Brave Biz Lab 2024 09 06

Good morning again. Hello again. Have you had a chance to wake up?

I'm still working on my breakfast.

Very good. Oh, hi, Monica. It's good to see your face.

Hello.

I. I have human clothes on now.

Yeah, I like it when I get to the human clothes phase of the day.

Yes.

Awesome.

All right, what are we celebrating this week?

I am celebrating that my job fair is today, so I'm very excited about it.

Amazing. You have a good strategy in place.

I do, and it's to be super flexible because I still don't know how it's going to work based on, like, all of the information I've tried to gather. So just being flexible, going with the flow.

So text me about going to a baseball game.

Yeah, that was the. That was the event. That was the first networking event.

Right.

It was a. It was a baseball game networking event. And so I thought it was going to be like a picnic, like, on. On the grass type thing, but it wasn't. And so it was, like, really awkward to try to network while people were, like, in the seats and watching the game.

I don't know.

I mean, I did manage to, you know, talk to some new people and get some contacts on LinkedIn and whatnot. But, yeah, it was just a. It was an interesting setting.

Yeah.

Yeah. You always know when a networking event is organized by introverts versus when it's organized by extroverts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like, I don't want to have to talk to anyone, but I want to be able to stay networked. Yep.

Awesome. Great.

I'm so excited to hear how that goes.

Have you ever heard of those silent book clubs? I haven't attended one, but I can't wait to. Yeah, it's a bunch of introverts who meet at, like, a bar or a restaurant. They all bring their own books, they socialize for, like, 15 minutes, and then they just read their own books for an hour in silence.

That sounds amazing. Yeah.

It's like a library. Everyone's just in a comfy couch and.

Yeah, I know. That would be so much fun.

Awesome.

Okay, so what else are we celebrating today?

I'm spoken to another new client today, another proposal coming out next week, and which was. She attended that Female Top Female Leader workshop. Awesome. Yeah. And yes. And I'm donating.

Oh, hello. That's fabulous. You're. You're getting sales calls quickly from that.

Yes. Too. I want.

We'll get to this in a little bit, but, like, let's talk about how you can reach out to that organization. And see if they have other events that you can speak at.

Okay. Yeah, I've already spoken to them and I suggested to do some like, like a serious or a continuation and she thought about it immediately after to see what was change that they created in their organization as a result.

Yeah, yeah, let's follow up. But if they have a bigger email list, like let's try to get you in front of more people that. Because it's obviously your ideal clients there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. And today I had a call with a new director of the Jewish library in Vinus, Lithuania. And like a long story, they're inviting my father to exhibit his photography and I'm. And I'm taking her on board as a pro bono. And I mean I'm so honored to do that for them. Maybe I'm giving away like too much of my time, so. But like we will. She's a trustworthy woman our age. That also gives a lot to like builds a lot of bridges between Israel and Lithuania. So. So I don't worry from that perspective. I trust I have that trust. It's just that I'm conscious of the.

Yeah. Oh, and we can talk about how to manage time too. Awesome. Awesome. What other, what other celebrations do we have? Today. Doesn't have to be massive. It can be you brushed your teeth, it could be that you're here, it could be that you sent a brave email this week. Anything.

I'm almost finished.

My lead magnet, which is huge. So amazing. Yeah, I'm almost finished. I should be finished today.

Finalizing.

So that's.

Yeah, that's been kicking along in the.

Background and kind of not getting done.

So to kind of have that done.

Is a bit of a relief.

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome.

I can't wait to see it. What else?

For me it's back to school. Like just send the kids off so I can now have some uninterrupted time throughout the day.

Yeah, yeah. That's going to be very peaceful. And Jason.

I don't know, I feel like I'm being pulled in a million different directions today. I. I don't. I'm here.

Okay.

Like I'm trying to carve out time for this. Although my job is like beating me into a pulp this week and I feel like I have no time.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean like, let's reset the context here. You're building a business that is at the beginning gonna require to make time, you know, require you to make time for your full time job. Right. It's not always Gonna go the way you plan and that's okay. You're not, you're not building a business that requires you to be perfect all the time. Right. We're building businesses that allow us to be human. Right. And also as we have weeks like this, you know, our brain gets to see. Okay, well here's where I can be more economical here. I learned from the situation. Instead of doing this, I'm going to do this. You know, it's an ever evolving learning process, you know, so deep breath. Like, this is, this is just a week, It'll pass. And then like the next time a week like this hits, you're know how to manage it better, right? Yeah.

Awesome.

And I celebrate. I'm actually going to see Michelle tomorrow.

Yeah, where are you.

