5 Money Rules To Make More Money In 2023

here are five money lessons I learned in my early 20s that allowed me to build an 80 million dollar creative agency and how you can apply them too make sure you stick around for Point number four because that might blow your mind so here's tip number one it's delegation let me expand what this means in most of our creative Pursuits whether you're a freelancer or a solopreneur a person who has one employee you're going to essentially trade your time and your skill for money and this is how most of us grow and there's a finite amount of time in which you can sell you could work weekends you can work really long hours and if you keep doing that for too long which is what I did you'll burn out this happens to all of us so the only way that you can scale Beyond being a solo operator is to delegate to give away some of the work that you're doing and this is how you're able to not only create opportunities for other people but how you're able to grow your capacity and this is really important there are some ways I would recommend you do it and some things for you to avoid when you're looking for someone to hire then this is a very tricky thing a question I get asked a lot is how do you hire your first employee the thing I would look at is make a a list of essential and non-essential work put in all the roles that you play Within the function of your company and you can soon realize the things that you previously believe to be essential are actually not essential let me give you this example people hired me to do design work so you would think naturally design is the essential things that I did and let me explore this with you so let's say I was hired to design a logo I was able to then hire people who were at a lower skill level than me generate different ideas to help us work through the creative process and through ART Direction in teaching the person the way I see the world the decisions that I make I'm able to elevate their work to a point in which it would pass as my own so when you realize this you start to understand that the design the creative work that you do is not essential and so you're probably thinking to yourself what is the essential work then so here's the clue who has the relationship with a client and who needs to be that person so it turns out clients hire people that they trust and that they believe can get the work done they're not as concerned as you might originally believe as to who does the work themselves they're not as concerned about who does the work more that it gets done on time and on budget and that's your role so as long as you're able to deliver work at the standard in which you hold yourself and accountable to you can hire other people to help you and that is lesson number one money lesson number two is to shift from an early base pricing model to one that's based on Project fees now why would you want to do this well when you're selling units of time what is it that you're really saying is valuable you're saying your time and most clients do not care at all how long it takes you to do something what they do care is what they get or the outcome of results that your work and effort achieves for them and so when you sell units of time you're inviting the client to manage your time which is not something that any one of us wants to do the classic image of the overbearing client sitting over your shoulder and on top of your mouse hand saying I prefer you to do it this way let's look at some real world examples of when this works and when it doesn't work whenever I'm working with a contractor who charges me hourly I'm really getting stressed out because I'm wondering are they taking too long for lunch or why are they they doing it this way when they should be using these tools instead you see what's happening here you're creating anxiety in the client's mind about what it is that you're doing with your time so if it takes you longer or shorter they're concerned either way and so this is why we need to shift away from hourly based pricing more towards project or value-based pricing and if you want a deeper dive on that check out this video where I talk about it at length and that's money lesson number two money lesson number three is focus focus focus we're creative people we like to do lots of different things and repetition makes us dull in our mindset you might have even heard from your teachers you want to show a breath of work lots of different skills you might feel compelled to provide an end-to-end service from beginning to end as they say soup to nut solution and this makes us really happy but it makes it really hard to Market it makes it even more difficult to get any real expertise and Authority in what it is that we're doing as an example when I first started I did design work I would design your logo I would design your brochure and I did literally do this for a bank and I would do some animation and editing there's basically nothing you could call me for that I wouldn't say yes to and it was so difficult to feel confident that I knew what I was doing because every time I was doing it for the first time again and this came to Clarity for me when I was working on a big main title job for eraser the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger somehow I got the opportunity to animate the titles for this movie and the client Kyle Cooper rgala they were really nervous that I wasn't able to do this it's my first film title job natural so they sent over an animator to supervise and do some of the work with me and the things that this person was able to show me made me realize something was like a holy F moment for me the basic things that this animator was doing I should have known but I didn't because I was spread so thin in trying to do all things for all people later that night I turned to my girlfriend now my wife and I said you know what here's the thing we're doing web design logo design print design and motion design I feel like the field that's going to be the most creatively nourishing and Rich for me in every