discussion for yourself and you're not taking notes I would rewind the section that was just said because I'm going to dive in with Chris on this you said The more valuable the person is the more money that you or creative should charge them because you're buying back their time
in the example that you gave no let's let's clear that up clear it up the way that we say this is very important okay the more valuable or the the higher the net worth of the individual that's sitting across the table from you the more their time is worth to them yes so
you're not buying you're selling their time back to them so something's going to take a 100 days or 100 hours and if you can do it in half the time it's worth twice as much to them so the condition is the person must value their time and what you do must solve their
problem and if you can do it faster you're more likely to get the gig but you should be able to charge more that's why they've invented Rush fees or you pay more money for an expediter now I don't know about you but I've had the opportunity to be able to buy real estate
and develop property and when you are trying to get your plans approved by the city it could take a really long time so the the contractor can't start work because we don't have approved plans and if you build without approved plans they'll make you come in and they'll tear it down and they'll
give you a fine and you have to do it again so now you're losing time you're losing money and you've wasted resources because they're not going to give you uh they're not going to reimburse you for the materials you've already use that you have to pull out again so there is literally someone
that is an in between between you and the city that expedites the plan to get it approved they literally walk your plans over to the city planner and say I I need a favor Jimmy or Mary I need you to get this thing signed off can you review this on a Tuesday and
they get your plans approved faster for which you pay them some amount of money so you can get going on construction that's how time really works correct me if I'm wrong and here's what I'm hearing is that the person that you are engaging with and I'm talking to the creators that are listening
you have to understand number one who they are right you have to understand their business AKA you're s cing out how valuable their time is to them and then you have to really assess what's the risk of them not doing what they need I guess for a lack of a better term fast
so as a creative I think you've had enough reps in the game to where you can have a conversation and sus this out very quickly but how do I approach a prospect to really understand who they are understand their business understand the associated risk so I can then come to the conclusion that
oh this is what they need and this is how I should price it in this way Mo ask a question how do you approach understanding a client's business who they are and the risks that are involved so you know how to price accordingly right ask a question oh that is wait that is
I was playing around with you that's the answer so what we want to do is we want to the the answer is the question you just need to know how to ask the question and so you've seen many videos on this where I ask people questions and like oh it seems so easy
when you do it because my intention is to find out what the real answer is so if you come to me with a problem I just want to know what the problem is so I'm like what's the problem what's the goal what are you trying to do why haven't you been able to
get this before so you can follow a very simple framework let me try to make this super easy for everybody you need to know what the outcome is that they want it's not what they want you to make but what's the ultimate goal what's driving this request so if somebody wants a website
it's not because they want a website so if you're bidding on a website you've missed the point the website is to do something that's to communicate something it's to sell an idea sell a product it's to create awareness around something so you need to figure out what the objective is the website is
just one vehicle to deliver the potential result there which we don't always know what the best vehicle is until we have a question so now you know what the goal or the outcome is then you have to ask well there must be something that's getting in the way of this there's a challenge
involved here you don't know who to talk to you failed in the past maybe the copywriting is wrong or maybe the whole strategy is wrong we got to figure that from them so what we do is we just ask more questions so in the past have you tried to do this no we
have not yes we have and it didn't work Why didn't it work tell me more about that well we went in with the wrong assumptions about who our customers are we overpriced the market we underpriced the market or we entered in a time in which there was some kind of controversy around this
product but now there isn't anymore we need to know we need to be a detective we have to ask questions we have to be Diagnostic in our dialogue so now we know what the goal is we know what the challenges are then we have to ask other questions what impact will it have
on your business if this problem were solved they get to tell us at this point and now you can see we're getting a lot of really useful information we're surfing we're surfacing the deeper issues and now we can get to a real point of understanding their business goals and their needs and their
challenges and what the potential solutions could look like and then we owe it to ourselves and to the client to say based on what I just learned there are two or three things that come to my mind that could possibly solve this each has a set of pros and cons let's discuss is
