Deep Discussion With Creative Professionals

I think we're live this is after hours and I'm joined by some incredible human beings and in case you're wondering what happens to everybody like how did we get so big and diverse well this is a very unique group of human beings we call them the pro members and they're all here we we just got back from Adobe MAX and we're just continuing the content love and the live stream and we just been producing so many things I'm not going to introduce everybody there's so many of you guys and it's so great to see you my only regret is that people who were who were here yesterday no longer here I mean they're still alive but there's just no they survived this is after hours with the pro members and the pro members are basically people that are part part of our exclusive coaching community there's 280 of us and we run from all different sizes shapes want solopreneur freelancer student to people who have really multi-million dollar agencies who are part of it and it's just this community that makes what I think what we have so unique and precious so there's no agenda we're just gonna have a conversation we're gonna go there was like a robot boys thing that's going okay so I I think we're just kind of at the end of one conversation so this will be the beginning of the next conversation so what's hot what's on your mind let's get let's get real and let's have a conversation who wants to start you can't do that mo you have the mic you you were in that position for a reason why don't you start you mean have to start with the question you could just talk whatever you want man I'll be monitoring comments and you too can monitor comments on YouTube yeah I feel like there's been a lot of discussion people that are already in a really good place with their business but they can't see that they're in a good place and they're concerned about what's the next thing that I have to do to make my business better versus just doing what's necessary to get more clients and I think I'd like for us to talk about that because this past week I've been learning so much from other people mm-hmm and seeing other people's work but hearing them say that I need to do this before I can get clients I need to do this before I can get clients and it's like do you not see how amazing what you're doing is already like you're like you're in a perfect position to already get clients and maybe that's because I'm not inside the bottle as they say and I'm able to see their work for how great it is so can we talk about that we can before we talk about that I'm gonna give a quick shout out to the 66 people we're tuning in live we already have other Pro members Dave Co is online in sick Drigo MO my boy yo like what up I guess have been told that this is happening did you guys tweet this out or how did they even know oh do you watch everybody let's create some massive FOMO for other Pro members who aren't here I know I'm cruel and just it's unusual like that but let's go for it Lee's let them know let's create massive FOMO fear of missing out text them all it's a like wish you were here super sincere though right you guys would keep it live okay Scotty Valentine why aren't you in the program Scotty after hours come on man pulse design Julien Dickie I just got the you know YouTube notification Riley Morgan what's up Cole Buchanan if you're watching if you're new if you have some questions both Ricky and Jonah are monitoring some comments there they are he's waving but you can't really see him we ran out a budget for a third camera so Canon Sony watching watching let us know about that mark to stuff okay let's get into it okay there's this phenomenon that happens and on our walk back for him tacos porfavor yesterday Ashley just turned to me it's like how do you how do you do that so fast like how do you take me from here and bring me down here and she asked me this question and I had to think of my feet cuz you know it's a short walk I was thinking because I think most of us look at problems with a magnifying glass we're up so close to it we're studying every single detail we're studying everything that we can't do all the things that make us annoyed things that make us scared and I said all we have to do is to gain some perspective you've heard that expression before and I mean literally I gained some perspective by stepping 6 8 10 12 100 feet back and looking at the problem from afar and I think that gives us context an example I gave to her was if you're sitting there and you're waiting for our parking spot and you've been patiently waiting and somebody pulls out of that parking spot and you're about to go in and some a-hole some d-bag scoots in that gets it you've got steam coming out of ears you're fighting you lowlife ki the car all these dark thoughts are going through your mind like why why are humans like that why can't we treat each other with kindness and be generous why can't we do that some courtesy goes a long way but that's you looking through the world through your eyes through that magnifying glass but if you were just to pop back a little bit maybe even just into the backseat and look at yourself looking at the situation and observe be the witness to it you might say okay here's a woman waiting for a parking spot and somebody else may or may not have seen that she was waiting and took an opportunity who knows but this woman has her health has a wonderful family is in a car that she owns that's insured really what is the big deal there's another spot a few miles away and if we can get that kind of perspective that distance I think it changes how we look at things so mo you looking at anybody else here can see their problems so clearly you're good enough or tweak this line or talk about