How to Get Better Clients

as I just said my name's Ron stocker I'm gonna say hello to the camera anybody watching my company is called leader digital and thank you to Karen for inviting me to come talk tonight about one of my favorite topics getting better clients I'm gonna try not to stand in front of the screen too much actually if you want to be recorded you should stand on the screen should you have face cover so now this is funny I was literally was 4:26 p.m. today and I was putting together the final touches on this PowerPoint I thought pop one for me is really hard I wish I knew somebody

presentation who does that for living and then I felt really silly because that's what Cindy does not only that she's the one who got me in touch with Karen who got me in touch with this room so which is probably why you do what you do because most people who you know are creative professionals for a living they don't spend their whole lives doing PowerPoint but you do so people like me shouldn't hire people like you so a little bit about me again my name's around stuff for my company called leader digital and I do websites marketing and accessibility we won't talk about accessibility today but that's it's about half what are you these days consulting for making

websites accessible to assistive technology screen readers Braille keyboard things like that but mostly building websites designing websites developing hosting all things digital a lot of internet marketing so I just tell people all things digital and that's a nice umbrella term a betting business for 12 years it started my company in March of this year 11 12 years ago and I've kind of floated in and out of self-employment I was my sliders of an accidental entrepreneur I got laid off in 2008 and I thought from 2008 or 2009 but it was it was right there during the recession I was working in building the real estate industry for a home builder and I got

laid off because everybody was laying everybody off and I thought well I don't want to look for another job in this industry because nobody's hiring so let me just take my marketing and internet skills and go out on the open market and see what happens so I did and then a couple times throughout that period I've had clients giving me job offers and accepted them that lasted for a couple months and then I thought I really like this I'm gonna go back to full-time self-employment so here I am now but I've always you know in and out of self-employment for 12 years but I've always had monthly play paying clients ever since 2008 and I've learned a lot in the process quite a bit and I would say it's all street smarts I never went to business school I learned by failing a lot probably like a lot of us in this room and this is a note to myself I was

invited by Karen and I should have hired Cindy to help me with this please don't judge my presentation I also run a group called the longline webmasters and we meet up in long line at this time actually 6 p.m. the second Thursday of every month and we talk about web mastery things sometimes it's designed sometimes it's hosting sometimes it's last month we talk about cybersecurity so that's something I even like spare time and also I was thinking I had to think that go a while but when I first got into the business I realized after about six months like learning how to build websites and and design things is not that hard because I can get online and look at online tutorials to the limited extent you could do that back in 2008 obviously there's a lot more now

but the hard part was finding other fellow creatives in the same industry where they could I could like complain to them about I've got this claim that's doing this terrible thing and they'd be like oh you too Wow so I created this group that I called the Pikes Peak webmasters guild I used to live in Colorado Springs and we would get together once a month and I paid for membership and it was an invitation-only group because I only people that I trusted and we talked about everything we talked about the good the bad the ugly we talked about you took you gave a proposal to that shop owner I did - oh boy am I glad that you got stuck with that client and not me we started noticing things like bad clients if they get a proposal from you and they don't hire you they're gonna go find somebody else and then eventually

if you start to get in the mix of your local network enough you'll start to say oh I did work for that guy he didn't pay me and then someone else say well great because he asked me for a proposal last week and I'm really glad I know that now because I don't wanna get ripped off so education in terms of relationships and Industry and helping people understand secrets tricks pitfalls that's that's something I'm passionate about so tonight we'll cover a couple things as you may have seen in the meetup invitation I did my goal is to help cover up identifying drama clients before they become clients from help identifying red flags and then sailors from Discovery process setting clear expectations from day one which

establish mutual respect helping potentially problematic clients become excellent clients with a little bit of magic and then stealing yourself with confidence to know when to walk away from the wrong client and that's something that I was talking with my wife about this and she said that's the most important thing that I heard you say so I actually reworked this presentation I've made it a lot more salesy but then my wife said you're that's all good but focus on that the most so we're gonna talk about that and then finally hopefully a little bit of streamlining your own project management for success beyond the sales pitch because it's easy sometimes to sell a project it's a little bit harder to keep a client and to make sure that they're happy at the end of the project so I'm

gonna define my terms here in the audience so this is four people I'm talking to here and on the video are creatives they're typically like me I'm a one-man shop maybe you're a one-woman shop maybe you call yourself a small agency maybe you have a partnership but maybe you know two people three people maybe you call yourself a solopreneur I'm gonna say freelancers tonight and whether that explicitly applies to you or not just roll with that I'm talking about small local businesses who typically meet at meetups Network and send referrals back and forth that's the world that I know about and so that's why I'm speaking to and if you have a real job if you're an employee of a larger company you can still get something out of this tonight because just if you think about it just replace

the word clients with employers and then replace the word contract with job offers because when you're out on the open job market looking for a job and interviewing with employers it's very much the same kind of scorpion dance you know that we have in the small business world where I'm not sure that I trust you and you can hurt me and I can hurt you and we're deciding do we like each other you've ever YouTube like scorpion dance that you just dance which is really dangerous you know before they decide to mate it's a mating dance but they're deciding should I kill you first it's that's kind of what businesses like stop me if I say the word client would any prospective client I frequently say the word client even though it's not somebody that I'm under contract with

and then also I like to use the term prospect prospective clients potential customers I hate the term I mean that's so dehumanizing so like what is elite who isn't lead I would never admit to being a lead I'm a potential client if you want my business I want you to treat me like a person not a lead so I won't use the term leads so the problem that I've experienced and that I've heard so many times especially recently when I started brainstorming this topic with a couple other people in the business and my Alert meet up that I wrote is that working as a freelancer is exhausting it's so hard and it's so emotionally defeating because you know we don't have like set work hours and we don't have someone to report to and we can't just mentally check out and go sit in a chair

for eight hours and then go home none of that works in our world we don't have paydays you know we don't have like a vacation and holidays and co-working and holiday parties and things like that you have to do all this ourselves which would be okay if we were making gobs and gobs of money but most of us are in fact what I've noticed is most freelancers say things like I'm always working seven days a week I never put my laptop down I'm still not covering my bills or if it's not that they'll say I have this client who and whatever they're gonna see next is bad right it's not a good thing frequently I've heard people say people don't value what I do or they're not willing to pay what I'm worth or things like the client hasn't paid me yet I'm not sure what to do if you've ever had a

client not pay or not pay on time these are awkward things that we have to deal with as freelancers or how about this one the client cancelled the project and they want their money back that that's tripped some people up that I know or the worst one I think the worst one the one that makes me angry is I had to drop my price in order to get the job which is something that I think we tell ourselves whether it's true or not so we'll talk about that okay what's interesting is I was thinking about how we talk about sales pitches and presentations and if I'm going to go meet with somebody I might use the term there was a red flag like red flag is something that we throw out all the time we frequently say red flag but I've noticed people never talk about the other flags so I did a little bit of research in NASCAR and Indy and there

