Hello, hello, hello, fine people.
Fine people of the WordPress web design ecosystem.
It is time for another WDD Live.
What do we got here going on?
Okay, all right.
Good stuff.
Hey, good morning, Curtis.
Good morning, Jamie and Adrian and Marco and Derek.
A lot of familiar faces in the house.
Sharon is here.
Hey, if this is your first time on a WDD Live,
I know we always have a really good,
hearty group of repeat offenders,
I guess you could call them.
But if you’re new here,
I want you to just drop in the chat and just say,
hey, just say first.
How about that?
Just say first.
That’s nice and easy.
Okay, we got good numbers straight out of the gate.
Like I said, this is going to be, you know,
one of those streams where
you should be able to implement this stuff almost immediately.
You should be able to get a very good, strong ROI out of this.
This is something that hopefully,
it’s one of those paradigm shifting things.
I think a lot of freelancers and even agency owners,
they’re stuck.
They’re stuck at a certain level.
They’re stuck maybe, maybe, maybe toward the bottom.
Okay, and they’re tired of being there.
And they know that they’re undervaluing their work.
They’re not pricing correctly.
But at the same time,
they also feel like they need every project.
They need, I need the money, Kevin.
I need the money.
I got to pay.
I got bills to pay.
I got mouths to feed.
Okay.
I understand.
I understand.
I get it.
But we have to talk about this.
And there’s going to be multiple angles
that we’re going to approach this from today.
As always, this is off the top.
It’s unscripted.
I don’t, I just generally have an idea
of what I want to talk about.
And then it’s going to go where it’s going to go.
And it’s going to be how it’s going to be.
And let’s just do a little bit of housekeeping
before we, before we dive in.
What’s super important?
What’s super important?
Oh, WP Town Hall.
WP Town Hall.
Podcast I do with Mark Zemansky.
Yesterday, it was a nice,
you could call it maybe a kind of a spicy episode.
If you didn’t listen to yesterday’s episode,
I would highly recommend you go get it.
WPTownHall.show.
You can listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever.
Wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can search WP Town Hall.
You can pull that up.
You can have a listen.
It was a really, really good episode.
We had our guest, Mike McAllister from the Ali theme.
If you’re not aware, WP Town Hall
is not just a podcast that you listen to.
You can actually participate in it.
You can, the listeners can actually come on
and be part of the discussion,
which is a really, I think it’s a really great format.
I think it’s a winning format.
It’s definitely different.
And it’s definitely more valuable
because we want to hear more people’s ideas.
It’s always good to just invite more people to the table.
And that’s what WP Town Hall does.
So I would highly recommend you subscribe to it.
Another thing that we talked about
is getting it off of X.
We did a little experiment.
I wanted to see, you know, would the, what are they even called?
Spaces?
X spaces.
Would they help with distribution a little bit?
Would they help people find and participate?
You know, we don’t have to use X spaces to allow listeners to participate,
but it just seemed like a kind of a natural thing that might also help just distribution for the format.
And I think what we’ve decided is we’re going to test a different platform.
I’m just going to use StreamYard, essentially.
And we’re going to set up a link.
And if you want to participate, you can, now you can watch the stream live on YouTube.
You can watch it live, probably on X.
We’re going to do a multi-stream, essentially.
Whether it’s my channel or Mark’s channel or my X page, Mark’s X profile, whatever.
You’ll be able to watch it live.
But if you want to participate, you simply go to a link.
You can join the StreamYard and you can have at it there, right?
And so we can just do it that way.
And we’re going to see if that helps things at all.
The other thing we’re looking at is time slots.
I feel like we did a couple evening time slots.
Maybe it was a little bit more listeners live,
a little bit more participants live in terms of speakers.
than the daytime slot.
But I just, I can’t do it at night.
I just can’t.
I got other, I got other shit to do.
I got a life to live, people.
I got a life to live.
And especially with softball season starting, I’m head coaching maybe two teams.
I can’t be doing, my nights are taken.
Okay.
So we got to stick to the 11 a.m.
I think that’s going to be a good slot.
StreamYard, much safer.
Yes, much better.
Yeah.
The other thing we’re running into is X spaces, the UX,
UI is just not good.
We’re also having some audio quality issues with like robot sounding people.
It’s just slightly.
So there’s a, there’s a few different reasons why we’re exploring a different platform,
but we’ll, we’ll see how it goes.
That’s an every two week format, kind of like WDD live.
So, uh, you know, keep an eye out for the next one, WP town hall.
Show, but yesterday go, go get yesterday’s episode.
Like it’s, it’s, it’s a really, really, really good conversation.
And it’s some of what we’re going to talk about today, which is great.
Um, okay.
So let’s, uh, let’s go ahead and dive in.
We’re going to get started today.
I was kind of prompted by this, this X thread that I came across.
Uh, I’m going to go ahead and share my screen here.
And, um, it, it started out the design industry is broken.
The design and he’s talking about the web design industry, by the way, I don’t know who this
gentleman is.
Uh, don’t know anything else about him, but this is such a like common, like, I think just
hundreds, thousands, thousands of people could have written and probably would have written
and might agree with this exact same sentiment and have made these arguments before.
I hear them all the time.
And I want to talk about how not to fall into this trap of thinking this way and what’s wrong
with how this is being assessed and how you might want to start approaching lower end clients.
And some of the arguments that I’ve constantly heard when it comes to servicing low end clients,
you don’t want to be that person that’s stuck, uh, at the bottom or feeling like you’re under
charging or feeling like nobody values your work.
It doesn’t appreciate you, treat you like a pixel pusher and not a consultant,
all the stuff that we normally talk about.
Um, and if you’re not familiar, I’ve done a lot of, I don’t do them often on YouTube.
I don’t often make it free content.
A lot of this kind of stuff is in the inner circle, but from time to time, I do do very,
very valuable trainings for free on YouTube.
Um, one of them is called processes everything.
It’s a three hour long masterclass.
It’s free on YouTube.
You can go watch it.
It’s probably one of the most pivotal, uh, trainings that you could possibly do as a freelancer
or agency owner.
Again, that’s completely free.
Uh, I’ve done some other agency related videos on YouTube.
If you dig them up, there might be a playlist.
My, my YouTube’s not that organized.
I don’t take it that seriously.
I’m not a professional YouTuber.
I just like getting on and doing the stuff that we do here and then getting off and living
the rest of my life.
So, uh, you got to find it is what I’m saying.
You got to dig.
But today we’re going to do one of these, one of these kinds of things that is directly
for the agency owners, directly for the freelancers, directly in an attempt to get you unstuck.
If you happen to identify as being a person who is currently stuck.
All right.
Robert says the design industry is broken.
Now I, I, I love the confidence in this statement.
I, I love the fact that he’s like, it’s not my opinion that the design industry is broken.
And I, I don’t feel personally that he like just comes out and says it though.
The, the, the web design industry is broken.
Okay.
So this piques my interest.
Just got a response to a $12,000 proposal for a 10 page website.
Right off the bat.
I can also respect the $12,000 price tag.
So he’s not in the, he’s not sending proposals for $2,500.
Now what kind of 10 page website is this?
I don’t know.
I don’t know any details about it.
So we can’t judge from the outside.
Should this be 12,000?
Should it be 5,000?
Should it be 50,000?
We have no idea.
We don’t really know anything about it, but what we can say is 12,000 is not a like low
end typical price that you would see on the low end.
You would typically see 2,500 or a thousand or 500 or maybe even 35 and 45.
I mean, I mean, I would say for a 10 page website, I do.
When I got out of agency work, we were trending towards nearly $7,500 for one page.
Right.
And so 12,000, obviously not, I wouldn’t call that low end though.
It would be on the lower end for a 10 page website.
I would think, but it all depends on details again, but right off the bat, we can say, yeah,
okay, like he’s probably in the realm of where he should be and where web design, I guess,
should be in general.
Their feedback.
You’re 10 times more expensive than our highest offer.
Seven other proposals, three freelancers, four agencies, highest price.
I like the format of it.
It’s a very scannable post.
It’s a really good, just typical social media format.
Highest price, $1,000.
Now that’s a bit shocking to me right off the bat.
I’m like, who the, who is this guy?
Where did he go to who had you could find three freelancers, four agents.
Where did he go?
Are these all, were these all on Fiverr?
Where, where, who did he find and where did he find them?
$1,000 for a 10 page website.
His mind is blown.
As we can see from the emoji.
What the hell is going on?
I don’t even care that we lost the job.
I think you do care.
I think you do care.
I think this post is showing a lot of caring about, about losing the job.
More about the context of why the job was lost.
But yeah, I think, I think you do care.
I care that designers are out here working for pennies, grinding for weeks to build a business
critical website and having almost nothing in return.
And the best part, the client is selling a $3,000 course on the same site that they wanted built
for $1,000.
I’m sick of clients.
I’m sick of it.
I’m sick of clients that want to build a business and make a profit, but completely disrespect
others’ work.
I don’t care.
It’s your own money.
If it’s your own money or investor money.
If you want to profit on others’ work, I surely don’t want to work with you.
Designers, wake up.
If you’re still pricing your work like this, you’re not just undervaluing yourself.
You’re training clients to believe this is normal and that hurts the entire industry.
Let me tell you right off the bat.
He is correct in that it devalues the industry.
He is correct in that it devalues our work in general and how people tend to see us.
But he is also, I would say, at fault.
And I think all of us have to take responsibility in this.
And he’s also not offering a solution.
The solution is not to cry to other web designers and bitch and moan and complain and be like,
y’all are fucking it up for everybody else.
Why don’t you stop doing that?
They’re never going to stop doing that.
There is never going to be an end.
Okay.
So this is just a fantasy.
And I prefer, well, I have found that it’s better to not live in fantastical realities.
It’s better to just live in reality and just accept reality for what it is.
And just essentially say, look, there’s never going to be a time where there isn’t low cutters and undercutters and low ballers and all this.
This is always going to exist.
There’s always going to exist.
There’s always going to be the fiver.
There’s always going to be the budget people.
So the solution, instead of complaining about those people, is to figure out a way to not fall victim to that and to find the clients who do respect you and do value your work and are going to pay.
This is not like, if you go back to the initial thing, but does the web design industry is broke.
You could have these arguments about every single, every industry has a Walmart.
Every industry has budget providers and high-end providers.
And every industry has really good craftsmen and really shitty workers.
Okay.
That’s every industry.
So is every industry broken or is this just a market with a lot of options?
And you have to make sure that you’re one of the higher end options, that you’re an option that gets paid for the work that you do.
And you don’t succumb to this idea.
See, if you believe, Robert, you’re like, man, Robert, you’re right.
This industry is fucking broke and this sucks.
Nobody can make any money in this industry.
Robert, we’re all getting hosed.
This is like, you just, it just becomes one big victim family.
And it’s not reality.
That’s not true.
We know there are freelancers.
We know there are agencies out there charging 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, up to $200,000.
I mean, it’s all over the map.
And they’re getting clients to say yes.
What is the difference between those freelancers and agencies and those clients and what Robert is experiencing?
That’s what you have to figure out.
That’s what we’re here to talk about today.
So first of all, let’s get in the chat.
Let’s get in the chat.
Are we, are we ads in your live stream?
