#267: Austin Church on How and Why to Sell Strategy Engagements to Your Clients

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. The number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, I firmly believe that the days of offering just writing services, writing assignments for your clients, those days are numbered. At least if you're an ambitious writer who wants to earn and continue to earn a strong six figure income doing great work for great people. Now, I don't want to sound like an alarmist, okay? It's not that you're going to starve by offering only writing projects. It's just that you're going to find it progressively harder to earn a great living consistently year after year working with top clients who love and respect you, if that's all you offer, is no secret. There's more competition than ever before in terms of experienced writers out there who do great work. And if that's your only thing, there are definitely ways to compete. And you know, again, you're not going to starve, but it's just going to get harder and harder. If you want to do well for yourself, you have to shift away from being an order taker to being a trusted advisor who can help clients way beyond just giving them content, just beyond cranking out piece after piece after piece every month. And if this sounds interesting, you're going to love today's episode. My guest is Austin Church, founder of Blernum. Blernum is a branding and marketing firm that works with passionate and gutsy company founders to build brands people care about. A few years ago, Austin started to shift his business away from providing just content and copy to one where he got much more deeply involved with clients. And he started helping them with strategy and planning by offering separate strategy engagements. In fact, he would and he still does. He leads with those offerings when he talks with a new prospect. And the results have been nothing short of transformational for both his company and his clients businesses. In this detailed discussion, you're going to hear exactly how and why that transformation took place, what it's enabled Austin and his team to do for clients, and how it's made his work so much more fun and profitable. We start at a high level, so just bear with us. But we're going to get into the weeds a bit and make this idea very practical. For you, so I hope you enjoy it. Austin, welcome aboard. Great to have you here.

Thanks for having me, Ed. I'm delighted.

Well, so am I and I'm glad we connected and I'm very excited about this topic because it's something that I'm constantly thinking about and not sure we've really addressed this level in this show before. So looking forward to diving in. Before we do that, why don't you tell us a little bit about your current business and we're going to dive a little deeper into this in our conversation. But I'm just curious with people who don't know who you are, what it is you do, what kind of work you do and what types of clients you typically work with.

Sure. So currently I do a lot of strategy work and that entails brand brand strategy, content strategy, launch strategy to some degree, messaging strategy, and then often carry high level messaging forward and still do some boots on the ground copywriting as well. And types of clients I most enjoy working with are usually mission driven and have a brand first philosophy. I think that brand is a mechanism for innovation. I think it's more important than ever and so find myself working with a lot of e commerce companies and like I said, a lot of cause are mission driven brands because those are the ones that already put so much emphasis on their brands and see such a deep need for differentiation. And so I guide them through that entire process of defining what their brands are. I've got a pretty robust methodology for doing that at this point. And like I said, sometimes I even get to play in the sandbox of words later.

Very cool. Now I'm assuming that did you start out doing working in the sandbox and then just kind of pivoted? Is that how it went down?

Yes. I thought I was going to be a college English professor. I went and got my master's thinking that then I would do my PhD, be on that whole track out of love with academia and got a job at an agency as a copywriter and social media strategist and to some degree an account executive. I had a multifaceted role because that's what the agency needed at the time. And so I was writing everything you can imagine from press releases and web content to ad copy, billboards, social content, just everything across the whole spectrum and got laid off in April 2009 when the economy tanked and suddenly found myself fun, employed and growing my hair out and actually loving life a little bit more than I had at the agency. So I was pushed forcibly out of the nest and I've been my own boss ever since.

I'm curious how, because I want to get into how this evolved. I'm assuming that when you started out on your own, you started out as a freelancer. And maybe I'm wrong, but you started out basically offering copywriting, content writing services for your clients. Is that how you got started?

Oh, yeah. I mean, you could have filled a thousand dump trucks with everything. I did not know about business and positioning and marketing and differentiation. So I was just a run of the mill writer selling generic services. I looked at what the agency had billed out my time at. I thought, well, if I want to leave a little meat on the bone for agencies because I knew how markup worked and how their business model worked, then I can get away with charging 40 bucks an hour. So charging 40 bucks an hour had a really impactful conversation two weeks in with a much more senior copywriter who even in just that one conversation, took me under his wing. And he told me I needed to raise my rates to 75 and I were effective immediately if I wanted to be taken seriously in larger markets. And my head exploded. I thought everybody was looking for a good deal. His name's Andrew Gordon. Still just deeply appreciate him. But he helped me understand that there's so much more to the business of writing than. Than just being able to string together nice sentences or even just being able to write effective copy. And so that began to set me on a different trajectory of not just generic services, but starting to dabble in some other areas that had higher value.