are three colors of flags in addition to lots of others like checkered flags and white flags and black flags but there are three very specific colored flags that are highly applicable to what we do I think and the first one is believe it or not a green flag and green means go so I am on the puzzling take off full speed ahead pretty simple right the yellow flag means driving conditions are dangerous due to an accident or debris on the track slow down and a red flag means conditions are too dangerous to continue the track is not safe to proceed at any speed a drivers must stop on the track so a red flag literally being stopped right now where you are don't finish your lap don't come to a slow you know

slow down and then find a pit means stop now that's what a red flag means so I think this is a much better example to use why we're having this terminology and you're doing that dance with the client you're trying to the prospective client and you're trying to wonder about I'm gonna work with this person do they want to work with me in your mind I would recommend think about these flags so what is a green flag look like when you're having that first meeting with a potential client the green flags are great these are the easy ones this is the best coins they're the ones we all want right they have a realistic budget they're a realistic timeline they're not in a rush they understand the process that's really important they're willing to put in the time because what we do as

creatives is very it's kind of like a ping-pong table right like I like the ball back to you and then you got to send it back my way in order for us to finish this it's a tube it's a two-way street I like to think of them as they're two cashews in the mix in the jar you've ever seen a door that makes nuts people like to make out the cashews because they're the best nobody likes the peanuts that's why you know there's always a bowl of nothing but peanuts when when everybody's taken what they want so they're like the cashews they're few they're special those are the green flag prospective clients they say things like what do you need for me when do you think you can have this done can I pay you now we're really glad you're here

thank you so much those are great don't those make you feel wonderful but here's what I learned something that was interesting and I only noticed this last year for the first time I realized I almost never had green flag lights maybe a couple maybe like five of them the whole time I've been in business most of them are actually in those black clients and so that's where driving conditions are dangerous slow down right these ones require caution but they could turn into an excellent client if you help them that's what I've discovered they don't understand the process necessarily they aren't sure exactly what do on they may have bad though they might think they want something that your need to educate them

in that process and tell them actually you don't need that and here's why or they might need to save maybe they can't afford you yet they want you to save up before engaging with you don't reflexively push these people away so I would use a term from the Cold War right trust but verify they might say things like can we just use our current website we just paid a lot of money for it that's something I hear all the time from people they say I need a bunch of internet marketing and SEO and content blog posts we want to do social media and I look at their website and today this is on at CMS I've never even heard of before its proprietary I don't know how to use it I can't use any of my standard toolkit you know marketing plugins and my basket of tools and they'll say but we just paid for

this you know it's really expensive if you're gonna work with me and if this is gonna work out I gotta tell you probably for the most part we gotta dump it and start over the good yellow flag client will trust you and say okay great now now you got a green flag right sometimes they'll say hey we need this ASAP that really makes me nervous but it's not a deal breaker necessarily here's a classic one we already tried that it didn't work okay well let me convince you why you should try it again or do a little bit differently or all the time that's what the last guy I heard to do this set and I wasn't impressed okay so you're you're judging me and my

performance based on what may have happened in the past all right can you work with my cousin on this sounds good to me but I need to talk to my business partners first depending on how that plays out that could be fantastic or it could be a disaster so again don't just push these people away immediately they they need some coaxing they need a little bit of helping and unfortunately or fortunately how would you choose to see it the person whose job that is is you the creative the red flag this is what everybody knows about conditions are too dangerous to continue the track is not safe to proceed at any speed drivers

must stop on the track these are the ones that we can already identify and we almost always do ahead of time we're almost never surprised at I came at the end of a job that went bad we almost never say but everything went so great until usually we can look back and say yeah yes I should have said no so we convinced ourselves that we see these red flags during our sales process and we convinced ourselves we can get over it we can work it out you can't you won't you'll regret it they these people say things like really don't say this but this is about them they're just shopping for three proposals to compare maybe Center boss buses like hey get three quotes and then we'll use that to

determine how much we should budget for this project I do not want to throw my proposal in the ring with three other you know to be one three I don't know about you there this isn't a priority for them you know they could take it or leave it they're not really serious but that's a red flag or the opposite during a rush especially their inner much because they weren't prepared they've been stalling and now they're down to the wire and they're gonna click all of that pressure on you even though it's not your fault they've obviously never done this before or they don't understand what it takes and they don't respect the process they don't respect their to dues as I was saying that to weigh you know ping-pong table they don't respect project dates right now if I give you a do I say my deliverable is

going to be on March 1st they're sending in an email and February 20th saying where is it where is it wow that's a pretty bad sign like I mean it's up to you know why are you harassing Internet another red flag is they want you to fix someone else's mess quickly or they're looking for someone else to blame when it turns out they're stuck in a trap I've had a couple of those that made my life pretty miserable for a few days so so here's some quotes of here's where the where I've started listening very carefully when I meet with people and by the way most of the time noticed when there are really bad potential clients or they become really bad clients of mine and I look back and say that was a disaster I almost always knew ahead of time usually it wasn't something they told me directly it was a little throwaway comment that they just

said like like in passing like well if that doesn't work out I can always just done he warned me he did he wasn't he didn't know that he was giving me this clue but I shouldn't pay attention to that clue here's one that I just can't stand I'm a very picky creative opinionated person I know what I like Wow to me that usually means they're gonna pick apart everything I do because they feel they know better that drives me nuts thanks for the proof or comp or whatever you call it let me see what my wife thinks or let me see if my my mother thinks or something like that once they start bringing families opinions into your project it gets incredibly awkward I

didn't used to think this was a red flag I used to think this was an awesome opportunity for me to earn business but I've learned when people say things like I'm just having the darndest time finding someone who can and then they describe something that I do and it sounds reasonable at first I thought well there must be so many bad web people out there yes that's partially true but also there are bad clients out there who just burned through a lot of good designers or freelancers and I'm their next victim I could do it myself I just don't have the time it's so insulting no you couldn't do it yourself or we wouldn't be talking with a small budget

think of the exposure you get we have a big subscriber base we have lots of fans if you volunteer or if you discount your rate we'll announce your name and the such-and-such and there's gonna be a thousand people there yeah that's not good we need this date yesterday this is different than we needed done as soon as possible I've noticed that people who say as soon as possible you can at least say okay what does as soon as possible mean into you have any hard deadlines is there a trade show that begins on July 1st like water that event is happening on the 1st of July so we have to be done with this thing or are you just like eating the mode to get it done quickly so people who typically use you know superlative

rhetorical language like we need it done last week those are the ones that I found are really tricky you got to be careful because they're real their expectations are not realistic can you train my son to do it Wow no I'm not gonna Train somebody else who you're not even paying to do what I would do for free and that's insulting to implied it or maybe I would but I'd charge a thousand dollars an hour you know of course they're not gonna pay that I don't like it but I don't know why now if you're all designers probably hear this more than I do something like I'm just not thrilled with this sheen or this color I don't like the such-and-such and then you ask why I

don't know I just I don't know it's like the people who stick and just make it pop like so a couple more can you send me the files and I'll do it myself I've had more than one person ask me that can I come to your office and watch I don't know if you've seen like it's some old craftsman shop like a watchmaker a clock maker whether somebody that has like very fine precision machinery sometimes above the desk it will say something like our rate is $100 an hour $200 an hour if you if you watch and $300 an hour if you fix it and then bring it to us to you know if you try to fix it and then break it and then we have to clean up your mess but I love that point there is no I'm not

gonna let you watch over my shoulder then this it's there's so many problems we'll talk about that can you make this go viral Wow marketing I get that a lot and I tell people no and neither can you neither could anybody else the things that go viral for not planned that way that's what my role is it's a serendipitous accident or how about this one that shouldn't be too hard right that shouldn't take too long right and they're like they're like goading you into agreeing with them like like that's reasonable of me to say that this shouldn't be too hard those are red flags so we want to avoid bad clients before they become clients from home you've ever visited this website or read the book or follow their

