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What’s up everybody welcome back to the channel I am super excited for 2022 and I’m also really excited about this video in particular. I basically decided look you know last year was the best year ever that I’ve had for my agency I’m not even talking about digital ambition and automatic CSS and everything else that happened last year just talking about my agency best year ever by far. And I thought to myself how can I make sure that all of the agencies and freelancers that are in my community here on YouTube on Facebook and you know in the inner circle whatever how can I make sure that they have their best year ever now obviously I’m going to be making a lot of videos in 2022 we’re going to talk a lot about how to run a better more profitable agency and freelance business in 2022. But I thought to myself if I could record one video to get everybody off on the right foot like three things for them to focus on for 2022 to increase revenue and profitability and I’m talking about like if you follow these three things you’re going to at minimum double your revenue and profitability probably triple 4x 5x somewhere in that range some of you who are on the lower end of websites right now we’re talking about 6789 10x what you’re currently doing. That’s that’s what I’m talking about that’s the power of this video right here so if you watch one video of mine on the agency freelance side for 2022 it should probably be this one because if you do these three things I guarantee that you were going to get those kinds of results now we’re going to dive in here I am going to try a new format out it’s going to be like a sketching writing format on the screen like a digital whiteboard kind of thing and I think this is going to help those of you who are visual learners I know it’s going to help. I know it’s going to help me as I teach this kind of stuff you know when I’m not inside of oxygen it helps for me to be like doing things as I teach but it’s up to you you know drop a comment below I would love to know what you think of this format after you watch this video I also want to know you know if you if you believe or if you have reservations that this video the content in this video is tremendously going to help you or you know just tell me like what your confidence is like. Like what’s your confidence level or if you’re unsure or if you have any objections to what you hear in this video and I am going to give you some resources that you can pursue as well but let’s go ahead and just let’s dive right in I’m ready to I’m ready to get rockin and rolling if you are all right we time is ticking right is 2022 is already the second day of 2022 time is ticking okay so let me just write this out here so we’re going to do three tips for 2022 boom three tips for 2020 I’m going to lay out the three tips and then we’re going to go into a little bit more detail so tip number one is going to be talk price early now this is not some super magical amazing pricing tip or anything like that that is going to rock your world right away but it is extremely important we’re going to talk about why number two is I want you to bill for everything for everything you deliver bill for everything you deliver this is a huge one and this is where we’re going to spend most of our time because there’s so many of you who are doing a lot of deliverables for free or you’re not including deliverables that you absolutely should be including and there are a lot of you doing website projects at a price point where I will actually say it is impossible to build a real business tool with the generates ROI for the price you are charging and if I was if I was advising prospects like people who actually need websites for their business if I was advising them I would say don’t touch an agency or freelancer that’s chargeable for a plan that’s charging a thousand dollars for a website or twenty five hundred dollars even for a website don’t even touch them they’re not in the ballpark or where they need to be to serve you appropriately and to serve you with a tool that is actually going to grow your business and you have the difference between a digital brochure website and a real digital like central marketing hub for a business which is a mindset shift that clients are making and it’s a mindset shift you need to have made as a freelancer or an agency or you’re going to die you’re going to you’re think not you personally but your business is going to die okay all right number three is going to be very simple this is an easy one this is probably the easiest one even though there might be a little discomfort at first it’s a very easy one and it will it is a game changer even though it’s simple it is a game changer no more milestone payments you’re not going to offer milestone payments in 2022 you hear me you’re not going to offer milestone payments in 2022 Kevin what’s a milestone payment we’ll talk about it more when we get there but in the short it is hey you you do 50% up front I’ll do it when we get to the halfway mark you pay me another 25% when we go live you pay me the last 25% things like that you are not going to do milestone payments in 2022 all right so let’s go ahead and we don’t actually I don’t think we need to draw out too much for for number one talk price early but I will circle it here talk price actually instead of circling it let me go let’s try out our highlight or this is the one we’re talking about right here okay talk price early I have mentioned this in a couple past videos but I want you to get to a price range as soon as possible with a client when you are on these free discovery calls or strategy calls or whatever you call them right but anyway a client comes along or they’re introduced to you you start have a conversation with a client hey yeah I’m so so agency what can I do for you hey we need a website yeah I got it okay fantastic if you have a current website what industry are you in basic stuff like that you’re going to talk about and then I want you to pull up their existing website if they have one more often than not they have an existing website that you’ll be redesigning and relaunching but if they don’t have one you know ask them about their industry ask them how many services they have ask them all that kind of but don’t get into all the key details yet just gather enough information for you in your head to be like this is like a $5,000 website this is like a $10,000 website this is like a $20,000 website something in there right now if you don’t know how to get to arrange in your head I actually have a tool it’s a spreadsheet tool and it will give you a range you you know outline the fundamentals really quick and it will spit out a range for you but nevertheless you need to in your head be able to get to arrange very very quickly and here’s how I want you to present this range to the person and this for me I try to make this happen within the first five minutes of talking to somebody you can talk to somebody for five minutes and collect enough information to know this is like a $10,000 website right and so here’s what I do I say okay cool I would love to hear all the details of my website all the details about your project and I’m ready to take a bunch of notes but before we dive in I’ve done projects like this in the past for clients for businesses just like yours or for industries for this industry XYZ industry whatever industry they’re in typically it’s between and now we spit out a range $5,000 to $15,000 you actually want this to be kind of a big range okay don’t don’t be like between five and $6,000 no no that’s way too specific between five and $15,000 between $10,000 and $20,000 between $20,000 and $40,000 those are the kinds of ranges you throw out and you throw out that range and then you just say is that is that within your budget or is that what you expected to spend or something like that right something to that to that effect and then what you are going to do next is intently focus on their reaction and what they have to say in the next let’s say two minutes.
