The Accountant and The Artist
There is a paradox at the heart of the creative industry. The world’s most imaginative people, those who conjure entire worlds from a blank page, often have the most constricted view of their own financial worth.
They can envision a new brand, a new film, a new future. But they cannot envision a reality where they are paid exceptionally well for it.
Chris Do, founder of The Futur, confronts this daily. “I love to make money but I hate accounting,” he admits. His strategy? “Make so much money and have so much profit margin it won’t even matter.” He calls it the “fire hose strategy,” an approach that makes friction disappear simply by overwhelming it with capital.
But this isn’t a solution for most. It’s a workaround. The root cause remains: a deep, often unconscious, discomfort with money. To dissect this, Do sat down with Paco de Leon, a finance expert who, unexpectedly, understands the creative dilemma better than most.
De Leon is a first-generation American who fell into finance not out of passion, but practicality. “I saw working class people and middle class people,” she recalls. “It was like, if you were serious and you wanted to make money, you became a doctor.” Unwilling to deal with blood and extra schooling, she surveyed her options. “These people doing finance…they don’t seem that smart and they seem to wear nice suits.”
It was a safety net. A way to be a professional adult while she played in her band and pursued her real interests. She found she had a high tolerance for boredom and pain, which served her well in the financial world. Yet, she felt a pull. “I bet you there’s a bunch of really interesting, cool, creative people who are doing really fascinating things in the world and they need help with their money.”
That realization led her to build a practice dedicated to artists and creative agencies, translating the language of finance for those who, like Do, would rather be doing anything else. It also led her to write her book, Finance for the People.
Ironically, Do’s own journey could have mirrored de Leon’s. An aptitude test in high school pointed him toward a career as an accountant or a stockbroker. “This must be my life, this is my destiny,” he thought. The logic and introverted nature of the work appealed to him. It was only the sudden discovery of graphic design that pulled him toward a creative path, a “salvation” that saved him from a life of spreadsheets.
This shared history, a push and pull between creative impulse and practical finance, reveals a fundamental truth. The relationship creatives have with money is not just a business problem. It’s a personal one, rooted in identity, upbringing, and human biology itself.
The Scarcity Brain
Why do so many creatives default to a lack mindset, nickel-and-diming their own potential? De Leon suggests the answer isn’t in a business school textbook, but in evolutionary biology.
“Human beings have this quirk in their mind where they pay attention to things that are scarce,” she explains. This is a survival mechanism. Early humans who paid attention to dwindling berry supplies or a shrinking herd of buffalo were the ones who survived. “The ability to pay attention and give a lot of our attention to scarcity makes sense in that context.”
This biological wiring creates a chain reaction: we scan for scarcity, it triggers a stress response in our amygdala, and that stress is supposed to kick us into action. The problem is, in the modern world, that “action” often manifests as anxiety, paralysis, or frantic, unproductive work.
Worse, this primal trigger is now a tool for marketers. Modern sales language is engineered to exploit our fear of scarcity. Phrases like “only 3 left” or the time-pressure of a Black Friday sale are designed to short-circuit our rational brain and provoke an immediate, visceral reaction. “Whenever I see that, I can feel a visceral reaction in my body of like, well I have to buy it now,” de Leon admits.
This constant triggering reinforces a scarcity mindset as the default mode of operation. We’re not just socialized to believe money is scarce; we are biologically predisposed to it, and our commercial culture relentlessly pokes at that raw nerve.
The Creative’s Double Bind
This biological programming is a problem for everyone. For creatives, it’s a crisis.
The issue is the direct line between the creator and the creation. “Creative people are very feeling-oriented people,” de Leon observes. “Their job, in my opinion, is to feel and then express that through a medium.” A design, a photograph, a piece of music isn’t just a product. It’s a distillation of their experiences, their wins, their failures, their very identity.
This creates a dangerous conflation. When a creative goes to the marketplace, they aren’t just selling a deliverable. They are asking someone to put a price on a piece of themselves.
“When the exchange does or doesn’t happen, or when you’re offered a lot less money, I think that’s when we start to see a lot of this friction,” de Leon says. “And a lot of this conflating of my work is who I am, and the prices that people pay is a direct reflection of who I am and my value and my worth.”
This is the creative's double bind. They are hit with the general scarcity mindset, then layered with a profound personal-worth dilemma that people selling widgets never face. Add a third layer, as de Leon points out from her own experience: a cultural narrative that positions creative work as something for the privileged. “I never really met working artists…until I was older,” she says. “A lot of those people were white and a lot of those people were well off.”
This creates a powerful internal script: “I’m not the kind of person that invests,” or “People like me are not wealthy.” These aren’t just thoughts; they are deeply held worldviews programmed by everything we observe. As sales expert Blair Enns, a mentor de Leon looks up to, is known for saying, those who don't talk about money don't make it. The silence and shame around finance become a self-fulfilling prophecy. An awareness of these dynamics is the first step toward rewriting the script, a process Do has explored in his own work on building a personal brand.
Arguing Against Your Own Success
This friction manifests most clearly in pricing discussions. Do points to the reaction he gets on a video about pricing a logo, his most-watched piece of content. The comments are a battleground.
While some embrace the idea of charging premium rates, a vocal segment reacts with anger and denial. “This is total BS,” they write. “If you charge this much for a logo, they’ll just hire someone else.”
What confounds Do is that this argument comes not from clients, but from other creatives. They are passionately arguing against their own self-interest.
De Leon provides a diagnosis. It’s a self-protection mechanism. “It must feel very frightening or alarming…if I’m out there charging 75 dollars for a logo and you’re out there charging 1500 or…fifteen thousand,” she explains. “That is gonna shock me.”
Accepting that a radically different price is possible forces a painful reckoning. It means confronting the reality of years spent undercharging and overworking. It surfaces questions about missed opportunities and financial struggles that could have been avoided. “It’s really painful to be like, I wasted three years doing 75 dollar logos when I could have expanded my thinking,” she says.
The easier path is denial. It is psychologically safer to attack the new information than to integrate it. A closed mind is a defense mechanism. People would rather stick with a broken system they understand than embrace a new one that reveals their past mistakes.
To test this ceiling, Do ran a social experiment on Twitter. He asked, “What was the most amount of money you ever charged for a single logo?” The answers ranged from zero to $750,000.
The predictable outrage followed. Disbelief. Accusations. Rationalizations. But the point wasn’t to prove a specific number. It was to shatter the self-imposed limits creatives place on their own value. The goal was to show them that their reality is not the only reality. “Your limited thinking will actually limit the kind of success you’re going to have,” Do concludes.
When Pain Becomes the Catalyst
If people are so resistant, what actually causes them to change? The answer is simple and brutal: pain.