Twitter account clients from hell is hilarious it's also sad it'll make you want to like drink a lot of beer and then cry into your beer because you still say things like oh yes I've said this before but somehow they're just they're they're bad but we'll here's why they don't listen look in my opinion the people that I would classify on my list I actually brought a list not that I would share it but if I needed specific examples I do have a list of my clients from hell they're people who don't listen sometimes they aren't polite in their communication they're not nice on the phone they're not nice in their emails they don't respect you your or your profession or the skills you bring to the table I've seen that a lot where

when I look at projects that go bad the underlying foundational problem is that they just don't respect me well they treat you like a peon or slave rather than a talented professional they think they know better than you or they want to tell you how to do it you want to use you as a tool to get what they really like a hammer or a song that's like they're viewing you as I know what needs to be done I just need the right tool to do what needs to be done but that's not how this works we're creative people who are hired for our skills and we need to work with people who value that what they assume that you exist to serve them they think you should drop everything and focus on them when they call or email I'll give you an example of one from one client from Hill he called me 7:30 in the morning on

Thanksgiving morning and he said can you come down to my office 7:30 a.m. Thanksgiving morning I ignored his call and listened to the voicemail later and then he called me the next day and he said you're really hard to get although Wow I didn't want to work with you anymore sorry this is not this is not good they contact you at inappropriate times of the day or days of the Winker you know Thanksgiving morning they make you feel bad about how much you charge even if they actually pay your bill I had one client and he was he was a guy that I liked the person he was a terrible client because he pay me and he'd do it like this okay all right okay use your chair and I it was almost like we're getting in a ton of war lately but

he was reluctant to even let me have the check that he just printed he just made me feel bad like I was ripping him off or something and he finally just admitted and said this isn't working and I thought I was gonna say that because I don't want to like leave your office with a check feeling like I'm ashamed of what I do I feel so bad for taking this money from this poor person no it's not how this works and if you're in that kind of a relationship get out of it so those are the bad clients we've talked about flags but here's the thing I'm going to say something that might be offensive just warning you know if you have bad clients I'm sorry to say it's your fault and it's my fault it is

everybody's fault because we're not you know we're creative professionals we're business owners or freelancers we don't have bosses who tell us what we have to do if you're a freelancer you're your own boss and so if you choose to work with someone who becomes a bad client that I don't know how to put it any nicer way it's just your fault for doing that and if you stay with the bad client and you feel like oh this person's just making my life miserable and you keep working with them that's your fault too so if you have bad points it's harsh but it's your phone that's the bad news the good news is since it's your fault that means you have all the control you can fix it the client can't but you can so you're a

freelancer that means you're free to work for whomever you please you know whomever you wish or don't wish to work with and I think we forget that sometimes and especially a client is not and will never be your boss and don't let them act like it I had a client shook his finger at me one time and he said I'm not your boss but I'm like your boss that was the closest I ever got to being an effect with the corner and I just said that's it no I'm not your slave I don't work for you I provide a valuable service that you can pay for if you like but you're not my boss and I'm not working with anybody who thinks that they can lower themselves over me like that and so never ever work with somebody like that again plus if you're

a freelancer it's your company you make the rules that's the best part right you can insist that people follow the rules that you create but here's the thing again pointing it back to ourselves that only works if you as well if you create all these rules about here's how I'm going to run my business and you don't follow them so I'm gonna help right mm-hmm and some people really struggle with this a lot with their personal self-confidence but I think it's really true it's verifiable maybe you can think of people in your own life like this you can't force other people to to respect you if you don't respect yourself I think the most important thing that you can do when you walk into a meeting with somebody else is to remind yourself I have something valuable to offer here

and I'm worthy of respect and so if they see that great if they don't okay but if you don't buy into that yourself first it's going to show right you're gonna be they're all timid and shaky with please please don't beat me you know like out of a movie or something like that um that's a little bit extreme but I definitely have seen people just like so young themselves why would anybody hire me well if you don't respect yourself the clients not going to you that's just a fact so Ron's rules I have some rules for myself and hopefully everybody else has some rules for themself I but I heard somebody's here writing a 10 commandments for your company

and I thought that was really great so I did I wrote it a ten commandments so thou shalt and thou shalt not literally and I put it up on my wall and I have rules for myself and I will not discount prices so for me rule number one is thou shalt not offer discounts I don't discount prices for anybody and here's a quick story on that and here's why learn this just Fortunes the one thing that I learned right away and I learned it without having to learn the hard way I walked into this boardroom with a non-profit and there were ten people in the room you know bigger taller than me smarter I'm this new guy they're my second potential client so I'm just starting out in business and I gave them my pitch and I said I think I can help you and here's why and it's a

great what's your nonprofit discount and I thought oh I want to try something really involved here and see what happens I said I don't have one and I thought I think I just lost this to you but you know they said okay moving on and I realized oh my goodness that was mine to lose I could have been the one to leave money on that table I I didn't it was serendipitous I hadn't like told myself and I do not offer discounts because it was only the second time I had done like a sales pitch but I was just thinking like you know if I had felt like I need to just kill my read because that's what some people do and I

would have lost out on all this additional income so then I went home and I feel like this is great because what I found out is if you don't offer to discount your erase or if you tell people you don't there are people who might not respect that but there are people who will so I want to work with the people who don't try to ask me for whatever reason you know what's your discount for such-and-such I just don't have one now that's not to say first of all it's not to say that you shouldn't I'm not telling you what to do for me that was just a very important decision that I had to me but also that doesn't have to say that I don't care about causes and that I don't donate time or effort or website I don't volunteer but that's very different and like you know giving

somebody half of there's very little perceived value in like it just count rate for design services there's much more perceived value in they're doing this for free they could charge us for it but they're awesome and they're so nice that they're giving us this thing which is really valuable not always but generally speaking I'm willing to donate my time or my talents to something but I'm not give me a discount yeah so we might 10 commandments anyway I just you know I started figuring out like what are the rules that I am okay with about them thou shalt and thou shalt nots and part of the reason for that is I need to know before I go in front of people what am I willing to do and what am I not willing to do and so I'm very upfront now about exactly what I do and I don't do I stepped in a couple message early