that interesting to you they you say yes you go through a b and c and you ask them of these three options which seems most appealing to you or some other option we've not talked about they say option b option b sounds like low risk or you know what we have more money
than we have time I like option C let's spend the most amount of money because I just need to get this thing done are you the person who can deliver that so you just do this in the form of dialogue by asking smart questions listening and following up with people I'm G to
push back and you know me and you have done this dance countless times for the length that we've known each other but before I push back on this on behalf of the audience you know I love a good acronym and you'll be dropping gems so I just want I'm gonna I'm gonna turn
this question formula into a quick acronym for the guest okay and the acronym is ice cuz Chris is always fresh to death and he keeps it icy so when you go into these sales you got to think of yourself like how swole is your wrist how icy is it number one and not
in any order but just to remember the acronym impact what's the impact that what you're going to do is going to have on this person's business is challenge what's the challenge that they're facing right now that's getting in the way of the E which is end goal what result do they want to
have happen What goal do they want to reach so if you're ever stuck and you're like I don't know what questions to ask I don't know how to run this just try your best to remember the acronym ice I'm sure by the end of this video Chris is going to reward it re
remaster it that's what we do when me and him are in the studio which is completely fine so let's let me table that I've been I've been in many workshops with you I've been on many coaching calls with you and I'm a student of yours and here's where old me kind of flares
up when you say well go in like you don't know anything right just be curious ask a bunch of questions I think you're great at that I think that could be very nerve-wracking for people especially creatives that maybe are early on or maybe haven't had a lot of exposure to sales calls do
you recommend and if yes any type of prep work that the person should be doing before they get into this call so they can ask these questions effectively because there's knowing what questions to ask but then asking them effectively for the other person to give you what you need so what are your
thoughts on that just for the record if you play back the tape I never said go into it with no information you just made that part up so I just want to be clear here so let's look at this as a graduated scale so if you're new in your journey you need to
do a lot of research you need to do a lot of preparation if you're more senior in your journey you'll notice that you do less research and there's a reason why you want to do it this way so let's assume everybody who's watching this video is fairly new in their journey in terms
of understanding how to be Diagnostic in their dialogue so you need to do some background information you just need to look them up figure out what their business is about see if you you understand it read the literature that could be on their website look at their social channels so that you're getting
a sense of their business you can even go into things like what is it glass door and and read the reviews and how people feel about the company you can go on to Amazon read the reviews their products or their services you can perform some benchmarks on their website and just scrape data
and you don't want to go into there as a know-it-all but just so that you don't seem totally ill prepared for the conversation but then everything else stays true in Kevin dy's book Socratic selling he talks about this no amount of research that you can do will get you the kind of information
that you can get if you just speak to the decision makers they have the up-to-date stuff they have the real stuff you just have the publicly available information so it's a dangerous game to assume if you go in there like I looked at your site Cent just hold on a second I looked
at your site and looked at conversions below average and you just go reading them whatever it is you research and like well I'm here to talk about hair andcut and you're talking talking about this it makes no sense so don't start the party without the client ask some questions and don't ask leading
questions either now people always say well how do I know it's a leading question because it presumes an outcome it's very directed There is a sense of judgment on it is your website working for you well You' made a presumption that I I want to talk about my website and that you're also
by inferring is it working for you that you don't think it's working you should ask a much more open-ended question because we're looking for the real problem and only with the client's help can we find the real problem so we use a bit of research and then intuition and being great at asking
questions and listening demonstrating a ton of empathy is how we really find what the real problem is so I found that the more information I go into the meeting with as a person who's further along in their Journey more senior than you is that I find that when I learn too much it
starts to Cloud what it is I'm looking for it's almost like I read the case File before arriving on the scene of the crime and I'm starting to make a lot of assumptions about What's happen when I really just need to show up and take in the information while in the back of
my mind knowing that it plugs into some data or some research I've already done so you're still here and guess what you didn't do what I asked before and that's why I'm back invading and interrupting your enjoyment of this video you're still here go ahead and stop the video and hit subscribe and
