#309: How To Productize Consulting Services w/ Max Traylor
Max Traylor is an entrepreneur, professional paintballer, author, podcaster, business coach, thinking partner, product creator and Producer Of Consulting Products at The Max Traylor helping agencies productize consulting services.Schedule A Call With Max on his website MaxTraylor.com
Subscribe to his podcast BEERS WITH MAX https://spoti.fi/3uZ1D4m
Get his book Agency Survival Guide: How to Productize Consulting Services and Do Other Things Better Too. https://amzn.to/3ynEz1p
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxtraylor/
Twitter: @TheMaxTraylor
Email: max@maxtraylor.com
Phone: (508) 479-9877
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people prices agency strategy productize money life sell business talk pay charge dad podcast service clients big call interview friends
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sweat equity podcast in streaming show the number one comedy business podcast in the world
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pragmatic entrepreneurial advice with real raw dog duck in that right Eric?
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Okay, everything that
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bother me at all when the podcast you see how good we are we talk over each other award winning podcast because we want 2020s best small medium enterprise is a spicery podcast in the United States thanks to Lux global excellence awards proudly hosted by Lux Life magazine. Got a niche in your head going?
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Yo, we've got max trailer on entrepreneur, professional paintball or author podcaster, business coach thinking partner, product creator and producer of consulting products of producer consulting products productize your services. All his info will be in the description of this episode. This episode is brought to you by grasshopper, try grasshopper.com forward slash wet it's $75 off an annual plan the entrepreneurs
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phone line what you need an extra business phone number, you can't have it go to your personal and go who it is. You can't have it go to a Google Voice number and then say no limit studio when you pick up the phone. Good joke even though it's funny. It's pretty funny. Try grasshopper.com forward slash sweat, we get to $75 it's the only place that URL would get you $75 off an annual plan. It's a scalable business phone line, you wanted a vanity number, you want a 100 numbers, you want a local area number, local area code number. It's got it all you can choose right in the app. Try grasshopper.com forward slash sweat. It's got a desktop that it's got a mobile app and we get $75 off an annual plan now who loves you like we do? Let's get this party started.
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today about my sweater, windy.
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Windy.
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Windy.
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About my sweater.
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We want to roll into it. Yeah, roll into it. Oh, yeah, we can. We can rock and roll. We can rock and roll.
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Why? No, no hat sounds better. You do what you want, man.
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For the video, peeps that watch this. They like the hat had no hat. Look, I think you know, well, it's new. It's new for me. This is a byproduct of
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my second kid.
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Just don't give it. Oh, yeah, you're at that point. So how is how young is the baby? So you and I talked? What a couple weeks ago. I have no idea how you guys know
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Craigslist, new I I've even forgotten. So let's not your people reached out to me to come on your show. That's it. And I'm I need probably clearance. If I'm talking about the day job kind of stuff.
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Just because I'm new. I don't know what's kosher and what's not. Ah, I see. You know, we try not to bring up the brands we work for on the show because it doesn't add any value to us or the show.
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But what's it called? So your assistant reached out to me via LinkedIn. Yeah, you're not connected. And you did the you did the
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I usually don't do them. But I was like, Ah, it's not hard to do a pre interview for a podcast. Yeah, I was like
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shit. It's good on you for being thorough. I'm just like I don't need I don't need the my egos like I don't need that pre interview. But yeah, getting interviewed the pre interview you were him. He was pre interviewing me to go on his show. We did the beers with Max right? That's the one yeah, it's on Spotify. We're gonna do your plugs at the top because I'll forget well like it could be I mean I yeah, but look I've been watching some of your stuff and I was had me laughing I was watching this last episode with your your buddy Johnny they're so nice. I'm excited you guys got a good thing I get it. I get the thanks
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like our I need that sometime. Yes, I'm listening to it. I'm going to hell if I know what we're going to talk about but it'd probably be fun Yeah, cool. I know like I'll go you know we're never look my love languages all I drink. The only is it cool if I drink beer because? Yes, yeah, we
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we definitely Yeah, we encourage it.
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By end you speak. I don't I can't speak for Eric his love language, but I receive it by words of affirmation. So yeah, those are Yeah, that works for me. We need to hear that. A little, a little, lots of lots of compliments, regardless of what I'm talking about lots of compliments for you. Yeah, I'm not thirsty. Stand up. I mean, that's all. Yeah, that's this show and stand up is like all about just trying to get some girthy ROI? I don't think I'll ever forget. Good. Yeah, as long as you did it. Yeah.
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They can't wait for like a proper executive board meeting and going look, your your guys ROI just ain't girthy. Yes, that's exactly what it is. That's exactly how it happened. Because I mean, how many times have you done reporting for a client? Or it's the elephant in the room? It's girth. It's not the length of the revenue stream? It's, you know? Yes, sir. Yeah, sometimes I we get so bored doing like a reporting update for clients or something, and I can see them zoning out. So you just kind of Mad Libs it and just throw some words in that aren't technically dirty, you should get like proper porn stars to present it.
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If I had that kind of access, I don't know if that's probably the only access you need to know how much access you need. Really, I think it's an easy market to break into, well, ah,
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maybe
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I haven't taken enough heat for that. I can tell you that much. All right, your book, show
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how to productize consulting services and do other things better to your agency Survival Guide. If you're watching this on video, we've got it propped up between Eric and I.