WTF?
Okay.
Well, I, I, I, I missed a switch apparently when I set up the live stream for the live streams, especially.
Now I am doing a test on my normal videos.
And as you know, we’re going to, we’re just going to take a little side quest here.
As you know, a lot of my normal videos do not have ads turned on.
I didn’t want ads turned on.
And I said, I, I don’t run ads.
I’ve said that multiple times.
I don’t turn on ads on my videos.
And I got a bunch of emails going, Kevin’s a fucking liar.
He does have ads on his, on his videos.
See, you can’t trust anything.
He said, okay.
What happens is when you tell YouTube, I don’t want to run ads on my videos.
All YouTube says is good.
We don’t have to send you any money, but we’re still going to run ads on your videos.
So you can’t essentially turn them off.
And so, and what I, I kind of, um, I had like a conspiracy theory that if you do like demonetize
your channel essentially, because I think they might decrease the frequency of ads if you
elect to turn them off or whatever, but they still show them.
Um, they, they, they will not like the algorithm affects your reach.
That’s just my conspiracy theory.
Like, ah, okay.
We can’t monetize this the way we want to.
We’ll probably prioritize other channels that are fully monetized.
Right.
That was like my little conspiracy.
So I’ve, I’ve been doing some tests.
I’m, I was turning them back on, on my normal videos.
Clearly I did it on the live stream and that’s probably a mistake.
Cause I don’t want you guys to see ads during the live stream.
That’s terrible.
But I wanted to see if it, if it does in fact, perhaps impact reach to have ads off versus
on there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on it, but I was like, well, I mean, if they’re
going to show them anyway, even when I say not to, um, let’s see if it impacts the algorithm
at all.
Okay.
So that is, uh, yeah, that’s that.
We back to the general topic, back to the general topic.
I want you in the chat and you have to be honest about this.
And I know you’re like, oh man, people are going to judge me.
I got, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta bump the number up a little bit.
Just be honest.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
Nobody’s judging you.
Just be honest.
If you had to put an average price.
Now my audience is going to be a little bit different because I’ve been ranting about this
for a very long time.
And there’s a lot of inner circulars here and they’ve seen training after training after
training on this.
So we’re probably going to skew higher.
Okay.
But just put the, if you had to put an average price, let’s say for, for a, uh, a 10 page
website, average price, 10 page website.
What would it be?
What would the number be if you just had, okay, my average client, my average billing
over the past two years, what would the number be for a 10 page website?
I just want to see, let’s just throw some, again, this is going to skew higher because of my audience
in general.
We are not polling the general web design audience here.
Okay.
So 3,500 minimum, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 6,000, 7,000, 2,500, 8,750, 12,000, 5,000, 7,000 to 10,000.
Okay.
So, and again, I would say that skews higher, right?
When I first started the inner circle a couple of years ago, a few years ago, I don’t even
remember now.
I don’t even know what year it is.
Honestly.
Um, I would say the average among the people joining the inner circle was like 2,500 to 3,500
to like a thousand, like anywhere in that 1,000 to like 3,500.
That was probably where people were at back then.
Um, so I’m glad to see the number is, is trending up.
Why do we charge these numbers?
Why?
Because to me that, that number is insanity.
Anything in that range is pure, unadulterated insanity.
Um, and, and the, the faster you can escape that area, the better off you’re going to be,
the better off your clients are going to be.
And when you analyze why we charge these numbers, I think that there’s a lot of underlying things.
First of all, there is a low barrier to entry in web design.
You don’t have to buy a lot of equipment.
Like you’d need a laptop.
Essentially.
We’re in the WordPress ecosystem.
WordPress is free.
A lot of plugins are free.
We’re used to very low slash free price points.
We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re operating on very low overhead.
And a lot of people who are getting into the industry, I would gather are looking for opportunity.
They’re looking for like, how do I make a life for myself?
How do I do this as my career?
How do I travel the world or whatever I want to do?
I want to be location independent.
I want to be schedule independent.
I want to be my own boss.
This sounds like a really good way to do that.
They’re, they’re breaking in, which typically also means they’re broke.
I don’t think there’s a lot of like hyper wealthy people going, you know what?
I think I want to start a, like a web design agency.
I want to be a freelancer.
That’s really what I want to do with my life.
And this is not a knock on, on the job, the career, the industry.
Of course not.
But I’m just saying it’s not a lot of independently wealthy people or people who have had super
awesome business success going.
I now think it’s time.
I’ve reached the point in my life where I think I should now start a web design.
That’s not really the path.
Okay.
And so one thing that we start, we need to start off with is people low ball on price
because they look at it from a perspective of what can I afford as a freelancer?
What can I afford as a agency owner?
I would not pay somebody $15,000 to build me a website.
Well, this is, um, this is a skewed concept for two different reasons.
One is you presumably have the skill to do it yourself, which is why you wouldn’t pay $15,000
to have it done.
That’s number one.
And two, your, your, your radar, your barometer.
Okay.
Your barometer for judging prices is broken because you’re judging it based on what you can personally
afford.
You’re not looking at it from a business perspective.
You, I think if you deep down analyze a lot of people in their pricing and when they, when
they struggle to even communicate a price or talk about price, there’s this underlying feeling,
Oh God, Oh God.
This is going to be when I throw this number out.
I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen.
They’re like afraid to talk about the number.
And especially the higher it gets, the more afraid they are to talk about it.
And it comes from a place of like, either I’m not confident that I’m worth that much or I
can’t afford that.
So I don’t know why I’m asking somebody else to pay it.
Why would I ask somebody to pay something?
I personally can’t even afford to buy.
And that is not how you judge pricing in business.
That is not.
And that’s not how you run a business.
And that’s not how you do sales in business.
Okay.
So if you’re coming at it from that place, you’re already like, you’re just, you’re operating
with a broken thermometer.
I think it’s, it’s, it’s, I think that’s a good analogy because you can walk into a room
and go, it’s freezing in here.
And everybody else is like in shorts and a t-shirt looking at you.
Like, why are you, why are you like this?
That’s, that’s what you’re doing.
Essentially.
If you walked into a room of like successful agency owners and super successful freelancers,
people that are doing real projects of consequence for really awesome clients at,
at top dollar.
And you were like, guys, the design industry is broken.
Nobody will fucking pay anything.
This is terrible.
Everybody’s under, they look at you like, like what, what, what, like you’re, you’re what?
Like that doesn’t make any sense to them.
Cause that’s not their, that’s not the reality that they happen to be living in.
You have a broken thermometer for this stuff.
You’re like, you’re not able to, to assess the world around you accurately because of whatever
is going on in your head.
Now it’s not your fault.
I’m just telling you the truth of what’s happening here.
Okay.
Robert made some mistakes in the sales process.
Clearly in the proposal process.
Clearly in the discovery call process.
Clearly the, this doesn’t happen, uh, to, to, well, if, if you follow like the trainings that
I put out in the interstate, this would not happen to you.
Okay.
First of all, we know that there are other people bidding for projects.
We know that there’s three other freelancers and four other agencies.
We don’t assume that they’re going to be pricing this at $1,000.
However, what we do know is the number one fundamental rule that Robert violated is this.
Okay.
You never send a proposal.
You never, ever, ever send a proposal unless you’ve already talked about the price.
Never, never.
Don’t ever do that.
Stop that.
Don’t ever do that.
It’s not a winning strategy.
You never send a proposal.
If you haven’t already talked about the price.
In fact, you should already know the agreed upon price essentially before you even write
the proposal.
You don’t want the number to be a surprise.
You want them to see a number that you’ve already talked about that they’ve already essentially
agreed to.
So there’s no surprise.
You also want to know if they’ve already gotten other bids.
You also want to know the general ballpark of those other bids.
Okay.
You can ask these questions to the client on the sales calls.
Yeah.
Have you looked around?
I’m sure you’ve looked around.
I mean, have you got any proposals back on this project so far?
I, I can, I usually do this after we’ve already talked about our price and the bracket and I’ve
seen the response to it.
You need to see their response to the numbers in the call.
When you’re staring at them or listening to them, you need to know what their reaction
is because here’s the other thing you have to understand about clients.
They have no idea if they, especially the smaller time client, they are like the small business
owner.
They probably haven’t commissioned a lot of websites.
If they have, it’s been three, four, five, six, seven years since they did it.
They don’t, they don’t know what a website is valued at.
They don’t even know what a website is capable of.
This is going to take us into a bunch of different avenues as we, as we get down this train.
There’s so many different things, dots that you have to connect together to understand this
bigger picture of why this is the way that it is and how to not fall victim to it.
Okay.
But you have to educate the client on why the numbers actually make sense and why lower numbers
absolutely do not make sense.
And that the lower the number goes, the redder the flag gets.
And if that flag gets super fucking red, you as a client should not go that route.
Like the, the idea that a client, first of all, he, they, they declined his offer.
The highest price was $1,000.
The idea that a real client who has been properly educated and properly spoken to would ever even
entertain saying yes to a $1,000 price point for a 10 page website is once again, that is
the brokenest thermometer.
As broken as that word that I just used is, that’s how broken the thermometer is.
No successful business owner in their right mind would pay it.
Just like you wouldn’t walk into a Porsche dealership and they’ve got all these Porsches,
beautiful cars.
I mean, it’s like, and I’m not, I’m not even a Porsche fan.
Just pick whatever dealership you like in your mind.
Just pick that one.
And you walk in and you’re like, look at all these new ones.
This is fantastic.
And we’ve got some certified used vehicles over here.
Those look like they’re in great shape.
$30,000.
That’s what I would expect.
$40,000.
That’s what I would expect.
But the, but the, but the guy comes in actually some other dude, some rando.
Okay.
Comes in and he’s like, Hey man, you don’t want these.
You don’t want the, I got this.
Look at this car over here.
I got this is $5,000.
I mean, you could, we could walk out right now with this thing.
Look, it’s Gort.
What would you like?
Any, any educated buyer would be like, okay, these are all 30,000.
What’s wrong with that one that is $5,000 immediately it’s red flags, right?
We, we understand this in used cars.
For some reason, we don’t understand this in web design, or we pretend that clients don’t
understand this in web design.
They absolutely do once they are properly spoken to and communicated with.
Okay.
All right.
So rule number one, if you’re taking notes, rule number one, you never, ever, ever send
a proposal unless you’ve already talked about the numbers and they’ve essentially agreed
to a near specific number.
And by the way, what you do with the proposal, because everybody’s like, how is that even possible?
How, how could you send a, I don’t understand how those two things work together.
Okay.
I’ll give you the cliff notes version.
You, when you’re introducing the concept of the price, you introduce a range.
So you’re going to give them a general range for what they’re wanting and needing, right?
Let’s just say the range is 10,000 to $20,000.
That is a range you are going to throw out.
Now, the minute you throw out a range, you’re going to get a reaction.
The reaction could look like, okay, they expected that.
Like that didn’t shock them.
Nobody died.
Okay.
Or like, like, you know, they, they would draw into themselves and they’re very fearful
and they’re very scared and they have no idea what’s going on now.
Their, their world has been tossed upside down.
Okay.
That might be a reaction, but that’s okay.
It’s okay.
If they have that reaction, you need to see the reaction.