I'm out of your hair yeah so in a situation where your prospect has identified they need a new brand identity and logo design system you've determined is what they need and you've determined that it solves a business problem what business problem did that solve um the way they show up is not representative
of how good of a business they are it feels in congruent with their marketing it's not attractive enough for the kind of client they need so they're not getting the right leads in the door cuz maybe they look cheaper than they actually are and they're in producing a new line of things where
this extended brand identity is helping them launch this stuff easier and make sure that everything is cohesive as it goes out it sounds like everything you're saying is what they have currently is misaligned with what they like from status to attraction to leads to product launch awareness Association they want to change it
are any of these things quantifiable from a business metric I get the dance we're doing now I'm the client I feel like I'm feeding right into your hand is this is this happening right now is this meta right now is this what's going on yeah if we're not attracting the right person then
person that we want which on average pays us this much is not coming through the door so we're not hitting the revenue markers that we want to hit do you think your money is better spent investing in copyrighting and marketing funnels and marketing programs than it is in brand Identity Design if your
whole point is to attract more customers do you think by changing the identity that that's going to do anything I think the copyrighting and the marketing and how it's presented needs to be aligned with the brand identity that's important to me or else we're just going to look like the quick marketers they
a clickfunnels landing page with a lot of text and it doesn't really speak to our culture who we are and who we serve so I I do think important I do want to say this I would love nothing more than to design a brand identity system for you however I just need to
check check in with you to say like in the real world do you buy products that you love from companies that are very valuable where they're logo and identity system is trash that's an excellent question I would say yeah sometimes can you name more companies where that's true versus false or can you
name more that it's where that's false versus true where they're valuable company and their Identity Design is terrible more cases where it's true or more cases where that's false probably more cases where where it's false as I think of my own shopping Behavior and the longevity of who I buy from I'm an
iPhone user The Experience from top to bottom from when I get on the website or when I go to their desk in the shop to the packaging I think it is important how many companies that can you name that are on the Apple level experience that you're talking about would should you go
down the list with me not many probably probably not so I already know the answer to this question is because a lot of people associate a solution with what they want and they don't actually take the time to actually check in whether or not the market validates this or not I'll give you
a couple examples the Hilton Hotel you love their logo and identity system I could care less about it actually right valuable company very much so Marriott yeah Norwegian Cruises we can just go down the line and in fact there are many companies which their logo identity is terrible but it doesn't seem to
matter so I would hate for you to spend money building something in hopes of a achieving a certain result when that's not likely going to happen I care a lot about Identity Design packaging customer experience but then we have to say that that's what matters to us and not because we're trying to
attract new customers because there's probably safer bets that'll get you a more likely outcome than it is to spend more money in doing brand Identity Design but there are two other things that you mentioned which is status there's a feeling here and you don't want to feel like a subpar brand you want
to feel like a premium brand and the next is you're you're making new products and you need to launch things and maybe the old Identity Design is attached to certain feelings and associations that are no longer relevant to this company you've outgrown the old container and to get a fresh start you need
to change identity if that's the case then a logo might serve that purpose really well it's giving yourself a makeover so you can start fresh often times when a company is inherited by the children of the founder they want to put their stamp they want to change things they're going new bold Direction
they want to make it more modern and Innovative they want to switch verticals that's a good time to change the name and the logo is that the case here the more you explain it that is definitely the feeling that I have and the desire that I want and where we're at as a
business so one is a feeling based and it's hard to quantify that but let's just put that aside for a second and the other one is because we need to reposition that's a marketing function and for sure you need a new identity to reflect that nothing gets depressed talking more than when you
start to make some changes like the identity all of a sudden people notice right away because you've you've you've given it a facelift that's why people remodel restaurants and and create new identity systems is this an important thing for you do you feel like without this it's going to hold your company back
I think it's necessary right now and I wouldn't want to put so much work around the launching of a product the bringing people in if the experience does not feel right for client and it doesn't not it doesn't represent us and the more you ask these questions it definitely is just a feeling