Well, let's talk about that. You do something that I see very few people do, and I'm talking about freelancers. You offer strategy as a standalone service. A standalone offering. So I'm curious, when did you start doing that and what was your motivation for moving in that direction?

So early on? I did it out of a practical need for the direction of the project to make sense. I mentioned that I was a social media strategist at the agency. So I was always thinking, okay, like, what collection of decisions do we need to make to get from point A to point B from where we are to where we want to go? So I always gravitated towards strategy, but had a liberal arts background. Had. Did not know this about myself. Right. But in the early days, it sort of germinated in. Clients are like, okay, thanks for the web content or thanks for the app copy, now what? And I'm like, looking over my shoulder, why are you looking at me? I'm just the writer. Why are you saying now what? And so I was always being pulled into it. And I don't know if it's because I had clients who saw something I didn't see in myself yet or if it's because they were just looking for someone to be the expert. They were looking for someone to lead. And so slowly but surely, I recognize that a lot of my clients had needs beyond just the writing. They're like, well, we have these other goals. We want to grow, we want to open a second location, we want to build our team, we want to get leads from our website for the first time ever, various needs. And I thought, well, just throwing up a new website isn't going to get you there. And so it had always been germinating, right? But there was a, I don't know, catalyzing event or whatever you want to call it. It was a trip. In 2015, I was binging on a podcast that you've probably heard of called the Business of Freelancing, Brennan Dunn's podcast. He has become a friend. And I just love Brennan, am really appreciative being able to sit at his feet or listen at his feet. That metaphor didn't work. But being able to listen to him talk about what he called road mapping and so many things. He talked about the Socratic method and I was very familiar with that from high school and college and liberal arts background. That's where my liberal arts background really came in handy. I was like, oh, asking good questions, being more consultative, creating space for clients, facilitating this process of self discovery. And so it was mid-2015 when I first started learning that, oh wait, you can get paid to help clients get clarity and begin to put together strategy. That's interesting. And you know what, that would be really helpful for me with writing because so often I'm asked to sort of color inside the lines that the client has already drawn. Halfway through the project I might realize, gosh, this client, they don't even have a clear sense of what makes them special. They the whole brand strategy was off or the marketing strategy was off and I would see these flaws. But if I was just the order taker, the rule follower, when we say jump, you jump. If I was just a contractor, not a truly strategic partner, then what could I possibly add? And so I always wanted to do great work. I've always wanted to truly serve my clients in strategy was the missing piece for me. So in early 2016 I would have clients with more open ended needs. It might be, hey, I want to establish myself as a thought leader. Could you Be my ghostwriter or hey, we really need to ramp up blogging, but we're not sure what to write about. I would say great, no problem. Why don't you book a road mapping session with me? I now call them wayfinding workshops. And they're longer and deeper and more expensive. We can get to that in a second if you want. But early on, I was charging 500 bucks for an hour, hour and a half. And the deliverable, or the outcome was a clearly defined plan for everything from how do we solve this business problem to what should our blog topics be for the next six months, to how do I go from being unknown to being recognized as a thought leader? And it felt effortless. The work made me happy. It was hitting buttons that were different than writing, but very complimentary. And most writers are multi talented. Right. And I found that I had a talent for helping clients get clarity, set direction, define definitive steps that they could take, and then begin walking down that new path. Path that we had identified together.

So it sounds like a couple of things kind of converge. You were starting to realize that you had much more to offer. You saw that some clients were really missing some of these key pieces. And then at the same time, you had clients who were interested. Not only were they missing them, but they were interested in getting your help. It wasn't just all on your side. It was a convergence of things happening on both sides. At least that's how I'm interpreting. Is that about right?