But the next thing that you talk about is what it goes one of two ways.
If they have a super like aggressive reaction to it, we need to go down.
Now we’re, now we are a sales psychologist.
Now we are like, okay, this is my patient.
I have to bring them back from the, the, the ledge.
Okay.
And I got to figure out why they’re having that reaction.
Now they might go out and tell you, well, I’m having that reaction because I got four other
proposals and they’re all a thousand dollars.
You, you’re the numbers you’re throwing out of crazy, right?
Okay.
Now we can go down that path.
Guess what?
Now you have insight as to what their other numbers are that they’re looking at.
And you have the opportunity to educate them on why those options are clearly, I’m just going
to tell you as an insider, and I can explain this step after step after why that is a absolute
nightmare scenario.
You’re about to get yourself locked into.
If you, if you go that route, that is a dangerous route, my friend.
Okay.
And you should be able to clearly explain why this is the case.
But now like you’re the one doing the educating.
Now you’re the one steering the ship at this point.
Now, if you can get them back on track away from the ledge, and by the way, that doesn’t happen
very often, um, if you’re, if you’re talking to a legit business owner, and I’ve, I’ve told these
stories before, I will be on a sales call with a marketing person of the company, not even like a,
you know, not even a C-suite like executive.
Right.
And they’re tasked with a, go find us an agency to build this website.
And of course, mandatory.
They have to talk to like at least three different people.
They’re not allowed to just take the first proposal, but we’ll get on a call.
I’ll throw out the bracket.
I’ll say, well, you know, if 50,000 to 75,000 is for similar projects like this and they’ll
go, okay.
Yeah.
Like they don’t even bat an eye.
They don’t give a single solitary fuck.
That’s how, you know, you’re dealing with like, that’s a real business, by the way, that’s a
real business.
Now on the, there’s smaller in people who still operate with that exact same thing.
It’s just like, I tell people all the time, man, like it’s, and this is hard when you’re,
if you yourself are broke, this is very, very hard to, to understand, but the more people
you hang out with that are either well off or wealthy or just have money or whatever.
Okay.
I mean, these are the people that will go into that car dealership where you would go in.
So you would go in and be like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m spending.
I can’t believe I’m, I’m agreeing a $40,000 car right now.
I don’t even know how I’m going to make the payments on this thing, but I need a vehicle
and I need it to be reliable.
And you’re like selling yourself on why you should sign up for this $40,000 car loan.
And then you’re in the office with these people like pin shaking, like signing on the dotted
line.
And by the way, you got to sign 8,000 papers cause they know you’re broke.
And they’re like, yeah, we’re coming to get this car.
If you can’t make the payments.
And you’re, you’re just doing all this financing stuff where a person who is well off, right.
And has money will go in and they’ll take that same $40,000 car and they’ll go, I want that
one.
And they’ll go, okay, how do you want to pay?
Do you want to come into the fine?
I don’t need finance.
I’m just going to give you cash for it.
I just want to leave like, like, you know, in a few minutes, essentially.
It’s a totally different scenario.
They don’t give a, they don’t care.
It’s money to them is that, that is like low level money to them.
And so you have to understand that when you’re dealing with like real clients, like real
businesses, real businesses, guys, let’s, let’s just, this will segue us.
Real businesses have money.
If it doesn’t, if they don’t have money, it’s not a real business.
Those two things don’t work.
You can’t say I have a real business, but I’m broke.
You have the start of a real business.
Maybe you have the potential for a real business.
Maybe it’s not a real business yet.
Cause real businesses aren’t broke.
Hobbies are broke, right?
Potential businesses are broke.
These are the entities that are broke.
Real businesses are not broke.
If a client comes to you and says, well, I mean, we just don’t have that kind of money.
What kind of business is this?
It’s not a, it’s, it’s not a real business.
I mean, what, what, like, tell me more, tell me more.
Like, I really want to know, like what, what real businesses have money.
Real businesses can invest in their business.
Real business can do the things that real businesses do.
So right off the bat, this is the reality you have to like live in and paint.
Like you can’t be sucked into this fantasy that there are all of these real businesses existing
in the world that have no money.
Well, that doesn’t, that is antithetical.
Having no money is antithetical to the concept of having a real successful business.
Okay.
So don’t get sucked into this.
This is a fairy tale that so many of us get sucked into.
There’s another fairy tale that we all get sucked into because it presumably benefits us.
It’s the idea that we, um, that everybody needs a website.
Every business needs a website.
Every bit that, remember that was a box.
You just had to check every business needs a website.
Well, if everybody believes that, then of course we’ll sell a lot of websites.
Okay.
A real business needs a website.
Okay.
Let’s, let’s make sure that we understand this clearly.
A real business does in fact need a website, an up and coming business, a hobby business,
a broke business, a struggling business, or whatever you want to call it, but ain’t got
no money business.
They might not need a website.
They might not, it might be better off if they just don’t have a website right now.
That’s another area that we’re going to get into.
I, and I know I’m jumping all around because again, this is just, this is just turn on the
camera, turn on the microphone and just whatever.
I just got to spill it out on all.
And this is a very complex, complicated topic.
I want to make sure that you’re staying with me right now.
Are we, are we still here?
Okay.
I’m, I’ve got a couple notes that’s going to help us get down a very specific path.
And I got one more set of notes.
It’s going to help us get down another very specific path, but I want to know in general,
are you still with me?
Okay.
Are you still with me?
All right.
Let’s see.
You vet your prospects.
Otherwise you will not make any money.
Yeah.
I want to go through this.
I want to go through the chat as well.
And we are going to do a full Q and a once, once all of this is, is, is done.
Okay.
Let’s see.
The analogy of a car tangible is hard to relate to a website intangible.
It’s not about that.
It’s not about comparing a website to a car.
It’s comparing people who have money and how they approach expenses and numbers versus people
who are broke and who have never had that level of success and how they interpret numbers
and approach expenses.
Right.
One is a point of like, I don’t have a lot.
I I’m fearful of these numbers and yada, yada, yada.
And the other is, I, I honestly don’t care what the number is.
I want the best thing, or I want the thing that I want.
And I want it right now.
And the money to them is inconsequential, right?
Whereas money to somebody that doesn’t have a lot of money is very, very, very consequential.
And that is the difference.
That is the difference.
And you have to understand when you are talking to successful businesses, you are often or should
be talking to people who feel like the levels of money that we are putting out is fairly
inconsequential.
The idea that the $2,500, that $5,000, that $15,000 would be consequential to them is crazy.
It’s crazy.
And I’m just telling you that as an insight, when you really start dealing with a really
good quality clients, that is crazy.
They don’t find those numbers to be consequential.
Okay.
They, they, they’re, they are far more concerned as they should be with, are you going to do
the job?
Right.
Is the job, is the thing going to get me the ROI that I intend it to have?
And yeah, they’re concerned with the things that are actually of concern.
They’re not concerned as much with the number.
And in fact, they will not choose the lowest number.
Like that is a policy often of these organizations and good businesses, good businesses by policy
will not choose the lowest number, the lowest proposal.
They want somebody typically in the middle.
If somebody at the high end does a really, really awesome job of convincing them and they
love that person, they really want to work, then they will pay that amount.
They will pay it for sure.
They’re usually trying to land somewhere in the middle.
They’re definitely not trying to land on the low end.
So if you have a client that is automatically out of the gate looking like, and sounding like
they want to arrive at the low end, that’s not a, that’s not, you walk, you walk away from
that.
You, that’s self-defense right now.
You walk away from that.
That is, you do not want to get tangled in that.
And that’s the, that’s what we’re going to talk about next.
Okay.
Why you cannot afford, you cannot afford to base your business on these clients, on broke
ass businesses who are not real businesses yet.
And I’m not saying they won’t be real.
Well, there is a strong chance they won’t be a real business.
We’ll, we’ll talk about that in a second.
It’s not that it’s impossible for them to be a real business.
Okay.
There, and I, and I’m not hating on people that start from the like baseline, nothing.
Okay.
And just to remind you, every business that I ever started was completely and totally
bootstrapped zero start from zero.
Okay.
Never once did I get funding.
Never once did I get money from somebody else.
Never bootstrap from zero.
I completely understand, but you also have to completely understand the massive failure rate
of small businesses, massive failure rate for very good reasons and for lots of different
reasons.
So the idea that the people that you’re talking to are very likely to run out of runway and
run out of steam and close up shop is very, very high at the low end.
Okay.
So now let’s talk about this.
We’re going to talk about red flag language, self-defense, making sure you’re not signing
yourself up to be stuck in this absolute rat race of freelancing and agency life.
Okay.
If the client says, I only need a simple website.
Okay.
Or they’re clearly not willing to invest in the right things.
When you talk about the things that are important, they’re more concerned with just checking a
bot.
Well, now, I mean, we just need a website.
We just need a web.
Well, why do you need a website?
Well, we just need a website.
We just need a, we just need an online presence.
We just need, okay.
This is all red flag language.
This is all low end, unqualified language from a client perspective.
My dear mother is calling me and I’m going to have to call her back.
I’m going to have to call her back.
Okay.
That’s an immediate sign to run.
Now, why?
Okay.
Let’s go off the premise of the reason most businesses fail.
Of course, there’s a lot of different reasons.
Okay.
The E-myth is one of them.
That’s why it’s probably the most popular entrepreneurial book of all time.
It’s people that don’t know how to run a business.
This is also the fault of most education systems.
I call them school systems.
They’re not education systems.
They’re school systems.
You get schooled in certain things, not necessarily educated.
Okay.
Entrepreneurship is typically not a major path of most schooling institutions.
So people try to start a business.
They don’t really know what they’re doing.
They try to figure it out.
The scrappiest ones survive and the least scrappy ones die.
Some luck is involved.
Obviously, some people are very scrappy and get insanely unlucky.
That is true.
It is not the majority of people.
Okay.
We’re not going to get into all the reasons why they fail.
However, there is red flag language.
And when you’re talking to these people, you can kind of see, you’re probably going to fail.
You’re probably not going to make it, right?
Now, if you start seeing this kind of red flag language, right?
There’s two ways you can go with this.
One is self-defense.
Oh, gosh.
Red flag.
Red flag alert.
I really need to press this person.
I really need to figure out if they’re like a good client to say yes to and like onboard.
Okay.
You should be, by the way, in a sales conversation.
The goal of a sales conversation in web design is not to sell everybody a website.
That is not absolutely.
If you think that’s the goal, let’s put the brakes on that.
Back it up.
Back it up, Terry.
Put it in reverse.
Okay.
That is not the goal.
The goal is to sell the right people the right website.
That’s it.
Do not sell the wrong people the right website.
That’s what we’re going to talk about in a second.
And definitely don’t sell it at a very, very low price.
So if the client does not know what they’re doing in business, they are essentially an anchor.
It is like you’re going to just drop them overboard in the ocean, and they are going to go straight to the bottom.
And your boat is tied to them as well, and you are going nowhere in life.
And here’s why.
And this is the trap, another trap that people fall into.
There’s the traps that we’ve already talked about, but here’s another trap that people fall into.
They think, oh, man, this guy just doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
And I do.
I’m a consultant.
I’m going to help him.
I’m going to change this guy’s life.