like I want to be proud with how we're showing up in the marketplace and I want to use your language to make the experience premium and I think the identity and the logo is a big part of that I need you to know that premium logos and experiences don't come cheap that's why
they're premium tell me more are you aware of that I am well not just the design the research the craftsmanship but also in the production of things the reason why app products feel that the way they feels because every component from the plastic wrapper to the packaging and the friction in the Box
the paper the photography it's all money and these are all little tiny signals that are sent from product to customer that they might not be able to articulate but they feel so often times prospects will come to us and say we want to create a premium experience but they're not they're not really
willing to back it up and so there's a misalignment there again you've seen this too overseas companies who do not off products or me too products will cut corners and you can feel the difference you can see the difference and you can taste the difference if it's a food product so you have
to be 100% committed to this otherwise it's going to be lipstick on a pig as they say are you committed to it I'm committed to it I would like to know more of what that commitment looks like because from what I'm hearing from you this is not just a oneandone play this is
something that will probably linger throughout many different Arenas of our entire business you mentioned photography you mentioned product you mentioned packaging so I would like to know what that commitment looks like and then it sounds like we need to have a deeper conversation on if this is the commitment what is the investment
relative to that commitment but I am right now committed to this well you've mentioned the word experience several times and then we have to sit down and map out with you what all is is included in the experience of something and I don't know enough about your company to make any presumption but
let's just leave it where we started which is you want someone to help you fashion a brand identity system that is reflective of the values that you want and you're willing to make at least conceptually a financial commitment a product design commitment an experience design commitment to see this all the way through
because we're only a strongest or weakest chain that's where we'll break so having said that in what ballpark of money have you prepared in your mind to spend towards this endeavor you know with it being something that I didn't think it would come cheap relative to what I want to accomplish definitely mid
five figures or something like this but again I don't know what I don't know so I am seeking you to kind of guide me in this Arena if I'm being transparent so you're prepared to spend somewhere in the $ 50 to $60,000 range is that right once that's accomplished what is the rest
of the commitment that you have in terms of printing production photography do you have a sense of your overall budget for design be honest with you you've opened up my awareness to what's going to be needed after this initial deliverable that I was expecting from this call so I would probably need a
little bit more guidance on that as to whether that's a communication with you to discover what that is or if I need to go back to the team and understand like okay we're going to need more money because of the roll out of this after the identity is so let's talk about this
real quickly this is an aside to everyone who's paying attention right now to in order for us to expedite the conversation I'm going to skip over a few things when to make some assumptions that Mo and I have not talked about and I'm going to enter back into the scene as if the
conversation already happened okay and if you're interested in hearing more about that let us know in the comments we'll take care of that so on a different episode we will go into detail this thing so that you can see it in this excruciating detail and we can do that now back to the
episode all right Mo given our conversation about your needs and the skews that you have and the different customer touch points I'm going to do a ballpark estimation right now on top of the 50 or $60,000 you're going to need to spend on the Identity Design or what you're prepared to spend we're
looking at another at least quarter million to $400,000 so somewhere between 250 to $400,000 is the commitment that you need to make on the other things first of all before we go too deep how does that sit with you way too much you're going to spend $60,000 on a logo and you're not
prepared to spend in production for the all the other touch points that we we talked about the website the social media assets the packaging the printing I'm just getting you prepared for how much money you're going to spend if you want to create that experience like I said you've opened up my awareness
to that being the need I didn't expect it to be in that high of a six figure Mark and I'm just saying one business owner to another if you're prepared to spend 50 to $60,000 on an identity system this is very much on the low end of the spectrum here so there's probably
some potential misalignment this why we have to have this conversation here because if you actually hire someone like us to design your identity system system but you cheap out or you cut corners on the production the printing your signage and all the kinds of things that you need to to make then I
think you're wasting your time and your money and I don't want to do that to you how would you like to proceed honestly from what you just said I may have to let this marinate I'm completely misaligned with what I what I think it's going to cost versus what you just laid out