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I just I was thinking about this on the way. So let's How about this? Explain what productizing means? Because it's kind of I think everybody kind of grasp it. But
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you know, I'll do it in a very broad way. It's taking, it's taking the things you know how to do making it a product, give me the product. So that book scaling up that we've both kind of dabbled in, yeah, talks about every service company ends up selling products eventually when they scale up. And then vice versa. So when you're a product company, eventually have services. So you'll see that Apple's doing it, they have a lot of products, they might think they're reaching their market cap. And so they're starting to offer those like, Apple TV, Apple Music subscription, plus all this subscription stuff.
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You know, the other way around was I think, like Infusionsoft, the one that made made a bunch of like accounting software, you know, they were doing the services as accountants, and then they made the software and kind of commoditize that productize that, I guess not commoditize, but they monetize it. How about that into a product? Is that that's a bro bro way of me trying to explain it. What say you? How do you kind of explain what product is like? Say you What say you, sir?
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steps in things.
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Oh, you want even less information? Yeah, yeah. So
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I don't know why I chose that word. Maybe I wanted it to sound different. And oddly enough, people reach out to me. And they're like, we're just thinking about productizing. I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. I was gonna say I've never heard it. Yeah, that word Exactly.
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But it's it just means that if people selling a service don't go into enough detail on the steps that it takes. If you want to use a big word like operations. If they don't, they don't put enough emphasis on the operations of their service. So they don't know what it costs, like Nike wouldn't sell a shoe, if they didn't know how much it cost to produce it. And yet, you've got the best strategy consultancies in the world, without standard operating procedure for their services. So you need you need steps. And then you need reusable things like templates and tools, which again, people don't do. So it's more of just a big word for the fundamentals of a professional services business or the thing that contributes to professional services, businesses bleeding out, you need operations, and you need reusable tools. And there you go. Okay, so productizing the way you would do it, if anybody's listening that has a professional services business, and I kind of tell everybody, that's if you really want to scale up you have to figure out process like, yeah, I mean, you should just philosophically for your life, figure out some processes template, a lot of life. Yes, scale up your life routines, like, or you're gonna be that person that's always late and like just has just shit all over their car. And like, you know, like, oh, always like, flustering catch up. You
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Yeah.
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came out of nowhere. You know those things showered this morning, right? It's like, yeah. You know how time works? I don't I don't know how some people are just consistently late that can't argue to me that it's not a power move or like a side con my Yeah. Hi, my in laws will give us the old we're just jumping into the shower. And it's the time when they're supposed to be here, man. Yeah, that well, careful with that, though. I've got I kind of, I wouldn't say I'm on time for everything, everything. But if it's something that's work related or a dinner reservation, a stand up show for sure. Like, there's something usually 15 minutes early if I can be.
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But like a barbecue, or a family dinner, right? Unless, like, the food has to be out at a certain time or you got to feed the kids early. So you got they have to be there on time. So there is no late for that though. Yeah, that's fine. You can't even really be late. Right? But I'm guessing the jump in the shower thing is like when they delay a flight. That's
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maybe two hours delay, but they're like, it's delayed. 20 minutes. Oh, cool. Cool. To start to work out all the people in your life who you know to build in that buffer. Oh, okay. You'll be here in 20 minutes. Right? See in an hour and 20 minutes. I do that for tea times. I'm a golfer. I got my list of friends where I have to lie to them. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then yeah, you have to do this stupid math for your Dumbo friends that it can't work o'clock. Well, it's like, Dude, come on. I have to do we're gonna do this in perpetuity. Like I have to. I have to remember that you're not on time. You're punctual. Literally one of the easiest things to do. Yeah, I agree with you college football rule. If you're not 15 minutes early to practice You're late.
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My one of my best friends puts his watch 15 minutes ahead like old school. And I'm like, dude, just so I got the tie. Exactly. That's another thing you tricking yourself. Like, what? And then you're just going, this is fast. I'll be alright. And then they just ignore that anyway. What are we doing? Like kind of dovetails timewise I'm guessing the entry point where you would help a company would be combined like commoditizing the time actually. So figuring out that cost rate versus bill rate because if your service or products easy, like you're talking about you have a shoe, okay, you can break down the shoe parts, the labor that goes into each shoe, whatever child labor was the Nike scenario,
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cheaper, way cheaper. We don't talk about that anymore. I don't know why. You know, that used to be a huge thing in the 90s. And it's just like,
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whatever. Grover
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went on to iPhones, Foxconn, and suicide nets, you know, oh, I hear some babies in the background. You got the symphony now. That's my background music. Yeah, they definitely don't care that you're doing a podcast. Yeah. Can we do two interviews?
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Yeah, well, you guys want to do the extended version? We know you live in my office. We know you have a ticking clock of how long you can get by without being interrupted. I'm sure.
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But the ever It never ends Who? Who said who sold the world on having kids. That's what I want to know. I want to hear this angle.
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Go ahead. But that's my point. What is the angle like who who showed up? And and gave the pros and cons and had anything in the pros department? It's biology Really? Yeah, I ology I mean guys are not.
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I mean, that's what happens. We have a kid getting laid fine. You engage with that later? Genghis Khan would not be friends.
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Did he Sire, like a third of the world at one point or something like that? A third of the world is a
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stick around though. I guess. I guess the argument is responsibility. Right? Yeah. who sold the world on being good dad. responsibility. I want to meet that like when you want to bounce on your kids right in Florida, man. We're deadbeat dad territory. So you need to start that new life with the Hooters waitress that you just met. Because she's really nice, Tia. She wrote her name with a heart disable me, man.
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Yeah, we're gonna have a before and after interview a year from now.