In New York? She's in New York. And then I'm going to drive to New York and then we'll hang out in New York for a little bit and then I come home.

So.

Yeah.

Nice. Enjoy. Send photos.

Awesome. What questions do we have today? Want to jump right in?

I had a question about feedback you gave on my audit strategy questionnaire. So thank you for that. The very last part part of it where I say, like, I understand this isn't a coaching call and if you want to, you know, have a short one on one coaching call, you can schedule here. And then I had a one off like paid for our thing and you said that I should just remove this because I had that weird experience.

So.

I think my thinking with that, like if they're thinking about bringing you in as a consultant for their company, it's going to seem like odd to offer a coaching call. Right. Because like they're thinking about for the company. It just kind of seems like a sideways, like, like a side quest. Okay. You know, and they may not know what that is and then it may start them thinking like, well, maybe this isn't the right thing for me.

Okay.

Right.

We want to make sure the sales process is designed for the particular client. Right. And it's scaring away people who aren't your ideal client too. Like, we don't want people who really need like one on one coaching to sign up for a strategy call for that thing. Right. It doesn't really make sense.

Yeah.

Right. We want companies to say, yeah, like we would like help with this and we want to bring you in.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah, that makes sense. A follow up to that is that, that is how I'm currently structuring the sales calls for the data. Career stuff though, is that still. That's still you or is that okay?

Yeah, yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't change that that's the offer. And so people are, you know, exploring coaching. You know, they're exploring that kind of career option. Like, that's perfect. Yeah. It's just, it just kind of seems like it veers people back to that. And then what we want is anyone who experiences you in the audit space, we want them to just stay in that lane. Right. We don't want to. Well, she also does this and this and this and this because that confuses the matter.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Yeah. You'll notice this is kind of an aside, but similar. You'll notice when, um, you go to a sales page for something, you know, a landing page, you know, could be for. Course, it could be for coaching. It could be for, you know, like a book. I don't know. It is only about that thing.

Yeah.

Typically there's no links anywhere else. You can't, like, you can't go and check out their website from that landing page.

Yeah.

Right. So really, like, we want to keep it like blinders on people's the eyes so that they're just staying focused on that one thing. Or else, like, they can go and be like, oh, what's this and what's this and what's this? And then they've walked away from it, and then they're less likely to book just because, like, they get busy.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

Does that help?

Yes. Thank you. Awesome.

What other questions do we have?

One of the things I came back to this week from a this business perspective, I'm working with a company that does, like, leadership training here locally and in throughout Atlanta, Canada. And so we're talking about putting it together, a partnership where I provide transitional coaching services to them. She asked me what my rates were, so I told her, right Now I'm charging $250 an hour to my private clients. And she came back and said that most of her consultants work between 100 and 125 bucks an hour. I'm just wondering where I'm so fresh and I, I want to try to build up a book of business as fast as possible so that I can fire my boss. That's my goal is this, is this line of business, like, something that I should aggressively pursue because it builds up that book faster or so is my question.

Yeah. My question for this is like, how many clients is she ready to hand you?

I don't know.

Okay.

I don't know.

Yeah.

So it's tricky because, like, Especially right now, you're time poor, right. You're working 40 hours. Ish. In your job. You have finite time that you can like, reasonably expect yourself to have energy to work on your business. Right. You know, if she's ready to hand you 20 clients, you know, and that, you know, fills up enough that you can quit your job and, like, work on your business in the other 20 hours, that's something to think about. Maybe 20 clients a week. It's like five clients a week. That's not enough. Right? That's not enough. But it eats up enough of your available time that it's going to be for you to work on your business, you know, so, like, you have to figure out, is it like three clients a month where you're giving them two sessions and that's kind of doable and you have some extra money coming in, or is it giving you enough that you can step away from the job? Okay, right. So I would ask her, you know, like, that's, that's a rate that I'd be willing to do if we're talking about this kind of bulk, like this kind of influx of clients. But that's really not doable for me otherwise.

Okay.

Yeah, because I don't want you, like, only making $500 each week or $600 for five hours of work when those five hours of work could generate, you know, clients that are paying 500amonth or more. You know, we're going to be raising your rates at some point, right?

Yeah.

So when. And of course, like, you know, this is your first time negotiating this. Whenever we're negotiating with a company, we want to start higher. Right. And then we can work our way down. Like, our first option is always going to be like kind of a. A benchmark. You know, it's. It's what it's called an anchor. You know, Side note, there's a great book. Never Split the Difference by right here, by Chris Negotiating book. He used to work for the FBI. Now he trains business negotiation.

It's.