let mean just quickly explain it to you so you can have the things to ruminate over okay if you were to use a new identity system with your with your existing website it will feel really weird because it'll feel like you took a cool logo and you paste it into your site and
nothing will work and depending on the level of design service that you're going to use it could be anywhere between $40 to $80,000 just to do that alone so when I mentioned to you $250 to $400,000 you can start to see given all the different touch points that we talked about I see
at least 10 in front of me which the average spend if you were to spend on the highend would be $40,000 per touch point which is relatively low compared to the identity system that you're inquiring about right now and it would be very hard to produce anthemic videos media assets to be used
for the next year for anything less than that so there's a disproportionate amount of money that you're spending on the logo which you're not willing to commit through on the other end talk about the printing budget and everything else that we're talking about there's no way you can do this in my experience
does that help you get perspective on that that the cost per unit is relatively low compared to what you're prepared to pay for the logo and identity system yeah it does it does I wasn't I think at the at the core of all this I wasn't prepared to spend that much out the
gate so it's good to know that that's kind of what's going to be expected and I definitely have to do some realigning with what I'm prepared to do let's take a pause here I want to explain something to our audience any company an entrepreneur who's prepared to spend 50 $60,000 and creating a
premium experience and rebranding has already committed way over over this amount of money this is where the role plays usually break because if you think about the amount of money they have to have and the investment they're willing to make they're not going to sit there and spend 50 60k on a logo
and say let's do everything else for 5K each it just won't make sense at all right so this is why our audience is not able to connect like oh the role play didn't work it's it didn't work because Mo doesn't run a $300 million company and he would know that when we talk
to customers who can pay this kind of money they'd spend $250,000 on one video alone one 30 second video they'd spend $100,000 on making an explainer video for a conference they're going to use one time in fact back in the day when we used to work with gaming companies for their demos for
E3 which is the big gaming conference they spend north of half a million dollars to do a product launch video that is like 30 seconds or a minute long that's the level which we're talking about right now so everything is relative right had you said um we have $10,000 for logo then I
would have pulled the other numbers down cuz I'm just using relative scale here that's why this once in hour it's like it doesn't make sense to me well no one would spend 60k and then cut every other Corner that I know there was a little bit of intention from me on that and
I know this but I want you to elaborate what you're doing I heard a few things that you did but I want you to break down that scenario I'm going to consider that that role play ended with me backing out maybe calling you again because you consulted me to really think about what
I'm spending my money on right and wasn't fully in alignment with my thinking well maybe I shouldn't spend that much on a logo because I don't have that much for everything on the back end but here's some things that I heard from you you did a lot of unsell yourself so making me
want to say no to you and not Choose You clarifying my need challenging my thinking and then logic testing and I think a big part of how we got to the conclusion of like dude you're going to spend 60 but you're not going to spend 250 on all the other collateral that you're
going to have to make that's a big test of my logic but I want you to kind of cuz you're masterful at this break down what what you did because I don't want the end conclusion to be like well Chris has 30 years of experience that's why he did it so well so
can you just break down what you did with with me in that role play yeah I'll tell you the simple way to do it and then I'll expand on it if you wish I do wish what I'm trying to do is what therapists do the therapists is almost solely reliant on the person
in front of them to tell them the truth and the truth is is a funny word to use because true to them true to life true to reality it can all be true and also be all untrue so whenever they hear something and their Spider Sense goes off they have to say where
have you seen this to be true what evidence do you have that supports your observation that's all we're trying to do so when the client says yeah all valuable companies have a really amazing Identity Design system I say well really actually I think my instincts tell me the opposite but I don't say
that up front I just say what evidence do you have to be true and I don't want to use those words because it seems very challenging for me to ask it that way so then I say well based on your experiences with brands that are valuable how many can you think of of
that have a great Identity Design system versus how many that don't I already know this because the world is ugly it's run by people who have no taste who hire people have no taste to make things that are taste less it's very rare that's why when the client or the prospect pointed out
apple apple is the easy reference as to the gold standard if you look at the gold standard it falls off really quickly there are tons of companies out there that have great products that have great customer relationships that are worth billions of dollars who have a really poor Identity Design system true so