a user benefit instead of talking about yourself it's so clear and they can just as easily turn around say mo is your problem here's your challenge and you need to overcome it how do we do this for ourselves how do we get this kind of clarity now ah she's ready and she's primed go ahead a little bit closer Mike yeah I like that metaphor I see now very clearly I used to have that in my family values like you see very positivity in every aspect of your life like specially teaching my kids or just we are alive today that's the best blessings yes and that's what you should see like when you get up in the morning you have me thankful like you are alive today and you can get to do so many things but I was not implementing the same thing in my business so today in session mean I was looking at a bigger problem and I want to reach it was like hundred doors away from me yes for that I was not taking I was not there at for the tenth door or not able to see that I'm talented I have worked ready and canvas is ready to paint I just need to take a brush in hand and start painting it so I see that metaphor now from my personal life to how to implement in my business and it and hence when you told me that car parking exams yeah yeah so thank you you have incredible clarity when it comes to your children and you can see them and you know that if they just changed a little bit they will have more happiness than success and everything will work out but right when it comes back to us it's like wait a minute different rules apply right and now hopefully if nothing else try to just insert a little pause between catalyst and reaction like something makes you react just stop a minute and kind of observe what's happening in your mind and then you can choose how you want to react yes pretty much sorry I just wanted something real quick I was talking to all Alec earlier and he was talking about everything that he failed on and he was saying that he's like man I was following Chris and I'm following him oh and this is and that referring to you and he's like and they're killing it on Instagram and they're doing all these things and I'm sitting and I'm struggling and I'm just falling behind and he got super caught up in his failures and for a second he paused and he was like but then I thought about he was like I'm doing so much other good stuff in other areas and I've been so hard on myself when it comes to this one specific thing and that's what a lot of us I feel feel like do we get caught up in the bad because the good is so abundant because the good is the norm like we're you succeeding and we're used to kind of having good days or at least average days but the bad sticks out so much because it's so rare that we don't really know how to cope with it and we give it a lot more attention than it should have hmm and that's that was what he was saying to me earlier and he was like I just took a step back and changed my perspective on it it was like I may have not one in this one area that Lisa gives me a chance to go back and succeed again and that's how kind of I've been framing the things that we've been doing here even though we haven't done the best before it still gives us the chance to reframe and you know try again I have a different take on that I think that was excellent Chris well done if you sit there and you replay the memories in your childhood and we did a lot of this yesterday and we created two columns we're gonna do the two column conversation again creating two columns and we asked ourselves how many times you remember the people who you love the most your parents who took care of you how many times did they praise you for doing something right I make a list just just follow through the thought experiment and then put that list away for a second and then the second list as yourself how many times did they tell you you did something wrong and I'm pretty sure that list isn't multitude longer than the other list so we've had a lot of training finding the things that are wrong we've had not a lot of training in pointing out that things that are right in fact when you think that you've done something right what is the response that you get don't let that get to your head getting too big for your britches stay humble be humble so even if you are able to acknowledge that you've done something right for yourself you go right back to the know the default voice is do not take credit for the things that work out so no wonder alec is sitting there thinking why can't I kill on an Instagram what am I not doing right versus what am i doing right in taking credit for it acknowledging it and being grateful for that I think that's probably why it's so easy for us to point out what's wrong instantly so sometimes if we really just want to connect another person just sit there and look at them listen to them make them feel like every word that they say is important and then try to find something right and they you will shock them it's a shock to the system and I was having dinner with some of the directors from a very prominent type foundry and we were just chatting and they asked me this question he says Chris what's the best reaction you've gotten from an audience because we're talking about a global audience of these different things and I decided to take the conversation in a slightly different place than I normally do I said the best reaction ever got actually came from of all places Dublin Ireland he's like what do you mean I said well I'm doing this workshop it's an all-day workshop and these are not young people they're professional people and we got to the mindset part of the day it's towards the end of the day and we're gonna we're doing some deep minds at work and I asked the group to think about this and I looked