I’m going to show him the ways.
I’m going to make him the most badass website.
We’re going to do the SEOs.
We’re going to do the PPCs.
We’re going to do this and that and email marketing.
We’re just going to turn this guy’s ship around.
We’re going to—you become a rescuer of these people, okay?
This is a very common thing that I’ve seen in especially low-level web design.
You are like, I have the knowledge.
I have the skill.
This is what I was born to do.
I can save these people from their business poverty.
And no.
Maybe there’s a one-off example of you being able to do that.
But here’s the problem.
You are just a web designer.
You are just a web developer.
You are just a consultant.
You are not operating the business.
And businesses, by and large, the website is not what makes or breaks the business.
What makes or breaks the business is business practices and business sense and actually knowing
how to run a business.
And if you’re not going to literally step in as president and CEO of their business, there
are too many things that you cannot control.
It doesn’t matter how much you know and how well you do the jobs of the websites and the
PPCs and the SEOs and the email market.
It doesn’t matter because you don’t have control over all of the other important stuff.
And they will continue to fuck that up repeatedly.
And you will just be sitting around going, I was just doing my best over here.
I can’t.
And then you know what they’re also going to do?
Nine times out of 10, they’re going to turn around and blame you.
They’re not going to take responsibility.
They’re not going to be like, well, we did fuck up the processes and our sales team kind
of sucks and our pricing was off and our this and our that.
They’re not going to take responsibility for any of that.
You’re on the hook.
Your fault.
You were supposed to run the website.
You told us we were going to rank.
You told us the PPC was going to work out so good.
You, it’s just going to be your fault.
You are tying your business to people who don’t know what they’re doing.
These are low end clients.
They don’t know what to value.
They don’t know what steps to take.
They don’t know what to prioritize.
You cannot save them.
You will die with them.
I promise more often than not.
So you cannot afford to service these people.
They also, by the way, it doesn’t make sense to service them at a low price point.
I don’t know.
Part of the rescuing is like, well, I mean, they can’t afford it.
Not everybody can afford things.
I should really step in and I can, you know, I can do it.
I can, I can, I can make it work for this person.
I can lower my price to 2,500.
You’re like underselling yourself.
They’re not even part of this conversation.
You’re sitting around the dinner table, just finding reasons why you should lower your price
for this person.
But you’re not realizing that these people who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t have
a real business and they’re broke.
This is for a reason.
Okay.
They also are going to require the most amount of your time and attention.
How do you reconcile that?
How do you reconcile?
Well, this person needs the most time and attention, but I’m going to charge them the
smallest possible price.
That’s not business sense.
That’s not business skills.
That’s not rational thinking.
Okay.
You’re not a charity.
You are a professional providing professional services.
If you want to take on charity cases, take on charity cases.
Say, I will, I’m just going to do it for free.
I’m going to do my best to help you out.
And if we both lose, it’s fine.
It’s okay.
It’s part of my charity work.
This is what I do.
Okay.
On, on Sundays, I’m a .org and that’s the work that I’m going to, that’s totally fine.
You could do that.
But don’t buy into this absolute lie that you can save these people.
And not only can you save them, you could save them for $2,500.
You can save their entire business for $2,500.
That’s whatever.
This is an absolute, do you, you tucking yourself in at night?
Do you read?
Is this the story you read to yourself as you doze off?
You’ve got to stop.
This is a fairy tale.
It’s an absolute fairy tale.
Okay.
So we know it doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make any economic sense.
It doesn’t make any sales sense.
They’re also, by the way, the pickiest people.
And I’ve, I’ve talked about this before.
People who don’t have money are very, very, very particular because they want to account
for every single dollar bill that leaves their fingers.
And they want everything to be absolutely as perfect as it can possibly be.
And they hyper-focus on that rather than focusing on the big picture and the big, because all
they care about is I got to have money for tomorrow.
I got to have money for tomorrow.
I got to have money.
I got to protect it.
I got to protect it.
It’s fear.
And by the way, okay.
Let’s let this segue into a website is not, and I don’t know why we, we don’t know this.
Why don’t we know this as web design?
Why do we allow ourselves to fall into this yet another trap?
This set it and forget it.
This build it and they will come.
That we just got to check the box.
We just got to get to point A where the website exists and it’s online and people can go to
it.
That’s not, that has no value.
That had value in 1997.
That doesn’t have value anymore.
You can’t, there’s five gazillion websites.
An electrician.
There’s 50 million of them in every city.
You cannot just have an electrician website and oh, thank God we got it up.
We got it up.
Now every, all problems are solved.
What?
What?
That website’s going to do nothing.
It’s going to sit there and do absolutely nothing.
This is why, let’s just let this segue into not real businesses and low-end clients and
people who can’t afford it.
$2,500.
They balk at $2,500.
They balk at $5,000.
They balk at $10,000.
These people can’t pay for SEO.
These people can’t pay for PPC.
These people aren’t going to pay for real professional email marketing or social media or whatever else
they need.
The website is step one to online marketing.
It’s step one.
Okay?
You have to then feed that website tens of thousands of dollars in the modern era for it to really do anything.
Or you have to wait a year.
They can’t afford to wait.
They’re going to be out of business in a year while the SEO kicks in, you know?
So do they even need a website?
They can’t afford to have one.
They can’t afford for you to build it.
And they certainly can’t afford to do the things that are needed to make the website actually produce an ROI.
They can’t afford a website.
They just can’t.
So let’s stop trying to sell them a website.
You would be way better off as a consultant and way more honest as a consultant to just say,
you know what?
Based on where your business is at right now, I don’t even think you need a website.
I think you, and you guys can in the chat, because I know people are going to disagree with me.
They throw out whatever example you want to throw out.
Kevin, but, but, but, but, but, but, but this person really needs a website.
You’re going to do that.
Fine.
Throw out the example.
We’ll talk about the example.
You, like, it’s crazy.
Let’s just use etch.
Let’s use etch as an example.
Etch is a software product.
Fucking software on the internet.
Could that, did that need a website?
Did I need etchwp.com to do the etch launch?
No, no.
I built it because I can build it.
It’s just, it was easy.
It was like, I could do it.
Right.
But let’s say I wanted to do the etch launch.
A lot of people will be like, well, Kevin, I mean, the first thing you got to do, like,
what, what would most consultants do?
Web design.
Cause I, well, Kevin, I mean, the first thing you got, you got, you got, you got, we’ll get
you on WordPress and we’re going to get this website set up.
And then we’re going to, we’re going to install a shirt cart and we’re going to get the licensing
system set up.
We’re going to do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Yeah.
That’s all fine.
And great.
That’s fine.
You can go that route.
You could definitely go that route.
Is that a mandatory route?
Is that required for success?
Guys, I could have done the exact same launch with a Stripe checkout page.
Like just, just directly go to this checkout page.
Just, if you want the thing, just go to directly here and fill it.
And it would have been nearly exactly the same.
And then I could have sorted out the licensing and all that stuff afterwards.
All the technical side could have been sorted out afterwards because real businesses, if
you have real concepts and real like sales skills and a real offer that people actually
want, you don’t need a website for that.
You don’t need a website for that.
If you’re starting an e-commerce brand, you know, you can, you guys know, did you know this?
Did you know it is possible to sell physical products, not on the internet?
Did you guys know that?
That’s a, that’s a real thing.
You could actually do that, right?
Did you know that you can sell services not on the internet?
Did you guys know that?
It’s a real thing.
Okay.
So when people come to you and they’re like, well, I mean, my business just needs a website
and you look at it and you’re like, how many customers do you have?
Well, I mean, I mean, we got, we got some, we got a few, we got a few.
So, okay.
You start getting on into the, into the price.
Oh, I can’t afford that.
Can’t afford that.
Can’t afford.
Right.
Well, hold on.
I mean, something’s not working out here.
Like if it’s a real businesses, they should be able to afford it.
So if it’s not a real business yet, then what we can inform that, you know, I don’t even
think you need a website right now.
Cause I, and I’m just being honest with you, we can pay you or we can charge you.
You can pay us.
We can build it for you, but then there’s going to be ongoing expense.
I mean, we do, we are going to have to run PPC ads to this because it’s not going to
get any traffic.
Let’s just be honest.
It’s not going to get any traffic right after we build it.
Okay.
So we’re going to have to pay to drive people to it.
That, I mean, that’s going to be minimum, you know, we like to see, you know, $2,500 a
month in ad spend, but you don’t even have the $2,500 to build the website.
So I’m guessing you don’t have the $2,500 a month to run PPC ads to it.
Right.
You see where we’re going with this?
Like you just be honest with like,
I don’t think your business, I think what you should actually do is you should get scrappy
and you, first of all, set up a GMB cause that’s free and the GMB can actually do you very well.
Okay.
But I think what you should really do is get scrappy on all of your other marketing and promotional,
um, actions in this business.
And you should scale up a bit.
And then when you’ve scaled up a bit, then we can talk about how to build a legit website
that actually scales your business even further.
But right now is not good timing for like, you are going to take,
whatever we decide on whatever number we decide on.
You’re going to take that and essentially light it on fire.
I would like to see that money spent in XYZ place, other place, not a website, right?
This is by the way, what scrappy startups do.
Scrappy startups find a very solid base level of success before they start investing in all of these
other higher end, next step marketing opportunities, marketing channels.
Okay.
A website is like a next step marketing opportunity in 2025.
It is not like in 1997.
This was different.
Okay.
In 2004, this was different.
In 2011, this was different.
We’re not in those eras anymore.
We’re in 2025.
Everybody got one.
Everybody.
So you can’t just make one and now you’re on the map.
Okay.
It doesn’t work like that.
You’ve got to put a lot of money into it.
They can’t afford the website.
They certainly can’t afford to do the things that they need to do to make the website successful.
So you’ve got to start leveling with them.
And by the way, if you talk them into it, if you, if you, if you buy into the fantasy with
them, well, you’re right.
You do need a website.
I mean, I can’t imagine a business operating in this day and age without a website.
So we got to do it for you, but you can’t afford much.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to help you out.
And I think what we can also do, you know, we know a lot about this marketing thing.
I think we can really help your business.
So you are buying in with them to this horrific fairy tale that does not exist.
And you are getting stuck in this rat race and this roller coaster.
Okay.
And it is going to be a roller coaster.
This is, I mean, if you know Bev there, this is a roller coaster.
Okay.
That you are going to be on.
So live in reality, start understanding.
Not every business needs a website.
They’re not ready for it.
They’re not ready for it.
And they should do other things before they start thinking about investing in a website.
Okay.
If they’re not at that level yet, if they don’t know what they’re doing, you cannot rescue
them.
You, you only have so much control.
You can’t control the major things.
Okay.
We like, as soon as I’m going to open this up to questions, chat, all of that.
I think, you know, I’m sure something else will pop into my mind.
We’ll go down another rabbit hole at some point, but I am going to open this up to chat and Q
and A.
I think we’ve done a lot of the major topics here.
We’ve thrown a lot out.
And if you have objections, I would love to hear them because it’s going to further the
conversation and help us go deeper into different areas of the conversation.
But let’s see.
Yeah, I know.
GMB is now Jeep.
I don’t, I don’t, it’s this, everybody knows what I’m talking about.