in the beginning I thought well I'm a creative guy I've got Photoshop and illustrator and InDesign just like everybody else yeah um you want me to do a banner for your baseball stadium advertisement sure Oh master I don't know anything about banners I don't know about spot-checking colors on vinyl and UV coating and fading and tear resistance and stuff like that so everything turned out okay but like I just realized this is something that I do not understand and I don't want to understand so no I'm not gonna help you with your bumper sticker or your your decal for your water bottles or business cards or brochures nothing is wrong with those things but I don't do those things and so when I start to over a a little bit too far into places where I'm not an

expert couple things happen first of all they start to notice that like it's not really as competent in this as he is in the other thing and then also it makes me a lot less confident and so I start you know feeling like I'm not good at what I do I stopped respecting myself so for me I'm upfront about what I do and what I don't do and I don't apologize I don't say I'm sorry and that's something that in particular my wife and I've talked about several times she says I'm sorry many many times and I'm trying to help her without condescending say you don't need to be why would you say I'm sorry right now with you what you said has nothing to apologize okay hi I wouldn't happen this year I felt some power you how to get

out of that still totally guilty but when I try to focus on is what is that other person giving me so that's I'm positive thank you for being patient it's better than saying and it makes me focus on them and then I feel better and it's also changing the conversation yeah since a neutral it's just yeah and you're still acknowledging something but you're not apologizing what you don't have to yeah that's a good point so yeah the only times I've apologized is when I make a mistake like when I Satele somebody on your website will be live at 1 o'clock a.m. Saturday morning and it's 9 o'clock a.m. and it's not live yet and they wake up on Sunday in their life I can't wait to see what he

told me okay yes I'm sorry right typically I try to preamp that by talking that if time looks like it's not gonna happen I'm sorry that's okay but I've noticed especially women die here all the time you're tripping over themselves saying I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry can I ask a stupid question I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry and I just think wow this really I think contributes to this sort of I'm not worthy I'm not good at what I do I need to ask permission to be here sort of an attitude and this so I don't apologize I'm polite but firm and and there's a way to be firm and impolite and I typically try not to do that I have sometimes the guy who told me he was my boss I said no you're not

by the way here's my invoice and he paid um I don't compete on price again these are my rules for me and this is not my Ten Commandments my ten minutes is a lot more esoteric and unique to my own situation but just some general guidelines that I think are good I don't compete on price like sometimes people will say I gave a I give a ballpark estimate I said 20 I think it's gonna be like maybe around 10 to $15,000 maybe more towards the $15,000 engine and he this guy said okay all right the other ballpark I got was 12,000 okay and you

know if we go into further negotiations I'm not gonna use anybody else's ballpark estimate or even a proposal I'll never look at someone else's proposal and say I'll match that I don't you know that's a game it's a game that I think people who think they have the power over freelancers try to do and they know the freelancers are just desperate enough to make a dumb choice like price-match when they don't know that the reason why this proposal is so much lower than errors is because the person who made this proposal didn't even take into account the whole back-end section which has a secure login and 65 administrative accounts and you know I don't care what anybody else says in terms of you know I've got a bit from this guy who came in here in a bid from this guy who came in here great my

price is my price and I base my price off of my discovery in my sales process not what anybody else says I don't work for free and I did in the beginning I fell for trap a couple times when people said well if you give us you know a little section size and an exposure and you know your name on the newsletter and maybe you can do that and maybe that's fine but you know again unless you're very explicitly donating something and that's very clear where I'm giving you a gift something from me to you that I came up with but generally speaking if somebody says like well can you can you give us a mock-up and then we'll decide whether we want to hire you

or not no that's free work I don't do that at all so I need money up front and I'm pretty firm about that and I'll tell people like in my proposals it'll say work on this project will not begin until the first payment is this year sometimes people like him in Holland they say well okay but can you can you do the such-and-such first can I reserve your domain name before we start fine yes I'll give you a half an hour worth of setting things up you've already signed the contract that's fine but for people to say things like yeah well we'll cook you a check next Tuesday can you get started now I mean cut the check now tell me when it's and I'll even wait for it in the mail tell me what it's in the mail okay we mailed it to be great I'm gonna start today um I don't work for free the one time I

took a gamble and maybe you could do this - I don't know that I recommend I took a gamble one time where client said we have some big projects that we want to do we need to prove the concept of this consulting that you're offering because we've never done it before it was an accessibility project and they said we're just barely trying to wrap our minds around how this works can you give us like a light version of what you normally do for free I said yes I will I was gambling I was telling myself I need to do this only if I'm okay with never being paid in the future and that promise for future business never happens it paid off really well and they called me they've told me a third time now for some of the biggest projects

I've been a part of for this scope of work that I'm doing so in that case it worked out really well but for the most part you know avoid free work and don't apologize don't stay on time pre-qualified pre-qualified you know you can read all the Emerson says simplify simplify well Ron stopper says pre-qualified pre-qualified and I'm gonna go with my philosophy better than his because I've proven this don't take bad clients moment because every minute that you placed with a bad client is a minute that you're taking away from a potentially good client and you know it depends on how desperate you are if you're like I was when I laid off but

had no clients at all it was like wow will you be my client please anybody like friends family I'll do it for almost free like I just need one piece to put in my portfolio and say I've done this one thing please anybody give me something so when you're first starting out maybe you have to do that but once you get to the point where you're kind of but if this is the service that I offer and I have people who pay me for it and they like me and there are probably more people out there like that the more the more you work with people like that the less those other people are going to be the less attractive you're gonna be you know the people who say wanting to think about it and back to you I'm not sure I ask my partner what's your discount so it's all about pre-qualifying get everything in writing everybody in this room knows this and

everybody in this room I'm not gonna ask the pharmacy we've all done work without putting things in writing me too and boy does that make things difficult when you get to the open I thought three months later you deliver what it is you said you were going to deliver or what you what you thought you said you were going to deliver and you for God that they said oh yeah can you also do this other thing keep everything put everything in writing get everything signed you hand a dog or music Lucy use something like that even use QuickBooks like if you send out a proposal or an estimate just put all of it you know in the bullet point section on the memo section whatever and then get them to sign it or at least at a minimum what I've done in a pinch with jobs that are like urgent as I'll say here's my

proposal to you if you approve this right back in the email I approve great it's it right that will I'm not an attorney but pretty sure that was to have been a court of law where you are saying here is my proposal to you and the client is saying yes I approve the proposal that is attached to this email yeah that's pretty solvent um I already mentioned this but I don't know if it discounts um oh I don't know if it refunds and this is something that I think goes with the I'm sorry sort of sense of insecurity I've talked to a couple people recently especially like thank you I built this website and the client didn't like it so they want their mind back or it's not what they thought and so they want some of their money

