The #1 Mistake That Keeps Freelancers, Consultants and Service Providers From Charging More Money

All right, I'm gonna make this pretty fast. But this story I just saw kind of blew my mind. So I want to talk about it, which is the fact that Google just paid or recently paid $2.7 billion to hire this AI genius who had quit in frustration. I think this is crazy. And I just posted on ON X and I honestly didn't get a ton of engagement on it yet. But to me, people are missing the point of that. You know, I have worked with freelancers for over a decade. These days I hire freelancers. I don't really teach or coach or train them or anything like that. But you know, I'm constantly talking with them and consultants and sort of service providers in general, right? And there's this interesting thing that happens. I'll give you an example. I was talking to somebody yesterday who is a contractor for one of my companies that's a direct to consumer company in the medical space. We're doing a couple million dollars a month. Company's going well. He has another company that I want to keep this broad because I don't want to blow this person up. But basically they provide services to content creators, let's put it that way, right? And their business is struggling a bit. They got to about $80,000 a month in recurring revenue, but then they changed the model, kind of got screwed up. Now they're down to like 20k a month in recurring revenue. And they basically have this gap of like 16k a month. And they're like, you know, worried about the longevity of the business. And so the whole call was super valuable. Talked through it. Basically, he told me this. I was like, let's get on a call and we'll kind of map it out and let me, let me help, right? And I did it purely from a perspective of helping and just wanting to, you know, this person's done great work for us and I want to make sure that they are able to keep doing great work for others. And one of the things I said was, hey, you know, let's create some packages for what you're doing. It's around UGC stuff, right? So basically going and finding UGC creators, getting product in their hands, getting them to shoot videos, sourcing the creators, getting the videos, you know, doing the editing, whatever's needed, all that kind of stuff, which is really valuable to a lot of, you know, DTC brands and E Comm and all that. And I'm like, you know, like, share some packages with me or create a package or something, then I'll post it into our Mastermind, where we've got a bunch of business owners doing between 3 and 300 million plus per year. And yeah, I guarantee you some of them would want to hire you for this work, right? We had this whole long talk about kind of undercharging and all that kind of stuff, and. But then he hit me up with the idea for his packages today, and it was like $3,500 a month for what I shared. And he was like, do you think that's enough value? And it's like, dude, the value is fine, but make your retainer at least five grand a month, right? Cause you get three people, you're essentially. Your business won't go under anymore, right? With three people paying you 5k a month. And he hasn't replied yet. I'm sure he'll say, okay, because of my advice on it. But like, that instinct to undercharge this person's great. They do something similar for us. They do an awesome job. They do some other things for other clients. The point is, I'm like. But then he went to undercharge so dramatically. And I just thought about that with so many people and consultants, right? It's like I talked to them about this yesterday too, because it was like they had a done for you package, but they were trying to do so many different things with it. And the most they charged ever for their done for you package was five grand a month, which is why they switched to a done with you package. But they attracted a different type of client. So the real lesson here, or one of the real lessons is like, you know, usually if you're. The caveat to all of this is you have to be really, really, really good at what you do, right? So whether that's a copywriter, which is how I started, and a lot of copywriters, like, follow me or on my email list or watch my YouTube channel or on X or whatever, or you're just a consultant. You know, for a marketing consultant, you do, you know, UGC stuff, whatever it is, right? You have to be with world class dev, design, whatever, right? World class. That's always the caveat. But if you are world class, you could almost always be charging dramatically more than you are. And the reason you're not is. Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is probably your mindset and imposter syndrome and all these sorts of things, which is why mindset stuff is real. And then the other part of that is you're not talking to the right clients and not. Or the right people, the right prospective Clients and then you're not giving them the right package or the right offer. And it's so when you want to be like, no, like, you know, like dude, like, okay, like the average A. You've heard stories of Google's paying AI people like a million dollar salary, like $2 million salaries. OpenAI is paying somebody a $2 million salary, right? It's like, all right. So they think, well, that must be the ceiling. This guy, they literally bought his company, right? He's his co author, he's very smart, world class, right? When his startup began to founder, Google came in, wrote him a check for 2.7 billion. Official reason was to license his technology, but the deal included another component. He agreed to work for Google again within Google. His return is widely viewed as the primary reason the company agreed to pay the multi billion dollar licensing fee. So, and then they're kind of like, oh, should they spend or not? Who cares? I don't have an opinion on what Google does with their money. They got enough money to drop 2.7 billion. And that's the whole point is that could drop 2.7 billion on a single person because you know, the right relationships and they're a road class what they do. And you know, Google is the right kind of