It's actually like a really fun book to read because each chapter he goes over the FBI example of it and then a business example. Okay. And it's a really great list. I actually might listen to this on my drive down New York. But anyway, I've read it, listened to it like, like five different times. It's great. But every time, like, we start a negotiation with a company, know that they have budget, they have budget, they just have to figure out how the budget works. We, if we anchor them higher, then we have more negotiating power to get them closer to us. Okay, right. So it may also be worth it for you to say, you know, I can't do that, but I could do 200, you know, and then go as low as 175.

Okay.

Right.

So yeah.

And then I mean, of course like the benefit here is you're not having to do the lead gen. Right?

Yes, that's, that's what I was thinking because my quick goal is $42,000. That's what I've, that's what I have to have in the bank account to quit.

Right. So 42, let's just.

That would be six months worth of like personal operating expenses for me to be able to say, okay, like I'm going to go all in. I've got that to do it.

Yeah. I mean if she could guarantee 8,000amonth worth of business, you know, that might be worth it for you. But yeah, yeah, go back to her, get a, ask her some open ended questions about how many clients like do you have that you're going to be sending my way right away? Like how much time should I be planning on doing this per week? Because I really need to be economical with my business, my job and this.

Okay. Yeah, that's, that's helpful.

Yeah. And then once we have that information, we can figure out like what the strategy is.

Forward.

Cool.

Awesome. Anything else on that?

No, that's it. Thank you.

What other questions do we have? It's funny, last time we did the challenge, the 30 day challenge, the Friday calls were also very like. I don't have any questions because we've been talking all week.

Speaking of the challenge, though, I may have missed something because. Because my week has been so crazy.

Yeah.

Is there, is there a. So is there like a, a guide or a document to work from that I might have missed about starting the posting schedule for next week or are we just taking what we learned and trying to implement that?

The whole schedule? Actually let's go over that. I think that would be really helpful. Let me find it.

Where'd it go? I think I've missed everything as well. Okay, cool. I haven't got any one of your emails about it, so.

Oops.

Okay, so I'm going to copy this link. We're going to pop it in the.

Chat.

And then I'm going to share my screen and just go over it with you. But you can open it as well and just make a copy so that you can go in and edit your copy. Okay. So this is the 30 day creating client attracting content plan. There are four different calendars that you can choose from. Okay, so creating. This is the my boss can't find out. I'm starting a business calendar where you are trying to build your personal brand, get people to get to know you, but you're not being overt about, hey, I have a business and I'm taking clients. Right? You're, you're just kind of like setting the stage for why people should give a about you when you do come out of the entrepreneurial closet. Right. This is calendar number two. You haven't really been consistent. You might have announced some stuff, but you've been a little squirrely about sharing more, right? And it's really a mix of sharing more about you so people can get to know you better and talking about your ideal clients and the problems you solve and the outcomes you help people get to and so on and so forth. Uh, version three is you've been pretty consistent, but you really want to push yourself and show yourself that you can be more salesy. You can push people to book with you and really hustle for clients without like hustle, hustle. And not like get booted from the tribe. Like not like you can do it and not die, you know, Dina, to your, to your question earlier. And then of course, version four, this is really great. If you've been really consistent on one platform and you're trying to build traction on a new one. Like you, you know, the things that work, you understand what you need to talk about, but you have a brand new platform where people don't really know you and you're really trying to build momentum there. Sorry, I have a tickle. So all of these, these categories, like you're not just gonna be like, okay, client pain point, what do I do? You're gonna go down here to all the content prompts, right? So we have quirky facts about you, we have your story, we have your dreams and goals, lessons learned, ideal client pains, ideal client desires, ideal client beliefs, details about your work, people you lock up, look up to and why. Gratitude. So you can go and kind of plug and play from all these categories into the calendar so you're not writing about the same thing over and over and over again, right? And what you can do in this document is if you want to like just start writing in it. You could do like start pre writing all the posts. What I like to do, going to make a copy of this so it doesn't affect what everyone else is seeing. Okay, so Monday intro post. Okay, great. So hold on, let's say I'm going here. Okay, so client pain post. That's going to be day two. So I want to find client pain post and I'm just going to go down the line and I'll copy this and go down here. Day two, well, that's really big, right? And then day three. What's day three? Details about your work. So I go to this, going to answer this, right? And then once you do this for all the days you can just go through and write them, you know. So this is kind of like TV work if you're just brain dead at the end of the day and you need to figure out like some work that you can do to get ahead. I find this is a great delayering task. So that way, because you know how like with adhd, like sometimes even the simplest steps feel overwhelming when you're overwhelmed. Right. Even going to the day and finding the prompt, like you've already done that thinking and maybe like you could go through and come up with like the basis idea of the thing you want to talk about. You know, that's a really great step to get started. But do, do what works for you. Like there's no right or wrong. As you're looking at this. Do you have any questions?