at a couple of people and he said I think in your childhood if somebody had just told you what I'm about to tell you it might have changed the course of your life and how you feel about yourself I said something to the effect of your work is good it's better than most and your work is valuable to many people who can see the gift that you have to offer and you're worthy you're worthy of being loved and grown men with tattoos beards and piercings started to weep and when I told him it wasn't like one of those like I've got an eyelash in my eye or you get the glassy I look like they wept like hands over eyes kind of shaking and I'm trying to be a professional here even though I'm a robot I still get emotional if other people get emotional and I can't be in front of everybody because see they're having a distinct advantage all of them could see me and I can see all of them but they can't see each other so as they're having their own moments I have to look away because if I sit there and swim in out emotion I'm gonna lose it and I don't know how long it's gonna take me to recover and then they I turn around and look at them and their eyes are glassy hearing the story we all could just use a little love some positive affirmation I don't mean to blow smoke up people's butt or anything like that but just to point out in a very genuine honest earnest way this is what I like about you and every time to the T if I say this in a quiet room to a hard person the minute what shape or size that come in most of them break because we're not used to hearing that so here's what we can do we can't control what other people say to us right we can't but we can control how we react and what we can say to other people so if not now at some point before the weekend is over find somebody tell them what they mean to you tell them what they're good at just say one thing you don't have to go crazy and say it with feeling and if you don't have anybody that's close to you tell it to a stranger with no other mom accept it to appreciate them well you're trying to read the audio podcast of this I'm sorry my yeah a little bit you didn't cope choke one time you didn't off one time and here you are coughing away alright I do have something to add though because you asked us a really good question I used to be great into the mic oh right into the mic am I good okay you asked us how do we have perspective for ourselves and there was a p.m. call during the program in the program to the program that you said we have to be able sorry you said that we're good at answering other people's questions like you said earlier today so how do we do it for ourselves and you said to create a prompt write it down and try to answer that question for yourself can you talk a little bit more about that and why it's so powerful for us to do that for ourselves whether it be a business problem whether it be a perspective problem gratitude all these different things because we can't wait for other people to just tell us good things either that is true there's a couple things first thing is when you write down what you're thinking you were translating a very complex thought process baked with emotions and feelings and jellow and then you make them concrete the act of writing gets you clarity on what it is you're thinking and sometimes we just need to fool ourselves because inside our mind everything makes sense the echo-chamber things bounce around and you have one feeling by the time it hits your mouth it becomes a different word and that's why people say to each other like you don't understand what I'm saying even though literally I understand the words but it's because you don't understand the emotion that I can't communicate to you right now Daniel's having a flashback right now he's like yes please I just had that relationship issue right you you guys here you know what I'm talking about hi Monica so there's there's a feeling and it gets the words and it comes out wrong so we just need to make the practice of translating those feelings into words and look look back at those words and like did that capture what I was thinking and the beauty of the English language is this very complex language there's so many words my wife's like why are there so many words to say the same darn thing each one means something slightly different different context different power different intensity and so we need to be much more mindful in the words that we choose to express our feelings into code emotions and experiences so when you write it down I think that's just a trick to make it concrete to make a concrete and then you step back and this is the part it's distance it's always distance you know how when something bad has happened to you with time time heals all wounds with distance you can see it with greater perspective the distance is what allows you to do that so when somebody insults you somebody offends you does a wrong to you the distance like you know maybe it wasn't that big of a deal and well you know they were having a bad day and now I understand the three things that I did that contributed to that moment and that's the distance so if you record yourself and you watch yourself later that's a great way to get distance and writing is the easiest most convenient way of recording so go ahead and write something down like what am i grateful for that's a prompt and then you can start to answer that you can also do what Daniel is doing which is the switch hands that's a trick too so if your dominant right use your left and see what happens some crazy stuff comes out it may shock you so I really like the part of what you said that when you write down you get more clarity and so I went to a recent conference Antonio of it and in meditation also we learned that