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Live from Hooters from a trailer park in Alabama. So I'm guessing I'm guessing that's the when you start working with someone to productize their service. I'm guessing that probably where you'd start. Let's figure out your project management, your labor cost, and let's start breaking that down. No, yes. Well, I had some experiences growing up and running an agency that made me literally not care about 99% of the services. People are selling. Like anything where you're where you're building or doing work.
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I don't like it. I don't like it's commoditized. Like, like building websites like creating content, the doing of things, I don't like it, I never touch it, I don't care. Interesting, because it's saturated, it's commoditized, you got you got weight, you got big old market forces that are training your replacements.
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And when you're replaceable, the money you can charge goes down, I lived it, I could charge a lot for a website and a lot for blogs. And then blogging became the thing. And these these companies like the one you were talking about, and like HubSpot trained all these agencies, and then the industry was saturated, you can get a blog for for $5. The the thing that agencies do, or should charge for, that doesn't follow that rule is strategy planning, thinking.
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And so that's the only thing that I focus on. And so productize consulting services. So I usually look at a company and say you're not charging for the thing that is most valuable and difficult to replace your unique knowledge, the planning that you do the stuff that you're probably giving away for free. And I consider that the key to profitability, the key to controlling client engagements, the key to differentiation, you know, pick your pick your buzzword, that's the only thing I think about. And usually people are giving away either in the sales process, or they're bundling it with these commoditized deliverables, which means they never get credit for that or make any money on it.
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Or, or you look at these big agencies that sell strategy and consulting for like a million dollars. And there's zero operations, zero rhyme or reason to it, they just pay people a truckload of money to just like figure it out. Yeah. To me, the latter is more of what a lot of marketing agencies specifically, they're very good, the business development, they're not so good at execution. So yeah, it's a tale of two, two time periods, you got that you got the fat and happy, you know, old old agency that charge millions of dollars for the for the strategy work and have the and have that, you know, big guys in there and they just figure it out as they go, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. And then you got the new gritty entrepreneurial agency space that came about from from business owners that saw marketing as this new contributor to revenue.
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And but the thing is that, like, a lot of those business owners that have come up in the last 10 years, they've been trained by software companies and software companies want button pushers, they don't want profitable agencies making money on strategy, because, God forbid, they recommend not, you know, their, their, their software products. So anyway, but long story short, I get brought in to
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make sure people are charging for their plants and their knowledge. So I guess what is the
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if I am a professional services business, I'm going to turn a small law firm I own you know, I'm an attorney, I own a small law firm.
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And when would I when would I know to contact someone like you to productize what we're doing, I think we're doing pretty good. We got from here to here. We want to get to the next level kind of thing. I know I need some outside help. When's the when is the entry point where someone like yourself comes in? You know, if anybody's listening, they're like, you know, I might need something like this at some point. But I don't know when that threshold hits? Yeah.
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My immediate answer is like, you know, Wendy, Wendy, start making more minds like this. It's like the silly default answer of like, you know, obviously, as soon as possible, you want to be making more money and you want to be differentiated, like who doesn't want to charge more, but honestly, I think it's when you really, you, you know what you're doing.
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And a lot of people don't give themselves enough credit. A lot of people will go their entire careers and not believe they know what they're doing imposter syndrome, real thing, but I'm talking about, if you're, if you're just starting out, and you're and you're figuring it out, and you're getting your legs underneath you, yeah, it's not time to
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invest your time and focus on saying we're going to do you know, we're going to sell this batch of knowledge and we're going to run this process.
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It's probably I mean, what's your sample size, maybe 1010 engagements, 20 engagements before you start to say, all right, I can see some patterns here. I can actually ask my paying customers, what they get the most value out of what they get the least value out of. And that starts to give you enough information to say, all right, well now instead of taking orders from our clients and doing what they want us to do, we're
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We're gonna kind of come into our own, and we're gonna say, hey, it's our responsibility to do to do things this way. Because, because we're confident that this is how you're going to get, you know, the most value. So
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going from like lead generation to demand generation, as that's a fun buzzword everywhere. We're, I'm going to tell you what you need from us, or we're not going to work with you kind of thing. Or, you know, you know, the thing on the drive over here. Your book is a meta example. of productizing. Yeah.
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There you go. Yeah. Yeah. The Big Brain on Brett. Yeah, it's,
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it's, what's it called? But yeah, I mean, that's basically what a lot of business books are. I mean, you're given the How to guide
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on how to how, how your agency can survive. By the way, having that on my desk, where people walking by I made sure to keep the shipping label there. So it was it didn't look like I was reading this, because we need it. I was like, Oh, no, my disclaimer.
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This is just research for the podcast.
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I'm smart. I promise. It looks like you're trying to survive your job just based on the right, right title. Yeah, I was like,
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I was like, how do I survive? Under self help books or something? You'll want to forage for sticks to make a fire first. Are you there? Or what's the period book? Are you there?
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But what's the book? Are you there? margay there yet? Fuck it. Man, my brain is dead. Is it about leading right now? It's about period. Oh, okay. I didn't know if you meant it was like a period piece.
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But
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yeah.
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Great Expectations. So. So you kind of when we talked previously, you came from kind of generations of entrepreneurial family successes, success stories, it sounded like from what I recall.
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And so you kind of got a head start on a lot of people, I'd say because you're relatively young to be dispensing this kind of knowledge. That is what someone would do, you know, later way later in the career.