Right. And like I said, we're all multifaceted. And I think if you come into the business sphere through the door of writing, it's easy to keep on thinking, well, I'm just a writer and we make ourselves smaller than we really are. Well, over time you do accumulate some business acumen. You've got more to offer. And I found that maybe 7 out of 10 prospects actually did not have a well defined project. So they would come to me and they would say, hey, we need new web content and just being naturally curious. And then later, once I developed out my toolkit of open ended questions, I would say, oh great, tell me how you arrived at that conclusion. And sure enough, there are all these unstated, amorphous goals, most of them involving growth or less waste or more efficiency or fewer headaches. And so over time, as I call it, like the buried dartboard, right? If you can uncover the edges of the buried dartboard and now you can clearly see the bullseye, the project is very different after one of those conversations than it was coming in. And There's a writer named Alan Weiss, legendary consultant, wrote the book Million Dollar Consulting, and he talks about conceptual agreements. And I found that strategy as a standalone offering means I get paid to do very deep and thorough discovery, reach a conceptual agreement about what the follow up or next project would even be, and then it will become clear to the client and to me whether or not there's even an opportunity to keep working together sometimes, because we now can clearly see the dartboard, we know what the target is. It's clear that they don't need my help at all. I can refer them to someone who does social media implementation or someone who will build a terrific, high performing e commerce site for them. And I'm fine with that because it's satisfying to help them get that clarity. But I think come full circle, we all have a lot more to offer than just the skills that got us into business in the first place.

I couldn't agree more. I find that most good smart writers I know are deep thinkers anyway. And if you're a thinker, you can help clients more than you might be helping them right now. I'd like to get a little bit more detail because I know we've kind of been setting the stage and talking in relatively abstract terms. But I guess as a way to pivot into more specificity, a two part question. How would you define strategy? Okay, because I want to make sure we're all on the same page here. And what does a typical strategy engagement involve for you?

Great. I define strategy as the group or collection of decisions that you will make, plan to make to get from where you are to where you want to be. So we can use strategy for a home renovation. We can use strategy for web content sales copy. We can use strategy for going on a road trip. It all starts with a goal. And a lot of clients actually don't have clarity around their goals. Sometimes it's been months since they've really done any real planning. Any take a look at your numbers, what is the next realistic milestone, that sort of thing. And so again, if seven out of 10 people coming to me and asking for a project, I think it was Seneca who said something like if you don't know what harbor you want, any wind will do, you may have been a part of projects, and I certainly have, where the client you fulfill the contract down to the every I dotted, every T crossed and the client is still somehow dissatisfied because that project revealed that the needs were deeper or broader or just very different than whichever project you got hired to do. And that always Made me a little bit sad because, yes, I came away with a portfolio project. Did the client really get what they needed? I started adding this, as I call it, a narrow corridor. Right. I ask all my clients to walk down the same narrow corridor before we get into the bigger house where I can offer them any variety of packages or bundles of services. Right. And so a typical strategy engagement looks like me sending over a list of eight to 10 questions in advance. Those questions pertain to their goals. Those questions pertain to even their experience working with someone like me. How did they arrive at this conclusion? Was there some sort of triggering event or impact itch that made them say, you know what, I really need to hire? So and so are they looking to the future? I'm just trying to gather as much intel as I possibly can beforehand because I now have a list of 20 to 30 questions that I use during the engagement itself. You can call it a session, strategy session, workshop, whatever. I have a list of questions that I will then hand pick the right questions based on my initial impression of where the client is, where they want to go. And I know going in that they're roughly needing some help defining the brand or they're feeling stuck with content. So I know generally which problems they're trying to solve. Then once we dive into the actual engagement, I'm just asking questions. It's on Zoom or another video conferencing platform. I'll record it. That way I can go back and reference it later. But I'm pulling out more intelligence, I'm pulling out more goals, more objectives, all the unstated stuff. There are often big surprises in these engagements. Mine now usually lasts between 90 minutes and 3 hours. If it's a 90 minute engagement, I charge 2,500 bucks. If it's a 3 hour engagement, I charge 3,500. Again, this is kind of like carving off the discovery phase from a new project and just getting paid to put together my own quotes.

And that's paid discovery, essentially, yeah.