back or they they're changing their business model so they don't really need this anymore so they want their money back I'm all with you up until the point you and they want their money back like I've done perspective you know work for clients that don't even have a business yet and they just never launched it for whatever reason great I am never giving them their money back that's their problem not mine I've never given anyone a refund ever ever ever that's an absolutely bulletproof rule and so like you know when I meet people who think like but they're struggling in there's no starving and there's trying this new business and they need the money because they want to do this other thing I don't care you just don't care what all the other reasons are because guess

what I'm struggling in starving and I need the money and I have kids to feed and every dollar that I take out of my bank account and give back to somebody when I've already done the work if I haven't done the work I'll give the money back that's the difference right like I had a client that this didn't apply because they didn't have money back but the quiet time okay so the project that I was working on came to a screeching halt obviously right if you know if they had like repaid for a whole bunch of work and then you know the client had died then of course it would given them their money back but know if I've known to work even if you don't like it that's your problem not mine but again a lot of that can be solved in beginning with pre-qualified right asking very pointed

specific questions about like why did again like if you can ask questions like this in the beginning like what does success look to you what do you want it to look like so that in the end they don't say things like I don't like it but I can't explain why because when you get to that point then they're feeling like that you know I want my money back I just try to do a lot more a lot more pre-qualification I'm front and figure out like if this is going to be a person that picky to where they're gonna ask for a refund because it you know the pan tones on the prank banner don't match the logo exactly online I don't have time for clients that are that picky maybe you do because you know all about like well of course this is CMYK this is RGB a hex coders and prints

checks and stuff I don't know any of that stuff so I'm not comfortable in a you know arguing minute with somebody who's gonna dictate a little tip for tap will you but you didn't do this and you did do it just don't work with those people right so some encouragement for you and this again this goes back to I think the the part where the encouragement I think is like the foundation or hardware why do we take on bad clients because we have insecurities so I would encourage you of you know for a couple things like stop apologizing again just stop I know that's what I feel tempted sometimes I feel like this is socially acceptable thing for me to do would be to apologize and I try really hard not

to sometimes I do typically I'll try to say something else like that's a bummer and that this turned out that way but what can we do now but when you say I'm sorry or I apologize you're making fault if you it's not your fault don't own it don't accept that um alright raise your prices now everybody all of you I highly recommend if you could please take anything home from this raise your prices right now I don't even need to ask what your prices are whatever you charge the to low raise them even if you raise them seven dollars an hour or ten dollars or $11.50 above what you charge now just do it raise your prices now and raise your prices every single year and when at the beginning of the year and let your clients know I'm raising my

prices next year on January 1st give them a couple months notice because that'll do a couple things a it will make them respect you more like wow look at that that's somebody who's like proud of the work that they do it will make them realize well okay well what they do is important obviously because they they feel like they can charge this it will also make them think like oh great I want to do a bunch of work with you right before you do this in January so let's talk in November because I got a bunch of things to work on but just the number one piece of advice that I can give is especially starting people when people who are really starting out like I was twelve years ago and some of you may you know doing this for a lot longer than I am but even so I mean like you

look at the trajectory of pricing and sometimes how many people have been in business for 20 years of entering the same rates that they were 20 years ago like everyone else on earth has raised their prices McDonald's has you know rent has gone up gasoline it's kind of you know going back down but gasoline prices are up everything is up why would you not raise your prices so that's a really good exercise I think in the confidence and encouragement for yourself because when you get to the point where like just here's another great example don't haven't see you I have a client there and she said she runs one of the departments and she said well we've got this tricky website that's built in such-and-such and the guy who built it left and we're trying

to find somebody else who can take it over to either webmaster we need some development donut we need some fixes it's a little bit broken not a huge amount of work she said what are you charged and I said I can't give you a proposal for this because it's too weird I don't know what's broken I didn't build this so it all has to be hourly and she said how much do you charge per hour and I said that's much and she said Wow and I thought if I asked her I said is that Wow good or Wow BAM she said that's a lot more than the last guy and I said respectfully he's not here there's a reason why you called me you have a problem I can do this where I know I can do this for you and there's my price you

know what she said okay just like that you know it's just there's something to being there's something about being proud of your price and say you know and standing firm on that and saying here's what I charge and I'm not going to budge and I'm not going to be embarrassed I'm not going to be ashamed I'm not going to be no bully but I'm not gonna be pressured to like match what the last guy did because the last guy didn't work out that's why we're talking so please raise your prices I don't know how many of you remember Stuart Smalley from 75 is it good Al Franken many years ago you had this little comedy bit where he'd look in the mirror and tell him so I'm good enough I'm

smart enough and doggone it people like me freelancers need to do that all the time maybe every day and don't laugh at it I mean laughter because it's funny but don't don't discount how powerful that is because we can get in these terrible terrible downward spirals of like ah this is so hard and a responsive design is confusing or parallax is changing so quickly in css3 and I'm using old terms now in davie Moscow no html5 and Ajax and there's so much to learn you know what no that's not true you're good enough you're smart enough people like you and if you don't believe it just

think about like the clients that you have to pay you right now think about that think about like like my email inbox is full of emails from people who like me and I like them and they pay my rate and they don't beat me up for it so they clearly think I'm good enough they like me at least enough to have a professional relationship and I'm smart enough because and everybody here is my nature I know it by nature of the fact that here's what you are doing you're here you're at a meet-up for free right you're not getting paid for this you're doing this because you care about what you do you're doing this because you have an interest in what you do you're a professional who seeks to make yourself better on a regular basis that means you are good enough and

you're smart enough and doggone it people like you and if they don't go meet a whole bunch of other people in your industry and you'll realize oh I do that or even better there have been a couple times where I've been in a good flow people and I think like wow he's going to talk about something I've never experienced before and I've never had clients say that I've never had that kind of a problem with the clients interesting maybe I'm doing a little bit better with my client than this guy is okay that's not to say like I'm perfect or amazing or the best but I've never heard any client complain about that before so I must be doing something right and they keep coming back right I have one class that is painting some some for the various things that we've done some ones more than others but every single month for ten years that's

a pretty good fan I mean ten years she pays me every single month sometimes again it's a trivial song just for hosting and a couple of modification sometimes it's really big but the point there is like she keeps coming back and saying you're my guy you're my god and I need you to do this can you help me with this what about this and the best part about that is she's referred three other people to me who you know I mean if I look at like the lifetime value of this client it's it's it's got to be higher than every other client that I've ever worked with because you take her plus the three others and you stick it all together and you know ten years Wow what a wonderful thing facing our you shouldn't complain she likes me so remind yourself yes Doris Molly that's okay be proud of your price be

proud of it say it with cry I've noticed when I start to get into this mindset where I hate it when people ask that question what what will you charge what's your price what's your hourly rate because I don't know it depends you know if I'm doing a project based thing I can't really give you a definitive answer right this minute on the spot they're gonna know more what are we doing I'm not doing all of this what's the scope these are gonna take how much of a pain are you gonna be i definitely build in you know pain in the bike factor absolutely when I consider some people and I think like okay this is not gonna be applied from hell but I'm gonna listen to a bunch of really long phone calls because they can't stop yakking and they're gonna change their mind a couple times because what I'm throwing on improving foot so I can't like just give you an answer for the most part but

if I can like if they say what's your hourly wait for such-and-such say it and say it what I was getting to is I've noticed when you say like just a couple minutes ago here's my price and I just see what happens the results are so much better because we're in people respect that so be proud of your place yes do you ever recommend saying what is your budget like if someone's a surprise I don't

know because I've never done it maybe the closest I've ever come to is I'll say like there are a couple of different ways to do what you're doing we could do like a two thousand dollar version like an eight thousand dollar version and like a twenty thousand dollar version which version are you thinking you're closer towards and they're pretty open about that and I think they intend to be honest about that but I think the reason why I don't ask people what's what's your budget is because most people I think you're gonna lie they're afraid they don't they want to they don't want to tell you that their budget is eight thousand dollars and then see that your proposal says 7995 dollars yeah right so I don't know personally I don't could you what you don't want to tell them is