“If you talk to people who’ve transformed their lives and you ask them why did they do it, it’s oftentimes because the pain of staying the same was…they could not tolerate that pain anymore,” de Leon states. Transformation happens when the agony of stagnation outweighs the fear of change.
The person who finally raises their rates isn’t necessarily inspired. They’re desperate. They are burned out, in debt, and can no longer sustain the physical and emotional cost of under-earning. The change is not a leap toward pleasure, but a frantic scramble away from pain.
Do muses on whether this pain can be manufactured through marketing, by painting a vivid picture of failure to motivate action. De Leon acknowledges this works. It’s a common tactic in manipulative marketing. “That doesn’t feel good to me,” she says, distancing herself from the strategy. “I don’t want to exploit other people’s…they are already in pain and I don’t want to put them in more pain just to sell them a thing.”
Instead, her approach is to provide the tools for when someone reaches that threshold on their own. Her book and content are asynchronous resources, waiting for the person who is finally ready. For creatives, she notes, there’s an advantage. They already know how to use their imagination. “They close their eyes…and they imagine something and then they make it exist in real life,” she says. “They’re already doing the work of thinking a thought and then making that thought exist.”
The challenge is to turn that powerful imagination inward, to redesign their own beliefs about money. This requires a new level of self-awareness and emotional regulation, a skill set often overlooked but critical for success in any creative business, as explored in discussions on handling feedback and criticism.
A Playbook for Financial Clarity
For those who have reached their pain threshold and are ready for change, de Leon offers a practical starting point. It isn’t about complex spreadsheets or market analysis. It’s about building a simple, consistent habit.
She calls it the Weekly Finance Time. It’s a recurring appointment on your calendar, with yourself, to manage your money. “The least amount of time you should dedicate is 20 minutes,” she advises. “An hour for people who are working for themselves is really solid.”
The initial steps are disarmingly simple, designed to overcome the inertia of avoidance:
- Start by showing up. The most important part is honoring the appointment. Don’t worry about what you’ll do at first.
- Just gather logins. If you’ve been avoiding your finances, you likely have accounts you rarely access. Your first task is to simply find your usernames and passwords for student loans, business loans, credit cards, and bank accounts. Put them in a password manager.
- Just look. In your next session, log in and look. Don’t judge. Don’t analyze. Just review your transactions. Lay your eyes on the data.
“It might feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s kind of like going to the gym,” de Leon says. “I’m not asking you to wake up tomorrow and join Equinox and do 50 burpees…I’m just asking for you to like, go there, park your car, and stand outside the door for a little while.”
This gentle exposure builds tolerance and reduces the emotional charge associated with money. But managing your state is an ongoing task. For this, de Leon introduces a powerful psychiatric tool: the Window of Tolerance.
Developed by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, this concept describes the optimal zone of emotional arousal where you can function effectively. Outside this window, your decision-making is impaired.
- Hyper-arousal: This is the “fight or flight” state. You feel anxious, overwhelmed, and fired up. You’re arguing with customer service chatbots or obsessively refreshing your bank account.
- Hypo-arousal: This is the “freeze” state. You feel numb, withdrawn, and disconnected. You’re “ostriching,” ignoring bills and avoiding financial conversations entirely.
The key is to recognize which state you’re in and use simple techniques to guide yourself back to the window of tolerance. “The state that you’re in determines the quality of the decisions that you’re going to make,” de Leon insists. It’s like going to the grocery store hungry; you’re guaranteed to make bad choices. Financial decisions are no different.
The Undeniable Case for Charging More
Once you develop the emotional regulation to engage with money rationally, the logic for charging more becomes undeniable. Do challenges de Leon with an inversion exercise: earnestly argue why creatives should charge less.
The arguments feel plausible on the surface:
- There’s less friction in the sales process.
- You don’t have to learn difficult new skills like negotiation or value-based pricing, a topic often discussed in-depth in frameworks for business.
- You’ll be liked and seen as affordable to everyone.
- You don’t have to make hard business decisions like choosing a niche.
- You can avoid hiring and management, staying a happy “maker.”
But as Do points out, “The arguments are fake…if you just go one layer deeper, you’re kind of screwed.” Charging less is a strategy for stagnation, not growth.
The case for charging more, by contrast, creates a cascade of positive outcomes. It is not an act of greed, but a foundation for a sustainable and impactful career. De Leon and Do lay out the benefits:
- A rising tide lifts all boats. When experienced creatives charge more, they raise the perceived value of the entire profession. This creates room for junior talent to grow and establishes a healthier market for everyone.
- You can work less and do better work. Higher fees mean taking on fewer clients. This allows for deeper focus, higher quality output, and liberation from the burnout cycle of chasing volume.
- You can build a business, not just a job. Profitability allows you to hire people. This isn't just about delegation; it's about hiring people who are *better* than you, elevating the quality of your entire operation and building a true agency.
- You can be more generous. Charging premium rates to corporate clients who can afford it allows you to subsidize pro bono or low-cost work for nonprofits and causes you believe in. Profit creates the margin for mission.
- You can build a life. Charging more means you can afford health insurance, save for taxes without panic, and fund a retirement account. It provides a living wage, not just a starving artist’s wage.
- It boosts your self-worth. The act of successfully commanding a high fee validates your skills, experience, and education. It proves that society values creative thinking and rewards the difficult path you chose.
This is the future Do and de Leon both want for creatives. “Wouldn’t the world be a better place?” de Leon asks. “How many other little Pacos out there didn’t believe in themselves, didn’t believe in their ideas and their imagination?”
The price you charge is more than a number on an invoice. It is a declaration of what you believe your contribution is worth. It is a reflection of your mindset, and that mindset is the only thing truly standing in your way.
You have the imagination to create something from nothing. Now, you must turn that power on yourself and create the financial reality you deserve.