It’s the same thing.
Okay.
Let’s go to, let’s, let’s scroll up here.
Okay.
Actually, you know what?
I’m going to go to, why don’t you, if you turn, if you have an objection, turn your objection
into a question and put hashtag Q, then I can just, I can just go through the questions
log and I can kind of, I can kind of see everything.
There’s a lot going on in the chat and it’s going to be really, really, really hard to
find stuff.
So let me, let me, let me just go into, into Q and A.
Okay.
All right.
Let’s see.
Da, da, da, da, da.
Implementing ACS in my agency is an absolute beauty.
Okay.
All right.
We’re going to not do ACSS questions in the stream.
We’ll do them.
I’m going to do another ACSS stream.
We can do it there.
Do you think it’s worth getting on RFP lists?
If so, what is the best strategy?
So you can’t really give them a price before sending a proposal.
Really, really, really good question.
If you don’t know what an RFP list is, it’s a request for proposal list.
Essentially organizations, government institutions, large companies, they will put out requests
for a proposal.
They will tell what they need and then everybody just floods them with their proposals.
I think it’s a horrific format.
I think it’s terrible.
I do my best to not compete in those formats at all.
I do have strategies for undercutting that format and backdooring your way in using a
completely different approach than everybody else that’s sending proposals.
But it violates all of the general principles that I believe in and espouse.
Okay.
So it violates the principle of like actually vetting people.
I mean, you’re not, they’re only having, they’re looking at all these proposals gathering up.
By the way, well, let’s just back up.
I mean, how can you submit a proposal when you haven’t even really talked to the client?
Because the request for proposal, the actual RFP is never detailed enough.
It is, it never has the right information.
And you always have to ask follow-up questions.
You always have to get a better understanding of what they actually need.
Why?
Because clients notoriously are horrible at communicating what they need.
And they’re horrible at prioritizing their needs.
Okay.
And they also, by the way, don’t even know what a website is capable of in the modern era.
They don’t even know what to expect a website to do for them a lot of times.
And so you have to have a conversation.
The idea that I would submit a proposal for something when I haven’t even gotten on the phone and talk to the person yet, that’s, that’s another insanity.
It’s another, that’s crazy.
That’s crazy.
Okay.
And then put a price on it as well and just throw my fucking hat in the ring with a gazillion other people.
No, we’re not doing, I don’t, I have a principle of if I’m going to play the game, I want to make sure I can win.
I want the odds to be in my favor, so to speak.
This is why I don’t go gamble in Vegas.
It’s why I don’t play the lottery.
It’s why I play games where I stand a good chance of winning, especially if I can develop some sort of skill to help me.
Okay.
I don’t understand the, this, everybody is obsessed.
The only people play the lottery.
Have you not have a calculator in your life?
Run the numbers on a calculator and absolve yourself of playing the lottery.
Going to, okay.
If you’re going to go to the Vegas and be like, I don’t care if I win, I’m going to have fun.
That’s my entertainment.
And I’m going to blow whatever money on just being entertained by the lights and the sirens and what.
Okay.
That’s good rationale.
But if you’re like, I mean, I think I’m going to win, Kevin.
I think I’m going to.
No, you’re not.
Stop it.
That’s not how the math.
Math doesn’t math.
Right.
I try to play games where I’m favored to win.
If I can develop the skill and I have control over the field that we’re playing on.
Okay.
And there’s rules and they’re known and yada, yada, yada.
So tossing your hat into an RFP ring is not a, I’m going to consistently win in this, in this area.
It’s not a game that I care to play.
Okay.
So we got that out of the way.
You did say, you did say, what is the best strategy since you can’t really give them a price before sending a proposal.
So what I do is I contact the company who’s, or the organization, whatever this put out the RFP.
And I let them know, Hey, I’m really interested in your project.
By principle, I do not create proposals for projects where we haven’t discussed the details because X, Y, Z, great reasons to not do this.
I also don’t put a price point on a proposal until we’ve discussed the price.
So what I would like to do is if you’re open to it, I just want to get on a quick call.
I just have a few questions to ask, and then I’ll be able to put something together for you.
And they’re either going to not respect that, in which case you just walk away and you’re like, great, cool.
We’re not a good fit.
You want to do things your way.
I want to do things my way.
It doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out.
Or they’re going to give you an opportunity.
Yeah, sure.
We understand that.
We understand that.
In fact, it kind of plants a seed in their mind.
Why the fuck are we getting 100 proposals from people who have never talked to us?
And how are they putting numbers on it?
And why are they assuming all these things about our company?
I start planting those seeds.
I would tell them.
I honestly don’t have people submitted yet because I honestly don’t know how they’re doing that.
They’re certainly not submitting anything relevant.
That’s all guesses.
Were they just doing this on guesswork?
So I just start planting those seeds.
Then, of course, when you’re on the call with them, part of that call is going to be price bracketing.
It’s going to be talking about the range of the price and then the objections to that or the acceptance of that and yada, yada, yada.
And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to propose something that probably nobody else proposed.
If they’re doing an RFP, it is usually a major project.
Small projects do not do RFPs typically.
So it’s going to be a major project.
And you just point blank tell them.
There are so many unknowns that we essentially have to do a bunch of discovery to figure out really how this is going to work, how it’s going to come together, what you actually need versus don’t need, what your competitors are doing in this market, yada, yada.
The laundry list of shit we got to figure out before anybody does anything means that we need to do a paid discovery session.
We need to do a two-week or four-week or six-week, depending on the scope of the project, paid discovery session where we figure all this stuff out.
And we’re going to map it out.
And it’s going to have some wireframes in it, most likely.
And it’s going to have a bunch of competitor research in it, most likely.
It’s going to have a bunch of PPC data in it, most likely.
It’s going to have a bunch of SEO data in it, most likely.
It’s going to have a lot of really, really insightful stuff, okay?
But we can’t do this.
This is not work that we do for free.
And what this does is it actually ensures that when we get to the point of being confident in what we’re proposing, we know we’re proposing the right thing, and we know we’re going to build the right thing.
This is actually insurance.
If this is going to be a $60,000 website, this is the insurance policy that that thing is actually going to work out.
And by the way, if nobody else has proposed this insurance policy, I would be, I would just, I would, I would, I would just, man, that is a huge red flag.
That is a huge red flag.
Again, are they just working based off assumptions?
Are you comfortable with that?
Are you comfortable working based off just their assumptions about what’s needed to happen here?
Okay.
So planting these seeds, you’re doing it.
But what you’re doing is you’re selling one little thing, a paid discovery session.
And there is no risk beyond that.
And by the way, they can take all of that insights and all of that data, and they can just hand it off to whoever they want to hire.
And you can tell them that.
You can say, hey, by the way, this is going to allow us to work together a little bit so you can make sure you like us and we can make sure we like you, right?
And then at the end of this, if you just are like, you know what, we actually don’t like these people, but we’re going to take all their insights.
We’re going to go hire this other agency.
That’s your decision.
Okay.
But at least you’ll be informed.
At least your project will get off to the best possible start.
And suddenly, if you understand this juxtaposition, what they’re considering is they got a stack of proposals, 60,000, 50,000, 30,000, 80,000, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then your proposal, $7,500, paid discovery session for X, Y, Z reasons.
And this is actually an insurance policy.
We actually need this to do our job properly.
Now they’re making a decision between 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 7,500.
And by the way, you’re getting that 75, you’re not even building anything for $7,500.
You’re just doing the initial upfront work because this is a complex project that needs this shit figured out.
And nobody on their team, you could ask them this point blank, are all the ducks in a row for this project?
Are all these things, you got the PPC figured out, you got the SEO strategy figured out, you got the email marketing strategy figured out, you got all these things you said you want.
You already got that figured out?
No, we don’t have that figured out.
Okay, well, somebody’s got to figure that out.
It’s going to be part of the paid discovery session.
You have to logically walk them through this.
But now your proposal in this RFP pool is completely different from everybody else’s, right?
They all just, okay, they want a proposal.
We’ll give them a proposal.
We’ll give them a price.
And you’re like, no, no, no, I don’t want to do that.
That’s not in your best interest.
What’s in your best interest is that we take this step by step, that we do the proper research, that we do the proper planning and organizing, all of this stuff that needs to happen before our project.
I want to do what’s in your best and just blindly submitting a proposal with a blind price and blind promises like all these other people.
That’s not in your best interest.
And then that starts to immediately, of course, as it should, build trust.
And then they start to second guess.
Well, corporate said, you know, the board of directors said we had to do this RFP thing.
But in their brain, they’re realizing as you educate, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
And you know whose proposals are rising to the top of the stack?
Yours.
Now, that’s just too much.
It’s a lot of work.
That’s just, I don’t play that game.
That’s how I played it and would play it if I needed to play it.
But I don’t want to play that game because, again, it’s like I got to convince.
I got to convert.
I got to do so much extra work.
No, I want people to come to me who already know, like, yeah, they, you know, Jan down the street says I need to work with you.
Okay, good.
Welcome.
That is the easiest person to sell.
Going out and cold selling these people who are already in a crazy format, a psychopathic format for finding a web design agency,
convincing them to go a completely different direction, that’s a lot of fucking effort.
That’s, I don’t want to, if I don’t have to do that, I don’t want to play that game.
Okay.
Let’s go into, let’s see.
Please make yourself full screen.
Okay.
We’ll do that.
But here’s the danger in that.
Dovber.
Dovber.
That’s a hard one to pronounce.
The danger in this is I will start showing something on my screen and I will totally forget that I am not sharing my
screen.
So if that happens at any point in this stream, that is Dovber’s fault.
Okay.
Just putting that out there right now.
What did you answer the dude on Twitter?
Oh, that’s a good, good question.
Where did I, where did I, I commented somewhere.
Look at my, I don’t even know how to use this platform.
How do you, is there like an easy way to figure this out?
I don’t know.
I essentially said like the initial mistake was that you submitted the proposal without even talking about the price.
They should know exactly what price they’re going to see when the proposal arrives.
And there’s no shock.
There’s no awe.
There’s, there’s nothing else.
Okay.
That’s essentially what I, what I replied.
But again, the other mistakes that he made, obviously on this call, he clearly did not talk at all about why a website should be valued at more than $1,000.
Like why a website should be valued at the $12,000.
If you’re planning, like the idea that you’re planning on submitting a $12,000 number, but you haven’t discussed why websites are worth $12,000.
Cause it goes back to a lot of these business owners don’t know what they’re doing.
Maybe, and maybe they know what they’re doing offline, but they certainly don’t know what they’re doing online.
They think a website is still a digital brochure.
They have no idea what it can do for their business.
They have no idea what the idea, what the opportunities are or what to expect.
So they’re coming at it with this perspective.
You’re coming at it with your perspective, but you never talk about it to make sure the perspectives are correct.
That’s crazy.
That’s another major, major mistake.
They don’t know why it’s supposed to be $12,000.
Why would you ever tell them $12,000 if they don’t know why it’s supposed to be that number?
Of course, they’re going to be shocked.
Okay.
So there’s this basic, basic fundamental mistakes in the sales process.
These are all covered in the sales trainings in the inner circle, by the way.
Most sales things, sales in web design, sales in anything is not a trick.