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Can you tell us about your kind of upbringing and kind of how you got to hear I guess, because this show, really, we want to talk about, like, how you get from like, I want to do this brand, or this idea or this business. And I'm gonna do it on the side. You know, my side hustle until I can do it full time. And that's kind of what I hope the audience guy is listening for. some practical advice on that that route. But I feel like your, your family background kind of set the table for you a bit. I'll give you the I'll give you the short rant to, to inspire the short, opinionated rant to inspire people. I used to walk into my dad's office when I was five years old. My dad tells a lot of stories, the first story that he tells about me, I walked into his office, I was about five and I'd say Dad, where do you make the money? And he'd say, well, and he realized that I actually thought he was printing money in his office. He said, Now I'm actually can't, you can't do that. That's illegal. But I have a digital scalable residual business model. And he explained it because I didn't know what the hell that meant. And he explained that if you do something once you should get paid forever. I was like, Wow, that's pretty powerful. And he's like, Well, you know, that's the reason we go to Disney World all the time. And he worked from home, which was really rare. So he was like, the coolest dad, we'd always you always bring like me and my friends to Disney World and everywhere. Because he because he could because he was at home all the time. And my takeaway from that was just a drug dealer by all rates.
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Everybody, that sir,
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like, you do a one time get out, man. Yeah, do it once you don't get out of this game. Okay. That's called heroin. Yeah.
24:10
Well, that could be it. But my takeaway was that you should put your personal life first. And then you should make decisions about business after you know exactly what you wanted to do with your personal life. And he wanted to play tennis every day, and hang out with me as as much as possible. So moral of story is I get into marketing because I, I liked marketing, and I started running a professional services company, an agency where you trade time for dollars, and it's a miserably difficult model to scale. And he just kind of laughed and thought I wasn't listening as a kid and so I you know, all right, try. Yeah.
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go at it. But every time I hit my goals, every time I grew the business, my personal life got worse until I discovered until I discovered strategy and
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I discovered that I could sell strategy for whatever I wanted. You know, we created this, like, McDonald's version, content strategy that we sold for like 2500 bucks. And a couple months later, we were selling it for 30. Grand.
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Because we positioned it properly we, anyway, long story short, I learned strategy. Yeah, perceived value. And but the thing about the rest of the services was it didn't play by those rules. You could say that blog, you could say your website, you could say, because that's, that's one tactic in amongst Yeah, you're
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making, it's making you a million dollars. So I'll charge you 500 grand, but then they'd go, Oh, wait, let me Google, like all these freelance gig networks, like I can replace you in a minute, it doesn't matter what it's worth, if you're replaceable, right? So we had to create something that was unique in the marketplace where they couldn't shop for. And it turns out, all you need is like a catchy name and a really good story. And then it's perceived as unique. And we had this content strategy for
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higher education. And we had the history and the and the, you know, the background and working in higher ed so you know, as possible. And so we could charge whatever we wanted for it. And it was like, five grand an hour or something was the equivalent. And it just changed my life, because we're scrapping, you know, the barrel, hardly making any money managing these difficult contracts, making websites and content, all this crap. And we just saw 1000s of companies popping up doing the exact same thing. And then here, we are making five grand an hour, like selling ideas, saying I put this over here, put that over, here's a nice little formula or some pictures, what do you think of that they Oh, my God, we love you, who should we work with. And then we bring in vendors and make a percentage of the revenue that the vendors we're making. Now we're just making residuals on on their money, we're that were the kings of the universe. So that changed my life. And not too long after that. We were asked to teach other agencies how to do that. So now I'm in a licensing model. Now I'm telling now I'm showing people how to do it. They're going out charging 20 $30,000 for this process, and I'm making 20% off of everything that they're making. And that was my discovery, that intellectual property is worth something.
27:15
So discovery number one strategy, you can charge an arm and a leg. Number two, you don't even have to do the strategy. You're the the knowledge, the structure behind it. The intellectual property is, is worth something. So I digress my message. Well, can I can I add, you probably had credibility that the strategy worked. Right? So like as your hopes Oh,
27:40
really. So you weren't like, Hey, here's the content strategy, use for these clients previously, it gave them this ROI back.
27:51
Or you could just go this is the strategy and just feel fine. No, you're right. Well, that brings me back to my point about like, okay, when, when do you have confidence that you know what you're doing, and you say, okay, we're going to do things my way and you stop, you stop taking directions from your client that tells you, I want you to build this website, I want you to, I want it to look like this. And you say, hey, what you really want is a website to grow your business, we have a system and a structure to ensure that it's going to grow the most. And we can explain it to you. But we have to do it our way. If we're going to take your money. There there is you know, there is a point that you reach where you're confident enough to do it your way. But again, most people are past that point. Most people know how to do it. And for some reason, imposter syndrome, or I don't know why. Well, you got imposter syndrome on one side, right? And then you got Dunning Kruger, which our age group in and younger has, where you watch a YouTube video and you think you're an expert. So there's a weird, you know, balance between the two kind of thing? Because I never I, you know, I'm aware of that one, the Dunning Kruger effect.
29:05
Because I hate all the kind of tech agencies that
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that
29:11
talk a lot of shit and don't actually do it. I don't believe them and they don't feel credible at all.
29:18
You know, I've got imposter syndrome when even when it's going well, you know, I guess that's when it kind of comes into effect a little bit. But it's that thing. Yeah. But it's that thing of like, it's not working. Why would you feel like an imposter?