when you write you invite you when you write you invite ya right you invite so here whatever the things we want to happen in our life we just want to visualize that and write down so you're inviting that energy and you're making it happen visually like in your head already so it's going to happens if you want to see yourself in five years and that goal you are wearing this you are in this house with this furniture you have complete imagination about it and when you write down you are inviting that thoughts towards in your life you are opening the door so that's completely I agree you right you invite I mean I think that's like a big part of affirmation there's something that I see a lot more people practicing nowadays and they're just becoming more self aware of the things that you actually want in your life and career monitor universe makes such a big impact and I think what's something great about this group is the kind of a motivational team around you of people they're just supporting you to try new things and I think that's something that a lot of us were taken away from this weekend is the group of people around us that were like you can do this like here's your permission try it if you feel I tried 99 more times but along that way we're gonna help you together mmm I just want to point out that post design paid $2 to have no stop coughing literally said poses as ammo stop coughing who said that pulse design pulse design are you gonna pay me no you take me oh they paid you just either get rid of you to stop coughing okay fernfield's gave us a couple of bucks a couple bucks for my tears [Laughter] okay just let you know you know what's happening on the internet right now I see you posted 171 people now tuning into this conversation in case you just joined us I'm talking to this wonderful community - called the pro community and they're part of my extended family there's 280 of us unfortunately all 280 people could fit in the building or the plane but there's about ten or so of us here there's you need the mic yeah yeah we're doing after-hours we're gonna get deep on a few few topics go ahead I think I have a good question you do I'll be the judge of that good so one of my problems is sometimes I feel I'm not precise with my words yeah so how can I get more precise with them how can I build that expertise or that skill I hear that right in this one yeah so you're like me in a way we're both ESL English as a second language for the four people don't know you're urgently from Venezuela right yes and you're like living up north but it's tough for us like there's a language and way of thinking and speaking and there's some studies that have been done too about how language can influence the way we think about the present in the future what does it call sphere of Worth theory and ads about language beautiful beautiful Ricky what a contribution awesome this fear of worth it's like a tongue twister kibrit I say it myself and I think it's just like everything that you do in life it's deliberate practice and intention so a while back I remember studying for the SATs and trying to memorize vocabulary words and thinking like why do I need to learn these words I couldn't see the benefit so I didn't make a great effort to do that but then I realized even in not trying I still remember some of those words and can use them and it's it's pretty powerful to be able to find the exact right word to describe what you're thinking there's a couple of things I would encourage you to watch really well-written dramas like movies with subtitles on for me hearing it in seeing it in use with visual reinforcement of subtitles helps out a lot there's a beautiful dark movie called angel of angels and insects and just the way it's written it's just amazing it's a dark movie I'm just letting you guys know those of you have seen it it's dark okay of angels and insects so that's one way I think being around people who speak the way that you'd like to speak more alike is a great way you know send the MFA program everybody starts using juxtaposition duality and just Academy it's just all those high-powered words through the six dollar words or whatever it's called they start using that word and then you start to learn how you use it and it's an interesting thing there's a bias conscious and unconscious bias that when we hear people use the same words that we use we feel connected to them that we have similar value systems and beliefs and this instant connection that's why when you get dropped into certain cultures like in the south or in hip-hop communities or in in Silicon Valley they all speak a certain way it's like you are one of us you know that you live there so those are things I would do there are other things that you can do I forget who told me this but somebody was afraid of talking so decided to start a podcast yeah yeah so write speak hang around with people watch consume and eventually your language will change and if you have a friend a partner a lover a husband or wife whatever it is give them permission especially if they're native English speakers to correct you every time you screw up something some people are annoyed by that and some people are very conscious not to correct other people because it's rude so you have to invite them to correct you because you don't want to make the same mistake okay there was a bit on one of these late-night comedy shows where our president Donald Trump some Trump he makes up words all the time and they're like nobody has the cojones to tell him not a single person like you just made up a word so he keeps repeating it over and again yeah so nobody's doing it many favors that says a lot about the people he has working for him his circle and the energy he puts out there