And again, my promise to clients in advance is always, I'm going to give you an actionable plan that has standalone value. Whether or not you choose to hire me after the workshop is up to you. But you're going to have a plan. So there's a lot of question asking, a lot of stirring everything up and seeing it's sort of like, oh, and then there are glints of gold. It's like a river. You're like, oh, okay. There's some things that are brighter, some things that we need to pay closer Attention to the second part of the strategy session or workshop actually involves what are all the available paths? Let me go back for a second. First phase is what problem are we truly solving for? Whatever initial request you made, what question are we trying to answer, what problem are we truly solving for? And then the second phase is let's examine the various solutions or the various paths forward. Let's do a little cost benefit analysis. Which one is most expedient or which one is cheapest or which path is most attractive to you based on various factors. Right. And then once they've picked the path that seems best out of the ones that are on the table, well, let's put together a plan. What are the discrete steps? Can we figure out what you need to do in order to get what you want? And a big mess of notes the client leaves, literally or figuratively. And then take a couple of days to to just clean everything up and deliver a neat, well organized, very clear and like I said, actionable plan. And then if I want to continue working with the client, the last part of the plan will be options for my ongoing involvement. So I'll say that another benefit of selling strategy as a standalone service, benefit of doing paid discovery is I get paid to vet my clients. And I've done some of these where at the end I thought this is not the right fit. And so I simply do not include the options for oh, here's what a strategy retainer would look like with us, or here's a strategy retainer plus one small creative project each month. And it has been transformative for my business to get paid to do discovery and put together quotes and vet clients.

That's pretty cool. And that's what you call your wayfinding workshop, right?

Is that the term, wayfinding workshop? We were, I have three young children and we were watching Moana and wayfinding is a big theme in that movie. And I was like, oh, that's cool, that'll work. And so I just stole it from a Pixar movie. Sorry, Disney.

I love it. Great. So I like this that in a way you've productized your strategy because it's very clear what it involves, what it entails, what you're going to go through and what the output is going to be so the client knows ahead of time what they're getting into. It's not an open ended kind of engagement.

And another thing that I really like about these standalone strategy offerings is creating a safe space where the client can talk honestly about their goals and talk honestly about the value of outcomes that they want. I think if you have not established trust with clients or with a new prospect, sometimes hard for them to be forthcoming and say, well yeah, we need some conversion copywriting and a new lead is worth $5,000 to us because they're smart business people too and they know that you're going to turn around and be like, well, if a new lead is worth 5,000 bucks to them, then I could probably get away with charging. But my point is it can be difficult if you haven't establish trust built rapport with the client to truly quantify the value of the project. Well paid discovery paid strategy sets you up well for value based pricing later because during this workshop, here's how much a lead is worth to us and here's what we did in revenue last year and here's what we want to do in revenue this year and we're really struggling with X, Y and Z. And so if I then in the report have all that information, I can then say, and I won't under price the next engagement, take the value based pricing approach. Because they've given me in the workshop all of the information I need to quantify the value. And a lot easier that way.

Oh man. And you know what I love about it too is they have skin in the game. They have just paid you for this process, which is night and day from when you are doing this as part of the qualification process. Right. Which is not. They're not going to get as deep, you know, they're just going through the motions. At least that's been my experience, because they know you need some information, but they're not vested in this particular outcome. They know you just need some information to be able to quote something. It sounds like the whole process is very collaborative, which I think is fantastic because you described it as. You're asking a lot of questions in terms of where they are now, where they're trying to go, outcomes, obstacles, et cetera. But then you get to a phase of the discussion where you're kind of putting everything on the table and collaboratively deciding on potential outcomes. So I just wanted to get clarification on that. Is that the case?

Typically it's very collaborative. And I think this process is particularly helpful for solo founders who often don't have a sounding board. They might have advisors, they might have a board. And even the companies that have more than one founder often aren't diligent about blocking out time in their calendars to ask a deep question. And I joke, I'm like, hey, Y', all. I live in Tennessee. We say y', all, but hey, y'. All. It's just kind of funny that you could do this on your front porch. We have porches here in Tennessee, too. Bear with me. Like, you can.

I'm in Georgia, so you're talking my language.

Okay? Right. So, like, go on the front porch, take a hot cup of coffee with you, take a journal, take a pen, and take these 12 questions and answer them, and voila. You'll have more clarity than you did before. But the crush of trying to grow a business, we just don't do that as often as we could. So a lot of the time, they're paying me for their own self reflection. And it inevitably happens with more than one founder that we're able to resolve some underlying tensions. We're able to get founders on the same page. And part of that is just anytime you have outside perspective, you have somebody who's willing to be direct and say, and I will be. That sounds like a really bad idea. Or even on the more positive front, are you really all that excited about this? Why are you pushing so hard for a project or a campaign? Or do you even like trade shows? Right. Like, I had one a while back where my client realized that she and her business partner needed to part ways. I'm like, so some deep stuff can come out. I'm like a business therapist sometimes, but.