Oh, this is helpful. Wait, one question. So you have four versions of a calendar there. What's the best way to select which version would be most beneficial for us to start with?

How many times have you been posting recently on average.

Like four or five days a week.

Okay, cool. And what have you been talking about? Primarily?

I've been talking about things that are edge to coaching. Like I've been sharing things about my Budapest trip and what I learned through my son's competition and you know, those types of things. So I'm sort of been trying to prime my audience that I talk about coaching type things.

Okay, cool. And are you focusing on the coaching? Are you focusing on their problem?

This is why I need this challenge because I have not yet done like a full round of speaking specifically to the problem that my clients are eventually gonna. My first goal with the social media posting was just to show up.

Yeah, totally.

And start posting. Right. Like, so I think I've checked that box. I've done that. I've been consistent. Now I need to be consistent about the thing. The right thing.

Yeah.

So I, based on what you're telling me, I would recommend either two or three. Right. Why I would say two is I, I want you to start sharing personally. Just to share personally without making it about coaching. Right. And like just sharing so people can get to know you and then also focus in on your clients, focus in on your ideal clients, their pain, their desire, you know, what they believe about their situation, things like that. Right. I want you to start differentiating the two because I think that's gonna like a. Help people, really build a relationship with you and then also really understand who you're helping. And it also won't like, I, I know you're full time employed and you're worried about your boss being like, what are you doing? You know, this way you can say, oh, well, know, I'm building my personal brand, you know, and I do want to take clients on the side. You know, I'm, I'm obviously still working here, but of course, like, you know, I have this certification, I want to do something with it.

Should, should I make that known in the first post? Like, should I acknowledge my company for helping me, you know, go through this coaching certification process and then say, why, why would I do that? Because it's true, they did help. And I, I don't want people to all the, all of a sudden get like two weeks into my content and then my boss to come to me and be like, you're just posting everything about your business. You haven't mentioned our company once. So I'm just trying to avoid that snare.

So I mean, is your job posting to LinkedIn for your, for your work?

Not really. I mean, my, my, my role is sales customer success. So I think there's this, like, I know that what they want me to be talking about are things that will drive business to polyunity, not necessarily business to my.

But what I'm asking, is it in your job description that you have to leverage your personal LinkedIn for the business?

I don't think that's written down in my job description.

Okay. And then has there ever been any KPIs assigned to you for doing that and the results that you need to get?

No.

Okay. And has there ever been like, like a marketing plan that's been sent to you? Here's what you need to be sharing about for the company on your LinkedIn.

No.

Well, I don't think you have to worry about this.

Okay.

I genuinely don't. Like, if they were sending you that stuff, then, yeah, like, we'd want to integrate it a little bit more, you know, and that's not to say that like some of the more personal posts you could, you know, integrate into the work you do for your nine to five, you know, like lessons learned Cool. What's the lesson you learned in customer success at the company you work at?

Right.

You know, your story, how did you end up there? You know, what did you like about the company? What else a dream goal you have? You know, what was a dream goal you had that led you to this point in your life? Right.

What do you.

And then of course, like, if you wanted to do a gratitude pro post, you know, you can absolutely showcase. I'm so grateful that I like this, this, this employer that I have helped me do this thing. And here's how I'm leveraging it in my nine to five. And like, I realized I also wanted to take some clients outside of it. You know, there are ways to fold them together. But I wouldn't be so worried about them being like, you're not talking about us enough when they're not already asking you to talk about them.

Okay.

And you can even say, you know, like, oh, well, you know, do you, like, what would you like me to start sharing? You know, if they really do want you to start pushing it. There are a lot of people who, you know, coach and also work for companies and they talk about both, you know, but again, like, if, if they're asking you to do more work to create content for them, then we also want to talk about, cool, what, what are the KPIs for that? And also, what's the, the phrase that you're getting for that? Because that's more work.

Right?

Right. You know, you, I mean, you could also say, hey, listen, I'm working on building my personal brand. People are going to find out I work here. Like, I think that there's a natural thing that happens where people kind of figure out you work at a place and then if they were thinking about hiring that company or working with that company, they're far more likely to go through me. And you could turn around saying, you know, I could also show people on the lead gen team and on the sales team how they could do this. You know, you basically turn around and teach exactly what I'm teaching you.

Right. I'll tell you exactly where my fears came from. Exactly. But two and a half years ago, I joined a program on LinkedIn called Brand 30. Have you heard of it?