perhaps he's the kind of person perhaps I'm only speculating or do not know the kind of person where if you correct him that's the end of you so that's a person surrounding themselves saying you can never correct me because that would be horrible look if each one of you guys heard me make up a word please just correct me now correct me later but correct me because I don't want to keep using the wrong word okay yes sir thinking I have nothing but admiration for anybody that's learning a second language because I barely can speak English myself right to learn two languages and one of the most beautiful things is if you speak with an accent do not try to get rid of rid of your accent while you're still learning because speaking with an accent is a signal to other people yo I speak your language better than you speak my language okay so when you suppress that accent they're like what is wrong with you why can't you conjugate that verb are using the wrong tenses and in Asian people Chinese people in particular screw this up all the time because there's no female male so they always grew up they'll say the father she said this like mmmmmm knows he and so it scrambled in the brain it's so it's funny until you learned that in Mandarin third there is no female male whereas in the French everything's female male it's like it's super complicated remember that bicycle is this the car is that okay what else we got going on I think anyone speak no no but anybody that that is not even near a mic in street go ahead you have to speak right into the mic I did do this a lot because I studied it at the language and it is very hard to remember certain words when you are reading books or something it's not recorded quickly in your brain so I'm a slow reader so how do you suggest on that like what do you suggest on that how did you get better in your second language one of the cool things about growing up with my particular parents was that they wanted us to learn English and to assimilate into American culture as quickly as possible whereas some of their siblings wanted them to retain the culture of the old ways so it's quite interesting and I find this it should be a strange phenomenon that we are many many years removed from the fall of Saigon fall Saigon was in 1975 April 30th right I think and who's that that's you boo okay and that there are people living in America that our first or second generation Vietnamese American that still speak with an accent that still hold on to this culture and I think it's wonderful to preserve culture but another thing not to adapt to your new homeland and it's a strange thing so my parents encouraged us to try to learn English and unfortunately the cost of that is I know speak Vietnamese very well that's the price I pay I'm not as connected to my birth culture then I am to my American culture I forget the rest of your question but I'm just thinking wait like I'm just thinking about the words you said you use the word wisely how you relate to the person so how do we delay to our clients what language they are speaking mm-hm and to speak in their words okay do you hear me yes you can pick it up you can pick it up really quickly like they are talking in certain kind of word languages a style yes so just to make them familiar and a part of it so we get connected very fast yes how do you use that the first thing I would do is to be super transparent but what is your trying to do it's like when you hear word you don't understand you're like wait what does that mean just ask him straight up okay and they'll tell you and they'll try to be more inclusive hopefully if they don't you'd probably don't want to be around them too much I remember working with some tech clients and they were using acronyms up and down all dropping them left and right and I just like excuse me I'm sorry I'm lady in the room I have no idea what you're talking about I'm trying to keep up but as you speak like this there's only one problem I don't understand and I'm the guy who's writing your messaging and if I don't understand I can't translate this and have a suspicion my suspicion is if you talk like this on your website to your prospective clients they too don't understand so it's okay for you to talk down to me and so what happens is in these kind of cultures they use shorthand because we all know and say the same thing and sometimes it's actually designed to keep people out of our culture but in this case they needed more clients and customers to understand what they did so was unintentional so when they say to me it's BYOD world Kris I'm like what a BYOD world you know what that means no bring your own device see there's a tech guy right there boom he's just out of himself oh really oh yes that's right okay good job somebody's done their homework and remembers okay how about somebody on this side any of anybody getting there's a cuter than nothing right now okay that's cool I'm ready just to respond when ready cool cool I like that respond Zach so since we're talking language barriers how do as a designer or as a creative agency how I feel like there's oftentimes barriers between us in the clients because we get caught up in as you said our terminology or only way we in the way we talk but we also want to be perceived as educated and you know we understand our craft but sometimes the client just doesn't comprehend that so how do you approach that we've we've made one cardinal sin already we expect the mountain to come to Moses and Moses needs to definitely come to the mountain the whole point of communication is to share what it is you're thinking to use very specific language that is going to intimidate the client to make them feel less than he's really creating a relationship that you don't want to create