Well, that's. That's exactly what I refer to it, by the way. It's business therapy. Because you're asking questions that they haven't asked themselves.

That's right. And so it's very collaborative. It's. I find it joyful. I love this work. And the actionable plan is just icing on the cake. And by the time, and if it's a longer workshop and we're able to do it in person, I'll cater lunch. I'll have great coffee. Like, I turned it into a whole experience, which I think is delightful. But what I want to send clients away with is just deep well of clarity and confidence that comes from clarity. Most of the people I work with, working hard and being intelligent, that's not their problem. It's just we begin to second guess ourselves when we haven't spent the time to get the clarity, because the clarity begets the confidence. And so it's fun. I don't need to keep jawing about that. It's a lot of fun.

Well, let me ask you a couple of things about the engagement itself in terms of how it fits in your business. So it's clear to me that where you see a fit, you use it as a way to make yourself the obvious choice to help them execute the strategy which now be getting the work done. Somebody needs to do that. You mentioned that you have two options. One was a 90 minute involved in a 90 minute session and the other one is a little bit longer. How long was that again?

Typically three hours. So it's like two 90 minute intensives or an hour and 15 small break in between and we can just get more work done in that time.

And you charge that's 3,500 for that one.

You said that one's 3,500.

3,500. Okay, so here's my question in terms of how this works out for you. I'm not going to make any assumptions. Do you see these as standalone moneymakers or do you see them as, I hate to use this term, but loss leaders. So obviously this is not where the real profits come in for your business. You enjoy them, you love doing them, that's obvious. But how do you see these? Do you see these as a means to going deeper with the right fit clients or how do you see them strategically in your business?

So I have raised the price again and again and again over the years as I believe that I'm delivering proportionate value. They are definitely not loss leaders because even if I put in, let's say an hour to prep and three hours for a three hour workshop, you're making great money. Yeah, great money. So even if it takes me two or three hours to then clean up the report, I'm all in at six hours. And so 3,500 divided by six is like, it's between six and $700 an hour, depending on how efficient I am with organizing and structuring and cleaning up the plan. And so definitely not a loss leader, but it establishes me as a thought leader. As a leader, I'll just say as a leader. And these sessions and these workshops give me much, much stronger positioning. I can charge higher rates for retainers and if it does become some sort of one off project, I'll have premium pricing with that too. So in my mind it's a win because I like it. It's a win because the money is great. And then it's a win because it gives me much stronger positioning later. It's a win if I decide I don't want to keep going with this particular client. And there's also. You might have met David C. Baker or read his book the Business of Expertise, but he talks about how a lot of the dysfunction and a lot of the miscommunication, just the fumbles and hiccups that happen in client work creative services happen in the implementation part of the house. He even has an illustration in the book that shows you should just have one door in the house and that one door should open straight into the strategy room. And the only way a client should be able to get into the implementation room is if they have traversed the strategy room first. And that just matched up with my own experience. But it's another reason these strategy sessions are so helpful. If you're on the same page with the strategy, you're preempting a lot of the mistakes and headaches and just frustration that come with clumsy implementation. And I already kind of alluded to that. I did everything I said I was going to do. I fulfilled the contract to the letter. I don't know why you're upset with me. I did exactly what you needed to do. It's kind of on you, Mr. Client, if your own goals and needs were a moving target. So I like to avoid those situations. And so I'm not sure exactly how to phrase.

Well, it's the. We know how I see it, Austin. I see it as a downstream. This is a river. Right. And if you're getting involved downstream, that's too late because you're working with material from upstream that you were not involved with. So what I'm hearing is you like to get involved upstream and then optionally, if it's the right fit, you can then help them downstream. But downstream stuff, even if you're an expert, is going to be ineffective if the upstream steps and processes are flawed.