aspect of that word is going to be in motion design are you okay if we take the company in this Direct now she's a super supportive person she wasn't going to challenge me but she saw the truth in that as well we can get excited about this the field is expanding it's trending there's a hungry market for this and there's relatively low competition so we decided to abandon all the other projects strip them from our website and say in that point forward blind as a design company was only going to focus on motion Design This one decision very important in year one of our business is what Blair ends calls making the difficult business decision it's a decision that so many people avoid they're afraid to go down a niche and this is not even niched enough based on the things that I teach today but it was at least us getting rid of a lot of different things if you want to have a breakthrough you have to have a powerful force to literally break through and in physics we know that pressure equals force divided by area so pressure is you pushing forward area is a number of things you focus in on and if you just reduce the amount of area that you cover the same force can have a powerful breakthrough effect that's lesson number three I just want to take the moment to express my genuine gratitude and appreciation for all of you when the last time we asked you to comment like you did so and it really jacked the numbers up for the algorithm so I'm going to ask you again and plus when I read these things and you testify about how valuable and transformative the channel has been for you even the cold-hearted robot in me shed the little tear there's a little emotional thing that's happening here so I appreciate it don't forget to like and comment here we are in lesson number four and you're here for this right because this is going to be the mind-blowing moment that's going to transform your life here we go money lesson number four learning how to have the money conversation now if you're a creative person if you didn't grow up with accountants and lawyers talking about money is really uncomfortable because socially it's kind of awkward in taboo to talk about money when we talk about money it seems like we're bragging we're talking about money it seems like we're greedy or selfish or unethical or all we care about is money so there's a lot of negative opinions thrown upon people who talk about money sometimes we do it and sometimes we're the victim of it so it's very unnatural for us to talk about money but those who don't talk about money don't make it so learning how to have the money conversation can be transformative so the first thing that we do is whenever we talk to a client we delay talking about the money because it creates the most stress for us as it turns out stress is not caused by the things you say it's caused by the things you don't say so let's think about this for a little bit and I've given this example before if you have a friend a college friend who calls you up and says hey I need a place to stay you're like cool but I wonder how my girlfriend's gonna handle this whatever so you allow this person to stay and what you thought was going to be one or two days turns into four days five days and your girlfriend's like um when are you gonna get rid of Jimmy because this is impeding on our life and I didn't realize Jimmy such a slob and he's gonna be here for so so long and you're feeling like super stressed out like I gotta talk to my friend Jimmy but we said we'd always be Bros and I'd take care of them but at the same time I have to honor this new relationship and respect the relationship that I'm in with my girlfriend so the stress is actually caused by you not saying something now a whole different approach could be hey Jimmy yeah it's cool if you stay but I need to make sure how long I'm gonna stay here this is critical because I have a girlfriend and I want to be mindful and respectful of her time in her space and Jimmy says well Chris I don't know maybe four or five days well you know four or five days is going to be the maximum okay like we said you know ride or die Bros for life kind of thing but you have to honor and respect that are you cool with that so you see if we bring this right up front it eliminates a lot of the stress winner feel in the back end and so the same thing is happening when you're talking about money whenever there's a transaction between a buyer and a seller or the seller the client is a potential buyer you both need to know one thing the most important thing I think above all other things is what price I need to know what the budget is because you can talk a good talk you could be the world's most Charming person you can have the greatest portfolio the body of work references you can lay them out a lot on a table but none of that's going to matter unless I can afford you if the solution matches the size of the problem at least my perception of it this is really important so the client is waiting for you to tell them what it's going to cost and you're waiting for the client to tell you what they're willing to pay so it's a chicken and egg situation but what's happening is the conversation goes longer and longer even though it feels like you're building Rapport and building Goodwill you're creating anxiety and anxious people don't buy at least they don't buy at the high price and this is going to hurt you in your business whether you are bricklay or Carpenter if you're designing logos if you're doing branding you need to talk about the money and you need to talk about relatively early and there's some rules about this we're not going to get into in this video but learning how to have the money conversation to know that people who are good at talking about money is a sign of good business Acumen not a sign of poor manners we need to understand this difference okay so oftentimes what I'll do is say as the clients are talking about everything that they want I'll say hold on this is fantastic and so you're very excited about working together what I need to know is what kind