TRANSCRIPT
no matter [Music] what you charge for your hourly rate I think the issue there is that you're having a conversation where you're trading time for money and the reason why I don't think that works is because if you've had 5 10 15 20 25 years of experience not only do you have 25
years of good experience and wins but you've had a tremendous amount of losses and failures and you've made a ton of mistakes super excited to talk to you it's not that often I get to talk to a finance person a financial planner and a bookkeeper a person in the financial space and I'm
excited and looking forward to it like there are a lot of financial people I don't want to talk to because I gotta I got a confession I want to make to you right now I'm just going to say so our audience is going to know I love to make money but I hate
accounting um okay so maybe we'll just put that out there I know you talk a lot about the emotional energy how we feel about money and all that kind of stuff but it's exciting to me to solve a big problem it's not so exciting to me to look at the numbers where I'm
like oh here's where every dollar every cent goes and my my trick in life in order not to have to deal with the the bookkeeping stuff is to make so much money and have so much profit margin it won't even matter I don't disagree with you in a lot of ways I call
that the fire hose strategy which I also Implement in my own business because it does make things easier right money does having money doesn't make all your problems go away but it makes a lot of them go away and it makes a lot of friction go away so I can see where you're
coming from there I also have a confession to make I too I don't like jump out of bed in the morning and think like I can't wait to reconcile my accounts or I'm going to shut up get out of town you don't like I'm thinking that come on I um I kind of
accidentally fell into Finance more more because my time was running out in college and I am first generation so my parents are immigrants everybody in their generation are immigrants and I just I always I saw Working Class People and middle class people and they really instilled those values and it was like if
you were serious and you wanted to make money right you like became a doctor or went into the medical field and when I was surveying my options I was like there's no way like me and blood not gonna happen also it seems you have to do a lot of work and I'm not
into that you gotta go to extra school not for me and I was like but these people doing Finance you know no offense but they don't seem that smart and they seem to wear nice suits like they go to an air-conditioned office all day long they think and like type on a computer
that's for me then I can like go home and play in my band and just like you know do whatever I want to do so I chose finances like this kind of like safety net right it's a practical I could always fall back on it I'll always be employable and like the one
thing I'm really good at is just like gritting my teeth and showing up kind of despite how I'm feeling right that has its pros and has its cons and I think I did that enough times over enough years I learned enough that one day I could just see it from a completely different
perspective and instead of it feeling like oh this is a burden and I hate it and I want to turn my back on it I want to run away from it I realized I actually don't really like it that much I have a high tolerance for boring things and for pain but I
bet you there's a bunch of really interesting cool creative people who are doing really fascinating things in the world and they need help with their money is there a way that I can kind of have my cake and eat it too where I can speak this language right and be this person but
then I get to meet cool people and like not have to you know hang out with accountants all day long okay I'm gonna call your confession and raise you a confession okay I'm gonna share another convention with you in high school I didn't have a lot of Direction I didn't know what I
was supposed to do and also first generation immigrant myself and I took an aptitude test yep I took an aptitude test and it told me I was supposed to be an accountant or a stock broker and I'm like this must be my life this is my destiny and for the same reasons in
which you said which was I will work by myself I'm an introvert I like machines I like logic and luckily something intervened and I was introduced to the concept of a professional working artist called a graphic designer and that was my salvation my my ray of light that pulled me in a totally
different direction but I would have probably warmed up where you did for a period of time had I followed that path so it's quite interesting that you have this love for music and you tolerate Finance and Accounting as a way to be a professional adult in real life right yeah but I raged
against it clearly and obviously I as much as I thought I you know being a professional creative is not for a person like me but you know I've now published a book and yeah it's just interesting to be in this position where I write and I share my thoughts and share my ideas
and I'm drawing and as much as I it's like the The Godfather keeps pulling I try to get away but it keeps pulling me back in I tried not to be a professional creative yet the the wave took me and here I am when you said a person like you is there anything
else that you haven't mentioned that defines a person like you um I mean coming from an immigrant family right being first generation um Brown um I never really met working artists until or creative professionals until I was older in my 20s and a lot of those people were white and a lot of
those people were well off and a lot of those people were in my eyes like quote unquote culture like you know they went to museums with their family and they had conversations about like dega and Magritte and I didn't come from that and so I think for me my approach to Art and
my approach to creativity has always felt I don't want to say wrong but it's really different you know it's like in my eyes kind of pure because it's very childlike like nobody shaped my ideas about art at a young age is always very playful and very free and so I think that's very
obvious for anybody who becomes familiar with my work that I Chris I'm just trying to have a good time here on Earth I love that okay we just jumped right into it and we probably needed to do this in sequence so for people who don't know who you are can you can you
introduce yourself and tell us a little about who you are Paco absolutely my name is Paco de Leon and I help creative professionals feel less weird about their finances and I run a company and we really do two things one side of our company is a service-based company called Helia bookkeeping and we
run the books for Creative businesses like production companies and marketing agencies and the other side of my business is what you are experiencing inside of your ears right at this moment I go on the internet and I talk to people and I create content and I share ideas and all of it is
in service of having more conversations about money so that we are all just feeling more comfortable about this topic we're learning practical things we're facing our feelings we're unpacking our emotions because I think that's really the first step to change is like what happened to us um how do we feel about it
how are we weird about it and how can we build better habits and a better future for not just ourselves but for everyone I feel like as you're talking and sharing your experiences and the fact that we're both in Los Angeles or the Greater Los Angeles area there's a lot of commonality here
and I'm trying to sort in my head right now what can I use your professional expertise and experience in that will help this larger community of creative people that we speak to I believe the things that you're saying are going to hit right in their heart and in their brain so if you
don't mind I'm gonna throw up a couple of things that people seem to have struggles with and you mentioned the emotional and the psychological aspects of money the guilt that people feel the shame or the lack of wanting to talk about it because it creates too much negative energy for them if if
I can enlist you in this endeavor to get people more comfortable with money is that okay that's what I'm literally on Earth to do perfect and you have the background where I just pretend to be one so here we go let me just dive into this a lot of creative people have what
many would consider a fix or finite or a lack mindset when it comes to money and before we get into the solutions can you speak to a little bit about the problems the Hang-Ups the the things we've been socialized to believe about money can we start there yes I actually want to talk
about evolutionary biology If instead of how we're socialized if we could start there first I think that would explain a lot so there's this theory in evolutionary biology that human beings have this quirk in their mind where they uh they they pay attention to things that are scarce and from that perspective from
an evolutionary biological perspective if you think about it that makes absolute sense right because think about think about early humans sitting on top of a grassy Mound cold and naked right or maybe a loincloth um in order to survive it it would behoove us to pay attention to things like oh there's not
that many Buffalo hanging out here or berries or whatever we're eating and the clean water supply seems to be dwindling right and so the ability to pay attention and give a lot of our attention to scarcity make sense in that context normally what happens is we see scarcity our body gets stressed and