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okay if they start whoa whoa whoa they start short circling when you give them that range big red flag big red flag that this person is not prepared to pay what you need them to pay now in your mind as an agency or freelancer is somebody who hey yeah you know I don’t throw out those ranges very often that sounds a little bit higher than all the projects that I do you’re thinking to yourself I mean who wouldn’t block it that right man let me tell you this there are I’ve thrown out ranges before that’s going to be $50,000 to $100,000 that’s exactly what we expected to pay you cannot discount yourself before they do okay you cannot say you’re saying that you’re rejecting the project before you give them a chance to reject the project that is something that you have to get over that is something that you have to get past immediately like ASAP like yesterday you’ve got to get past that if they’re going to reject it let them reject that let them reject it don’t you reject it first and there are many ways where freelancers and agencies reject projects before they even give the prospect a chance to reject the project here’s another way to do well you know I’m thinking that would probably be like well around $7,500 oh gosh like that kind of like they can sense like I’m exaggerating it obviously but the prospect can sense that that is your like oh oh I think $7,500 sir that kind of thing you’re done like you’ve already rejected the project for them okay now they have no confidence that you can actually deliver a project that’s worth $7,500 but if you’re just coming right out of the gate imagine this you’re on the call with the client you’ve collected just a little bit of information you come right out of the gate hey I would love to hear all of the details about this project before we dive too deep most of the businesses that I’ve worked for in the past on these types of projects have spent between $5,000 and $15,000 now there’s a key there right have spent it’s not I charge them it’s they’ve spent they’ve spent between $5,000 and $15,000 does that sound about right is that what is that within your budget is that what you were expecting to spend you can word it however you want to word it okay but now the ball isn’t their court and you have produced this with confidence you are driving the conversation you are controlling what is happening right now and the client is now having to respond to you and it’s their reaction here that really really matters so if they block if they flinch whatever it’s a big red flag now it doesn’t disqualify them there are a lot of clients who they’re like oh I didn’t know I was going to spend that much and then but they’re curious they’re like why is it that much why why should I be spending that much and now you have a chance to educate them and at the end of educating them they could be very accepting of that range and ready to do business with you so it’s not a hundred percent of this qualification but it is a red flag some clients and this is why you need to continue the conversation forward and there’s a lot of ways to do this and this is stuff that I’m going to be doing a lot of training around and coaching around inside the inner circle on how to handle these conversations but there are some clients who are just never going to get to where you need them to get to they’re not even going to be close and the whole point of talk price early is that you need to figure out which person this is as soon as possible because there are people that will string you along and waste tremendous amounts of time how many hours of doing proposals and statements of work and phone calls and reconsiderations and we need to talk more and we need to do this and we need to do that or can you show me something first like we’ll do this and that like that is so much wasted time on a person that is never going to get to a price that you need to get them to that you need them to get to okay so the whole point of this first thing is cut your losses early and often you if you want to do the if you want 2022 to be your best year ever you need to get past these people as quickly as possible and spend the majority of your time and focus and attention and effort on the people who have the money that you need them to have or are willing most of these people have the money are willing to spend the money you need them to spend so that’s number one talk price early. All right let’s talk about number two this is the key kind of thing here this is the bread and butter of this training so I’m going to draw a website here and oh I’m off the screen hold on one second let me get this over here all right I’ll just make a small one so here’s your website right here catch a little logo got your navigation up here the big problem that a lot of you have this is the traditional way all right the I don’t even know if I would call this the traditional way the popular way the way I see all this now this is the mistake way to do it this is the non legit way to do it think of it however you want to think of it but you have this website the client you’re on the phone the client and they’re like hey we need a website you’re like cool how many pages is it and then you throw out a number and I don’t really know how you calculated this number or arrived at this number but I can pretty much confidently say if you’re in the five hundred twenty five hundred dollar website range which I did a poll on my you tube channel the other day and I asked people hey average of the last few projects you did what is it and a bunch of people were in this five hundred is twenty five hundred dollar range and I can confidently say if you’re in the five hundred five hundred dollars to twenty five hundred dollar range you probably don’t have a really rock solid scoping process and then you’re also probably not thinking about these websites the way you need to be thinking about them and the way that business is the clients that you were going to end up working with need to be thinking about them all right so here’s what you do you say all right that is twenty five hundred dollars boom twenty five hundred dollar website and again I said this is going to be ten pages all right so we’re going to end up scoping out a ten page website now again I don’t know how you arrived at this number but what I do know is you have a big problem and that is problem number one we’ll say selling one thing and this plays right into a bias that your clients already have an erroneous bias and it’s something that you should correct as quickly as possible but you’re not correcting it by just giving them a price and selling one thing but here’s how clients think I need a website my business needs a website and they come to you and they say my business needs a website they mentioned one thing did they mention my business needs wire frames my business needs UX design my business UI design my business in professional copywriting my business needs SEO my business no they say my business needs a website they’re asking you for one thing and then you come along and you whoops that’s the eraser you come along and you sell them one thing why why are you selling them one thing just because they asked for one thing you’ve got to correct them okay yes I hear you want a website but what you’re actually asking for is a lot of things all right and here’s all the things that you’re asking for by asking for a website but we’re not going to get there yet we’re going to get there in a minute so this is the traditional model you sell them one thing for twenty five hundred dollars what you’ve done effectively is you either haven’t sold everything that you’re going to deliver you’re going to deliver lots of things not just one thing and you’re not pricing for all of those things appropriately or you’re truly not going to deliver things you should be delivering and that’s why it’s only twenty five hundred dollars and for a lot of you I think it’s going to be a combination of both but even so you are doing a massive disservice to your clients and we need to fix that not just for their sake but for your sake as well because