29:34
Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah. Well, the most sobering thing that you can do and my my business partner is a, we, we, you know, we do this for reason is to interview your current and past customers. Yeah. on a regular basis doesn't matter how long like interview them and ask them what's going on? Is it working, if it's not working, to what degree What's wrong with it? That's the
30:00
The only way to know and people literally do not talk to their existing customers, let alone their past customers. So they don't know. And one of the things that we do always with every customer as soon as possible is talk to every single one of their customers to understand what they see is most valuable and what they see is least valuable. And what we find a lot with professional service organizations that don't sell strategy that don't sell consulting, that don't sell planning is we ask the customers, what they see is most valuable. And they basically describe, yeah, strategy, consulting, planning, decision support, we go to them because we don't know what to do. They don't describe Well, they created this website for us. That's really cool. Right? Yeah. That's interesting. And, you know, strategy in my head always, strategies a fun idea, unless,
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without execution, it's just a fun idea kind of thing. Like, it's, maybe you don't have to do it. I know, I know. I wish to talk to me about seven years ago, I was gonna say, Where were you? Well, we were
31:05
coaches of professional teams have a job? It's the same argument. It's like, Oh, well, you have to have coaching and you have to have you know, playing. Yes, you do need both and and yet, there are business models for for both of those pieces, pieces. There's a coaching as a strategy, business model, we've got consultancies all over the place. Sales consultancies are a great thing to look at as an industry that's about 15 years ahead of where marketing is today. Marketing just recently got a seat at the revenue table. So they're like the new kid on the block. And for the last, like, since that happened, it's been largely dominated by deliver, build content, build ads, for a short amount of time, you could, you could make margin off of ad spend until the market for creative got really saturated. So that was like a really cool period. That's where like the Mad Men, you know, shows came from then it just got really shitty. And I was just eating people alive, because you got software companies reducing the barriers to entry, dumping millions of dollars into training. And he got 13 year old saying that the the greatest agency in the world, and clients don't know the difference. And so we can't make money anymore. Unless we say, hey, the industry is complex, right? Yeah. We're gonna sell you answers.
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And plans and knowledge. Because we're old, and we've been around the block, we've done this shit. Yeah. And, yeah, if you want to really charge a premium, then put a name on it, you know, build a build a cool story around it, differentiate it? Well, also, your branding is another intangible that a lot of people
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should pay for. And they probably
32:54
from let's just go from the marketing agency aspect, they probably just throw it in there with the services, just like strategy, like you're saying.
33:04
And so branding it correctly, I think is awesome. You know, there's a brand strategy to all to what you're doing, but also how you're trying to teach them. You know, we're getting into more of an intangible kind of society or marketplace. So, branding is another thing that's like, what is that? You know, what do you ask people what strategy is so you can get a wild amount of answers? Right? plan. It's a plan, right? Yeah. I mean, yes, we are going to do this, right. As a strategy. Yeah.
33:35
Yeah. I like how your, your, your definitions are more caveman, then. Then you can top us on caveman, caveman and things. But your job brevity is the soul of wit. Yeah.
33:49
But it's that thing of like, I'm sure you've got to that point. Because you've talked about this, probably since you're five.
34:00
Yeah. You know, trying to figure out the strategy with your dad. So we, you know, in the turf, that you all can tell it, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, he he actually learned more about the Do Not Call laws than anybody else. Because he figured that compliance would never get like you would never fire the compliance guy.
34:24
And you know anything about it, but that's what that's what he figured, like, I want to do I want to do anything I want to do. So I need to pick something that will never be fired compliance guy. And so he just learned about it, blogged about it made videos about it. If you Google Do not call protection, you will find Bob treats all you'll find. And he just told companies like hey, when people call me, I'm gonna recommend they work with you and I want 20% for life.
34:50
And they were like, No, we pay our sales people 4% and he was like, Well, great. Well, here's the deal. Here's the deal on a silver
35:00
platter. I'll talk to you next week. They're like, what? And then you give them another deal and another deal
35:08
until they have to work with them. He played by his rules and he's still getting paid for deals that he did you know, 1515 years ago isn't make an arm and a leg, he makes like 200 grand a year. But that's enough to play tennis whenever you want. Yeah, but he hit his goals. It's like you said he started with what do I want to live? Yeah, what do I want? Yeah, what do I want to do? And I'm gonna reverse engineer it from there. And unfortunately, like, we grow your nine to five if that and then you got this, you know, then you got this, like, work your ass off culture for a while that said, like, Oh, you work on the weekends. Like, you know, it's like the American dream or something I don't know. Read is like sacrifice everything to work your ass off for the man. But I think that's shifting a bit, especially during COVID where people are working from home and realizing that for the last 1020 years, they've been driving to and from work and wasting four hours of their life every single day. Not to mention being really pissed off in traffic, like the mental toll that takes on you. So there's just been so much can't wait to get on set. cybertruck like, yeah,
36:18
yeah, I'm gonna get fucked up. And that drives me everywhere. Definitely do that. So that was so yes, that was cool. I had a I had a unfair advantage in that I grew up with, like someone telling you look, there are no rules.
36:32
Like you can, you can sell anything you want, to whoever you want, for whatever price you want. As long as you just like, decide, that's what you want to do. And as long as you know that when you are successful with that, you'll have like a good life. People don't think about that. They're like, Alright, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like, you know, build this whole business, and it's gonna be successful, but they don't think about like, what their personal life is gonna be like when they are successful. And it's usually a complete sacrifice. Yeah, and what's interesting, as we're talking to you, you don't have the disposition of a lie, guys that are what I would think in your position. Like, you know, these agents, former agency owners, or whatever, they're all kind of twitchy, and like, almost like a friend that stopped drinking and is always like smoking cigarettes and tap. You know, that kind of antsy, like, that kind of energy. And you kind of celebrate that their phone is ringing off the hook. 24 seven, like they were at the office for 12 hours. Yeah, yeah, you get a productivity boner. Like, yeah, that's it. girthy ROI and productivity. And your dad was given that
37:40
big girth energy.