No.

And I was, I was, I was working for a different company at the time, and it was like a post every everyday kind of like campaign, but it didn't have this kind of structure with it. And my boss got really upset and it led to the deterioration of my employment relationship at that company. So I don't think it will happen every time, but because it happened once, that's why it's like fear in the back of my brain. So just some context as to why it's kind of a little scary.

Yeah, no, 100%. There's, you know, if, if ever something like that happens, of course you're going to like, carry over trauma from that. Right. You know, part of it is you're not going to know until, you know, if they do have a problem with it, then it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

100%.

Right. And then. Yeah. I mean, it sounds, from what. How you're describing it, it sounds like that manager was on a power trip.

It was terrible. It was a horrible company and I'm glad that I'm gone. But that's. I think that's why like, I've been. I'm also to the place where I want this so much that I'm willing to take the risk. So.

Question for you, because you have a team, right?

Kind of like worst startup. There's like 18 of us and I do the work of probably three people. So does everybody, because we're a startup.

So how often do you go and stalk everyone's activity on LinkedIn?

From my company? No, as a matter of fact, I often miss their posts. Their posts?

Yeah.

So if everyone's that busy, I wouldn't worry about it. And it's like I said, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. Right.

Okay.

And so like, you are like, if you go with, with month, the, the second option you're sharing about yourself, you know, and you could say I'm. I'm really working on developing this skill where I'm better at copywriting, know, and writing sales copy. And I figured it would be safer to use it on my side hustle than to do it here, you know.

Okay.

Copywriting is one of those things that you can practice and practice and practice, but if you don't put it out there, you're never going to know if it's good enough. Right.

Deal.

Yeah.

Cool.

Awesome. Good enough.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay, cool.

What other questions do we have?

Not a question, but I just want to say this out loud. I guess with this round, I think I'm going to go for version 2 instead of version 3 because of the fact that I have not been posting a lot about the audit stuff.

Yeah.

So I think that the, the version two would be good.

Cool.

Awesome.

There. I do have a question. Though I guess what would be a good mix between the audit and then the career coaching?

I mean, it really depends. Depends on a few things. One, how does your brain work? Right. Because if you're constantly changing between the two, it's easy to get them confused. Yeah, right. The way I'm building out my kind of like reusable content is like month one BYOB month two hyperfocused. Month three byob month four hyper focused.

Okay.

Is Ella going to be coffee flavored? I do that to my dog sometimes.

It was cold. It's cold.

It's really old coffee.

Sorry.

Sorry.

That's so funny.

Anyway.

Yeah, so I mean like that's, but that's how my brain works. And also like I, I know that like when I talk about one topic, like people start following me for that topic and then they're like, oh, this is what you do. And then if I change, like it gives them enough time to like say, oh cool, she does this other thing too. Right. But really, I mean you could do, you could do two of one, one week. And I mean, sorry, every week you do two of one, one of the other and just flip flop it. You know, you could, if you're writing a post about your coaching, you could also do like a footer about that. You just copy and paste same footer all the time about how you go in and work with companies also to help them start, you know, utilizing data analytics in their, in their work and then flip it. So if you're writing a post about, you know, working with auditors and companies, you have that footer about. By the way, if you want to get into data analytics, why did I pronounce that differently both times? Anyway, When I said it the first time I'm like, that's not how you pronounce that. And then. Yeah, anyway, and then have the footer about your coaching. Yeah, you know, it's up to you. There's no wrong answer here. The goal is people know how you're useful to them and the goal is you don't go insane as you're doing this. Right.

Okay.

Ideally that's not always the case. Yeah, that's helpful.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, awesome.

What other questions do we have?

I wanted to ask about the client. I've spoken today. So it's a recruitment company based in Lithuania where they have operations in Belgium, Netherlands, quite late, but they're still only have a 14 market share and they want to go and to recruit more candidates for the clients. The recruiters that are paying that are hiring the recruiters, the employees that they bring from Lithuania. Okay. And so I, on the discovery call today, I asked so I would understand how she imagined our work together. And I told her that typically I work with my clients on a 12 months commitment basis. She indicated that she's open, but what she initially thought was that it would be like a strategy audit workshop and strategy audit and strategy redesign work. And, and then she, so she, so she made me understand that she would like to do like a day or two and, and then of course continue if necessary. So. So now I'm putting for the first time a proposal which is slightly different and we talked about it in the past. So like to create this playbook. What I do see with my current work that like, it's a very long process. And this, my strategy audit, I'm 100% confident in this because the, the onboarding, the one that I developed myself, you.