And if the client at that point has pigeonholed you as a vendor and partner, not an expert guide. I have strategy retainers going back to 2015 and 2016. People have paid me consistently monthly to just do this in 30 or 45 minutes. And I'm like, I just would not have been invited into the inner sanctum if I had started out as the guy who fill your web pages with content. So I mentioned the stronger positioning, but I've just been able to charge a lot more. Do the value based pricing I mentioned because I was upstream, not downstream.

So. And by the way, with the totally understand in terms of how you see this, I guess where I was going was you can only do so many of these. I mean, you'd have to bring in a bunch of them in order to make a living just on this. Right, Right.

So there are some clients who know exactly what they need. And I'm not going to try to persuade them to do this. I'll end up doing on a good month too. And these are the tip of the spear. And if everything goes well, they will result in either a big strategy project that in my case would result in like a brand book, or they will result in a strategy retainer. So they're a great initial offering, more accessible price point. But you're right in that they're not. Even though it's a productized service, they're not truly scalable because I more or less have to block out half a day to even pull one off.

Yeah, yeah. I love all the benefits that come from it. I'm curious when it comes to branding, let's just pick that one. If you were to work with a client on this, we talked about what the workshop looks like. Without getting into a ton of detail, can you give us high level what the deliverable look like? What are the components inside that? Well, the brand strategy, because I'm assuming the brand book would come. That's part of the. That's downstream. Right. That's implementation. That's a deeper engagement. But in terms of what the deliverable they get, that has standalone value. Of course, a session had standalone value, but then you were giving them something. Where do you draw the line between I want it to be valuable, but I'm also not going to figure out your branding for you right now. That side of the scope.

Right. So you're right that the strategy session turns up other needs. You're right that you can't give away the farm. Right. And also usually you're going to spend the whole time solving for one problem. And that's one of the questions that I'll ask before a strategy session. If we could accomplish one thing together, do you have any idea what that thing could or should be like? What's the job to be done if they then sign up for brand strategy? Brand strategy, based on my methodology is defining the brand. What is the brand? A lot of people have brands that they love. They can't give a succinct definition for what a brand is. Based on my own research and just sort of praxis. A brand is a thought or an idea or a promise that calls to mind certain attributes and stirs up certain emotions. So a client, they often, they don't know, they can't tell you succinctly what the brand is. So I say let's define all of the component parts. Mission, vision, brand values, which I think are much More important, they're more like operating principles rather than cozy sentiments you'd put on a poster on a wall. Brand personality, which includes voice and tone. Then we've moved to the identity block, which is visual identity, verbal identity. Oh, sorry, I skipped over strategy. The brand strategy piece is brand goals, business goals, target audience positioning, and then high level messaging. Once we've buttoned up the high level messaging, we move on to identity, which sometimes I'll still subcontract a designer friend to actually do identity design, sometimes I don't. But either way, they're getting verbal identity and then the emotional, intellectual dimensions of the brand, which I think are super important. But again, people are cloudy around some of these really important components of the brand. Intellectuals, like, what do you want to be known for? What do people have to believe in order to love your brand? Who do you want your best customers to become? What is the transformation? Yes, there may be like an avatar, like a customer profile, but what about the one that's in the future? Like, where will people end up? And then emotional dimensions. How do you want to make people feel? What emotional territory do you want to own? And once all that's in place, then you get into brand experiences. Digital, physical. And then I carry over the intellectual and emotional dimensions as well. So it sounds like a lot and it is rigorous, but again, it's fun. I've had clients get very, very emotional because for the first time in years, they're able to state why they started doing in the first place what's in their hearts. And I don't mean to get all squishy, but a lot of these people are lovely people who so problem in the world, something bothered them, they wanted to do something about it, and they're just not able to even say someplace, like on a website, on a homepage, what their transcendent purpose even is.

And so, Austin, I just want to clarify something. You're touching on everything you just described in the workshop, correct?

This is what I would do in a brand strategy project wayfinding workshop would typically be used for. They're like, we've just got problems. We're not telling our story. Well, we need to do something because our competitors are eating our lunch. We hate our website. What should we do? We're losing key employees because our culture's not great. And then what insight that may come from that is, oh, the root problem for some of these symptoms is you don't know what your brand is. Well, if you want to do something about that, hire me for a brand strategy project. And I think some of these symptoms will disappear.