you’re leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table you’re also leaving a tremendous amount of ROI on the table for the business most likely okay so this is the traditional model now what’s really wrong other than selling one thing and kind of breaching that like reality of websites what else is the problem with just selling one thing a website at twenty five hundred dollars well first of all you can’t scale so problem number two no ability to scale so you’ve got to think to yourself hey if I’m going to be an actual business owner and I’m not going to do all the work in my business what do I need to charge like if I need to have one or two or three other people working on this project how what are they going to charge me to do that kind of work in the end if they if I put the entire website into their hands how much will they it bill me for okay and I would gather that if you’ve got two or three people working on that ten page website from start to finish if there is skilled as you are you’re going to be upside down they’re going to charge you at least twenty five hundred dollars okay you remember this is three separate people there was only one of you charge in twenty five hundred dollars to do this website now you’re going to put three people on it we’re going to talk about why you need three people why you’re probably not going to get the job done with just one person doing the work but at the end of the day you’re probably upside down at best case scenario you’re breaking even you don’t have a business at that point you have a nonprofit you have a charity okay they’re paying twenty five hundred dollars of website you’re but you don’t have anything left over at the end of the day so that’s a huge problem problem three is you’re living projects to project this in the W two world is called paycheck to paycheck but you because you’re a freelancer or an agency are living project to project now what that means is if you are a solo entrepreneur you’re not pawning this project off I’m not going to say pawning the project off you’re not having other people do the work in the projects that you can build an actual business because building a business and doing work in the business are two very very separate things but if you are doing this by yourself and you get sick you get COVID you get Omicron you get whatever now you’re going to be up shit Creek okay you can’t do the work that you promised to do and at that point if you have to farm out the work you’re really going to be you know below water because you priced it for you you didn’t price it for these other people doing the work so yeah you’re going to get the project done but you’re not going to be able to feed your family you’re not going to have anything left over at the end of the day would also happens if there’s any delays on this project or expenses go a little bit higher than you imagined on this project you’re going to be hurting for cash and when you’re hurting for cash the next opportunity that runs along here is opportunity number two hey I need a website too you’re like your attention goes from this website here all the way over to project number two and now who suffers client number one client number one gets hosed because you are now schmoozing with client number two because you got bills to pay because there was no margin in that twenty five hundred dollars okay you just said hey that’s what I can afford to do if I’m doing it myself and then things went a little bit of rye and now suddenly you’re upside down in the project you need to go chase the next dollar you are project to project notice when I talk about downsides here in this training I’m not just talking about downsides to you as a freelancer or to you as an agency owner I’m talking about downsides to your clients and I explain this to prospects all the time you know how many prospects have come to my agency and said the other agency abandon us they’re gone they ghosted us I don’t we paid a money and they’re gone they I don’t know what to do they did have to work now they’re gone and there’s a lot of explanations for why that happen maybe some of the stuff was on the client it’s never really on the client it’s always on the agency for not educating the client for not setting the right expectations with the client for making sure the client knows what they need to do and we’re going to talk about that more in a minute when we get there but there’s a bottom line is the agencies that don’t charge and the freelancers that don’t charge appropriately my eyes twitching sorry I’ve been doing that for a while hopefully it’s not super noticeable it feels it feels awkward I’m trying to look at the camera my eyes like I don’t know what’s going on I’m a crime got my eyeball alright so the the thing is every time I see agencies not charging enough and freelancers not charging enough right they’re living project to project the client suffers tremendously the let me say it again the client suffers tremendously and I tell clients this all the time I’m like how you got to be very very careful right the lower the price of that project is the better like or the more sweat better becoming off your brow as you’re signing that contract because this thing may never get the fruition and the other thing with project to project is if you’re not abandoning the client you just start cutting lots of corners freelancers and agencies notorious for this they just start cutting lots of corners oh let’s just get it done get it done get it out get it out get it out right so you’re still not being served well as the client when you’re dealing with a budget freelancer or a budget agency so again a lot of you you know you’re going to look at these trainings that I’m doing when I’m talking about increasing prices increasing profitability charging more yada yada yada you’re going to think Kevin you just want to hose clients no absolutely not I’m in the business of protecting clients the the key here that you must understand is both of you can win both of you will win when a project is priced appropriately okay it’s not just the agency and the freelancer winning that is like such a fundamental thing to drive into your head until it sticks right when a budget freelancer or budget agency charges a budget price they lose and so does the client most often the not when a client pays the appropriate amount is willing to pay the appropriate amount the agency freelancer is charging the appropriate amount willing to charge the appropriate amount every but that is a scenario where it works where everybody wins the client gets what they wanted and the agency gets what they needed okay so that is just absolutely critical so let’s talk about I don’t like that little divider there okay so let’s draw another website because now we’re going to talk about the real way now we’re going to talk about appropriate pricing now we’re going to talk about everybody winning so client comes along and they say I want a website or we’ll change that to I need right I need a website okay cool they’re asking you for one thing but we all know that this thing is not just one thing let me switch to my I’ve got another tablet over here because I wanted to get some notes down and make sure that we didn’t miss anything for you guys okay so they’re asking for one thing and now you and you and by the way you’ve already qualified them you’ve talked about price early and often so you already gave them a range and they in their mind we’re like yep that that fits into my range there’s no red flags whatever and now you’re on to the next step so we’re going to talk about what all goes into this website how many deliverables are there and how many disciplines are there so there’s really two D’s that I want you to think about two D’s that I want you to think about one is deliverables one is disciplines okay there’s a lot of deliverables maybe under one discipline but you know as well as I know that when you’re building a website the right way when you’re building a real legitimate business tool there’s a lot of disciplines involved so we’re just going to outline some of these so we’re going