okay does that make sense yeah so we say you know what Pantone color do you wanna do you want to process or spot color and with our hit of varnishing that what did I say to you yes I don't know so there's only a couple things that can happen when you do that one for fear of sounding stupid that they don't know what they're talking about they're gonna give you the answer that don't really mean that's bad information too they feel like you're you're trying to flex on them like why would you communicate like this like I don't bring all my business terminology in here why would you so what we need to do is to have that shared thing this is what it means to build rapport so we mirror each other we have to find common ground and you guys have heard me say this I'm gonna keep saying this it's like whenever a problem happens you're at least 50% of the problem but you're most definitely 100% of the solution so whose responsibility is it to communicate to the client and we make a mistake and I know this too and you guys know this you ever notice how a poser speaks versus an expert a poser flexes puffs up uses certain terminology speaks really fast try to impress you with what they don't know that's usually what posers do and you notice like really wise people who are knowledgeable experts they don't speak like that at all they remember that you may not know any of these things and they speak to you in a way that you can understand not to speak down to you but speak to you at a level you understand and that's really really important so you may say to your clients do we want to do a three camera setup with shooting at 4k 24p and they're gonna turn to you like what why would you speak in that language versus like what objective are we trying to do what's important to you to communicate and then I will use my knowledge and experience to sort the rest out they don't know they don't care they just want it to be good they want to have success and so speech that I'm like real humans and you'll be okay hmm all right yeah yeah it's more powerful than you think just add to that really quick hopefully you're creating a situation with your clients when you're learning from each other where they're learning from you and most importantly you're learning from them and what I try to do is I try to set up that relationship right at the beginning of the you know the project or engagement that's great what a beautiful way to look at it instead of trying to set the goal is to impress them just establish expertise just up the goal is it's an exchange of information that I want to learn from you well I I just come from the mindset that the client isn't the enemy you know they're really talented smart successful people and you know they have the money to hire you for a reason they've done something to get there right so I think if you just come in with that kind of respect and admiration you know for them then you know they're gonna you know hopefully reciprocate that with you and if not then maybe they're not a good fit but you know if you have that really if you build that relationship early on you gather you know both sides of the equation or party will get the results that they want yeah Mason Lawler's give me a shout-out to Stan Lee he said he met you in Berlin Stan Lee in the back okay okay you know what I was talking to somebody who has been running her own practice for eight years and she needed some help about understanding sales and how to onboard clients and the same thing that we go through all the time and she's not a pro member but she's kind of a respected person in the design community and I was thinking oh my gosh I guess there's a lot of people out there who don't actually know the structure in the nature of how to talk to a client especially a prospective new client so before I kind of get into that conversation from somebody who's a little bit newer to the group who or may not have it all figured it out figured out I'd love to have your take on what is the objective when a client reaches out when you're talking to him how is that supposed to go who's got the mic there you go you want to do it do it what's the objective in speaking to a new client yeah so ring-ring new client hello I saw your work what are you trying to do you want to honestly help okay you want to help yeah and I say honestly because it sounds like we've talked a lot about impostor syndrome and what posers do when they like you know that if somebody's using a bunch of filler words and puffing their chest out you get the thin they're dishonest like the people who are able to articulate what they do most effectively and how they can help are gonna say it so tactfully because it's effortless it's like watching a professional athlete do something they're so trained and well versed in the truth that they're speaking that it flows like like honey from the whip so you don't even have to you know that it's fully transparent and that it's good and there's nothing wrong with it so just honest deliberate communication and assessing can I help you or can I not and if I can't how can I put you in front of somebody that can't help you yeah that's good anybody else want to add to that before I jump in you know figure out what is the problem that you're trying to solve for them and what the goal at least that's why should I figure out what is what what problem are they trying to solve and what is gonna be the goal they were gonna try to reach with what I'm able to offer them mm-hmm and having that understanding police a lot of different conversations but you don't want to let them self diagnose what the problem might be I want to have that understanding to make sure that you know I want to create something that's gonna help them and that create something