I wanted to make that distinction because it seemed extremely comprehensive. And I thought, well, this sounded like the downstream engagement, but I didn't know if maybe you touched on all of those points during the workshop and just to kind of get an idea of how they're thinking about these things now. But that makes much more sense. That seems like a lot of ground to cover in the workshop. Yeah. What I wanted to make sure it's just for listeners, and I'm trying to put myself in their shoes, is I want to make sure it's clear the fact that these workshops aren't designed to solve the problems as much as they are to put everything on the kitchen counter, you know, get that kind of clarity and start kind of narrowing things down to few things that are really going to move the needle. And that in and of itself has great value for a client because. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, now I see it. Right. So then you can say, all right, so these are the things you would need to do, and then here are the next steps. Here's how you do it, and here's how I could help you if you were interested.

That's right. And I'm glad you brought that, because I think those of us who have been so heavily involved with implementation for so many years actually have a bit of an identity and paradigm shift. It can feel a little bit uncomfortable to just get paid to bring clarity. It's almost like, wait, is this sleight of hand? Like, I don't want to deceive anybody, but three hours seems like a lot of time. But again, the first half is, what question are we trying to answer? What problem are we trying to solve? Because business is messy. And when you have got. You're a founder, maybe you're an operator, you've got a million things going on. Come up with 3500 bucks, you give it to a guy like me. And even by the time you come through the door, you may have been late dropping off your kid to school. Like, there's just so much going on. It may take 15, 20 minutes to even just slow the RPMs from 8,000 down to 800. Right. Again, there's zero implementation. That happens in a way. Finding workshop, roadmapping session, strategy session. It's all just about what problem are we even trying to solve? What solutions are available? Which one seems the best? What are some initial steps that could be taken? Great. See you later. You can hear from me with actionable plan in a couple of days.

Got it. That makes perfect sense. So let's switch gears a little bit as we wrap up. Here's a big question. Anyone who's listening right now, who's nodding their head going, that makes a lot of sense. But I see this chasm between where I am right now and how I'm working with clients and what Austin is describing. How can they start moving in this direction? Is there a simple next step or two that you might suggest someone consider?

Yes, I do think some people do not like strategy and that's okay. So I would say to anyone listening who's intrigued by anything we talked about today, intrigued by strategy as a standalone offer. You wouldn't even be intrigued by this if it weren't a good fit based on your skills, disposition, right? Some people are just naturally good listeners, love asking thoughtful questions. If that's you, then the next step is just an experimental approach. When I got started with these, I charged 500 bucks for 90 minutes. I might spend another two or three hours putting together the plan. And that's where I would say start. Right? You can go online, you can touch base with me. I'll be happy to share some of my open ended consulting questions with you. It's not sleight of hand, but step one, if this even intrigues you, that probably is your green light. Step two, collect some questions and just start putting this offer out there. I can help you with a strategy session. Get clarity around a business problem, creative problem, even a writing problem that you want to solve. Step three, book one. See if you like it. If you don't like it, you don't have to keep going. If you do, ratchet up your rates over time. Extend the length of the session itself. But those would be the three steps I would recommend that I think are pretty pragmatic.

I think that is very smart advice is just start somewhere and whatever's getting in your way, just figure out how to push right through it. Like, I love your idea of like, okay, this sounds like a lot of money. Just charge 500 bucks. Really, the amount you charge at first doesn't really matter. It's just about putting something out there so you reduce the friction to getting the first one and see how you like it. I love that.

Well, I think those of us who've finally made our way into premium land can be reluctant and it feels like steps backward to pilot a new offer at a very attractive price. And I would just say no, it's experimentation. You don't have to make a profit the first time around because your goal is not profit. Your goal is do I like it?

Yeah. It's a learning thing. You're testing Austin. This has been amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing so much detail about your experience with this. There's so much in here. I think this is the kind of episode people are going to want to come back to and listen to twice before we sign off, where can listeners learn more about you, your work and what you do and how you help people?

Sure. Thanks for asking such great questions. I hope somebody out there will try this and I hope they'll have as much fun with it as I have. Folks can find me at Austin L as in Larry Church AustinLChurch.com I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn and reach out. Like I said, I'm happy to share.

Those consulting questions Again, I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your wisdom, my friend.

Thanks for the conversation. It was a lot of fun.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance Writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com where you will also find the detailed show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.