to do number one that goes into this is discovery okay so you’ve got to do some background research on this company you’ve got to do have a lot of conversations with the owner maybe with other people on the team you’ve got to look at their competitors you’ve got to do a lot of work to make sure that you’re building what this company actually needs you to build remember most clients are coming to you and they’re hoping that you are like a consultant they know they need a website but they don’t know all of what it needs to be involved right to actually get them to a central digital marketing hub for their business it’s going to generate as tremendous ROI that’s what they really want at the end of the day that’s what they’re really asking you for a no company just want a website no company just wants something there they want something that is going to attract the right people convert those people and grow their bottom line like if you had if you said okay do you want me to build you a brochure that nobody really ever sees or interacts with or do you want me to build an actual digital funnel that like lots of people go to and I’m like looking over here like I’m talking to the client you want something that people actually go to and read and look at and click buttons on and fill out forms on and make purchases on and become leads on or do you want this other thing that’s just a digital brochure that just sits there and looks pretty which one do you think they’re going to choose right so when they come to you and say I need a website they’re not telling you I need a digital brochure make me something pretty they’re saying I need a tool that is going to grow my business all right so understanding that then we have to say okay what is involved in actually creating that so you have your discovery next you have your UX design okay this is in the form of whoops wire frames so your deliverables here would be wire frames but let’s just look at these two disciplines to get started discovery is a discipline there’s actually a lot of deliverables under discovery I’m not going to list them all out UX design is a discipline can the same two people if you go to any random person who does discovery and strategy and let’s say a lot of your discovery involves SEO so I want you to take a random SEO expert and say now I want you to make me a whole set of amazing UX wire frames in figment how many of them do you think are going to be able to do that these are clearly two separate disciplines all right so this is the stuff I want you to keep in mind as we go through this what else goes into this well we have UI design and you’re going to see this even more as we continue to go down the list the separation of disciplines that why why is that doing that okay uh UX design wire frames UX design mockups so high fidelity mockups is the typical deliverable of UI design ask yourself again out of all the discovery people how many can go into figma and make a high fidelity mockup even UX designers who specialize in wire frames aren’t always good at UI there’s a lot of UI designers who can make beautiful things in figma but they don’t understand at all UX or discovery they just they take wire frames they make them pretty okay so these are clearly different disciplines and whenever you have different disciplines guess what you need people okay because at the same person is doing all of this you have a jack of all trades in fact let me not do I don’t want to do like stick figures let’s make them smiling people okay so here’s your here’s your people there’s my faces all right so there’s your people you’ve got to be putting people into these seats now we’re thinking bigger right but we’re not thinking bigger just to be bigger we’re thinking bigger because we need to actually deliver what the client needs from us and it’s very difficult for you to be an expert in all of these different areas can you be serviceable in all of these different areas yes you can be serviceable in all of these different areas but even if you’re serviceable in all these different areas you’re not going to be able to scale if you insist on doing it all yourself so you’re going to make serviceable websites not great websites not top performing websites you’re going to make serviceable websites and you’re not going to scale that’s what you’re saying when you’re like oh I can do all these things myself and I’m going to do all these things myself okay fine and that might be good enough to put enough money in your pocket for now but you can’t scale and you’ll never buy your time back you’ll always be stuck and when Omicron comes around you got to owe me homey right that is going to put you out of commission and you’re going to be project to project paycheck to paycheck you’re you’re still going to be not living great it’s going to be a high stress lifestyle a week goes by and you’re like man I’m not really feeling it this week I’m a little burned out too bad so sad you got to get back on the horse your project to project your paycheck to paycheck because you’re not charging what you need to charge you’re not charging for everything you deliver and you insist it on doing all this stuff yourself okay those are the positions you were going to find yourself in so I’m not just saying scale the scale scale to be bigger scale the more revenue scale the more profitability whatever I’m not saying any of that I’m saying scale because it’s what your clients need from you see if you’re going to be a freelancer the probably freelancers let’s just go on a side tangent real quick we’ll just go down here so freelancer a real freelancer does a specific thing really well here’s what a freelancer could do UI design I’m going to do one component of a website that’s what a legitimate freelancer would do and they would be an expert at UI design they would be an expert at whip it up amazing looking stuff in Figma but that’s all they would do that’s a legitimate freelance role I would argue that web design is not a legitimate freelance role because what you’re saying is I’m going to freelance seven different disciplines and I’m going to freelance 700 different deliverables out of those seven different disciplines what you’re basically saying is I’m a jack of all trades which means you’re a master of none which is great but you only make serviceable products and even if you’re amazing and all this stuff you can’t help a lot of people you can only help a few different people at a time and you’ll never help the big players right because even if you did even if you got a really big contract let’s say you got a six figure contract and it’s going to pay you eight grand a month okay or nine grand a month or ten grand a month whatever that sounds amazing right but you are now beholden to what you’re what is the difference between a freelancer and an employee at that point you can’t service any other clients you’ve got this massive client you’ve got to give them all of your attention and I say this all the time employees are freelancers with one client that is all an employee is so if you’re a freelancer if you call yourself a freelancer and you have one big client you’re no different than an employee and the one day you may wake up and that client says either hey sorry we ran out of money or two we just don’t like you anymore right or you got the only homey and they’re like we don’t want you around here anymore right whatever it could be I don’t know it could be anything you wake up and that client just decides today is not your day you just lost everything everything so you have no diversification and this happens all the time to W2 employees they walk into the office on a Friday hey we got to talk to you today okay sit them down talk to you oh bye bye clear out your desk right your position is not needed here anymore sometimes or just you’re not needed here anymore it can happen in any number of ways but you understand what I’m saying right so I want you to really be thinking about all right I probably should not be trying to freelance entire website projects I should probably go the agency route I need to put the right people in