37:43
But yeah, I mean, but it sounds like, you know, that I talked about, like, we talked about relationships, like that person that's so anxious and eager, and just,
37:55
you know, trying to ask out a girl, and now, she's never liked the app suite. I want that energy around. The people that attract are the ones that really know themselves. And I think that's what, that's what I was given is like, you figure out what you want your personal life to be like, that's you having confidence in who you are, that guides every business decision. And and the fact is that when you put your personal life first and you stop thinking about working eight hours a day and five days a week and, and things like that,
38:27
then you start making business decisions that everyone else in the world sound completely crazy.
38:34
Like, what do you mean you can do that? And those are my those are, that's what got me into this business wasn't like I could make I could help people make more money. That was easy. Anybody could do that. It was a few times when people were like yeah, I just spent six months in Africa with my family. And while I was there my business doubled. Yeah, and that was something that you did I was like, Whoa, that's a different feeling. Or like a client I have now she's like yeah, I've made you know, it's may I've made more money this year than I've ever made an entire year before. And oh, by the way, I'm still doing the three days a week thing huh? Interesting. The only working three days a week so that's what I that's what I I tried to you know, start with with people is like, No, what? What do you actually want you like kids, you like snowboarding? like doing these things? Great. Well, how about you do more of that than work? And that's gonna force you to do some things like double your prices, which I don't care who you are. Everyone should double their prices
39:36
today
39:39
because it's simply the start of a better conversation. You can always go down in price, you can always go down. Yeah, that's, for some reason, perceived value goes up, the more you charge if I if I was sitting here telling you that in order to work with me and cost a million dollars, your first thought would be like,
39:56
hey, Who the hell is this guy a million dollars and be what
40:00
Come you know what comes with that. So there's a, there's a perceived value to pricing yourself higher. And when it's too much, it's the start of a really good conversation. You get a lot of really great information
40:16
when they want to work with you, but it's too much money.
40:20
When you charge too little, you don't learn anything. You just get a yes, you're like, oh, that was easy, and it's clouded by, you know, the happiness that you got the deal, but in reality, you left a lot of money on the table. And you didn't learn anything about their buying process where the money is coming from.
40:37
Who makes the decisions, any of that? real risk of the relationship? That kind of stuff? Yeah, read write. The best thing that you can do is get a no, because it's too expensive. It's the greatest that you should go out and do that as many times as possible.
40:52
Yeah.
40:53
It goes on my buddy. Yeah.
41:01
Fuck, cheers. Cheers to you. Oh, nice. Yeah, I like I like the drinking. I
41:07
like come prepared. I call this the COVID cocktail. When you have two kids, you'll get your second COVID shot. Grab yourself a few beers and have yourself tonight. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah, I'm trying to go off beer lose a little weight. It's actually been working sadly. Because that's how much have you ever been drinking?
41:24
I did that for a while. But I I unfortunately, I interviewed a health conscious person. And she said that the best thing to drink is pure vodka. Uh huh.
41:38
Yeah. DHA. And the downside?
41:44
Well, yeah, if you drink more of it, it's probably not a great more than the equal now. Yeah, it doesn't it's not it might be healthier for your body, but it doesn't long term. You should just we should all just do stop drinking or or periodic, you know, breaks. Yeah, yeah. I, I don't like to do anything too much. moderation in terms of moderation, or whatever that Oscar Wilde quote, talking
42:13
about today, dude. Yeah, normally pop those off. No problem. Yeah, yeah, pop it off. I'm trying to think
42:22
we got we ask everybody that comes on the show. I'm sure I'm gonna have about 40 questions as soon as we're done here. Because I'm gonna like, go about my, the rest of my day and be like, ah, should ask this.
42:37
Well, like I said, I got two kids right outside that door.
42:42
And I'm happy where I am. If your goal is to have kids go three hours, maybe your goal is to have kids but podcasting? Oh, yeah. No, you know what to think about his time in the thing that everybody talks about that I've talked to I asked a lot of older successful people, because you find out that you think the busiest most successful people are too busy to dispense advice. And it's quite the opposite. No one really asked them I find in general, I'm talking who says the most successful people are the busiest? Oh, I just I that a lot of people think they are right. Like they assume it, right? Because they're successful. Because good problems, right? We Yeah, because we correlate those right, with the American kind of work ethic of getting to that, getting to that higher echelon, right? In business, I find that they don't get asked a lot. A lot of them are like, I wish more people would ask me nobody questions, because I'd be happy to tell them everything I know, a lot of the time. Time is the one thing I find from everybody that I've talked to that's, you know, over 50 and been successful, what I would deem successful. And what they wanted to accomplish in time is the through line of like, I wish I didn't spend a lot of time on bullshit like chasing bad clients and trying to make a deal when you haven't doubled your your service price.
44:11
You know, those kind of things where you're spinning your wheels all the time, and you're not really think you didn't really think it through I think about that a lot right now. Divorced dad life, because of my Okay. Well, I've got the kids 50% of the time, you know, and of the week, I'm going to try to be a way a little bit more present. Try to be more present with them. Try to like, plan stuff to I don't want to be an aloof dad, right? divorced Dad, you don't want to be the guy that's like, I just let you you know, you didn't. You didn't have to bathe every day at my place, you know? And then they become the smelly kid at school and shit. They're just wearing the same clothes every day. Like you know, those like aloof divorced dads that just like you had they have stories that are like that. I can't believe you just let me eat Cool Ranch.