Know, I can actually jump in because I want to get to the question because otherwise I don't know what details is relevant and I get overwhelmed by details.

Okay, I see. So, So the, I mean, the audit phase. Okay. The onboarding that I do for my clients. Yeah, it's the audit phase. Okay. And it takes a long time and what clients normally want. And I hear it from my clients, so this is why I say it. They want a quick fix.

Yeah.

And I don't do quick fixes. Yeah. Because it's not up to me. It's really up to them. The process that they are going and, you know, it's really well. So with a shorter term, I'm now trying to think, what are the goals that we will manage to achieve and how I should price it. Because they have a three year plan.

Yeah, yeah. Hold on, let me just think through this. Okay. So right off the bat, making it like saying, you know, it doesn't really depend on me, it depends on you. No one who's coming to you for a quick fix gonna be like, oh, you're right. Like, I suck at doing work. Oh, you're right. I'm gonna take forever to do this. Because they're driven, they want a quick fix. They're gonna think, yeah, like I'll do this. What do you mean? That's not handling the objection. So you handling the objection. You know, you can say, hey, listen, like what you're asking for is actually just that first onboarding meeting that I do with my client in that time, like for us to even compile all the information, it typically takes this amount of time, make it about the process, not about them doing the work. Because they're gonna be like, no, no, no, I'm different. I'm different. I will totally do the work.

Right.

Who thinks they're totally different and special, right? You saying, like, oh, you're probably not going to do the work. Like, they're not going to be like, oh, you're right. Like I, I'm just like everyone else.

I didn't suggest that, but I understood that this is a valid point in.

Any case about process.

You know what, what we're discovering through you going through these conversations is that the sales process needs a little adjustment. Right.

So.

So, you know, I think how we want to change it is, you know, you want to introduce.

Cool.

So we have a couple options here. Here's one way that I work with clients, you know, year long engagement, we do this, this and this, so on, so forth. Or I can design something custom to you. And of course, you know, it's not custom. It's like kind of the same thing you do for other clients. But like, then they feel like they're getting what they want.

Okay.

And then as you say, cool. Like, you know, if you were to get everything you want out of this relationship, like, like know that some, some of the things you're going to ask for, we may, I may not be able to provide. But what would the ideal be? They'll say, I want to do two days where I completely rework my whole strategy and know what to do. And you're gonna say, great. That's what absolutely everyone wants. And I can tell you a two day, like a two day session for strategy is never gonna work. It's just not going to work. Like, you know, we can do it fast, but it probably won't work. You know, I have very grudgingly sold that to clients in the past and I really regret it. Because what matters to me most is that you see results. Yeah, right. And I know from experience, and I have this many years experience is that really to, to really dive into the strategy and really understand we need a minimum of this amount of time.

Yeah. Okay.

I typically like, I have this option of people working with me for a year. If you want it faster for a year, then know that we can absolutely do it faster. It is going to be more expensive. Right. What are the three things you can like people want? They want it faster, they want it better, and they want it cheaper. Right. Never have all three. If you want it fast and good, it's going to be expensive. If you want it cheap and Good. It's going to take a ton of time if you want it. What is it cheap? Cheap. I'm confusing myself all the options, but you know what I mean.

Yeah.

You can say, like, you get to have, you can have two of the three which do. The three, which do you want?

Okay. Okay, got it. And this is really good, good stuff. And thank you for that. And now how so? Like in my proposal. And I, if that's okay, I will send it to you like in the beginning of next week. I have my call with her only on next Friday, so I have plenty of time just that today. I, I don't know what, why, but I feel like I need to rest. So, like I, like I shared the one before. So I would have, you know, those three options. So what are the options I present to her and the same or in 12 months or.

Actually she just told you she doesn't want 12 months. She wants something shorter and faster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would give her those options. I would also have an option that's like the one page of the, of the 12 month program. But I would say, hey, listen, for, for what you asked for, like, I mean, custom for you, a couple of custom options. And I would add a line at the end, like setting expectations. Right. Because you can say, listen, transparent. I'm never going to promise something that I can't deliver. Right. And I know you want it in two days. And you know, Mike's, in my experience, this is how far we can get in two days. And I'm happy to get you started there, but I know from experience, often we get started there and people end up wanting to work with me for longer because they realize there's so much stuff that they don't know. They don't know exactly.

This is exactly what we talked. She even said sentence herself because she acknowledges that there is something that we don't know what we don't know, and I don't know what she doesn't know before we do the audit statement page.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. You know, and the other thing is you can, you can start treating the audit phase as almost a lead gen.

What is a leads gen? Okay.