client and in this case they're hiring them. But hey man, you want to go hire me for 2.7 billion? Probably gonna say okay to that deal, right? Even I would say I'm not for hire. Ever. Give me a multi billion dollar deal, I'm probably for hire, right? And so like, yeah, it's just wild to me. Then you've got freelancers and consultants out there who are scared to ask for 10% or 20% more to double their rate. But it's like, it's not the money, it's the client, it's who are you speaking to? I'll give you one more quick example and then I'll end this video. I recently put a thing to my email list of about 10,000 people, which is by the way, a lot of them are freelancers and people like that. But I have obviously maybe 20% are business owners. And my friend had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. He was having the surgery. I was like, I really want some extra cash to be able to help him with things, which is good by the way, because it turns out the health insurance is like a scam and it's just this whole awful thing. So having all this extra money around to be able to help him turned out to be really valuable. But basically the deal is, hey, I'm going to come in and help you find wins that pay for myself, maybe you know, give you five to ten hours a week and it's going to be 75k a month, right? Put out the email, put that out to my list. Had like a couple of people reply very quickly. One of those people was a really good fit for it. They hired myself and I'm brought to my CEO to also help. So it's like an operational component too. They just paid us for the second month. They're like, oh, we want to make this a year long commitment, right? They'd like to go for a year. So, you know, not, I'm not great at math, you know, but let's see here. You know, 12 times, don't laugh at me, but 12 times 75,000, right? What is that? So 12 times 75,000. So $900,000 in extra income for the year from one email to my list from one client, right? Pay me $75,000 a month. Now let's go to like other consultants, right? Put out there. If I want to get, if I was charging $5,000 for the same work, it's like first of all, okay, realistically, how many of those people could I really service, you know, correctly? And the answer is probably like three. I'm thinking if I didn't have all these other things, I have multiple eight, seven, eight figure companies, right? So I don't have the bandwidth for one. But say I'm like, not me, I'm like really good, but I only do consulting, right? In that case, how many hours a week do I really want to work? Let's say I want to work 60 hours a week because I'm a beast, right? Okay, cool. So you know, If I'm doing 10 hours a week, on average, six people, if I charge five, you know, 5K per person. So I could basically make $30,000 a month working 60 hours a week and you know, kind of hating my life in some cases because I'm like, man, I'm grinding. But you know, for the average person you're like, wow, that's life changing. $30,000 a month. That would be so life changing. And it's like, yeah, probably it would. But this goes back to your skill level, right? The problem is not that if you're early on, like if you're kind of worth $5,000 a month, fine, then yeah, that's what you should be charging. But I just see a lot where there's these world class people who are absolute experts who are really good and I'm speaking about them. And for everyone else who's watching this, you should try to become really, really good. But then once you are, you know, it's less about the right, for the right price, nobody cares. You know similarly like when I was doing video sales letters and writing copy and I would charge $50,000 to write a 7,000 word Google Doc and send it to somebody and they'd be like alright, great, I made a million dollars a month doing that for a million dollars a year, doing that for several years in a row. Because you think about yourself so much. But think about them if like, you know, even like when I started doing some AI agency work and we still do it a little bit. Yeah. When I was sold some retainers and packages that were like $150,000 a month just to deliver copy to some nine figure clients who needed that much copy. Like okay, right. It's about, it's not about you, it's not about the money, it's about the client. What do they have? If I'm making $100 million a year, so this consulting client is paying 75k a month, you know, they're doing 100 million a year let's say. Right, let's say it's around what they're doing. Okay, so if I get them one win, that increases revenue by 10% which shouldn't be hard because they're running on funnels, they're you know, running their E comm, Their brand, they're number one brand. They're in a different country but they're the number one brand in that other country. So I've already given them some deliverables and things. So okay, one win, 10% lift, $10 million they paid me in the first 60 days, right. I make them $10 million in the first 60 days. They paid me $150,000. So again, so hey, you're gonna give me 150,000, I'm gonna give you 10 million back. And by the way, it might be a 20 or 30 or 40% lift. So I make them 20, 30, 40, $50 million. Right. That's how they should be thinking about it and how I'm thinking about it. So, so that's the case. It's like that's a no brainer. And by the way, of course they're gonna wanna keep hiring me cause keep getting them lifts, right. If every 60 days I'm increasing, you know, their revenue by, you know, even if after the first 60 days it's like a 3% lift, a 5% lift. Right. So increase their revenue, you know, by 3 million. 5 million. Right. Like, they're paying 150,000 for that, for this big company with good margins, and that's gearing for an exit. Eventually that will be, you know, probably a nine figure exit. They're, like, happy to do it. And so, again, this story is just a massive reminder of how, like, you don't, you know, think less about yourself and more about who the client is, who you're serving, or who you're going after. And, you know, that's a big secret, but it is not actually complicated at all. All right, thanks.