the right seats on the bus what is this going to cost me first of all what are all the seats on the bus then what is it going to cost and then how can I make sure that I build a healthy business by pricing appropriately that’s that’s the discussion we’re having here right now and this is going to change the game for you I promise in 2022 we’re not done so you have discovery you have here’s your discovery you have your UX you have your UI what else how about copywriting all right so get me a UI designer get me a UX designer and now say I want you to write professional sales copy for this website are they going to be able to do it no probably not they’re not going to be able to do it you are like well I can write serviceable copy here we are back to the I can write serviceable copy oh here’s the I’m going to take on the next set of deliverables you know how long it takes to write copy you know how much you have to study to write really good copy for for a business it’s a specialty area it is a specialty discipline okay but you’re like well Kevin I don’t need to do copywriting because I make the client do that you make the client do that you you make the client do that here’s the thing the two massive problems with this number one you know as well as I do clients don’t deliver copy on time ever or hardly ever and they deliver really poor copy so let’s go back to what we said in the beginning do you want mr. client a brochure website that looks pretty and has all the boxes checked or do you want a website that actually grows your business clients as I want a website that actually grows the business well guess what then they can’t write the copy because they don’t they’re not copywriters even if they did write the copy on time it’s not going to be good copy and chances are they’re not going to write they’re not going to write the copy or provide the copy on time either so there’s two massive problems here and it’s your fault let me poke you it’s your fault as the freelancer or the agency for putting them in that position and not telling them hey look doing copyright building a website that actually grows your bottom line that actually does it it’s choose the goals that you told me you wanted to achieve that takes professionally written copy it can’t just take serviceable copy it can’t just take copy that you guys whip up right no offense to you but unless you have a copywriting background if you write copy for this website chances are it’s not going to deliver because copy is one of the most important aspects of a website and its performance and conversion and sales and all of that even more so than the design which everyone focuses on everybody wants to focus on how beautiful is it how pretty is it how clean is it all of that but at the end of the day you and have an ugly website with amazing copy and it will sell like gangbusters so this is why tell clients all the time look I understand you want to try to save money you want to try to do it yourself you guys think that you’re capable I’m just telling you if you guys produce the copy for this there is a strong chance of this website does not deliver now if you want to go that route yeah you know we’re not going to get into all the details there for me pretty much it’s it’s like required that our agency produces the copy for websites we do not put that in the client’s hands we almost do not let them and it’s the way I position it in the conversations right where they get the vibe like all right this is something I got to invest in right but we’ve just gone through the wise okay you are not doing the client a service by expecting them to write the copy or letting them write the copy so if they’re pressing you pressing you know we really want to do this you got to press back it is your job to press them back but copy writing you can clearly see this is a completely separate discipline what does that mean you need another face on that in that seat of the bus okay so we’re out of copy writing here what else are we going to do well we’re off to the the very you know common thing that everybody understands which is development all right so that’s going to need a face now within development this is one of those disciplines where there are just tons of deliverables so every one of these disciplines has its own set of deliverables but development by far has the most amount of deliverables so here’s an area where you’re probably under charging because there’s so much you’re just not accounting for so goes back to what did I say up here bill for everything that you deliver bill for everything that you deliver it’s not just disciplines that you deliver for it’s all the deliverables within those disciplines have to be properly accounted for ahead of time so that you can scope this thing out properly so we’ll get you know more into detail on that maybe later but we’re going to keep moving what else well there’s project management this is a big one that’s so many people don’t bill for and it is another discipline area that has lots and lots of deliverables phone calls emails project management software Monday you know meetings and updates and all of these things that go into managing a project well you probably doing them for free if we’re being honest right or it’s just a cost of doing business but here’s the thing big companies think Microsoft think Apple think like all these people that have amazing websites gigantic websites they do all this stuff internally right they’re not hiring agencies they they’re doing this stuff internally so they have a web team right and they have project managers and what do they do they pay project managers because real websites that produce real results require project management because you just saw one two three four five now six different faces involved in this project those people need to be coordinated this project needs to be organized this project needs a point person you can’t tell the client will go talk to my discovery person go talk to my wireframe person go talk to my mockup person there needs to be one point of contact okay so this requires another face and when it requires another face it requires another bill okay it requires another invoice line item this again is not just a way to make money it is something the project actually needs here’s another question you can you can pose to a prospect would you like us to wing your project or would you like us to place your project into a rock solid systematized process that goes through multiple people and has a dedicated manager which one do you think the client is going to choose are they just going to you know risk the first version or they’re going to say no please put me into the rock solid systematized process and give me a project manager if they’re going to choose number two then they pay for number two okay because number two can’t possibly be free so you understand this is another line item another discipline area that doesn’t just serve you because as the owner this takes a lot of weight off your shoulders having this project management person man that is amazing it dramatically well I just had like a stroke it dramatically the only home it got me again so it’s affecting my brain now now the the project manager takes so much stress off of your shoulders okay so that’s great for you but it also takes stress off of everybody involved in the project all these people in these different seats on the bus much less stress now they all feel organized they all feel like they know their place they all feel like they know what they’re supposed to do when they’re supposed to do it they’re checking off all their tasks yada yada yada and then for the client ultimately at the end of the day the website gets done on time the website gets done on budget and they have a communication person they feel confident in they never feel like they’re out of the loop they never feel like they they don’t know what’s going on everything works really smoothly and they have a great experience and when they have a great experience what does that also do it lands you testimonials it lands you case studies and that’s another thing