of budget ballpark are we in and you can throw that out there and the clients are going to say well Chris you're the professional why would we know what it's going to cost you should tell us you're fine so here's what you should say and you can write this down maybe you should write this down for clients like you and for projects like this we charge somewhere between X and Y I'm gonna give them a range so I'm going to bracket between two big numbers and the numbers need to be relatively far apart so the low number I suggest you talk about what your high price price might be so let's say like the the most anybody's ever paid you is twenty thousand dollars you can scale this number up or down depending on your individual circumstances what I would say is between 20 to 35 000 big gap and price bracketing is so they're gonna hear two numbers so even if they hire you for twenty thousand dollars they're gonna think they got a bargain just because you're using price anchoring here now you can level up and take this to like the black belt level you can start with a higher number first you can say for clients like you for projects like this we charge anywhere between thirty five thousand dollars pause and twenty thousand dollars so like whoa okay so now you're anchoring with a higher price first it feels a little unnatural to say we're not used to hearing this but if you do this and pause they're like wow holy cow this is a lot more money than I thought and then you say twenty thousand dollars they're gonna say oh what a relief my gosh we can afford 20. it's because we're contextual Learners we don't know if something's big small too hot or too cold just like in Goldilocks until we have something cold hot or too big or too small through the context we understand this is a good fit for me this is also the reason why many companies provide three tiered pricing this is especially famous from Apple there's the good the better and the best and what economists and accountants already know that you don't is most people I think around 80 pick the middle option because they rationalize in their mind the lowest price one is too weak for me and I'm not a cheapskate yet the highest price option is two Premium Too luxury too much of a beast I don't want to buy that version the middle option is the best and by providing either price bracketing or Price options you are allowing the client to make the decision to work with you versus comparison shopping you against someone else now these are very complex Concepts I hope you got some value from that but once you start to learn to have the money conversation to be comfortable talking about money you can actually start making it and that's why this is the Banger money lesson number four I don't want to overwhelm you but I want to give you this bonus tip about how to talk about money there's a couple like little rules of thumb that you can follow to have a more natural conversation about money so that you can make more of it couple different things for small projects for clients who keep not talking on your door and they can't afford you I would bring up the conversation about money as early as possible after the greetings hello we're interested in talking to you I would just metaphorically raise my hand and say uh before we go too deep here I just need to make sure you have somewhere north of fifteen thousand dollars to spend on a project like this and this way if it's not a good fit for them it's way out of the ballpark they can just end the conversation you know what Chris we appreciate you bringing this up front because there's no way we can pay anything like that you say thank you you can refer someone or you can say goodbye that's all fine so you want to bring up the money really early if it's a relatively small budget to you not to the client and you keep getting clients saying it's too expensive here's world number two which is when is it opportunistic or advantageous for you to talk about money later in the process well if the project has an undefined scope and it's going to be massive first of all there's no way you can figure out what this is going to cost you so by guessing early on you're shooting yourself in the foot generally speaking when we're doing consultant work when we're doing brand strategy that has multiple deliverables if we're talking about building an e-commerce website where there's too many layers parts and pieces to it I'm not going to price it then and there what I'll do is I'll do a bid or a verbally say in general orders of magnitude a gambid general orders of magnitude you can look that up the military uses this and the numbers that you're going to give are in 10x we can give you a website for ten thousand a hundred thousand or a million dollars whereabouts are you in this and just be quiet let the client say something this is a general orders of magnitude kind of did and this is very important so the clients are going to say well we're not in the 10 000 because we're not cheap we're not in a million because we're not crazy but somewhere between 100 000 and a million is where we're going to be so they'll say something like that somewhere between 100 to a million this is an opportunity this is an invitation for you to probe further see we're still applying the same range fighting price bracketing concept but delivered in a different way so now you have some information so it would behoove you to say are you closer to the million or to the hundred thousand I'm getting a little bit more information on the prospect now and depending on how they say this and how you read it they're gonna say well if we word shy of a million we'd probably be okay with that and then I would just follow up with how shy of a million are you a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand where are we here and then they're gonna say well probably in the 800 000 range I said this is fantastic and oftentimes they'll volunteer even more information to you to say I have discretionary spending power if the budget is under 850 000 Chief marketing officers and chief