that kicks us into action some people might freeze but other people it kicks them into action and so kicking into action is like finding more water mobilizing and moving so we have this like this chain of response like our brain is alerting our amygdala is scanning for scarcity it's it's looking for it
it finds it we get stressed out and then we are kicked into action and other people you know different people are going to be kicked into action in different ways one person might freeze and freak out another person might want to numb out and watch Netflix another person might just let their mind
go in circles so I think from just a purely biological perspective we're already kind of screwed when it comes to this lack mindset it becomes very natural and when we look at things like sales or different types of sales language they're the people who are who are writing the sales copy the sort
of things that we're seeing happen online now really lend itself to really pushing on that thing inside of our mind that freaks us out about things being scarce so things like only E3 left whenever I see that I can feel a visceral reaction in my body of like well I have to buy
it now because there's only three left right I need to like be greedy a greedy human and take what I can get um things like we just you know we're recording this right after American Thanksgiving and the Black Friday is a perfect example of like a 24 hours period where if you don't
get it now you're gonna miss out on the sale right so what's what is scarce there and it's time so uh yeah we not only are we I think biological biologically predisposed to pay attention to scarcity there's all these things in society that are looking to exploit that within us okay I love
that um I think it is seemingly true this theory that we're not as motivated to get the things that we want but we're more motivated to protect the things from like losing something right so there's this negative mindset that we're kind of be we're going to be triggered to take action I understand
it perfect sense let's Advance this conversation further then so now I'm a teenager or I'm a new college graduate and I'm going to go into business uh let's just assume look let's for the sake of our conversation here I'm gonna be a freelance creative how does this translate into me not charging what
I want not being able to have this conversation you mentioned this kind of stress reaction that we have but what else is it about this can you can you unpack this a little bit more yeah I think that there's probably a lot of different things going on I think for Creative people in
particular there is much more of a A to B a direct connection between what you're creating which ultimately is a part of who you are right when you're a creative person my opinion is that you spend a tremendous amount of time feeling life and experiencing it and feeling it and letting that data
that you collect become synthesized inside of you and then you create something that speaks to that experience right everything you're feeling so I think creative people are very feeling oriented people their job in my opinion is to feel and then Express that through a medium and so therefore the thing that they're creating
whether it's a graphic or a photograph a film a score it's very much a part of who they are and then to try to go to the marketplace and say hey there's this thing and I made and it's very much a part of me would you like to buy it and then when
the exchange does or doesn't happen or when you're offered a lot less money I think that's when we start to see a lot of this friction right and a lot of this conflating of my work is who I am and the prices that people pay is a direct direct reflection of of who
I am and my value and my worth I think there's a lot of commingling going on and it makes perfect sense to me that that would go on but uh yeah I think sometimes we have to take a very cold and calculated look at the skills that we're creating and I mean you
talk about this a lot and the value that the person that we're selling our product or service to what how valuable is it to them and sometimes we have to take a step back and understand it's not a reflection of of who we are and and our contribution to the world it's just
tragically Market forces um uh one of my friends and somebody that I look up to Blair ends often will say say things like those who don't talk about money don't make it and I want to just tee you up to this thing and just kind of trying to tie all these things together
uh how a person's view on money uh affects their ability to earn and how they're interconnected these things are tied together so can can we talk about that oh yeah let's talk about that Chris so you know earlier when I said Oh I thought I'm not the kind of person who could be
a professional creative that people will pay me for my ideas right that was a world view that was instilled in me it was programmed in me because of everything I observed the environment I grew up in the media messages who I interacted with and who I didn't interact with and that happens that's
that happens to us that's like the whole that's what we're doing when we're growing up we're observing narratives and stories and biases and we're synthesizing all of those things inside of us and that's creating our world view and our world view dictates how we think things work in the world and money is
just one of those things right we have stories about love and relationships oftentimes we learn that from our parents and their relationships or the Dynamics we have with our siblings and we observe this with money as well so yeah I I want to be careful here because it is your mindset is very
very very important it's one of the few things that you can alter and control right we can't control when a recession happens we can't control if Elon is acting like a weirdo and you're holding Tesla stock we can't control you know when a war is occurring but we can control how we think
and so that's why I think people like you people like me We tend to really really focus on where our agency lies and mindset is one of those things so if you grew up in a household where money was never talked about or you grew up in a let's give a really extreme
example I I ran uh I came across a person who was associating like money with abuse because she grew up in a in a household with an alcoholic father and every time he would come home from work he would after a Payday he would spend the money at the bar get really drunk
come home and he would be abusive and so this person did not it took them many many many years to understand that they were drawing this direct connection between literally payday and abuse and I know that's a very extreme example but I think it illustrates it really well and it shows that sometimes
not sometimes it would behoove us to really put in the time to really consider how we have drawn these conclusions and what we think about money and how what how we think about value and what you think you're allowed to do in the world and once you start to really unpack that you'll
start to see that these through lines they do impact you in terms of money but that inevitably impacts your career choice that inevitably impacts you know just how you think you can be in the world and I think once you start to untangle those things there's like a more lightness of being there's
a bit more freedom of of expanding and changing how do I become aware of maybe a not so healthy narrative around money if I'm if like if I don't have that over like if I'm not already aware of it right now are there signs that that you can point to or symptoms and
then you can say okay look this is probably a good indicator that somewhere in your past you had an unhealthy relationship with money I think there's a few different ways you can start to do that one thing to do is like try to watch your thoughts which I know is like I'm literally
like recommending send Buddhism to people but if you can start to observe the things you say to yourself when it comes to money that's a really good indicator because what's happening there is that's just like a script that's on repeat it's like playing in the background um like for me the one the
one that I said earlier it's such a great example it's just I'm not the kind of person that I'm not the kind of person that invests or people like me don't invest or people like me are not wealthy right like things like that people like me can't afford to do this thing people
like me will never work for I'll never work for myself trying to catch your thoughts is a really good place to start um observing other people talk about money I think is also a really good thing to do it's like if you have a friend who's constantly like I can't do that I'm
I'm broke we're broke I'm poor I'm broke when you start to see other people's stories on repeat I think it becomes easier to see your own stories um and then like you know since you're from Los Angeles you're fully weird as as I am there's a lot of weird things you can do
you can meditate I think a meditation practice is not just for you I think it's to help make the world a better place so that you're just like not popping off at a Trader Joe's and stuff like that you're just a little bit more chill and the thing with meditation that's really important
or the thing that I took away from it that I continue to take away from it is this whole idea that you can think of thought and not be that thought a thought can be a cloud floating in the sky and you don't have to like grip to that thought so aggressively and
believe that you are that thought sometimes the thought just comes and that's that and I think the more you can internalize that idea the easier it is to start to find like catch the thoughts and then decide hey I'm not gonna let's think about let's do a different thought let's have it let's