I can solve your problem no matter what your budget is because maybe you can't write so typically again I would try to talk about scope like phases that's that's one thing that I've worked with with price you know price project objections a lot which is okay we have grand dreams we want to do all this membership and subscriptions normally shipping in Texas okay what I just heard you saying is returnees logistics warehouses inventory you know Texas shipping rates processing fees very complicated which you just said you don't know it but what you just said was not really complicated can we start with something smaller how about we have a

one product and that's it like with it was e-commerce that's how I do that you congresspeople what we want to offer this and then I'll say okay but but how many colors do you have you know you find out like how many SKUs they've got like 97 SKUs but they don't have a budget to build an e-commerce site that can handle all of that I'll say something like can we get up and running with a version 1.0 of this with one product in one color and it's a take-it-or-leave-it sort of a price and then typically you know if you kind of chunk it I guess that's what I'm getting there which is if you can't afford $90,000 because that's what it costs can you afford 3,500 bucks to get something up in the next two months and then we could talk again afterwards so letter exactly know how to answer that

because my approach has just been different and then also the other thing I've noticed is if you get people in the habit of paying you they're probably not going to go with somebody else so even if you can't give them everything that they want you know you're getting some money from them you're giving them something and now they're learning about you and they're liking you and then sometimes then it just comes down to like yeah well we got the budget approved first things - so let's talk it's like when people ask you what do you charge I know I do too but that's does it exactly but you could say that that's a yellow flag which is we check for what what exactly are you saying what do you charge for

what are we talking about how are you talking about you know at rupal website with like you know Defense Department of Defense level security against hackers and HIPAA Security and violations and fines if you don't keep all your data perfectly online or are you talking about just like a mom-and-pop shop it's doing coffee and basically they just need like a brochure site and their menu and directions and stuff so I there's there's right that's where it takes to to have this dance what do you charge it depends Church from what what exactly do you want so that's where my sales process is full of questions and I'm just trying to think of who

originally asked about it but basically I have a questionnaire which I'm happy to share with all of you that I ask every single client before I work with them and the reason why I do that is I have it both online and if they refuse to do it online or if they can do they're not savvy enough or whatever I'll ask them those questions in person and then I'll type in the answers for them or over the phone and then I'll hit submit so basically I'm filling out the form for them but it has 31 questions about scope and Sons and success and timeline all those questions and I basically tell them I can't give you a price until you answer for me all these questions and part of what that does is it pre qualifies the bad ones like if they can't literally if they can't be bothered to answer a question like how

many SKUs are you gonna have in your online shopping cart like if they haven't thought far enough ahead to do that they're gonna be a pain when it comes to actually putting that in place because they have to do that work I can't do that work that's their job right they're the ones who know their product and their inventory and that sort of thing so if they're just looking at me like well you're the guy that I just hired and you just make all it you just make it all happen I don't want to work with someone like that so intentionally my question is really long so that it makes the people who are just like well what's your ballpark cost and then they get to like question 17 Wow it's a lot of big boom I don't feel like filling this out great I don't and I'm not meaning trying to be a jerk about that but these are questions that we have to have answers to before we start working together anyway so we

might as well have any answers to those questions before we even get to final price maybe ballpark is a better way you know like I said like $2,000 ballpark $8,000 $20,000 mark somewhere in this range I don't know if that helps but that's kind of where I'm approaching how do you charge for the hours or do you just do what it takes then answering the question I just read it's just over it you know it's like it's like me right here right now I'm not getting for this and that's perfectly fine because I make you it'll pay off eventually someday but no I don't think about billing for it because usually you know I mean if I can

spend I mean think about think about your typical sales cycle like how many hours do you put into landing a client 5 7 12 15 I don't know it depends you know some people have a really complex a little cycle where it's like okay well now we need to know the sessions matching the scope of this now you need to call your supplier and figure out answers to how they're gonna do this before you can even figure out what you're gonna do or some people you know like the green flag client where you sit down with them in a coffee shop maybe and they say well I just started a new company and I do this and I'm looking for a website that does this and that's it how much does it cost well I could just tell you that cost well last time I did a project like that it was about $6,000 great that was easy

so that was like a 30 minute sales pitch so just you know you build sales towards an overhead it doesn't like you could do it differently and remember this sounds corny but my wife said be sure he's name is you're worth it you're worth it and if you're not if people don't feel like you are then you shouldn't work with them because if they don't think your words when you charge then maybe you're not to them and if that's the case you shouldn't be working for them because you want to work with people who feel like you are a worthwhile investment so if i if i belaboring this point i think it's just because so much of the problems that I see freelancers struggle with is I'm not

worth it I should just count my prize they'll never go for that they can't afford this I shouldn't even offer this such-and-such because they don't want it it's so in room focus but no you are worth it and stick to them you're good enough you're smart enough you can do this so you know like Sydney will ask you how long have you been in business so you should be charging a lot of money and you should be so filled about how worth it you are because you're an expert you've been doing this for like you said very long time that's great like you should exude not arrogance but

a real serious sense of I've done this a long time I'm good and that's why I act and that's why I keep doing it because I like it and because clients like it when I do it so yeah you can do this that life is too short to work with bad clients I mean the problem with their clients is they're not just bad clients in the sense that like they make your books look bad but they can ruin your health like a snowman I've seen people who are just like like you know here's the worst checks they're like messing up your personal life like you know you're afraid that if this client calls you and you're out at happy hour with your friends now that he's ruined you're happier because now you know like there's a person on the other internet

phone you're gonna have to talk to them eventually you really don't want to and it's gonna be an awkward call and you just wish it would go away so you know life is too short for bad ones so I'd like to say so some some tactics that I have charge guilty that's really important I'm pretty bad about doing this in the sense that I think I almost never had the courage to kill fee before but I don't put it standard because I don't typically work with people that I think might kill the project but a kill fee in case you're not familiar is where somebody says we lost our funding so we can't move forward or something like that happened the project is cancelled I still get money right it's not my problem that you wanted me to build this thing kill fee means you know the