I already know that I kind of have a lot more evidence at least I've been able to observe that supports the opposit so when I hear something that's untrue or illogical or irrational I I just have to ask is this because you are someone that does their due diligence assessing these things so
you can be like okay that sounds illogical or am I jaded to assume that I don't feel like everybody can come to that conclusion so quickly where you're testing that person's logic I give you the life hack assume everything that's said and presented to you is untrue okay and I'll tell you why
not to be a jerk but that's what it means to be a critical thinker to be critical of your thoughts what I assume because when I I've worked with enough clients now my assumption is clients are busy they don't spend their time thinking about the things that I care a lot about and
so they haven't formulated all their thoughts and theories on what they need to do on a visual or design basis they ask for solutions they don't even know are connected to Real Results and they don't use precise enough language and so that's a lot of reasons why I suspect nothing that they say
is true not that they're ill intention not that they're trying to lie to me but they just haven't had time to think about it my job my role is to help them think about it as an advocate for their business and their goals not as an advocate for kristo and I think what
you're seeing here is a level of business maturity yes a level of self-confidence and self-awareness amount of stoicism and living by the value of do what's right for the the client and you may lose the business today but you'll win the game tomorrow so let's break this thing down let's take it to
somewhere real personal between you and me we got off a two-hour call with the entire content team and each and every single person presupposes they have the right solution and the whole time in which I'm talking I think they're just mostly just waiting so they can present their idea versus like what is
Chris really saying what is it that he wants and how do we check in with him to make sure this is true and he's thought this through now I'm unlike most people in that I actually do think through what I'm about to say and I try my best to use precise language but
this is not an indictment on you and anybody else that was on that call but everybody I think is just really waiting to say something not really listening at all and using their own unverified observations and opinions to counter my own opinions you're going to lose that war every single time but what
you're also going to do is you're going to increase the friction that you have with your clients so that's just a business lesson everybody I don't go in there saying uh you should do it this way because I believe this to be true and you don't know what you're talking about and you
know well my observation says the opposite and that's unfortunately just a sign of business immaturity now it's going to sound like wait a minute didn't you say you go and assume that people don't know what they're talking about and they're lying to me and it's un yes I do but I'm interested from
their point of view what their observations are and I would like for them to share that data with me versus me coming in saying well I went through the site and been watching these shows on the internet and this is what's that's me entering new evidence into the case I don't want to
do that so if they say something that's true then I'm more convicted and confident that this is the right solution this is an extremely high level intellectual conversation I think is about to like over people's heads I mean I I've had I've done this multiple times now and it's still it it every
time it blows my mind because it just makes me realize how jaded we go into these conversations How We Do lead with a tremendous amount of assumptions How We Do lead with tremendous amount of hunger and ego and wanting to earn the business quickly from a place of selfishness and the whole time
and I think this is why people love role plays between you and I not to digress and we always see the comments like Mo if I was in your seat it would be so much easier I would I would haggle him and all this kind of and I'm sitting here like he never
once made me feel like I need to haggle him if anything he made me genuinely reflect internally and be like damn I may not be thinking about this the right way my logic may not be clear so for me to quote unquote submit as some of the trolls say it's like no you
were too easy on him it's like no it's just so calm and so mirror esque that it's like oh that sounds very reasonable well I think you've already highlighted most of the problems one is maturity maturity comes in self-confidence ego assumptions arrogance I would use the word arrogant because I think what people
assume to be arrogant is not what they do it's like no that's what other people do but if I come in ready to prescribe solutions to you presuming I know a lot about your business and what your wants and needs are and that everything I say is true that's that's a pretty arrogant
position and I ask certain questions thinking I think I know the answer but I leave room for them to say something different right and if they say something different I'm like oh okay you're right and if you frame as an open-ended question they won't feel like you're leading them so you have no
pie on face and if I say isn't it true you were there on the night of the fifth with the the murder weapon and then they're like no I wasn't I was with my mom like well you know Poo's on my face isn't it so but if I'm like so where were you