let's tell a different story okay so I want to quickly just recap some of the things that I heard you say a creative people tend to have like a double whammy when it comes to relationship with money like it's a luck of the draw depending on where you're raised by who and how
you're raised with your relationship with money but then if you're on the bad side of that and you're also a creative person who's really led by feeling and how you observe the world where there's a connection between what you create in your own self-worth and if we feel toxic things maybe a creative
person feels them twice or four times as much as someone else so we're having this not so relationship with good relationship with money now here's where I see it manifesting itself and I'd love to get your Insight on this maybe we'll agree maybe we'll disagree let's see where this goes um I have
a video that I put out on dinner internet and it's about pricing a logo and it's our most watched video and so I get a wide range of people who tune in and then they leave some kind of comment they are usually on the extremes of reaction like love it of course this
is true this is what I'm doing and now I need to learn more about this and then there's this other side which really confuses me and it's not coming from clients it's usually coming from other creative people where they say this is total BS if you charge this much for a logo they'll
just hire someone else and it's almost like they're arguing against their own self-interest which really confuses me do you have any insight on that and then I'll lead you to the next thought yeah I think that it must feel very frightening or alarming and I don't know if embarrassing is the right word
but if I'm out there charging 75 dollars for a logo and you're out you're charging 1500 or a multiple of that fifteen thousand that is gonna Shock Me and sometimes I think people would rather Mess With the Devil they know right they would rather keep their mindset smaller because at least in that
way they understand how that world works right they they've created rules for how that world works you just have to do a lot of logos you just have to kill yourself working but okay I know how that world works I think it's very uncomfortable for people to look at something from a different
perspective and to truly have their mind exploded and everything that they've been doing even if let's say I've only been doing it for three months but let's say I've been doing 75 logos for three years it's really painful to be like I wasted three years doing 75 logos when I could have expanded
my thinking and looked at this from a different perspective and that creates a whole Cascade of other questions what problems could I solve if you're in debt you're like uh Jesus you know like it's kind of a ball of wax and I think it's much easier to keep a closed mind um so
is uh it's it's some form of self-protection mechanism that it's too painful to accept what might be a true reality versus the one that you created for yourself because then you're really going to beat yourself up to say like I could have changed and other people are doing it I'm just the idiot
doing this so it's actually we'll stay with this low fees low self-worth at least that aligns with our world view is that what you're saying I think that's one reason I don't think maybe that's every person who's leaving you mean comments on your videos saying this is ridiculous and uh completely false but
I think a good amount of people like if you look at it like look at the same thing with different circumstances like somebody who's working a job uh who's unhappy right and let's say you know they're not making as much as they need to be making and somebody posted a video on the
video is like it's the same advice like you can make a lateral move right in an industry that's growing and that's how you can make more money that same person might say the same thing of like that's that's just not how the world works right and so I think there's a lot of
people that they just don't understand the power of your own mindset of your own thinking and how powerful having a much more growth oriented mindset truly is okay so to to continue on this thought here before we get into Solutions and remedies for this I want our audience to suffer for a little
bit longer as you're probably sitting there nodding your head in the car or wherever you're listening to this okay so I took it a step further I went on Twitter and I said I'm curious what was the most amount of money you ever charge for a single logo no strategy no marketing analysis
no re just a logo and of course I knew what was going to come back which was a wide span of in terms of budgets from zero to the highest one I saw was 750 000 for just a logo and people on the internet are losing their mind and this is now no
longer me saying it's possible this is random people on the internet whether you believe it to be true or not or saying it and they're just sitting here and I I just can imagine them looking at their phone or the computer screen eyes glaze and face like in utter shock and disbelief what
I was trying to do with this tweet was to show people how your limited thinking will actually limit the kind of success you're going to have now I'm not sure where the social experiment goes here if anybody will wake up it suddenly have a different conversation with themselves and I can already see
so much pushback that's not possible or it's because of X Y and Z reason do you want to expand on why you think they're responding this way and before we get into what we can do about this I stand by my original answers yeah I I do I think that it's painful for
people to change it is painful transformation is a fun word but actually transforming is is hard work and again I don't think people want to believe that they're much more powerful than they are we're our potential for change is Limitless I believe and I want people like my whole vibe is step into
your power and a big part of that is taking responsibility for the programs you already have running in your brain and thank them great they've got you this far but what's going to take you to the next level is on learning a lot learning a lot of new things thinking differently and allowing
allowing possibility into your life regardless of how heinous it looks right you know like 70 750k for a logo is insane but I'm glad that you told me this information wow what there's so much more possibility than I even realized yes so we might be slipping into letting go of the scarcity lack
mindset and moving into a abundance mindset first of all saying okay this exists and this is possible and then if you try and then you ask yourself again well what else is possible maybe there is no limit and the only limit is the one I put on myself so you you mentioned that
transformation is actually painful it's a lot of work and there's a lot of resistance so as a person who works with creative people and helping them with finance and money if somebody's not ready for that transformation if they're pushing back so hard are they for now a lost cause you just leave them
alone or can you help the people who who seemingly are dug into this position see this is the lovely part of having a book it's asynchronous communication so I don't have to be in the trenches with people in terms of helping them change that you know there's a world where I will I
would do coaching and I think I would have to do deal with this on a more real basis but I actually think it's easier to deal with creative people because they use their imagination right they close their eyes or go for a walk in the park or roll a joint and they imagine
something and then they make it exist in real life so they're already doing the work of thinking a thought and then making that thought exists IRL and I think once people start to just start to understand that they've already done this and they continue to do this it makes it easier for them
to face the music that their minds are powerful and that they are powerful and that they can use their imagination and create tangible change externally the funny thing that I read in the comments usually on one of our videos like this is like this is so stupid this person doesn't know what they're
talking about I'm never gonna watch a stupid Channel again I'm thinking friend I put out advice on how you can make more money and I'm not even selling you anything and you're so angry about something well fine shoot yourself on the foot the bullets are yours you do what you want with them
it's totally okay you actually don't hurt me by not taking my advice and making more money for yourself and for your loved ones that's on you and that's totally okay and I always think that maybe one day I'm gonna craft an argument so well or create a beautiful illustration like like you have
in your book Finance for the people where they'll see the illustration like oh that's the model I needed to see and understand in order for me to process this I'm ready for that transformation you're talking about now does such a thing exist or are you saying like well when they're ready for the
book that means they're ready to learn and that's a time in which you can have that dialogue with them I mean I think we talked about pain earlier I think I think a lot of people if you ask them if you talk to people you do talk to people who've transformed their lives
and you ask them why did they do it it's oftentimes because the pain of staying the same was they could not tolerate that pain anymore and the pain of transformation was just like ever so slightly less painful and so let's just do the ever so slightly less painful thing and the results are
amazing I think maybe those people are not you know the people who are not seeing your perspective the ones who are angry about the very expensive logos maybe they just haven't reached that threshold of pain where they're like okay Something's Gotta Give and then it cuts to the Montage of them transforming I