project is not completed so that's different than like I completed the project here's my final bill you have to pay that but kill fee is like oh okay we had this ten thousand Owen Project we got twenty-five hundred dollars in and the project evaporated okay well you still owe me twenty five hundred dollars or three thousand dollars whatever but you can literally you can legally do this including your contract which said if this project is canceled for any reason then it killed me I don't think the legal term is a kill fee but eight the fee of at least this much will still be paid because I'm not going to spend all this time we're trying to work on your project for you to say you know the project died and now you mr. freelancer have to suffer along with me that's not right it's just the same thing it's like you

know if you have to fire some employees you know because your business is struggling with the industry is struggling most companies like they give them severance pay or unemployment or something like that you know they don't just kick them out the door and say have a nice life even if they're struggling really financially there's there's a safety net in there so we don't have that safety net that's freelancer so build on him and kiltie trust your first impressions again so many times I've looked at a project that went wrong and it's not you know when I met him that first time he said weird thing that I didn't understand or he's talked about he was really picky or such and such like that I had the client from hell one of the few people that just decided you know what I just don't want to pay a

bell literally like there was no good reason for it he felt like he had a good reason his reason was I just don't like the website you've built he gave me a very little feedback along the process so that's what I learned to like ask much better questions but basically I built almost the whole thing and it was about about 80% there maybe 90% there was a couple of stylistic things that were wrong and somehow dated information but he just said you know what I want to work with you anymore so I'm not big enough I didn't like him the first time I met him literally I said to myself I don't like this guy I don't know why I just don't like him I don't feel like he has my best interest in mind I feel like if I got on his bad side things could get weird but then I just said yeah but I

don't I'm being judgmental and who knows well my first impression was right and I mean what I found out is he hired one of the buddies in my group but I told you the great plan gets around and I said I need to take you out for lunch and tell you what happened with this client and he was so thankful he bought me lunch and he was like oh thank you thank you thank you and the same thing happened with that client so it was it was almost too late but basically the guy said I don't feel I don't like what you don't think so now because I'm smart and because I'm clever I already got half my money up front so did it pay for all that time that I put into it no but great I'm keeping that no refunds sorry I don't care that you

don't like it you know you paid me to do this project you decided you don't want this project anymore that's your problem don't break your own rules you know I'm so bad at this I'm just a classic example of somebody who comes up with rules for myself and then somebody will ask me like well can you do this such-and-such and I think don't break your own rules because if you have a rule that you're you've seen it yourself you find yourself breaking all the time maybe should it should not be a rule and rules are there's a really good book I read a long time ago like ten plus years ago and it's called I think it's called the referral engine spy guy named John

James and in there he talks about building up a business that's a good wheel it's like an engine that refers business to you and he talks about this concept that I've never forgotten and I think it's one of the most brilliant things I've ever heard he says come up with it's kind of like the ten commandments idea but he says this is how we do it here document even if you're just a one-person shop this is how we do it here we start here and we do this and then we do this and then we do this and then we do this and we and then the idea is that you're like making a square right and everything outside of this we don't do so that way when somebody comes to you and says yeah but I don't want to do it that way I want to design it myself and then sent you the files and just

have you turn it into a website you can say well let's see enemy the fire no that's not in my this is how we do it here and so if you are you know competent enough to say to know yourself and say like if every job that I do stunts like this and we follow all these steps this is going to be the end product and everyone's gonna be happy the clients gonna be happy I'm gonna be happy we'll all be happy that's the this is how we do it here then we can be very confident that when somebody asks you for something really weird that's outside your process you can say no because they're screwing with your system and it's not even that they're trying to um and by the way with most

clients from hell I don't think they want to be clients from hell I don't think they're intentionally like saying I'm going to make the freelancers life miserable I think they just mostly don't know better um but they don't know that they're messing with your system when they say things like I hired a designer this is just an example that I'm using here because I've heard it many times I hired a designer from such-and-such because they're really good at that if I send you the source file I was kidding you can you then like a reskin them and put them on the maybe someone could that's not how I do this is not how I do it here so I'm gonna go through my list and see what's in my process and when they ask for anything outside of that I can do a couple things I can either tell them no and here's why I can tell them that's not for me but there's somebody

else that that may be able to help you with that now that's a win-win-win right because if you find someone who likes that process in that system then the clients don't gonna be happy and your friend referred them to happen and you're gonna be happy because you just avoided bringing someone in your process who's gonna screw at things so there's a couple ways to deal with that was the last thing I was gonna say or you could just tell them no and here's why that's that's kind of a yellow flag concept with a client like no I I can see why you might want to do that that's an interesting idea your thought process is good but that doesn't really work in my experience and here's why just a really great a quick example my family has a home building company and a lot of times

people will walk in the door and they'll say like oh yeah what about this great custom this can we buy our appliances ourselves and then have you install them well you're taking it outside of the system right the system is the home builder buys all this this this this and this in the hands are the keys at the end so when people say like I would I want to go buy the paint myself and drop it off or I want to buy the appliances and you install them there's a massive problem in that they don't understand which is the Builder is liable if they install something that you buy the wrong way because it's not in their normal system so they're taking on a tremendous amount of liability so if you as a builder install a dishwasher the wrong way

because you didn't know that this brand does it a little bit different than your normal dishwasher and their house floods guess who has to pay for that builder not the homeowner you can't say well the homeowner provided it that's not the way it works so same thing with your business whatever that you know creative freelance business or industry is that you working you guys set those boundaries and saying this is how we do it here don't work for free again just please don't work for free it's not good for you it's not good for them and they have a problem with and this is probably pretty obvious but it's worth stating I'm working for free or working in a discount is and here's just a great example and I've used this scent when I talk with nonprofits who ask about a non-profit just go they say the problem

with giving a nonprofit discount is if I look at my phone and it rings and I think oh this is the client that doesn't pay me the same rate as everybody else or if I look at them in the emails in Baguio and I see like I see four emails here three of them are four three of them are from clients who pay me my asking rate one of them is my discount plan what am I going to be tempted to do whether I am or not I'm gonna ignore the the cheap one and put everybody else in front of them because that makes financial sense right whether you're intentionally saying oh pardon me they pay less than everybody else so I can prioritize the other people you might not see them but you're probably gonna think so same thing with working for free it breaks the power of no

know is my favorite word if I write a book someday it's going to be called the power of no because no is a far more empowering word than yes I think especially in an industry like this where you feel obligated to like work with people and say yes I can do that yes I can do that no I've discovered the best word you can learn in this business is no I don't do I won't do that I don't work that way I won't match the price of the last guy I won't work outside my framework don't be afraid to say no no is not offensive if you're not offensive saying no it's not offensive there are nice ways to do that right um stand your ground again I've noticed the best results I have is when I have an idea and somebody pushes back I just kind of say well this