let’s go back to copywriting for a minute remember when I said oh you’re going to let the client write the copy let me make sure I’m on the on the right part yours you guys and see all this we’re going to make the client write the copy it the if the client doesn’t deliver your copy ever like or or on time let’s say three months late here’s the thing about that um they’re going to blame you still okay they’re still going to like find a way it’s just they just haven’t had a good experience and I’ll back them up on this I’ll go back to saying it actually is your fault it actually is your fault because you let them do what they weren’t supposed to be doing or you told them to do what they never should have been doing in the first place so that is on you sure you can point the finger at them and say hey you were supposed to deliver the content you didn’t deliver the content on time but at the end of the day the client is the one that’s not happy which means you don’t get a good testimonial you don’t have a good case study this is hurting your business and their website was late the copy wasn’t done right so now it’s hurting their business it’s a another situation where all of you lose where if you would just took my advice and done all this the right way you all would have won so again for all of you who think no Kevin just wants to increase his prices we can increase his profitability make more money he just cares about what’s in the bank no it’s about serving clients the right way it’s about giving them an end product that actually grows their business and doing that on time and on budget with a really great experience everybody wins when you do this stuff right okay did I leave anything out no so let’s talk about actually scoping this stuff I’m gonna I’m gonna clear this out we’re gonna get rid of all this okay so what does it look like remember we cannot do all of this for $2,500 it’s just not possible let’s go line by line and just talk about some of this stuff okay so one thing I would highly recommend that you do is you do a base website fee let me write these all out again so we’re gonna do discovery we’re gonna do UX that’s your wire frames okay we’re gonna do UI that’s your mock-ups we’re gonna do copy we’re gonna do dev and on inside of dev we’ve got you know an laundry list of deliverables that we’re gonna be doing and then we’re gonna do project management okay all right perfect okay so let’s do let’s do some pricing now what I’m gonna do is put one more thing up here and this is a base fee there are a lot of set-up costs involved in onboarding a new client there’s a lot of stuff deliverables that we just know we’re gonna need when it comes to launching the the website when it’s actually done right and then there’s just the idea of look to get started on something like this there’s it’s like a set-up fee basically but it also includes just a lot of just deliverables that are there for every single project so it doesn’t matter how custom you scope things out there’s stuff that is needed in every single project and all of this I just wrap into a base fee and all we’re gonna do is go down the line and just see what happens when we actually scope out a project accounting for all disciplines all right so let’s say we’re gonna put our base fee and I and what I’m gonna do here I’m gonna give y’all the benefit of the doubt y’all I’m from the south y’all I’m gonna give y’all the benefit of the doubt we’re gonna go on the low end of all this stuff all right so base fee we’re gonna say is just 500 bucks does that look like a 500 should I write that better let’s take our time okay base fee is just $500 that’s gonna cover you know WordPress development server setup installing WordPress getting your oxygen setup doing all the normal stuff that you have to do with oxygen like getting color set and sizes and all that good stuff it’s gonna deal with all the launch deliverables on the back-ins all the DNS management all the you know backing it up moving it from server to server going live checking everything all of that stuff is all included in the base fee okay so we have your base fee of $500 now we’re gonna talk discovery all right so on the discovery side of things remember you’re gonna put a lot of work into all right what does this client do how does their business work what is their process like how are their competitors positioning things online SEO work is involved in there like SEO discoveries some basic keyword research now I know what I charge for discovery but we’re gonna keep this on the very low end some of you don’t even most of you probably don’t even charge for discovery at this point so I’m gonna give you a number you can be comfortable with you’re gonna charge $500 for discovery all right next is UI wireframes so you decide how much does it cost for me to develop a wireframe for a website now this is the discipline of user experience design so it’s not just like nanana da da all right here oh here oh here oh blah blah blah it’s not that it’s legitimately sitting down and mapping out the experience you want users to have as they go through this website what are they gonna see first where the button’s gonna be where the offer is gonna be what do we want them to click on what are they when we when they’re here where do we want them to go next where where they previously all of this stuff that goes into UX design that all gets baked into these wire frames okay so you’ve got to decide how much are those wire frames worth I’m gonna go super low end and we’re gonna say that you do wireframes for a hundred bucks okay we already discussed is a 10 page website so we have a thousand dollars in wireframes next is UI mockups so this is taking these wireframes this is a completely different discipline right a different person in this seat so another question you can ask is how much are people gonna be charging me to do to create wire frames how much is someone gonna charge me to do one page UI nice and pretty okay and then how many you know mockups who actually need do I need all 10 mockups do I need five mockups it depends on your comfort level right my agency my developers they can take a homepage mockup and what we call a UI style guide and then maybe a couple other mockups and then they can build out you know 20 different wireframe as long as they have the wire frames they can do 20 different pages from those but the wire frames are absolutely critical we do a wireframe for every single page of the website but when it comes to mockups we often do less but to make you comfortable if you need if you want wireframe or mockups for every single page we can do that actually that that would put it on the higher end let’s do a hundred dollars so that’s the low end of pricing for mockups but we’ll say we only need five of them so that’s a total of five hundred dollars now we’re gonna write copy okay how do we price out the copy well I do it per word there’s a lot of different ways to do it but we’re gonna do it per word now we’re gonna do very very low end very low end like you would not be profitable on this copy but I’m just doing this to prove a point of billing for everything that you deliver all right now actually let’s remove that okay 10 cents and we’ll put an at symbol because now we need to know how many words we’re gonna be writing well there’s 10 pages let’s say we do 500 words per page so that’s 5,000 words which is five hundred dollars in copy that is dirt cheap copy dirt cheap copy writing but I’m just doing this to prove a point okay all right so dev is next remember we have 10 pages how much are we gonna charge to dev out a single page let’s just keep this super consistent like we’re doing hundred dollars times 10 pages equals a thousand dollars okay and let’s just see where we are at with our addition here so we’ve got a thousand here we’ve got a thousand there that’s 2000 we’ve got a thousand here that’s 3000 we’ve got a thousand here that’s why is my eraser back again so we’re at 4,000 all right cool now project management I typically do this as a percentage of the project so for it 4,000 let’s just make this easy at 10 percent