see so are you saying that the very real pain of not achieving what you want if it's greater than the pain of changing your mind or transforming then they'll go for the less of two evils in their mind I think so in a lot of ways I think we're motivated by pain and
pleasure and a few that's exactly it you hit it on the head yeah okay so if I were wanting to help people push them off that cliff and jump into that pit of pain I need to paint a more Vivid High Fidelity picture where they're gonna feel that pain the most is that
what you refer to in marketing before where people are really tuned in to exploiting this part of it making you feel so much pain that you're then I'm motivated to change I feel like I'm leading you down a path where you know the phrase like the path to hell is paved with good
intentions I feel like we started off with good intentions and now I'm suddenly leading you down a path where I'm like yeah all of your marketing messages should be really agitating they should really make the the the the the potential customer feels tremendous amount of sense of pain and then that will make
them change that works I know that that works we know that that works I'm sure you're signed up to people's email lists and that's their strategy and you can see it because you spend so much of your time dissecting and understanding marketing I I haven't spent as much time thinking about marketing as
you have and even I can see it and that works but that doesn't feel good to me it that doesn't resonate with me and I don't want to exploit other people's you know they're they are already in pain and I don't want to make them feel like I don't want to put them
in more pain just to sell them a thing you know so that hasn't been my Approach but I can see how it's very powerful and useful so you do what you want to do crisp I'm washing my hands of this can't just say that it's on there so here's a footnote for future
listeners please put in your calendar November 30th at 3 13 PM uh Paco indoctrine indoctrinated me in the dark arts of manipulative exploitive marketing she's the Sith Lord that I didn't know existed and now I've joined the dark side well I guess it was bound to come out eventually right it is out
now your Emperor Palpatine the whole time it's been you it's been you yes pull me the strings okay Jedi Council let's get back together let's get back together and form what the possible solutions are so how do we okay if we're in the middle Bren decided and we're like you know what you're
saying resonates I feel a lot of pain around money and my refusal to talk about it to price appropriately it always feels like this lowest mid mentality wins where it's a race to the bottom I'm ready for a change what do I need to do are there steps I can take things I
can think about yeah I think if you are working for yourself the one thing that you that's very actionable that you can do it right now you can start doing this right now is schedule weekly Finance time and it's exactly what it sounds like it is a block of time that you dedicate
every week to starting to care and mind and manage and Foster your relationship with money and I think the least amount of time you should dedicate is 20 minutes I think an hour for people who are working for themselves is really solid start because maybe the first like month you do it you're
like what am I gonna do for an hour over time you'll realize like you know when you work for yourself you have your personal finances you have your business finances you have invoices that you need to send you have invoices you need to follow up on you probably need to call your cell
phone company and you're like hey you totally charged me 100 more dollars now than you were two and a half years ago can we have a conversation about this there's a lot of like administrative things that are that are required to like mind your financial life so you can you know make a
list and do all those things but the important thing is to just start showing up for yourself and if you've never done this before during your first weekly Finance time I think you should just log into your accounts just get your logins because I know there's a lot of folks out there who
they don't even remember their student loan logins or you know there's like a business loan that they're like I don't know I pay it but I don't log in get all your logins and put them in a password manager and now you're just like one step closer to being much more organized and
having everything together and then the next week you can just start to poke around and just like look at your look at all the things you charged on your credit card uh over the last week or the last several weeks and just look just lay your eyes on it and it might feel
uncomfortable at first but it's kind of like you know going to the gym right I'm not asking you to wake up tomorrow and join Equinox and do 50 burpees I'm really not asking for that I'm just asking for you to like go there park your car and stand outside the door for a
little while be like next week I'm going in um be gentle with yourself and and really give yourself that space because whatever you focus on it it expands I have to say something Paco you have a kind healing energy it's very different than the way I would talk about this and I appreciate
that so there's lots of different flavors for everybody in the world it's like soothing to hear you say this okay no judgment try you know expose yourself a little bit at a time and see what you get you know the funny thing is I mentioned earlier in the podcast I don't like looking
at numbers it kills my creative brain and every once in a while when I look at the numbers bad things happen I really tell you yeah so here's a very small silly thing I was on the converse site and I go and check in my account like you say log in I'm like
what is going on here then I see in my history purchase history I bought two pairs of the same shoe like no I didn't this is stupid why I I know what's in my closet I only have one pair this is crazy so you know what I started spinning myself into some some
narrative and I'm not happy so I'm chatting with a customer to support person which I'm sure is not doesn't care whether I'm happy or not about what's going on they basically give me no answers like oh you purchased this last year I'm like yeah but I just noticed right now that you charged
me twice it doesn't make any sense why would I buy two pairs of shoes and they couldn't figure it out either but they're and then they said um it shows that you bought two sizes can you tell me what the sizes are they're like I don't have that data and then I was
frustrated in the chat and I started revisiting my mind I'm like oh my god I'm an idiot I did buy two pairs of shoes I bought two pair because I wanted to try one on and return the other but it doesn't show that a returned one so I spun up into a negative
State and I probably gave this person a hard time for 10 minutes for no good reason this is why I need to stay out of the day-to-day finances so the way I usually manage money it's like um I I saw this interview with Gene Hackman he goes I know how to act directors
don't tell me how to act he says all I want you to tell me is one of two things faster or slower and that's kind of how I am with finances my wife or her she's a creative person but she does the the finance for our company I just need her to tell
me faster or slower spend more money or slow down on spending the money because this is where we're at and that's all I need to know is this a horrible recipe for disaster I don't want to say that this is a horrible recipe for disaster but I would um encourage you to be
more engaged and I have a little tip for you the next time you want to be mean to somebody um in the chatbot or you want to be mean to the chatbot oh God I sound involved um so there's this psychiatrist um I think his name is Daniel J Siegel pretty sure it's
that and he created this thing called this tool called the window of Tolerance in the window of Tolerance goes from a scale of one to eight and it is meant to help you identify where you are how you are feeling so the window of Tolerance is somewhere in the middle let's say it's
like a three four five and anything above or below is you're either feeling hyper or hypo you're either feeling like very numb and withdrawn you're like ostriching right you don't want to face your finances you don't want to look at your accounts you don't want to do anything you don't want to open
the mail you want to ignore it and then the other on the other end of the spectrum you're fired up right you're just ripping that Bank of America customer service rep a new one you're you're being very hyperactive you're stressed out and so before you sit down for your weekly Finance time and
especially before you do anything that's like a bigger financial decision try to ask yourself where you are in your window of Tolerance right and if you're feeling all worked up okay what are the things that are going to kind of bring me down to this window of Tolerance and I forgot to say
what the definition of the window of tolerances that the window of Tolerance is a state that you're in where you can Health you can deal with life's ups and downs in a really natural healthy way right so you're not like popping off with people and you're not just ignoring the situation um so
ask yourself where you are in that window of Tolerance and then do something to bring you into the window if you're outside of it so a couple examples if you're like feeling numbed out and withdrawn and you just kind of want to scroll and not do anything you might want to Splash cold