branding officers have a budget limit where they don't need to get approval from the board or from the president and they can sign off on this is good information for you because if you go one dollar over that you gotta send it up the chain and a whole committee gets involved and you want to avoid that so now I've learned if I build the bid somewhere in the 850 000 range the clients are going to be okay now notice as we're talking about money here we're not talking about the hours or even the deliverables we're just getting a sense of how big the scope is in the client's mind and those are some bonus rules of thumb on how to guide you about talking about money okay here we are number five and this is probably my personal favorite it might not be like oh my God Christians blew my mind but here we go it's to invest because in order for you to make money you've heard this expression you got to spend money and Sean Cannell has said scared money don't make money being an entrepreneur means a couple different things but one of the things it means is taking on risk the more risk you take on the more potential profit that you can have Peter Drucker famously said in business all profit comes from risk I'd like to add all profit comes from taking on risk taking on responsibility and creating value to others so if I may be so bold to add a little addendum to that what do I mean by investing so the first thing that you do when you're scaling your business is you invest The Profit that you have into people because without people a Service Company doesn't have more you invest money in people because in order for you to grow you have to have more people so that you have greater resources and ability to scale what it is that you do when you invest in these people you're hiring people you're giving them job opportunities you're going to need to train them up and build systems and processes to help them do the job better you're going to invest in tools and equipment and this is important thing when we were first starting out I tried to buy the best computers and equipment that I could afford for the people working because I knew it was a great return on investment it always boggled my mind when I walked into an agency that 20 or 30 people into running on outdated equipment janky monitors and their software package like they're sharing licenses it didn't make any sense to me because what you're saying is this human's potential is artificially capped by the speed or the lack of speed of the hardware and software and the tools that they're using first of all that creates for a horrible employee experience but you're really saying let's take the Ferrari out but let all the air out of the tires does it make sense to me so you need to invest in people and understand that by allowing them to do their best work by providing the right environment the tools you're going to enhance their joy and happiness in creating the work and as they say happy design comes from happy people from California they don't really say that but you know you know the campaign so that's you investing in people the glaring Omission so far has been what about investing in yourself Alex hermosi talks about this in one of his videos he quit his job he was on the fast track to becoming a partner or whatever as a consultant in an industry when he started his own business and he knew his fallback plan which would assure him to make a hundred thousand dollars was to drive Uber and to strip at night for clubs this and he says in all seriousness like and if you've ever seen Hermosa he was like he's one Jack Beefcake so of course him being a male stripper would work out for him but he said once he acquired skills and learned how to do sales his fallback number was now 250 000 or something like that and when he learned how to do marketing and to do sales at scale his worth was 500 000 plus he will say something like this after your living expense and your rent and food invest as much money in your self-development as possible until you make so much money it's no longer possible this is a profound concept because what you're doing is you're raising the basement of what your value is in the world the more marketable compounded skills that you acquire the greater the basement the larger the cushion you can fall back on it's one of the things that kept me in the game for so long because as an entrepreneur you're gonna face many dark days when you think things aren't working and there's going to be this little Angels sitting on your side or maybe it's the devil tempting you to say you can quit now you can go work for someone and you can get paid 400 500 600 000 a year because that is your market rate that's what you're worth the money lesson number five really is to always invest in yourself to invest in skills that are marketable and that can be compounded this is truly how you build up your net worth and the most beautiful thing is they can take away your house they can take away your cars they can take away your equipment and your software but they can't take away what you keep up here and that's lesson number five that's it for me your five money lessons I hope you find this to be valuable and if you have a specific question that you want me to answer put in the comment below and make sure you get right to the question please please for the grace of God don't tell me your whole life story I want to know but not in the questions because I have to read lots of questions and comments and I hope you got some value see you next time bye

Channel: The Futur

Views: 351,187

Keywords: money, basic money skills, money skills, money management, money secrets, money advice, money tips, money inspiration, money video, money making advice, make more money, the futur, how to make more money, money rules, make more money in 2023, money lessons, chris do, 5 money rules, money rules for financial success, business tips, successful business, business sucess, grow your business, business, make more money 2023

Id: o8IdDEJym1U

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022