on the night of the 5th did can anybody corroborate your whereabouts how do you know how do you remember that time so well that seems pretty reasonable I'll move on to the next question if you go in there feeling needy like you have a lack mindset it's going to skew your questions it's
going to change your tone of voice and you're going to sit there and think what can I do to get Mo to sign on the dott of yes so true and oh I Don't Care What mo asked for I want to sell sell sell well it seems like Mo wasn't comfortable with 50
I'll drop it to 25 right now this creates all kinds of strange signals to your prospect it's like wait a minute is this all a game for you this is my business you just change prices and scope on the Fly and one thing that we didn't talk about MO is what I'm doing
I'm not really trying to unell you I'm just trying to be your Advocate that's how I felt though and if we were strangers and I could get you to tell me on camera afterwards I suspect and you can tell me otherwise there's a little feeling of warmth like like God because we just
want to make sure that people care about us before we do business with them and moad asked me this question a long time ago bringing it up from the archives here and he's asked me before Chris how do you show people you care how do you do that and I turned to Mo
I said Mo here's a dirty Secret because I genuinely care it's that simple I don't need to sell you today in fact I prefer not to sell you I got enough on my plate now here's something really interesting I saw this video and hopefully you can find it for the cut later there's
a guy I don't know who he is I I feel like he's Jake the Jeweler Jeweler and he's giving away an ounce of gold I've seen this video yes okay it's like these little tags that he gives out to people and people are super suspicious of other people it's like let me see
how much gold I can give away today so he's like hey do you want a gold do you want gold they're no no no because they think there's always strings attached and when people like no I don't want it he goes that's totally fine and he says to camera something like I think
this is one of those things where no is more valuable to me when they say no so I have no problem with rejection when you have something truly of value like you're literally handing out gold on the street and people don't want it you don't feel rejected you feel relieved but I don't
think we internally believe that what we're doing is valuable cuz there's so much insecurity about what we're doing we don't value it ourselves so it's like when when clients have a just one pause one moment of hesitation you crumble and when they say I don't want that you feel rejected you feel depressed
you feel like you and and and all the people who have questioned you are are are are are correct in their assumption that you're not going to amount to much it eats at your soul I don't look at it like that I look at it like you know this this isn't a good
fit for me on on multiple planes is not good for me so let's move on until we find the right person who wants what I've got and my solution actually solves the real problem for them you hear me say this a lot Mo in our private dialogue you'll hear me do it in
role plays unfortunately you weren't there when I was running my service company but you would have heard it there too it's like yeah I'm not sure you need to do this I'm not sure this is in your best interest and and every time I say that they're like wait wait wait wait wait
wait wait you don't tell me what to do I will buy this from you I'm like okay you're not even doing it as like a cat Mouse game either cuz there's people that do do that where it's like I'm gonna keep pushing you are genuinely saying I don't think you need this from
me right now I don't think you need this at all matter of fact not just right now this is not a good use of your time money or effort and it's a weird dance that people just follow whether relationships sales it's like I want what I now think I can't have when you
are running around desperate in need of a girlfriend in need of a client in need of a boyfriend you're super needing is very repelling whereas if you're stable with your business with your life and you've got things going on you have other clients that you're working with you won't feel like you have
to sell and you'll conduct yourself very differently you have that inner core strength and stability that then people will find very attractive so that's something else that they're challenged with right because they're in a place where financially they need work I kid you not on the daily I got people sending me messages
in my DMs saying bro I'm totally broke you got to help me brother you I I just need one thing from you it's like I just want to delete those messages yeah yeah first of all I don't know you and why you coming at me all desperate like that it's not a good
look this would mean the world to me bro you need to do this I'm like I don't need to do jack for you right now I don't even know you I don't know you why would I this is make sense to me very true what I always find fascinating in our discussion is
the following we come in asking you for the tactics and you give some of the tactics the house the scripts the the prep work all of that but nine times out of 10 when we're talking about pricing and negotiation it always falls back on the personal development side and I know I just
know that when you said high level it's because we went there and there's people in the chat like dude dude give me this script Playbook so I can value base price accordingly but I really do believe this is always the disconnect and the hurdle that people need to go over because you're talking