water on your face or go for a run or a walk or you know um like listen to lizzo very loudly and if you're on the other side of the spectrum if you're feeling really stressed out and you need to calm down you can pet your dog or FaceTime a friend or take
three deep breaths or rub some essential oils between your hands and smell it I mean you know what works for you and this concept is important for finances because the state that you're in determines the quality of the decisions that you're going to make right the example I always love to use is
like if you go to the grocery store hungry you're going to make bad choices period do not stop or do not pass go do not collect 200 that's just how it works right and it's because of the state that you're in and we need to start understanding that with financial decisions the state
that we're in matters as well and I just want to also say like for the world to be a better place we should all take responsibility for our feelings and learn how to self-soothe and self-regulate I like that so when we're feeling disconnected and indifferent or numb we need to shock our system
back the other way like we need to care again we need to bring some of the energy and the passion back in and if we're feeling too stressed out maybe hyper or just in an uncontrollable State we need to like cool down a little bit and bring ourselves back to center right totally
I mean faster or slower right yeah hey there you go way to tie it in okay um and then you get into this window of Tolerance where you're making Natural Healthy maybe rational decisions so you're not too far on the other end of the spectrum right that's exactly it your decisions are more
rooted in cognition and rationality instead of like just an emotional response yeah I just want to let people know I usually don't get upset and my level of getting upset I'm not going off on the person like oh this is not helpful that's usually what I write like uh could you give me
more information and I'm just I'm mostly frustrated that uh in the time in which I'm talking to this person I got zero resolution to the problem and also my time is worth more than the 45 bucks I'm trying to save and get back here but that's usually how I calm myself down it's
like it's really not worth it it's just not worth it no amount of money really is worth me getting upset over and changing my state right my flow State it's very healthy of you well if you always snap back to look at the bigger picture the of Life very few things will actually
really bother you right totally yeah now I need your help here um oftentimes I try to get creative people to learn to price their projects to be more so that they can be paid more so they have to work less and they can do higher quality work employee people treat them better grow
the economy all kinds of things but sometimes that doesn't work and I I Came Upon This this kind of way of arguing or looking at a problem called inversion thinking where you take the opposite stance I'd like your help here and and you have to do like earnestly like tell me why it's
better for us to charge less I I don't know why can you help me there's a whole bunch of people seem to want to argue for this and not realize that's what they're arguing for like when we get into a discussion about why charging hourly is punishes efficiency and Innovation and experience like
no it doesn't if you charge a certain amount and you're able to do it faster you'll get paid less but you'll be able to take on more work right like how does that make sense I don't even understand where you're going with this right so I try I try I try real hard
to say okay why what would motivate someone to charge less well there's less friction in the sales process okay you don't actually have to learn a new skill set right uh you'll be liked um and you're you'll be affordable for everyone so you don't need to have to be selective because choosing a
niche or a lane which I know you talk about uh you don't have to do that you don't have to make the difficult business decision yeah so there's all these things that can get looped in there and then if you just go one layer deep you realize all the problems with that kind
of thinking well I don't want to have to hire or to manage people so if I just charge less I'll do the work myself I'll be happier I don't want to be a manager I want to be a maker so I can keep going on and on but the arguments are are fake
on my part because I don't really believe any of them right and they can be do I mean again if you just go one layer deeper you're kind of screwed only one layer deeper it doesn't take much more than that right so let's try the opposite let's let's argue for the things that
we do believe in why should creatives charge more they should charge more because well I believe in a high tide all boats rise so the value of creativity in society will go up if everybody charges more um because we shouldn't have to kill ourselves working we can work less we can take on
less work if we charge more we can increase profits we can hire people we can serve various different demographics actually if we hire we can um so what I'm looking for subsidize actually helping people who can't afford us so we could actually help more people in that way if we charge High rates
to Big corporate clients then we can charge lower rates or maybe even afford to do pro bono work for like let's say non-profits um then this like creates a whole Cascade of other things like we can afford insurance and we can afford to save for taxes and like have a living wage we
can afford to have a retirement account and fund it we can afford to have a company that pays employees living wage and maybe even provides benefits I feel pretty good about those answers that's a good list and it seems pretty obvious then why you should charge more but there's a whole group of
creatives who want to argue on why that's a stupid idea I like that you brought one to my attention that I didn't really think about but is 100 on nail in the head which is if we all charge a little bit more we lift up the entire profession it makes it easier for
people who are at our level or starting out have something to Aspire to and to grow into because what is disheartening to me is senior level people who have tons of experience moving their prices in the wrong direction creating no room for anyone just getting out of school which creates a whole new
set of problems now and you mentioned hiring people the only thing I would add to hiring people is you could help afford to hire the best person if you were able to charge more and what would that do for your transformation that the people that you hire exceed the talent level in which
you're at today because we often think they're Never As Good As us but that's an arrogant statement to say that people uh there isn't anyone in the world who could do the work better than you that's like you're not looking hard enough then and the there's one other one that I would add
which is what would charging more do for your self-esteem self-worth self-confidence just to know like my gosh I put four years of my life to go to that school and when everybody said I couldn't do it I did it and I'm making this kind of money which is equivalent to what a dentist
or a high profile lawyer might make this is pretty cool our society values Art and Design and creative thinking Divergent whoa this is really super cool I want that for everyone Chris I want that feeling for everyone wouldn't the world be better place yeah I I feel like if I grew up in
a world where that narrative was much more pervasive I probably wouldn't be doing this I'd probably be doing something else in the creative field but it makes me wonder like how many other little Pacos out there you know didn't believe in themselves didn't believe in their ideas and their imagination you know and
they didn't invest in that part of them and are are those people who become adults how are they like robbing the world of their contribution I feel like we're both hitting this same desire for society from slightly different angles you have a podcast that you do you have Ted Talk you've written a
book called Finance for the people and you also have a service firm called hell yeah where you where you do bookkeeping and financial stuff for creatives is that right that's right okay I'm taking from the other side which is I have resources courses and tools for people to use and hopefully uh to
to pull them upward so that they can be in a good place where they can afford to hire people like you uh and to be able to get their finances in order because look if you make enough money you can hire people to do all the parts that maybe make your brain hurt
I feel like that part yeah right so we'll we'll push together and hopefully move this forward so my my final question for you it's not a small question the question is this um somebody's listening to this right now and they're like oh my God hell yeah I know I need to I need
to get right about all this stuff I'm ready what are my next steps besides having the the daily money conversation and some and and I think you write about having this kind of gratitude practice is there anything else that I can do to start to write this ship and have a more positive
relationship with money is anything that you can tell me to do that's practical tangible that I can do today this is going to sound incredibly promotional but you should definitely read my book Finance for the people or listen to the auto audiobook and I narrate it or I read the book rather I
mean I wrote this book for you you if you're sitting there and you're a creative professional and you know that you need to start putting more time and care and energy into your financial life and you feel overwhelmed you know that there's free information on the internet but you're just like I don't