so that’s 400 dollars so we are now at 4,400 dollars and we have not talked about all the deliverables that go inside of dev that you excuse me have not yet charged for so forms right charge for all the forms if you’re doing more advanced pages if you’re doing templates we haven’t even talked about templates yet so let’s do templates here right because those are different than pages sometimes there’s 10 pages but you need extra templates on top of that let’s say you need three at a hundred dollars each that’s adding another 300 dollars to your project okay now you’re getting closer to five thousand dollars we could go through this all day and actually have a spreadsheet and inside the inner circle not only do I have a spreadsheet with scoping calculators built into it but all of my pricing is in these spreadsheets so you’re going to be able to see everything I charge for every single component of a website build all the different phases all of the different disciplines it’s all mapped out for you and you can change the amounts to your own amounts and then use the scoping calculators to fully scope out a website project but we just took a twenty five hundred dollar website which I gave you on the top end that you were selling before is one thing we broke out all the different areas at the dirt cheap prices and we’re close to five thousand dollars so we have two x that website revenue all right now you’ve got to determine even if you’re not going to put all these faces remember all these faces we talked about let’s say you’re still going to do this by yourself for a while you’re still going to do serviceable work in all these different areas you’re still going to do it yourself you’ve at least doubled your revenue okay now if we’re going to put actual people in these seats now we have to talk about how do we still be profitable after we put those people in the seats because you ain’t going to do it at this amount right here I just told you this is dirt cheap pricing right if you actually did this website you could easily be ten thousand dollars fifteen thousand dollars right so you could either be ten k fifteen k and here’s where I tell people in the inner circle twenty five k the number of pages does not matter the number of pages does not matter you could take a client that says I need a website it’s in this industry it’s ten pages how much and you take ten different agencies you could get anywhere from five hundred dollars to fifty thousand dollars what is the difference right there’s a lot of differences some things we’ve already talked about but the lower you go on that on that range the more you are likely as an agency or freelancer to go bankrupt number one and as the client to get a really shitty website or a website that’s pretty but doesn’t do anything for your business right the closer you are to the low end those are the outcomes the higher you are now this is not a guarantee there are some really high priced agencies that do ask for work okay so you just have to vet the agency you have to vet the freelancer I’m talking to clients right now but by and large the higher you go the better the experience is going to be period all right and I’m not saying always choose the highest price person I’m not the highest price agency but in a scale you’re going to be well better much better off I don’t say well better off you’ll be much better off with a middle to high priced agency then you are a low end agency or freelancer that’s almost guaranteed all right so let’s talk about the last thing real quick before we go all right what I want to do you know we’re already an hour into this thing I think I’ve scratched the surface I’m really encouraging you again having the best 2022 ever the inner circle is $20 a month or it’s $16 a month if you pay for six months at a time it’s dirt cheap okay and it’s it was started dirt cheap and I said when we get to a hundred members I’m increasing the price to $50 a month and then I may even increase it again from there well we got to 100 we got to 200 members we have to 300 members 400 members 500 members 600 members and 700 members and I still haven’t changed it because it’s simply at this point it’s like goodwill okay I just want as many people as possible to be in it so that they can so as many people as possible can benefit and change lives like the one thing that I hear that makes me the proudest has nothing to do with automatic dot css has nothing to do with oxygen trainings it’s when a freelancer or agency which they’re doing in droves now come into the inner circle and post and say Kevin I took your advice I did x y and z and I just sold a $5,000 website when previously I was doing $2,000 websites or I just sold a $10,000 website when previously I was just doing $2,500 websites I’d somebody come in and say they sold a $25,000 website that is the highest project that they’ve ever sold and there’s much much much more margin in it for them I also love when people come to me and say Kevin I finally brought on a person to do x I finally brought on a person to do y and now I have more time I have less stress and I priced accordingly so it’s not really costing me that much money to bring them on those are like when I wake up in the morning that’s what really gets me going is hearing stories like that because I remember when I was dead broke when I was trying my best to figure out how all this agency stuff works when I had no idea how to properly price things when I was slaving away working 80 hours a week and still couldn’t pay my family’s bills I remember being in that position and I don’t want people to be in that position so I decided hey look I don’t need the inner circle money all that much let’s leave it at 20 bucks I’m like spitting at the camera now I’m letting I want as many people to get in here and benefit as absolutely possible that is a hundred percent the reality of why the inner circle is still 20 dollars a month or sixteen dollars a month if you do the the six month or whatever why I didn’t raise it and why I’m not planning anymore on raising it and in fact I have to redo the sales page because it still is like early bird offer and all that other good stuff it’s just it is what it is at this point okay it’s there for you so go get it go get go inside the inner circle go to my trainings on pricing and scoping grab my spreadsheet that has all my pricing in it that has the scoping calculators in it it’s all right there for you it doesn’t get any easier than that having the best 2022 possible is literally grab the spreadsheet follow with the spreadsheet says that’s all you have to do and follow what we just outlined in this video number three no more milestones okay so no more milestones which means 50 oh gosh I switched again 50 50 of 25 25 25 25 25 I’ve seen all of these before right 50 25 25 25 25 up front then 50 then 25 I see all of these different like oh I’m so creative I’ve got this all milestone thing figured out no no no no no no no here’s the problems with milestones number one okay it assumes you won’t what it assumes you won’t deliver you’re telling people right off the bat or you’re not telling them you’re acknowledging I may not deliver this so to protect both of us you can pay me 25% now and then when I deliver some you pay me a little more and when I deliver some you pay me some more what are you are you a scam artist do you not do this for a living are you not a professional why wouldn’t you deliver well maybe one reason I don’t want to go off the screen with this maybe one reason you want to deliver is you price like this instead of like this like we’ve just talked about right you’ve got these little 80 baby prices instead of the real prices you should be charging that is one viable reason why you may not deliver and I will tell clients in this video point blank if you’re dealing with an itty bitty agency freelancer deal budget side of things you better you better get them to do milestones to protect you because the high likelihood is they are living project to project and as soon as one little hiccup happens with your project they’re chasing the next dollar so absolutely