is my rate and it's really awkward for like 10 or 15 seconds sometimes because you're thinking like wonder if they're not gonna want to work with me but I've just found the more that you're you just you're proud and you say here's what I do and you don't even have to be like insulting and say take it or leave it you don't have to do that but that's the implication right which is this is what I do this is how I can do it in this equation and then just wait and it's awkward but if you just stand still and you know see what happens typically the film people are pre respectful and people like to walk away you know again like I just think of people that I know who've gotten into really bad projects and they just they took it on because they like felt bad for the client or it

was a friend of a friend or it was their mom's friend from boating club or something like that those are John's now you hate the client and the client hates you and now your mom is upset at you because you screwed up your opportunity to help the quilting Club person but your mom doesn't know yeah I was trying to do you a favor by taking on the quilting Club lady and she only had three hundred and fifty dollars I was doing this to help her well guess what it didn't help anybody now everybody's upset and nobody wins so walk away great don't be afraid to walk away here's another tactic this is great this is likely to kill fie ever seen was it movie goodwill I think we're Matt Damon is the gene yes you

know when like the big government agency wants to hire him and then he sends his friend in and he says retail retail you know I don't know if you've seen that scene but basically this guy is super math whiz genius but he doesn't know the value of how how smart he is and so he sends his buddy to go negotiate with this government agency that wants to hire him and he said I got to work for a retainer and it's this funny iconic scene where he's being like totally ridiculous but his point was like you want to hire me I want money now cash and so these government agents are like I've got $72 it's silly but that's a really important point get a retainer right if you want to work with you want me to work for you um give

me some money even if we don't know exactly what it is yet give me some money so that I can feel like you're a real client if we're talking about like a ten thousand dollar project I'm not going to like you know start well so there's there's a couple things there's a retainer and then there's pain discovery which are kind of the same thing right so here's just a great example I had a client that said we built this website and the functionality the most important part of the functionality of it is broken it doesn't work can you tell us whether we can redesign it and fix it or or do we need to start over and I said I cannot tell you that but if you pay me hourly for eight hours I will I'm Friday gonna

give me him I will look into it because what they did and then at the end of that eight hours and it took I think almost all the air they said what's your recommendation and I said we need to start over and there's my proposal so in a way you can think like oh that's offensive that's like adding insult to injury you took their money and then told them that they have to pay you lots more money but actually the honest truth is no that was the best outcome that could possibly be because I wasn't angry and to put in eight hours to figure out what was wrong with their system I gave them a definitive answer no you can't save money by using this yes you need to start over and now that I've seen when you were trying to accomplish here's exactly how much it's gonna cost to do it the right way so you get a retainer in front you get

money up front now so that you're not upset that you're spending one hour two hours three hours five hours to get to giving them that proposal that's the most one of the most effective tools I've ever seen is when somebody says how much will they come will this cost you say I don't know but if you don't say it like this but if you pay me on an hourly basis I will spend time doing it research to find out exactly how much I think it will cost that a reasonable person could look at that and say well nobody else said that but that sounds like the proposal I'm going to get from this it's gonna be a lot more detail a lot more thoughtful and thorough than the other people who haven't liked seems that you know right so meet my friend retainer he's your best friend ask a lot

of questions so many questions again my questionnaire has 31 questions yours gonna have a lot more but the point is you want to know like at the end of the project what is success what would you call success and I literally ask clients then let's say one year from you know when this project is done tell me what success looks to you it looks like to you if they say something ridiculous like well we want to sell six million dollars worth of products by then okay if I think that's ridiculous I know now okay now I knew what their expectations are does that match up with reality it might or it might not but now I know rather than getting a year in and then saying boy this really isn't what we wanted this is not what we were hoping for but there I don't know why clients are not going to tell you that you have to pull that out of them that's a lot of

questions set clear expectations from day one this is so important be very explicit the who the what the why how the win so if like did I tell people like I'm allergic to the word some money because this is classic I'll ask questions like when this website is long because that's what I do his website is launched it has a blog section pretty good on my blog posts yes great who's gonna write those Oh we'll have somebody do know on our site so do you who who is this somebody I needed you you can't just say like I'm gonna have somebody do that because you know it's gonna happen the most for the most part either they're gonna assign it to somebody who doesn't want to do that or they're just never going to do it so like if you cut your kind of like armwrestling them to to not BSU about

anything so then you can find out at the end of that process like well my proposal is rock-solid because it includes blog posts and I know they want that because they told me that they don't actually have anybody who can do that in-house they can't just say we have some types somebody do that I don't accept somebody I say like who who right now right now this very minute if your website when doing who would you call what's her name what's his name Dave do something okay great no that helps me a little bit but if the fact that you don't know his name tells me you have no idea what you would do if your website went down right now that's part of my sales pitch which is you know if I build your website you call me as soon as it goes down he'll answer it you never have to ask who do I call because

I'm a one-stop shop so setting those expectations is really really really important and then you know deliverable dates when do we need to go live by well like I said before of the trade show example if you have a trade show on July 1st okay that's pretty hard deadline if they're saying like well you know we want to have it done by by Valentine's Day why why Valentine's Day just it feels like it should take about that long okay that's not a good enough reason so just in closing go forth and conquer get better clients make more money have more fun and I have a link that I'm happy to share with you for my intake questionnaire example and again that's just the best thing that I've found if you ask all the questions at

the front the more questions you're gonna have answers upfront um don't be happy to email this out to you if you want there's no surprises at the end right the end goal that you and I and we and everybody in life one is if I get engaged for your services you want me to pay you for your services and you want me to be happy to pay you for your services and you want to be happy to work with me and at the end of the project we want to be able to say that was good and I'm glad I did that and I would do it again right so that's the ultimate goal and the more you can kind of set sort of these sorts of things in place and answer these questions ahead of time the fewer surprises there are at the end

and I'll just give you one last quick parting fun again using my family business as an example I was a marketing manager the company that laid me off I was a marketing manager and one of my Jobs was collecting photos of our homes as they were being built as we have these groundbreakings and as we had something that I implemented as the marketing guy because I thought it was really important is at the very end of every job we had what I call the key server where we hand over the keys we make a big deal about it some people think it's qarnain but 20 years from now they look back at these pictures and he's so glad many of them but my goal was at the end of every single long when we handed them key they were smiling we wanted to see them happy

and saying yes I'm glad I hired this company I'm glad you know I'm happy with the end product I would do this again if I could I would hire this company all over again that was a really good measure of success and we had a client who found us online looked at the blog posts contacted us and ended up hiring us to build the house and I asked him why did you pick us and he said well I'm an architect and I know the building industry and I thought when I looked at your blog posts I thought look at all those happy homeowners they're doubly building your house and they're still happy with their builder they don't want to kill him that's the Builder I want building my house because I've seen building projects go you know off the

rockers so many times where everybody's just like ready to get out of each other's lives like I'm so tired of seeing you here's your keys go away that was his experience and he said the fact that I saw smiling people holy champagne and posing with their families and holding cheese and crying because you're so excited I want them so that's what I aspire to in my business where everybody does that at the end of a project and I think the same would be said for you so that's all I got