But this is a paid thing that people can sign up for that audit. And it can be, you can, you can charge like $8,000 for it, you know, $10,000. However, you know, we'll figure out the pricing for it. But you can say, absolutely. But know that oftentimes, like we're opening way more boxes of stuff that you're going to need to sort through. We're not like, like the odd is going to show you all the things you don't know that you don't know. And we're not going to get to the point to where I'm showing you how, like what to do with them. Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's an option. If people are like, no, no, I just need to know. And then just trust that like you're gonna go through and be like, cool, here's all the stuff. Do you want to keep together? Like oftentimes they'll be like, yeah.

Okay. And now, thank you so much for that. And now when I again, like practically writing in my proposal. So now again, what are the three. So one, the, the third option is the 12 months. And the first option customized for her is.

Hold on, hold on. So I would have a separate page with your three 12 month options. That's separate. I would have. Listen, just so you can compare apples to apples, this is my standard offers where we're, we're doing bumper to bumper, right? This offer. Here are the custom options that I made for you.

Just one.

I, I would give her two.

Two. Okay.

Give her two. Because if she wants something custom like you need and she's really like determined to do a custom, give her two options and say, you know, oftentimes when I do a custom option for someone, they still end up working with me for 12 months. You know, so you want to make it a little more expensive than it works out in the 12 month option.

I see.

And she wants it faster.

Right. And, and in the, in the custom and the two options, I, so I give like on a project and let's say it takes three months, but it's still a project. It's not. So it's not a retainer. What I mean, I mean, how do I price it?

I mean, you have to answer that question. You have to figure out like based on the pricing that we've talked about for your other stuff. Because I don't know what goes into you doing a project, like an amorphous project to me, I don't have the ability to assign a price to it.

I was asking that for the figure. But how do I price in terms of retainer or a project? I mean like as a whole.

I mean like I, I would give her. She can pay monthly or she can pay in full.

I still do that. Okay. Still do that.

Yeah. But of course, like the monthly options, more expensive. They get a little deal if they painful.

Yeah.

And, and as you're going through the proposal presentation call, you're focusing on those two custom options that you, that she asked for.

And then they mean.

And by the way, if, if neither one of these, if you're like, this is great, but I feel like there's something missing. Just wanted to offer this to you. These are the 12 month options that I offer. These are my standard things. You don't necessarily have to, you can ask, do you want me to go over them? If she says no, it's fine, then you don't have to.

Got it?

Yeah.

Now the question is the time span. Because I can do the like onboarding in a month and then meet for a strategy workshop. So.

So that's what you do.

Okay.

You're the expert at what you do. Like, so everyone, you're the expert at what you do. Your clients are always going to want it faster, quicker, cheaper. Right. Just because I want my house built in one day doesn't mean that's realistic.

The thing is that with the redesign, this is where I feel less confident and which I probably shouldn't because I did it in like with the pitch decks. In a way, I was building the new case and I was touching the business strategy and so on, but I never like anyways, like I don't want to, you know, even waste my time on this. Some talk. So. But it's just that I. It's very difficult for me to understand what we will manage to do with those two days workshops. This is my now question in my mind because. Yes.

Why do you need to know before you do it?

Because yesterday we did a workshop with my client that pays me for five months and we've planned six hours and we did, and we did manage to get to something, but it's not good enough. We need to continue working on it and there are a lot of like identified issues.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so Dina, like, you're not going to be able to answer these questions. You're not going to be able to tell them this is exactly what you're going to get. You're going to say you can get six hours oftentimes, like we'll get through a portion of our to do list. There's still going to be a ton left. You, you get to be. You tell them the truth that they don't want to hear. That will build a lot of trust. Right. From setting expectations too high and not being able to deliver.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Sorry.

Because the brainstorming, if done properly, takes long time because often we come to a meeting, you know, and we're really, like, just advocating for this option and not the other. And we're really scared to do a real brainstorming and ask and go to the unknown. It's very. Like, many people avoid it. This is why. Yeah.

So here's what. Here's the overall shift I want you to do.

Okay.

You're not trying to make people happy.

No.

You're not trying to do whatever it is that they want you to do. That like, your, Your job from here on out is educating people on how this typically goes. This is what people typically want, and this is how they typically don't get what they want because it takes longer.

So now I put my expert good hat on. Expert.

You can say, hey, listen, like, I could tell you that, but it's not going to work for you. And I have too much integrity to take your money and give you something that's not actually going to be effective. So if you want that, there are absolutely consultants out there who will take your money and give you something that's probably not going to work. But if you want to work with me, here's how I operate, because I want to make sure that our strategy works for you.

You got it?