It is not a technique.
It is not a, oh, I just got to do it this way.
And then bang, I’m closing deals, right?
It’s very, like the best sales is very, very authentic and very, very factual.
Because the people who you need to work with are reasonable people.
You need to reason into this position.
Reason them into their position, right?
And people that will respond to reason are exactly the kind of people that you want to work with.
The people that won’t respond to reason are the people you don’t want to work with.
If you’re foregoing reason and you’re going in tricks and practices and this and that and gurus and da-da-da-da, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
You might be landing sales, but you’re doing them a disservice and you’re doing you a disservice.
That’s not what sales is.
Sales is, I got a real product, a real offer.
I really believe in it.
It gets real results.
It has a major ROI.
It’s going to have more benefit to you than this little bit of money is to me.
And do you want to do the deal?
Thank you.
Who is going to decline that?
Who is going to say no to that?
That’s all you have to do.
And this is, okay, this would segue us into, I’m not going to go down this path fully, but it segues us into fiction marketing versus nonfiction marketing.
Everybody said marketing so hard.
Marketing is very, very difficult when you have to tell fictional stories.
If you can just tell a nonfiction story about your product, everybody is going to be like, that’s fucking amazing.
I just want that.
If you were telling to the right people that have that problem that the thing solves, they’re going to buy it.
It’s frictionless.
Okay.
Nonfiction is frictionless.
It’s when companies come to you.
And as a web designer, this happens all the time.
And this is those low level companies who don’t know what they’re doing.
Guess what?
They have a mediocre vanilla product.
They’re like, here’s my vanilla offer.
I need you to sell it.
And you go, oh, I mean, I’m so good at this.
I think I can do that.
I think I could do that.
And then you go off and you are on a mission that is absolutely going to fail.
You are not going to sell their vanilla product because you’re going to have to find ways to try to not get people to realize it’s fucking vanilla.
So you’re going to, and that’s very difficult.
And it doesn’t particularly feel good either.
So there’s so many problems with low level clients.
Successful businesses, on the other hand, why are most businesses successful?
Well, they have a good offer.
They have a good product.
They get people results.
Like a lot of people found out about them and told people about them.
And they’ve grown through word of mouth and this and that.
Right?
These are established companies, established brands.
They’re not selling vanilla usually.
There’s a reason why they’re really successful.
Okay?
By the way, this is in the sales training in the inner circle.
One of the checkpoints, there’s a checkpoint training where you go through these various checkpoints of what you need to talk about on every single sales call.
Challenging the client, literally saying, okay, I see you’re doing this business.
Why is yours different from all of theirs?
Right?
Most people are like, oh my God, why would you challenge a client on a sales call?
Don’t you want the business?
Don’t you?
No, not necessarily.
I might not want the business.
Okay?
I need an answer to this question.
Because if you can’t answer that question, my job is fucking terrifying.
I can’t make you any promises.
I can’t do my job.
You don’t know why your business is better than the businesses over here?
You don’t have a good reason?
Well, we’re eco-friendly.
Well, they’re all fucking eco-friendly.
Every one of them says that.
Tell me something tangible that makes you better than them.
And if they don’t have a reason, how are you going to market it?
Already, it’s a losing proposition, a losing game.
What did I just say a minute ago?
I don’t like to play games where I’m favored to lose.
That’s not a good strategy.
Okay?
Let’s not do that.
So yes, you need to challenge clients on sales calls.
Okay?
All right.
Let’s go.
Do you think a solid one-page website is enough for a web agency website?
Especially if most clients are referrals, so SEO isn’t a concern.
Absolutely.
We’re building Agency Alpha right now, which is a fully designed template for…
It’s going to be part of the frames library, but it’s going to be an add-on.
It’s essentially a single-page agency site.
The idea that you need a multi-page SEO’d out…
First of all, I mean, let’s just understand the SEO.
You are…
I love the themes.
The themes.
The recurring themes.
Like, it gives me a lot of confidence in what we’re talking about here.
The recurring theme of not playing a losing game.
You think you’re going to register a web design agency domain in 2025
and break onto the scene with SEO?
Everybody and their mom in this industry knows SEO
and has done at least above the base level of SEO,
and they’ve been established way longer than you.
You’re going to waltz in and just outrank them?
Do you know how much effort that is going to take?
Do you know how much time that is going to take?
That’s a terrible strategy.
So what are you going to do?
Blogging?
What are you going to do?
You’re going to go back to 2012 and outblog them?
What are you going to do?
Okay, so yeah, it’s a terrible strategy.
I would rather you see, put that time, that money, that attention, whatever,
into any number of other effective channels.
Have a single-page website that shows some of your work,
has some case studies so they can read about your process
and why you did X, Y, Z and the before and after and the yada, yada, yada.
But no, no, we’re not going to pretend that we still live in 2012
and we can outblog them.
We’re not going to pretend that we can just show up on the scene
with a brand new domain and outrank these other agencies
that have been here for 20 years.
We’re not going to play pretend.
We’re going to live in reality
and we’re going to do the things we need to do to succeed
that are not the things from 10 years ago.
So yes, a one-page website is plenty,
especially if you’re getting referrals,
especially if you’re pursuing other channels and avenues.
Absolutely.
I could do that five days out of seven.
Okay?
You don’t even need a website to have a web design agency.
So you don’t need a website to have any kind of business.
Trust me.
Trust me.
And you can throw out your examples.
Well, Kevin, I mean, this guy wants to sell shoes.
How’s he going to do that?
A lot of ways to sell shoes.
Not online.
Okay?
There’s a lot of ways.
And I’m, is that saying you never need a website?
Of course not.
I’m just saying you might not be ready for a website yet.
And you might not need a website yet
the way you think you do.
Okay.
How should we differentiate pricing
for new versus existing clients?
What steps to communicate this change effectively
to existing clients while maintaining retention
and attracting higher quality leads?
A really good question.
SK, hold on one second.
Okay.
I had to clear my nose there.
All right.
You don’t want to hear that.
You don’t want to hear it in the mic.
All right.
It’s a really good question
because it brings us into another area.
And this terrifies agencies.
This terrifies freelancers.
But again, you came here for a free game.
So I’m going to give you all of it.
All right?
I’m going to show you everything like gray sweats,
as Nick D says.
That’s a good line in a Nick D song.
Nick D, great artist.
If you’re not on the Nick D bandwagon,
you need to get on it.
You need to get on the train.
Okay?
All right.
You should fire the bottom 20%
of your clientele every single year.
So in December, you gear up to drop the bottom 20%.
Now, you don’t just drop them.
It’s an optional drop.
But you inform them, here’s what’s changing.
Okay?
Prices are changing.
Are this are changing?
Are processes changing?
Are we’re not doing that anymore?
Or whatever.
Whatever that you need the narrative to be.
Right?
And you just give them the option.
Are they staying?
Or are they moving on?
Moving somewhere else?
And you get rid of the bottom 20%
because you have to make room
for the next tier of clientele
because you’re trying to level up
every single year.
And you can’t do that with
essentially like baggage from five years ago
who’s on the lowest possible rates
and the lowest possible everything.
Now, again, you’re not kicking them off.
Like, let’s say you’re hosting packages,
like your management packages
started at $49 a month.
And now you’re charging people $199 a month.
So you got a lot of people on $199
and everywhere in between.
But you got a lot of these people on $49.
And you’re like, man, like,
and by the way, they’re pinging you.
They’re needing this and that.
Now, if you never hear from them,
you might decide, okay, well, I never hear.
It’s fine, whatever.
We’ll just keep rolling the way we’re rolling.
But if you’re hearing from them a lot
and it doesn’t make sense
for it to be $49 anymore,
you inform them that, hey, by the way,
just want to let you know,
our prices are going up to $199.
We got to get you level with everybody else.
Totally understand if you can’t pay that
or don’t want to pay that or whatever.
And I’m happy to make recommendations
on who can host this site for you,
who can manage this site for you.
But I wanted to give you the option
if you want to stick around.
I mean, we love working with you,
but we got to keep this like, you know,
things got to be consistent.
And so they’re just going to make their decision.
They’re going to be like, oh, yeah.
Now, if you’ve actually helped them
and you’ve actually gotten results for them,
their general feeling will be like,
of course we want to stay.
Like, we love what you’ve done for us.
Like, yeah, we’re going to,
that’s not even a question.
If they want to move on,
then it’s best that they move on anyway.
And you both win.
Like they get somebody else
and you get to drop the low provider
that’s still needing shit from you.
Right.
But you should just do that as a general practice.
How should we differentiate pricing
for new versus existing clients?
So the problem I think is with hourly rate type pricing.
If you’ve been doing project-based pricing,
which I recommend,
they might not even,
they’re not going to see it as much.
Okay.
And they might ask you like,
why this new proposal for this chunk of project
seems to be higher than it has in the past.
And you can just let them know all the reasons for that.
But the main, I think, issue comes in,
the friction comes in
when you’ve done a lot of hourly based pricing.
When you’re like, okay, you used to be $75 an hour,
but I see on my invoice you’re $125 an hour.
What the hell?
That’s where a lot of the friction is going to come from.
So at that point, you have to make decisions.
There’s a lot of different ways to handle it.
Are you comfortable with just telling them that’s how it is?
Or do you want to tier them up,
step them up to where they need to be over time?
There’s a lot of different ways to handle it.
But math is math.
And if you’re charging that amount for good reasons
and you’re getting them results,
then they should pay it like everybody else pays it.
Okay.
Because this is not like software,
you know, like automatic CSS and frames and etch.
Like I can honor, if I sell somebody,
okay, it’s going to be $49 a year.
It’s going to be $99 a year.
I can honor that forever.
It’s software.
It’s like, and we could just absorb it.
It’s not, but this is your agency.
I mean, they could be,
they could be, you know, demanding a lot of your time.
They could be demanding a lot of attention.
They could be really picky.
They could be, there’s a lot of things going on
and you just can’t afford to keep servicing them
at like very low rates.
So you got to do what you got to do to protect your business.
How do you price the discovery call?
It’s just like anything else.
You have to look at what are the deliverables
within the discovery call.
So like, I will give you a very, very surface level examples.
You’re on the initial sales call with them.
Are you guys interested in pursuing PPC?
Do you know what PPC is?
Is PPC a valuable thing for your business?
Yada, yada, yada, yada.
Let’s say that box is checked.
Well, guess what?
PPC has to go into discovery.
So now we got to figure,
what are the competitors bidding on?
What terms are they doing?
What are their landing pages look like?
What do their offers look like?
What are their, so now we’re going off
into that territory.
Is SEO important to you?
Do you want to invest a lot of money
in ranking this website organically?
Yada, yada, content marketing, digital PR,
all these different areas.
Okay.
Every box that gets checked
is another rabbit hole of discovery
that we’re going to go down.
Now the discovery is more expensive.
So it’s depending on which boxes get checked,
which boxes don’t get checked.
Okay.
And then also what you’re going to put into discovery.
Sometimes it’s, okay,
we’re going to do some initial wire framings.
We’re not going to wireframe the entire project,
but we want to get some initial wireframes done
of what the homepage might look like,
what the narrative might be,
what the flow might be,
where the call to actions might be,
yada, yada, yada, right?