about and me and you have done this many of times even on a personal one-on-one level you talk about people not being in a state where they can be abundant where maybe income is not that well and that's a very difficult place to be in and sometimes you have to psych yourself out
because I know when you weren't making in the bread that you're making now you were still that guy maybe not as mature and Suave M like you are right now but you still had that level of selfworth the beginning side of this conversation was here's the Playbook on how to diagnose via dialogue
to then get to a place of value based pricing you need to be removed from being the vendor if you just need to be a consultant and adviser and make people feel warm but I need to know if you can sum it up in the way that you speak so eloquently what does
someone need to do right now that has been with us for the hour hourong conversation to get to the mental space to arrive in the conversation the way you just described I do want to clarify once again something you said you you diagnosed the dialogue those were my words right you want to
diagnose in the dialogue but I'm not trying to get to the value based pricing it's a naturally occurring thing but not always because most times when people present these scenarios to me it ends there but it doesn't need to be there it could be like well seems like what you need is for
for you to book an hourly session with me and it's $5,000 an hour and you say okay great let's do that it's just not that often that people are coming to me and asking me for a high Lev coaching oneon-one situation so I I am not selling that service so I'm looking for
the problem and finding the appropriate solution for it sometimes it's me sometimes not me and I'm looking for the appropriate pricing model yes so in some scenarios I'll do a hybrid one I said why don't we do a fixed fee for the finite scope and a variable fee for the undefined scope so
we can get started with something that puts everyone at ease versus like well I don't want to spend two and a half months scoping the project with you only to find out it's not going to work so in architecture it's called sometimes design build which is we design the parts that we understand
we bid for that and we build those parts and while we're doing that we're processing permits for the rest and we just do it together requires a lot of trust but at least we get going we can get you in the building faster and we can respond to the conditions yes and I'll
tell you why this works because when you're doing a remodel there are things within the walls and the floors that you just don't know what you're going to encounter they design something based on assumptions but when they rip things out you're going to encounter new problems the Plumbing's all messed up we're going
to move this kitchen over here we're going to move things so that it's more economical for you and it won't really impact the design or the usage that's a new model that's a different model let me now break it down for people step by step let's just say you just jump to this
time stamp right here and you want to be more confident in be able to talk to a client you want to you have the desire to be more business oriented and Diagnostic in your approach if you don't want to do that and you want some cookie cutter formula find it from someone else
because it probably won't work what's that we ain't the ones or maybe we are and then you'll find you'll figure it out somehow but I don't I'm only going to tell you what I have done and what has worked for me so first of all you got to just check in with yourself
if you're acting desperate it'll change your entire approach so before you even have any kind of this dialogue make sure your business is in a place where it's at an equilibrium that you're not burning so much money that you're desperate to take on anything that walks in the door that puts you at
a lower footing in the negotiation process and it it just changes and it it skews the perspective of your mind so get right with your finances go in there with an open heart do a little bit of research so you understand some fundamentals about your client's business and then ask a couple of
questions and it will sound something like this what is the goal you're trying to achieve what is motivating this right now what have you tried in the past has prevented you from achieving this what metrics will you use to measure success what problem does this solve for you and the impact it will
it make on your company that's quantifiable what percentage of value created are you willing to invest to see this through what does doing nothing impact your business good or bad if none of these Solutions are appropriate for solving this are you prepared to look elsewhere or to do nothing it's something like that
well those are the questions but if you don't understand the philosophy behind the questions what they say you'll be like a robot you'll you'll like write down the answer but you won't know what to ask them next it won't flow cuz you truly don't understand it it's to understand vocabulary words but not
to how how to structure a proper sentence you could understand the words but you won't be able to use them and that's the problem and is the underlying philosophy to enter and exit from a place of being an adviser the philosophy can be simpler than that the philosophy could be you exist to
serve the client to help them gain Clarity on what it is they're trying to do and to use your experience or lack of to help them to identify the highest potential of success in terms of the path forward whether that includes you or not help them get clarity that's the main thing and
don't be afraid to speak truth to power and do it in a kind respectful way without biases and assumptions and you'll do well that's the philosophy
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