45:00
Rita's every night kind of thing. That kind of shit. Not there. I'm not there yet, but my wife's listening. So
45:07
hi. But, you know, I think about time in like, I used to try to do the thing where I'm watching the babies when they were babies in light, and try to work at the same time, and I burned out bad. And I think time, if there's a through line of this whole conversation, it is like, what do you want to do? But really, it's like, what do you want to do with your time in the future?
45:32
I got a few things. I got a few things to say about time. I think the biggest mistake I just watched Inception on on mushrooms, so take that for what it's worth, Oh, goodness, when Interstellar,
45:45
Interstellar ecstasy.
45:50
Much don't do that. No, not not a good use of time. But anyway, back to time. A big mistake, big mistake people make is to equate time with value. And, you know, their big problem is I tell them double your prices? And they say, Oh, well, you know, it only takes us 10 hours. And, you know, we we can't, you know, we can't justify that cost. But I had the life hack my dad one time because my dad wouldn't charge for his advice. And I said, Dad, I want you to hold up your right hand and tell me that everything you have learned for your entire life is worth nothing.
46:27
And he couldn't do it. And the reality is that when you're selling strategy, when you're selling planning, when you're selling your knowledge, you are not selling your time you are selling access to a lifetime of accumulated knowledge. Number one, it's priceless. Number two, it goes up in value every single day.
46:44
That's right, think about time. That's good. It's wisdom.
46:48
Knowledge times experience equals wisdom God thing squared. Sure. Why not? Well, I feel okay, after you've that bitch, who cares? It's more expensive. And you know what? Here's another thing about raising your prices, double your prices? If you get a no, get four more nose, then split the difference? Yeah, yeah, you can always go, Hey, we got a promotion, or we've got something going on. You can have a reason to fall back up and go, hey, let's we can do that. This. No, yeah, it's a but you're you're you're saying you're you're setting your market price. By law. It's law. I can solve all your problems can be $40,000.
47:29
My you can you can sell my evidence for okay. No, it's too It's too It's too expensive. Give it to me. It's too expensive. We can't afford it not well, law. You know, I think today's your lucky day, because I got more business that I can handle. I am extremely confident that I can have a major impact on you. And I know it's the right thing to do. What does it need to look like to work together? Because I'm kind of, I just kind of want to do it. What does it need to look like? If you're into it? I'm into it.
48:01
Yeah, I mean, we could, you know, we could probably work it down to if you can do something in the 20 whatever comes after that, it doesn't matter. Whatever comes after that doesn't matter. It you're now you've set you set your perceived value. Right, and you set that high? Yep. And maybe the maybe the day before you were charging 20 grand. But now they're going to feel like they got a deal for 21,000 25,000 maybe you get the 20 but you have a little equity, maybe you get 20 but you have a little revenue share on top. So you put yourself in a really powerful negotiating position while making them feel like they're getting a deal.
48:38
You just got to raise your prices. It's it's sobering. Yeah, and here's a pragmatic practical tip. If you do like your invoices monthly for someone or whatever, make sure to cross out you know, given the full rate and then cross it out make sure the discounts on there every time every time you do it. So they know that your that's your rate, and you cut it for them every month or every time they get a bill. So they know that you're your values there every time and then when they don't pay take them to court Oh for that top line that was crossed out which I got about 5000 old bad debt clients get that that
49:20
that notice in the mail.
49:24
I one time I interviewed a business consultant there was an auctioneer
49:29
that her profession was an auctioneer. And she would teach people how to always raise her like the exact opposite of what we're talking about. And talk about the value of raising your prices every time and saying hey, I usually charge this much for for you I'm going to charge more. It really interesting,
49:48
really interesting person to talk to, in other words, the perceived value or or what happens mentally when you know that you're paying more than everybody else. Because there are people
50:00
out there that relish in the fact that they pay more for things that that other people pay less for like cars. Oh, I got an example for you. This is what I was trying to think of and I couldn't
50:11
do that. Here's a recent company. It's a product company mostly that double the price of their product. And then and was publicly known, and they sold more than anybody pre COVID era.
50:28
peloton bikes explain that like how to get peloton was already an expensive bike system. Right? It was and then they doubled it. They just doubled the prices. And they didn't add any value or anything. They didn't have a new product line that came out they just straight up doubled them and they fucking crushed it because what you're talking about is on the consumer level people want to go you know, be very smug. I've got a peloton. Yeah, like, I ended you want to be that hot chick in the commercial that really doesn't exist that gets up at 430. In bikes before the family wakes up. Well, here's a here's another fun story about pricing. Because during COVID all of my
51:13
advice here went out the window. So during COVID we decided we my business partner and I came up with a service and we call it Oh shit.
51:24
That's what we call it. Oh shit. And the premise was you pay what you can
51:30
and turns out Panera Bread did that imperative? Panera Bread did that in a location in?
51:37
in
51:41
there you go. San Francisco California. Poughkeepsie. Sure. That's not it. It's like Atlanta in Atlanta location. Thank you took San Francisco to get there. You're welcome. And they made confused and and they're in their sales skyrocketed. Because it turns out people don't know what a muffin cost. So they just came in, they're like, oh, wow, you're doing $20 here's, yeah, here's, here's five bucks, you know, they get a muffin and a coffee, and all of a sudden is the equivalent of raising their prices. 50%. Same thing happened to me. I took on about 20 customers at a time when no one else was taking on customers, just that people were not going to pay me the 30 grand. That was my price point at the time, it wasn't gonna happen. So we created, we interviewed all of our past customers, we said most of what's the most valuable thing we've ever done, we took that little piece and we made it the ohshit program. We said, Alright, here's what we'll do. And we put like a, like a $6,000 price point on it. And we said, pay what you can. And we took people on at 500. As long as anything I said, on the calls, I said you have to decide right now. I don't have time for this the world's ending I don't have time to negotiate with urgency because pick it right pick it and and by the way that the friend, the time I saved closing deals right there and not having to follow up and make as there is no proposal, you pick, you pick a number between $1.06 $1,000 and we start working tomorrow, I took on 20 clients during COVID when otherwise nothing else would would would have happened. Most of the people paid half upfront and half.