You can make that part of the discovery
or not part of the discovery.
This is an unlimited amount of ways
to string this stuff together
and then to price it.
But that’s not the important part.
The important part is,
are you following and respecting
the general premise that says,
I can’t just wing your website.
If your business is important
and your goals are important,
we need to research,
plan,
and strategize.
Again, this is why nonfiction is easy, guys.
Sales.
Nonfiction sales is easy.
You’re sitting across from a human being
who claims to be rational.
We have to plan.
Do you agree?
We have to strategize.
Do you agree?
We have to research.
Do you agree?
They’re going, yes, I agree.
Yes, I agree.
Okay?
It’s logical.
It makes sense.
Then you say,
who’s going to pay for that?
Should it be free?
No.
Say it with me.
No.
It shouldn’t be free.
Right?
This is all very rational.
Very non-fictional.
Okay?
And so they just come to the realization,
yeah, we need to research.
We need to plan.
We need to organize.
We can’t expect this guy to do it for free.
I mean, what the hell?
That would be a dick thing to do.
Right?
All right.
So we’re going to do this discovery thing.
That’s the conclusion that they come to.
It’s not a sales trick.
It’s just non-fiction.
It’s just having a rational conversation
with another human being.
And then you go,
and then you go,
and those other five proposals you got,
they didn’t mention this.
They didn’t talk about research.
They didn’t talk about planning a strategy.
They didn’t talk about any of this.
You think they’re going to wing it?
I mean, are they just doing this based on assumptions?
And they’re going, you know what?
Why?
Now the dots are connecting in their mind.
And they’re going, you’re right.
Why are they doing it that way?
That doesn’t make any sense.
They made a lot of promises, didn’t they?
You know?
Like, if we could have that kind of conversation
with the client,
that’s how it would go.
It would just be like,
what the fuck, right?
What the fuck?
You’re on the page with me?
What the fuck?
That would be how it would go.
Because it’s irrational to do that.
It’s irrational to submit a proposal
full of promises and prices
when you haven’t done a lick of fucking anything
to prepare for this, right?
Okay.
Now, some businesses,
a lot of businesses are,
there’s a lot of general stuff
that you know has to be done, okay?
And so what I often do
on lower level projects,
not the low level you’re thinking of,
not 2,500, that kind of thing,
but on the smaller projects
is the proposal for,
here’s what we know needs to happen.
Do we know you need a homepage?
Yes or no?
Okay.
Yes, we can nod to that, okay?
Do you know,
do you need an about page?
Most likely for what you want to do.
Okay.
We know what you’re going to need.
Service pages.
We’re going to have a page for each service.
Okay.
We know that, right?
There’s a lot of details we don’t know,
but we do know a bunch of things.
And we’re going to make a proposal
based on that bunch of things.
But we’re also going to have
a paid discovery segment of this project.
And that’s where we’re going to start.
And we’re going to find things in paid discovery.
Then we’re going to do all the things
that we talked about.
And then we’re going to do a phase two
that starts to incorporate all of the stuff
that we found in discovery.
Okay.
Or we can do change orders
or we can do whatever needs to happen,
but at least we can just sell it as one package
and not have to sell the discovery first
and then sell the thing with another proposal
and yada, yada, yada.
A lot of the smaller level projects
don’t need that two-step thing.
That’s very common for mid-size,
higher level projects.
But for low level projects,
you can get away with bundling it all in one.
But it’s always getting done.
There’s never a project
that does not have paid discovery.
Never, ever, ever.
Because it violates the principle.
What are you doing?
You’re just making assumptions.
How do you write copy?
How do you write copy?
Like, do we think that copywriters
just pour a cup of coffee
and start a fire in their fireplace
and sit down and start thinking
like fucking Stephen King?
That is fiction.
That’s how a fiction author writes.
A nonfiction author
has to do a shitload of research,
a shitload of talking to the client,
figuring out what they’re,
like, I gotta get the deets
on what makes your shit stand out
from everybody else’s.
Now, if I’m gonna be,
if I’m gonna Stephen King this,
right,
then I don’t need anybody.
I can just sit around
making shit up all day long.
But if I’m gonna do
nonfiction marketing,
I gotta do a bunch of planning,
a bunch of research,
a bunch of writing
and rewriting,
and I gotta,
right,
it’s a different story.
Who’s gonna do that for free?
Nobody.
Who should do that for free?
Nobody.
And that’s just the copywriting.
Now, you do that
with the wireframe,
you do that with the UI design,
you do that with the branding,
you do that with whatever else
you’re gonna be doing.
We’re not just winging this.
And by the way,
if you present these things
to the client,
they start to understand
why the prices,
go back to the $1,000 price point.
Okay, Mr. Client,
here’s what we’re gonna do.
Let’s be a rational person.
Let’s nod our head together
as we go through this, okay?
We have to do the research.
We have to do the planning.
We have to do the strategy.
This is called discovery.
We have to do the wireframing.
We’re not gonna UI design
in the dev environment.
That’s super fucking messy.
All your iterations that come back
is just gonna make this environment
even more messy.
It’s very expensive to do it this way.
What we do instead
is we design in an actual design environment
by an actual designer.
You know, a lot of these other agencies,
what they do is the dev,
who’s not a designer,
also kind of hobbles the design together.
It’s not gonna get you the best result.
So we have an actual designer
that’s gonna come in
and design this thing.
And then after the design is done,
based on the wireframes,
then we’re gonna move into the dev process.
And after the dev process,
we’re gonna move into the punchless phase.
And then after the punchless phase,
what we’re gonna do
is we’re gonna deploy this website for you.
And then we’re gonna start
on this marketing channel
that we discussed prior,
whether that’s PPC or SEO
or whatever you guys discuss, whatever.
So you lead them that this is the process.
Yes, yes, I understand.
All of that makes perfect sense.
Now, who the fuck is going to do that
for $1,000?
Any of that, any piece of that,
not even,
they’re gonna do this for,
they’re gonna do the whole,
I won’t even do a piece of that
for $1,000, okay?
So just ask,
you’re a rational human being, right?
Who is doing all of that?
The answer is, my friend,
if you wanna come to a rational conclusion,
they’re not.
They’re not doing it.
They’re not doing strategy.
They’re not doing research.
They’re not doing planning.
They’re not doing wireframing.
cobbling shit together
and they’re making a bunch of assumptions
and a bunch of lofty promises
and then they’re handing it over to you
and saying,
good fucking luck.
And usually,
they’re not gonna be around
for when this thing implodes,
as it’s very likely to do,
to get blamed, okay?
They don’t want a long-lasting relationship with you.
They don’t want to legitimately help you.
That is the relationship
you’re about to enter into, my friend.
And a rational human being is gonna go,
I think you’re right.
The math does not math.
This doesn’t make any sense.
And if I hire them,
that’s my fault, right?
Okay.
Nonfiction sales,
nonfiction marketing has,
and by the way,
in a world where everybody is caught up
in fiction about everything,
nonfiction happens to be a very compelling
and a very impactful
and a very entertaining story, okay?
And so it works.
It works really, really, really well.
And they realize,
okay, I’m not talking to like a fucking
used car salesman
who knows this thing as a pile of shit
and is trying to send me home with it.
I’m not getting that vibe.
I’m getting a guy that’s like,
literally was challenging me a minute ago
on why my business doesn’t sound
any better than these other businesses out here.
He’s making me sell my business to him, right?
That’s the vibe you want to get, okay?
And if the sales conversation doesn’t have that vibe,
they will start to realize,
you know what?
I think this guy just wants to sell everybody a website.
Like imagine you telling,
I don’t think you’re ready for a website yet.
what the, what do you mean?
I’m trying to buy a website from you.
Why would you tell me that?
Because it’s the truth.
I don’t think you’re ready for a website yet.
I think you have a business
that’s not at the level it needs to be at
to afford a real website.
Now, you know,
somebody’s going to cash your check
and they’re going to put something up
and they’re going to check a box,
not going to do anything for you.
Then they’re going to ask you for more money.
They have to,
because the website itself
is not going to do anything.
So,
and you’re just,
just laying the facts out for them.
And they’re,
isn’t that the best way for them,
by the way,
to see you as an actual consultant?
It’s all nonfiction.
Nonfiction is the best way to go.
It’s the easiest path in,
and you can sleep well at night.
It’s nice.
Okay.
Should we get into discussions
with individuals
offering website creation services
worth 100 to 500 pounds
just for educational purposes?
Many sets provide,
no,
ignore them,
pretend they don’t exist.
The,
the,
the rodents,
the rats,
the leeches in the industry,
much of whom apparently live on Reddit.
These people,
you can’t fix them.
You can’t,
they’re not rational human beings.
You can’t,
you can’t reason them.
You can’t,
there’s just,
it is best.
I’ve found,
if you pretend that they don’t exist,
don’t even worry about them.
Don’t even worry about them.
And by the way,
they’re in every single industry.
They’re in every single industry.
So,
and if you have the right conversation
with your clients,
they don’t matter.
No,
no real client is only people
who have no idea what they’re doing.
Entertain the,
the,
the super low ball people.
Okay.
And again,
that’s not the kind of person you want
because you’re going to sync with their ship,
which is inevitably going to sync.
and you can’t,
you can’t gamble
on the small percentage
of really scrappy people
who are just at the beginning
who are actually going to make it.
It’s not where you want to gamble.
You want to play games
that you are very likely to win,
which means you start
from a position of,
oh,
well,
I have a winning client.
I guess I stand to win.
Like,
that makes the percentages
really go in my favor,
right?
Versus,
ah,
I’m going to start with this guy
who clearly has no idea
what he’s doing
and he doesn’t really value my work,
but I think I can rescue him.
What the,
what,
what,
what?
None of that makes any sense.
Stop,
stop the madness,
right?
Play games
that you are likely to win
and you will be much better off.
You will be much happier in life.
Uh,
okay,
let’s see.
Would you recommend approaching
IT company?
No,
no,
I,
I stayed very clear
from IT companies.
Uh,
I’m new in freelance agency.
I don’t have any portfolio to show.
Is it fine to do some makeover
on,
uh,
some sites
or do some landing pages
to show my skills?
Absolutely.
You don’t have to get hired
to build a portfolio.
Um,
you can,
like,
I’ll use branding
as an example
and web design
as an example.
Let’s say it’s day one.
Kevin,
it’s day one
of your agency
life.
Um,
nobody knows who you are.
You can’t just waltz in
and get clients from people.
Okay?
So what I’m going to do
is I’m going to pick a website.
Usually like a local,
I would want to start local.
That’s probably where I would start.
I would start local
because I can control local
much easier.
Uh,
and I feel connected to local
much more than,
now,
if your local area
sucks,
it’s a whole different story.
We,
we,
we,
we can’t deal with all the,
all the possibilities right now,
but I would start local.
I’m,
I’m in a,
I’m in a decent city.
Okay?
So I would start local
for sure.
Uh,
and what I would do
is I would pick a website
or probably three or four.
I mean,
I got nothing
but fucking time on my hands
because I don’t have any clients.
so I got a lot of free time
and,
and I would pick websites
and I would pick like,
not disasters,
not,
you don’t pick a dumpster fire.