you don't want to compile it together and you know there's not anyone who you feel like is speaking your language I wrote the book for you I wrote the book for people who feel unseen and underserved and ignored by the personal finance industry I wrote it for people who are who have thought
that they're bad with money their whole lives but that's just not the truth it's it's that people were not meeting you where you are at and they're they're not taking I think a playful approach that speaks to you and so I'm here to bust that myth and I'm here to to help as
many people as I can step into their power and find their agency I love that and you know I sometimes can be abrasive and rub people the wrong way and I I love my job and that I'm able to talk to interesting fascinating experienced people like yourself who have a maybe a like
a different approach a different energy and a different way of looking at things and so there are like at least 31 flavors of ice cream there should be at least 31 Flavors of coaches and people to talk about finance and money and help you get right with it because we don't have to
be doomed by how we were brought into this financial Universe anything that you want any transformation you desire if you're willing to put in the work and open yourself up you can achieve you can achieve it all whether it's with myself or with Paco or someone else I want that for you so
I'm hoping that something that was said today in this conversation between the two of us spark something inside of you and you're ready to kind of have that real Earnest conversation with yourself and get the help that you need so that you can profit and you can provide for the ones that you
love the most and not be in this place where if the slightest shift in in economics and finance happens in your life that you'll go into Financial like ruin and I just want to make sure that there's some cushion for you to fall back on so you're not panicking at your lack of
finances or ability to be able to weather a temporary storm you had said before when I was talking about money that you want to be able to have something that's more tangible to talk about versus theoretical and so in your life your experience you must talk to so many different creative people I'm
wondering if you can share a scenario that's fairly common in your practice where someone's having a not so great mindset about money or wealth or pricing that you can then convey the lesson learned in the dialogue that happened between the two of you without revealing any identities this is a tough one I
mean I I deal with the same kind of pushback that you deal with in terms of the hourly conversation where people are comfortable charging an hourly rate and they also the argument can be made that if you charge high enough hourly that is a reflection of your experience or that is a reflection
of the value that you're providing I just don't like that having that conversation of trading time for money and I think that's the main thing that I try to convey when I when I speak to people or when I try to get them to think differently is that no matter what you charge
for your hourly rate I think the issue there is that you're having a conversation where you're trading time for money and the reason why I don't think that works is because if you've had 5 10 15 20 25 years of experience not only do you have 25 years of good experience and wins
but you've had a tremendous amount of losses and failures and you've made a ton of mistakes probably painful ones where you've had to pay out of your pocket or your reputation was tarnished and so you really learned from that mistake and I think that can be best reflected in the project rate because
at the end of the day your if a mistake happens you're you are going to fix it right you're and what they're paying for are all of the mistakes and all of the wins every all of the knowledge that you've accumulated the network that you can tap I mean it's just it really
is a true reflection of the value that you're providing to your client at the end of the day Paco I love the way that you said that and it is an argument that people do bring up a lot to me which is Chris why you so stuck on value-based pricing or Project based
because at the end of the day you just take the amount of money you were paid and whatever hours you worked and that's your effective hourly rate I understand that but the way that you said it which is it's a conceptual philosophical problem that you're still focused on selling time and you're not
focused enough on what really matters to clients whose impact or deliverables or feeling you're still exchanging time for money and it's a habit that I think many of us just need to get out of thinking so I appreciate you saying it I don't think anybody said it that way before so I really
I think that's that's going to be a gem for people can I can I give you a financial confession before we go oh yeah because I gave you two confessions you must give me your second confession okay my second confession is my bookkeeping agency was charging hourly rates until very recently until the
beginning of this year embarrassingly enough and we switched over to Flat Rate finally and something I had been wanting to do but I struggled with for a lot of reasons and some clients were on package rates other clients were on hourly and I needed to like do the full changeover and it really
changed the business I think yeah it's changed how I approached everything uh with the business it's changed the economics of the business I do feel much more confident and I finally see this is going to sound bad but the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of what I've been shooting
for and what I've been trying to reach in terms of financial goals I can finally see it the minute we've switched everyone over to value-based pricing so I cannot recommend it enough I should have done it sooner like all great things um but yeah do it guys can I follow up with something
on your second confession here yes the follow-up here is um what was the resistance you were feeling beforehand and then I'll ask my second question later okay I think for me the challenge was trying to come up with a uniform process between getting my bookkeepers to bid out a project and making sure
that I wasn't losing money and figuring out how to do that with different bookkeepers in different processes so I kind of just needed to like find the time to dig in and zero in on that one and two of course I was scared I think everybody is scared to say last year I
charged a hundred dollars an hour um this year I'm charging fifteen hundred dollars a month you're scared you're going to lose your clients okay and then you said you felt the light at the end of the tunnel almost immediately after making the decision can you talk to us a little bit more about
maybe two or three of the real benefits and impact that you've had as an owner of a business that switched over from hourly towards project-based pricing sure so I'm not sure how many so with bookkeeping what's nice about the business is that it's monthly recurring Revenue which means I know how much money
we're making every month as long as our roster stays the same right and so that's just helped me make better decisions about how to invest money that's helped with cash flow and that's helped me figure out ways to create a path so that I have a retention of talent right so I can
pay my staff a living wage and okay now I'm on the path to not just like getting by now I'm in the path to what does this look like to help my employees more than I am is that you know health insurance is that even though I fundamentally disagree that health insurance should
be tied to employment that's an entirely different conversation um but yeah what are the ways that this company can also stay healthy in the long run so that I can create a workplace that is less stressful for everyone and that will be here because you know people some people's livelihoods are at stake
here and and you know that's really that's a different that's I don't want to say a lot of responsibility but it's made me look at my business in a way that I just didn't look at it before you know that we have a real staying power and a real chance to make an
impact in our employees lives and we have a chance to be here longer to make a larger impact I rambled there sorry about that it's okay I like it so part of it is having a predictable Revenue stream reduces your level of stress and allows you to make clearer Better Business decisions that
will impact not only you but the people that work with you and for you and there you said it very clearly concisely and beautifully thank you Chris well that's a big thing it really is so wonderful okay my guest today has been Paco de Leon she runs a firm called hell yeah and
they do bookkeeping for Creative people she has a podcast you need to check that out and she recently published a book called Finance for the people and get your hands on this people it is written for you and what's neat and novel about the book itself is it's filled with illustrations it says
like there are 50 illustrations and diagrams and I'm a visual person so I like reading words but when there's a really good illustration to go along with it it makes it just uh it's a mnemonic so I can remember it easier I could recall it later so I'm looking forward to digging into
it myself it sounds like a wonderful book uh Paco thank you very much for being on the podcast today if people want to find out more about you where can they go you can go to the hell yeah group.com and I would encourage you to sign up for our weekly email newsletter called
the nerd letter it drops every Wednesday morning and uh yeah thank you thank you so much for having me on your podcast Chris thank you foreign
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