53:17
Maybe half of those people never paid the second half. But
53:21
like, I don't know, maybe 10% paid full pay, we had a couple people pay full price. We had a couple people pay half, we had a couple people do installments $1,000 here $1,000 there.
53:31
But the moral of the story is
53:35
you kind of you figure out your market price is as a lot of
53:41
you know, your your the market demands what the market demands, right? So
53:46
you're almost It sounds like you're doing almost experiments with that.
53:51
With your business.
53:53
I think I think the moral of the story is that people are trying to sell things.
54:01
And they're not listening to what people need and then asking what they would pay for it. And because they are not disciplined enough to have everything they do in having operational procedures, knowing what everything costs to then say, okay, you have this problem, you have this much budget, I know what I can do for you and still be profitable, and still have that engagement lead to a more consistent, ongoing consulting thing.
54:33
So maybe that's the point. Well,
54:36
you know, I feel like we could talk, this philosophy, strategy, all this stuff for hours. we'll have you back on.
54:46
I read this book and
54:49
need to figure out how to take this podcast productize it into a book as well.
54:56
What's it called? We asked everybody that comes on what if
55:00
Vice would you give your 13 year old self?
55:05
So you can you can time travel. You can go back in time understand the question was eyes widened very big example started getting bigger, so maybe he's on something.
55:19
So maybe we just blew his mind kicking his business. Why can we keep it business? It can be business, it can be personal it can be you have a business at 13
55:29
flogs my first business was teaching my foreign college classmates how to ace class participation because I went to a I went to a school with a lot of Middle Eastern women and in their culture you don't speak up. Turns out that a lot of turns out that a lot of courses in high high cost colleges are based on participation.
56:00
made some good money with that. Really
56:03
weird. So you're talking first businesses? Yeah. And 13 somebody said, maybe I would have told my 13 year old self just to do that. Just call it quits. That's your business do that. You know, it's a good market for it. Simplify? No, I would, I would have told myself that.
56:22
earlier on, I would have, I would have designed to the personal life that I wanted. I didn't like I heard my dad's advice, but I was still in this culture of, alright, I'm gonna go to college. totally unnecessary. I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna find a nine to find a nine to five job, I'm gonna, you know, have this career. And that's what I'm gonna measure myself worth on? And I would I would have told myself. Yeah, that's, that's complete bullshit. Just like you want to work one day a week, great. Multiply your prices by five. There's your one day work week. Do you think you needed that though, to get to where you are now?
57:10
No, because you needed you, I think a powerful motivator is knowing what it's like. Because the when you're, when you're working three days a week, or when you're doing your own thing.
57:23
What you what's guaranteed is that you're going to have a lot of, you're going to have more advice, you're gonna have more people telling you, you're crazy than people telling you, you're doing the right thing. Because 99% of the people you interact with are going well, you're crazy. And that's risky. You know, I got this job over here is what you should be doing. So they're projecting fear to the right, they're protecting right? They're protecting their own values and what they grew up with. So even if I had stumbled into doing the right thing, to your point, at 1513 years old, I would still be grass is greener on the other side.
58:00
And I would still have thrust myself into what everybody else says was the thing. And, you know, because doing your own thing ain't easy. It's scary as hell. But when you're successful at it,
58:12
you're actually happy. Whereas when you're successful at, you know, typical career stuff, you end up making too much money, and you get fired, when you're the person that's making the most money. And then you have to start over. And I think that's what my dad put the fear in me is like, you don't want to be in a position where you'll have to start over people, people say entrepreneurs, or, you know, people doing their own thing are at risk. Well, there's nobody that can take all of my clientele and all of my income all at once. There's nobody that can do that. And yet, everybody that works for somebody else, everybody that has a full time professional job, there is a single person with their finger on the button that could make your income disappeared tomorrow.
58:56
That's risky.
58:58
Yeah. And cryptocurrency trading. Yeah, that, that. Yeah. divorce. And I understand the comedy business is quite difficult as well. A man I yeah. I need to take a more calculated approach to that career. But you know, that's I kind of bucketed anything artsy as, don't make money. You can sell an online course of how to start your online career in comedy.
59:24
Do you haven't seen my act? So jokes for
59:29
it to feel? Yeah.
59:32
But, uh, yeah, it's one of those things where now I, I don't want to keep us going. I'll keep us talking. And we got to cut it off because Eric's got a hot date.
59:45
But you realize I'm incentivized for the opposite. What not dating errors going as long as Oh, you can just
59:53
you can just pretend to talk.
59:58
Just Yeah, just talk
1:00:00
can help us Yeah, see see you guys
1:00:03
well I appreciate the fam letting you letting you do this as they're probably
1:00:10
your wife probably waiting on you to have a break like that. Alright and then dump everything on you
1:00:17
but I'm leaving
1:00:20
we'll have you back on man this is wildly interesting and appreciate randomly connecting
1:00:27
Thank you
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