You pick a,
clearly the websites,
you know,
it’s working fairly well
but like,
they’re still doing a bunch
of stuff wrong.
Yada,
yada,
yada.
And I would redesign it
or pay to have it redesign
if I’m not a designer.
Just invest a little bit of money
just on the homepage part
and I can kind of get a glimpse
from the homepage
what we need to do elsewhere.
And maybe I just do this
with homepages.
Maybe I just make my project
dedicated to homepages,
right?
And it’s kind of,
you treat it,
well,
I’m doing like a daily photo thing
right now.
I just started a photo blog.
I’m doing a daily photography thing
and you kind of treat it like that
where it’s like,
okay,
I’m going to put as a practice,
I am going to choose a website
of a local business
and I’m going to redo
and rebuild the homepage.
And then I can go to medium.com.
I can go to Facebook.
I can go to Instagram.
I can go to whatever platform
I want to use for distribution.
Again,
I don’t even need a website
and I’m going to start
putting this out there.
I’m going to start telling the story
of why I chose this one,
why I made the decisions
that I made.
By the way,
when I’m done with it,
I’m going to share the link
with the actual company.
But,
you know,
I don’t really care
if anything even comes from that.
It’s a practice of,
I’m going to do,
I’m going to show my work.
I’m going to just do this
in public.
I’m going to tell the stories.
I’m going to share about it.
And then I’m going to start connecting
with people in my area,
with all these local business owners,
right?
I’ve said time and time again,
the best way to get business
for your website,
your digital agency
is to stop pretending,
again,
this is a fairy tale,
that everything has to happen digitally.
Get up,
walk away from your keyboard
and your computer,
walk out into the real world,
and there are infinite opportunities
out there.
If you think that you’re just going
to sit in front of this keyboard
and make magic happen,
like some fucking digital alchemist,
that is a hard road
to go down,
okay?
Get out,
away from your computer,
and go talk to real people
in the real world.
I’m not saying cold walk
into businesses.
I outlined a lot of different ways
to do it
in the inner circle.
But,
you got to get away
from the keyboard,
okay?
You start talking to these people.
What are these people going to say?
Do you have any work I can see?
Well, yeah, sure.
Here’s the whole feed of it.
And, in fact,
they’re going to be more entertaining.
It’s not,
that’s a boring,
okay,
every website’s got an agency.
Do you understand
that not having a website,
just being like,
well,
here’s what I would like to show you.
My project feed
that explains
all these websites I’ve redone,
why I made all the decisions
that I made,
all the things
that they were doing wrong
that they could be doing right,
and da-da-da-da-da-da.
They’re seeing now
a much more entertaining format,
a reasonable format.
Not a,
buy me,
buy me,
look at me,
look at me,
we’re the best agency,
oh my God,
we’ve been around forever.
No,
they’re reading,
actually,
like,
entertaining,
hopefully,
and educational content
in a feed format,
and they’re going to come
to the rational conclusion
that anybody else
will come to.
Damn,
this guy knows this shit.
Like,
this is pretty good.
I want him to do this shit for us,
right?
And they’re going to hire you
with no website.
That’s what I said a minute ago.
Oh my God,
you could,
you could have a web design
agency with no website.
Of course,
you could have any business
with no website
that’s super successful.
Okay?
It’s only us
that is bought into the lie
that everybody needs a website.
That’s a web designer’s lie
that we all continue
to tell ourselves
for no apparent reason.
Okay,
so yes,
that’s exactly
what I would do.
You have to demonstrate
your skill.
You have to demonstrate
your knowledge.
And there is a gazillion ways
to demonstrate that.
And you don’t have to wait
for somebody to hire you
in order to demonstrate that.
You can demonstrate it now.
You can demonstrate it tomorrow
at any time of the night.
Whatever you want to do.
The internet
is a wonderful place.
Okay,
let’s see.
Should we place
a starting price
on our website
so we can filter out
low value clients?
Yes.
I’ve talked about this
in the sales call trainings.
If you get on a call
with somebody,
very quickly
you’re going to realize,
and by the way,
hopefully you pulled up
their website
before the call, right?
You can pull up
somebody’s website
and instantly you know
low-end client,
mid-client,
high-end client.
Okay?
What are some ways
you can tell?
Well,
it looks like shit.
Go to the about page.
It’s one guy.
Okay?
All right.
So we know
where that fits, right?
I go to the website.
It’s not fantastic.
It’s pretty decent.
Oh,
about page.
They got eight people,
ten people on the team.
Okay.
All right.
They got something going here.
They got something going here.
All right.
So they’re mid-range, maybe.
I go to another site.
Oh, wow.
They got locations
in four countries.
Okay.
They got some real shit
going on here, right?
Okay.
So you can tell.
So you should already know.
Now,
if it’s a mid-tier person
or a high-tier person,
you talk about price
at the end
because those kinds of people
are not primarily concerned
with price,
nor should you be
you should be concerned
with goals,
important things,
yada, yada, yada.
Okay.
Price at the end.
If you feel like,
oh,
low-end client,
red flag alert,
you talk about price
immediately.
And the best segue
into that
is essentially,
okay,
before,
I got a lot of questions
for you.
I’m super interested
in your business.
Before we get into
all of that,
just want to make sure
you know
our websites,
even for one page,
starts at $5,000.
Is that,
are you cool with that?
Is that what you expected?
What,
and then you get
the reaction,
okay?
Now,
just because they’re low-level
doesn’t mean
they’re going to freak out.
They can be like,
okay,
I could swing that
if it’s like,
going to actually
help my business,
so let’s talk.
If that’s the kind of vibe
you get,
cool,
you’re good to go.
And then you talk about
pricing in at the end,
okay?
But if you get that
major reality,
what,
you’re crazy,
da, da, da, da, da,
then you start to decide,
do I want to spend
my hour convincing
this person,
or do I want to just
recognize reality
that they’re probably
not a good fit,
and then I can refer them
to somebody else,
or I can go down
the path of,
I actually don’t think
you need a website right now.
Like,
if you can’t afford
the $5,000
to get started here,
I actually don’t think
you need a website.
And then you could just,
this is my charity,
this is what I do,
my charity work
is informing people
of what they could do
with that $5,000
that’s not a website,
right?
And,
because there’s many
other places
that they can invest
that money
to get a much better result.
And so,
I’ll send them on their way
with a,
some sort of valuable insight.
All right?
You could do that.
Let’s see.
As Blue the Red Panda says,
the stream doesn’t like itself.
Yes,
please,
please hit the like button.
If you have gotten value
from this stream,
please hit the like button.
Okay,
I’ve read your advice
on priming the clients.
What time are we at today?
Oh,
geez,
we are violating
our 90 minute principle
for WDD Live.
So,
this is going to be
the last question.
I have read your advice
on priming the clients
by giving a price range
before sending a proposal.
Do you send proposals
and wait for an answer
or do you create the proposal
and present it live?
I send the proposal
and I wait for an answer.
I do not,
do not,
under any circumstances,
want them to feel pressured
to accept the proposal,
to move forward
with the project.
I don’t want them
to have any second
thoughts
or second guesses
or anything else.
It is literally like
we discussed all this
on the phone.
Here’s all the details.
The price is the price
we talked about
and now it’s in your hands,
my friend.
And if you’re motivated
to do this,
I’m going to,
I’m going to see a signature
in my inbox
the next day
or in 72 hours
or whatever it happens
to be.
And if I don’t,
you’re going to get
an email in a week
that says,
it’s essentially
the magic email.
If you haven’t heard
of the magic email,
I highly recommend this.
Let’s see if it’s still up.
Is it called the magic email?
I swear it was from,
yeah,
here we go.
Just go read this
right here.
But the magic email
is,
does it have the copy
on here?
Yeah,
here it is.
This is the entire email
right here.
This is the entire email.
Since I have not heard
from you on this,
I have to assume
your priorities have changed.
And then you just sign it.
And they will go,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
no,
my priorities
didn’t change.
I really want to do this.
Okay,
I’m signing the proposal.
That’s why it’s called
the magic email.
It’s magic,
okay?
But that’s it.
And if they don’t reply
to that,
guess what?
They weren’t motivated
to do this.
They’re not serious
about this.
And you don’t want
them as a client.
You want serious,
motivated people.
That’s who you want
as a client,
okay?
Oh,
yeah,
yeah,
see,
I told you,
MedBev,
whatever your name is,
I told you,
I told you what would happen.
Here it is right here.
I just heard a bunch of pings
in my,
did you hear my discord
going up?
Yeah,
yeah.
Andrea,
somebody’s got my back
over there.
I just,
I heard pings
and I was like,
oh,
pings,
pings mean alert,
alert,
alert,
I’m probably not sharing
something.
Okay,
go,
it’s the magic email.com
and it’s,
it’s,
it’s,
it’s one sentence.
That’s all it is.
It’s fantastic.
Here,
I’ll even zoom in for you.
All right?
So,
yes,
do not pressure them.
Do not follow a follow.
Just seeing your thoughts on this.
Just seeing how you feel about this.
One more time.
And certainly don’t do all the things
those assholes,
those,
those rats in my DMs do
and Twitter and LinkedIn
and everywhere else.
Man,
I can’t believe you’re ignoring me.
Man,
dude,
I didn’t contact you
in the first place.
These people that cold email you
and then get,
or cold message you
and then get mad
that you haven’t responded.
Or,
I don’t think you’re serious.
Yeah,
you’re fucking right.
I’m not serious about talking to you.
Who are you?
I don’t even know who you are.
I didn’t ask to be contacted.
Yeah,
that’s,
you,
you only want motivated clients.
They,
they’re motivated to pay you.
They’re motivated to listen to you.
They’re motivated to sign on the dotted line.
They’re motivated to do the next thing
and the next thing
and the next thing that you propose.
My final thought on this would be like,
again,
talking to low level clients.
They can’t afford the initial website.
They can’t afford to do the rest
of what needs to be done.
They certainly can’t afford
to do all the other things
you want them to do down the line.
They are a dead end.
They are a dead end.
You cannot get into a relationship
with dead end people
in any part of your life.
Okay?
So,
let’s just parlay that
into general life advice.
If the person is a dead end,
they probably don’t belong in your life
in any way,
shape,
or form.
Okay?
And that definitely goes
with web design clients.
All right.
I got to get out of here.
If you have questions
about this after the fact,
you’re going to have to put them
in the comments section
of the video.
I’m not going back to the chat.
I never go back to the chat.
I don’t have time
to go back to the chat.
You can email me
if you want.
The best place to ask,
of course,
is the inner circle.
That’s where I prioritize
giving people replies
and responses
and all this.
Hopefully,
you found this valuable.
Hopefully,
it changes
how you’re approaching things.
Hopefully,
your situation changes
after you implement
some of this stuff
and put up
some of these boundaries
and start doing things
a little bit differently.
I want to see
positive changes
in your business
and your life.
That’s why I’m here
every other Tuesday.
It’s why
the products
that we create
exist.
It’s why
we’re just
everything is about leveling.
We want everybody
to level up.
A rising tide
lifts all boats.
Okay?
I’ll be back
in two weeks.
Check out
WP Town Hall.
Check out everything
we got going on.
Peace.
Yes.
Thank you.