Yep. You get to do pushback. You know, I. I have folks ask me, can I just do one month of coaching? Can I just do one month? I think I just need one month. And I'm like, no, absolutely not. Like, I know what you can accomplish in one month. And you're not going to be happy. You're going to feel like it's a waste of money because you're not going to answer any of the questions. Right. You know, you get to be, like, more tough about this. All of you. You know, when you're having these conversations, of course they want a quick fix, but you know, that's not realistic. And it makes you more of a badass when you say cool. Like, you know, I recommend you go somewhere else because I don't sell quick fixes. I sell fixes that actually work.

And now I'm in a situation with Daniel that he has a co founder for his NGO that his co founder said we need to set goals. And now I don't understand still. What is the goal of the ngo? Were not able after six hours to answer that question.

Yes, you get to. You get to deliver that tough truth.

This is what I did.

Yep. We don't have this. We can't do that. And you can put it back on them. What's the cool ngo?

This is what I did. And.

Yeah.

And I immediately like, okay, so thank you for saying that. I did think about putting like a framework and saying, okay, this is what we want to achieve. I can put the dates, but the dates will move as long as we don't have the first question answered.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, cool.

We probably have time for one more question. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Who would like to go? Ivan, Any final questions? Can you.

What time is everybody meeting? Is it 9:00am Eastern at the, for the social media? Can you send me the link or the invite or the something? Like I said, I don't know. I think I unsubscribed. Then was like, why am I, why am I not getting anything? So my own fault, obviously.

Let me forward it to you.

Okay.

Okay, there you go. And I'll subscribe you to that list and everything. Anything else.

You did add me, right, Katie?

Yeah, I did. You'll get all the fun gift filled benchmark emails that I wrote for this. That'll keep you going, keep you motivated. I, you know, I want to share a little bit behind the scenes. So like, I ran this, this challenge in May, like just decided one day I want to do a challenge in two weeks, and then just started spitting out stuff, you know, threw pieces together, like really hodgepodged. It didn't have anything. This time I've built out more emails, I built out more posts, I, I've built out like more structures into it. So by the end of this month, my team is going to take what I created last time, what I created this time, and fold it all together and then it's just going to be a package that we get to roll out every quarter. Right. We get to like create some ads to it, we get to really push it, we get to have like a lead magnet, we get to have, you know, a bunch of stuff that goes into it. Right. But like, this is how you can build stuff. You don't have to be perfect. You can launch it once, see how it goes, launch it a second time, see how it goes, add stuff, take stuff away and reuse all of the marketing material for it. Right. Also, like, all the posts that I did, they're only on LinkedIn, so we're also going to be creating content for Instagram and TikTok. Like that's based off of the things that we've already done. Right. So as you're doing stuff like this, as you're like, oh, I want to do a webinar and I want to do a challenge and I want to do all these other things, know that everything you create to push that. Everything you create for it, everything you create to follow up from it. You know, all that can be reused in the future when you do it again. Right. Hopefully you have more organizational talent than I do or you have a team who can help you.

But.

You know, So. But yeah. All right, well, why don't we do main takeaways? Who would like to start us off and then we'll popcorn it.

I am not in the entertainment business. I don't make my clients happy.

Yeah. What's. You know, have you seen Back to the future 3?

No, I should probably.

You should watch it. But there's a scene where he's in a. In a saloon in the. In the Wild west, and someone's, like, shooting bullets at his feet and dance, dance, dance. That's not you. You're not dancing. Someone shooting bullets at your feet.

No, no. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you so much. I'm going to Monica.

I think my takeaway is that I want to think about maybe a challenge to spice things up.

Awesome.

Most random thing. Yeah.

Think about something that's three to five days to start. 30 days, a lot of commitment. But three days to get people in. That's the sweet spot.

Okay. Yeah.

And who are you picking?

Oh, Jason.

I need to calm the down.

Here, here. And ditto all of us.

Michelle.

I think it was kind of what you were saying to Dina was just, it's okay to say no. I think you gave kind of similar advice to. To Jason in a roundabout way. It was like, you know, say no. Be tough love. Be like, yeah, I can do this, but it's going to cost you, or, I don't do this because it's not going to work. Rather than kind of coming from a scarcity mindset being like, I have to say yes to this job because it's money coming in. So that was a nice reminder.

Thank you. Awesome.

And enjoy tomorrow.

Thank you. Yeah, we're going to have a lot of fun. We haven't figured out what we're going to do, but it's New York, so there's so much to do, so.

Yeah, exactly.

Awesome. All right. Have an amazing weekend, and you know where to find me. Okay, thank you.

Bye.