if if I’m again I’m talking to clients right now freelancers agencies you better hear me because this is just the truth when I tell clients I’m like hey if they’re going to go budget you better go milestones because that does legitimately protect you but what does it do if you’re trying to get out of this rat race game if you’re trying to get out of paycheck to paycheck project to project lands you got to understand that when you put a milestone offer out there you’re acknowledging that you may not deliver okay so I don’t want you to do that to it allows the client to delay and then this goes this tremendously harms you because you thought you were a web design business you thought you were in the business of building websites but now what you’re really in the business of is being an accounts receivable person you’re spending half your time chasing all of these people who owe you money right or the other thing that happens and this goes back to remember content oh Kevin I have the client do that well guess what if the client’s a little tight for cash and they’re like well I know that if I deliver this content that kind of gets us to the next milestone and they’re going to be asking for more money so I’m just going to say oh my I’ve been busy I haven’t been able to get that client that content to you I’m so sorry we’re going to work on it this week I got somebody on my team’s going to help me with it uh they’re all these excuses that you always hear a lot of times that’s the client not delivering things because they don’t want to be at the next milestone yet because they’re a little strapped for cash why because you didn’t talk about price what let me go all the way back up here you didn’t talk about price early and often you didn’t realize that when you gave them the number they were like oh god how it’s going to be so painful to pay for and they didn’t really have the money and now here you are all the way through all of this work inside the project and it’s time to deliver time to deliver and the clients like I just don’t think I’ll give them that right now because I don’t want to get another bill right now and two months goes by and three months goes by man I’ve seen it over and over and over and over again okay so it assumes you won’t deliver and it allows the client to delay as much as they want so how do you get by this well and this may be a little bit uncomfortable for some of you but here’s how you get by it you say we’re going to go month to month payments actually it’s not even month to month because it’s not a contract it is a contract but you get what I’m saying it’s not a contract they can cancel right it’s monthly payments or two things you can do here or up front 100% and you’re like Kevin that is crazy ain’t nobody gonna go up front 100% on a website you want to bet 60 to 70% of my clients make one payment up front before any work is done for the entire project $15,000 $25,000 $35,000 multiple multiple times not even blinking an eye why because it’s how you want to how you position it to I give them a 10% to 15% discount why because it’s worth 10 to 15% to not have hassles to not have clients who don’t pay to not have clients who do this and that and that and delay and whatever that we all just talked about okay so up front actually should be I would flip these okay so I would say up front is like you put that offer in front of them first and then if they want to go monthly they can go monthly and I do present these offers side by side they they have a choice I actually give them typically three options okay and that’s what we need to talk about in the monthly payments so in the monthly payments we can come up here and we can say it can be wow stop switching back two payments three payments six payments and then sometimes even 12 payments okay so you can go monthly payments that’s super easy now don’t give them all these options this is together one two three four that’s five different options okay don’t give them all those options give them three so I would do an upfront payment a two paying a three pay or if it’s a really long kind of project and it’s going to involve some like retainer type work I would say give them an upfront or a six pay or a 12 pay sometimes I don’t give the upfront if it’s a really big project really like it’s over the course of a year there’s retainer type work involved I just go straight to monthly payments and typically at six or 12 months we break it out because I want the cash flow I want the recurring charges I want the recurring cash flow but there is risk to you now one thing I will say about monthly payments you go beyond the delivery of the projects let’s say it’s just a website and it’s 60 days okay but you’re going to offer a three pay and a six pay there’s a lot of risk to you in there that you’ve delivered this in 60 days that are they going to make all of these payments the third payment or the remaining four payments that risk equals maybe a 10% up charge right so you say look I’ll do flex payments with you but it does cost a little bit more so that’s just another thing to think about when you’re structuring these things and again you can see my proposals you can see how I structure all this stuff inside the inner circle but this is going to immediately shift from listen I’m a professional there is no chance in the world that I’m not going to deliver to you okay so we’re not even going to entertain the milestone thing that assumes I’m not going to deliver and I don’t want to delay on your part so what we’re going to do is I’ve processed this whole thing out you have a statement of work that has every single deliverable on it you have a fixed timeline we’re going to adhere to the timeline you’re going to adhere to the payment timeline here’s the payment terms you can pay once up front you can make two payments you can make three payments you can make six payments whatever you choose but they’re going to be on time every month automatically withdrawn I am not going to be a boss man at a mafia who has to go around the baseball bat collecting money okay I’m not talking to the client now I’m just I’m talking to you as a freelancer and agency owner this is the mindset you got to be in you’re not going to be an accounts receivable person full time you’re not going to be a mafia hitman full time okay you’re going to just put them on a monthly payment plan it’s going to be automatically withdrawn and you’re going to do the work and you’re going to deliver on time and that’s how this is going to work and let me tell you it’s a game changer you get rid of milestones it is a game changer because no longer are you tight for the money you get the bag on time every single month all right so let’s go back and review we spent enough time on this video we’ve scratched the surface enough the rest is in the inner circle three tips for 2022 talk about price early bill for everything that you deliver and no more milestone payments you do these three things you are going to win big in 2022 I hope this was really helpful to you I hope that you do get in the inner circle and continue working with us more closely like I said I want nothing more than for every single person here watching that is considers themselves to be an agency or a freelancer to have the best 2022 imaginable and I can lead you to that place and so can a lot of the other people who are doing amazing work inside the inner circle it’s not just me there’s a lot of people in there who are helping as part of the community we have built we have built the best oxygen and I believe agency slash freelance community on the internet so it’s up to you to go in if you want to I believe everybody can afford it and that is you just got to make a decision really you just got to make a decision and I didn’t you know I didn’t want this to be a sales pitch for the inner circle but it’s just we’re just talking reality at this point right all right that’s it for me I’ll be back we’ve got tons of oxygen videos coming we’ve got more agency freelance trainings coming we’ve got more automatic CSS videos coming 2022 is going to be amazing I’m out peace