that they think they might want okay excellent okay yeah so as well we try to well weigh what has worked for me is try to build a relationship not just saying that I'm just here to help you solve your problems so we'll get to know the person who they are what are the goals who they want to become so you can connect more like just as a business level how do you build a relationship Daniel asking questions getting to know that each other when I work for me is like I get in touch with people that are like-minded and I started like just genuinely asking questions like hey how do you get there how you do this beat you be curious mmm okay great okay so let's let's add some layers to the conversation are we good students sorry to interrupt are we good students of yours or what what do you think about that for dramatic reasons you guys just relax and be okay you guys did great this is the wrong group to be asking or maybe this is the right group to be asking because you guys do know and so that's why I like when I snap back to reality and I talk to someone who's not been part of this universe of ours their answers are like crazy and I think don't wonder you don't have any clients so let's help the wider community understand this okay so I'm not gonna give you guys all the answer I just want to add a layer to it and we'll keep going until we get to the heart of it and feel like we've had a really meaty conversation and greater understanding about this what you need to understand that it's difficult to think everybody here gonna agree with that cuz all I have to use ask you like what's an important question to ask what you want to learn what your brains just melt right it's difficult to think and it's really difficult to make a decision just remember those two things it's difficult to think it's difficult to make a decision so when you talk to a client you're like so what's the problem it's like you're asking me to tell you like what I don't know if I knew I would have told you so we have to develop language and techniques to do that so we have to assist the client to think and then we have to remove the fear of making a decision and you know how difficult it is to make a decision I witnessed that many times in the last 48 hours we'd go out to eat together some of you some of you I'd bring you up and like this is how the menu works these are options consider this what's your preference and I said don't step into the line until you're ready to fire you know this got it though says yes I got it Moses I got it and he walks up and he starts asking more questions chilao asking and asking and I'm just sitting there rolling my eyes like Moe it's just one meal of mini meals that you're gonna have it's not the last meal for tacos and it'll be okay so you know how difficult it can be to make a decision yeah this simple act of ordering or where to eat can be enough to send something off the deep end now you're gonna ask your client to make a decision on where they're gonna spend a hundred thousand dollars and you want them to make the decision on the call they don't know you from Jack they're heard a few good things they saw a few things but we all know you can see things and you can hear things that don't work out because the world is full of people who are faking it how do they know where the genuine deal okay so just remember what are the two things that's difficult to do well don't look at your notes this is the client to think and reduce their fear of making a decision okay it's hard to think it's hard to make a decision so how do we help them to think we're going to ask them some questions and we have to ask them in a slightly leading way because it can't just be like what do you think of the world then you're gonna get all kinds of answers so we kind of have to point them in a direction based on some of our knowledge and experience and this is how we are going to express and communicate the other person we're not new to this industry so the quality of the question then determines the quality of the knowledge that you have when you come to a doctor within probably four question has already figured out what you have there's a good chance I already know what you have they're just going through this so that you feel better about it right because they know it's cold season or flu season and then you come in it's like I know it's the flu but I'm gonna ask you some questions right any genetic disposition what did you do recently is any broken you know they go through some things and you can tell because they ask very pointed questions and this is part of the Socratic process to ask short questions that are easy to answer that lead you to something you're making a big complex problem something smaller so it's easier to understand one part of it that makes sense right if you ask somebody tomorrow to draw a lifelike portrait of a human being that sounds like a very complicated thing to do unless you're a trained illustrator if you're not what do you do you say here's how who you hold the pencil then you know an old pencil draw a circle draw a square draw a triangle a tall cylinder and just keep drawing those until we understand then before you know it the instructor says you've now learned how to draw up the human head so you just break it down into small bite-sized pieces and that's kind of how you do it you're excavating the information from the person's brain you're listening and you're playing back well what you've heard and you're checking to see if it's leading in some kind of logical direction if somebody says to you I want this to be epic I wanted it to feel big like a blockbuster for summer and then in the second breath they say but I wanted to be really intimate when I connect to people on a one-to-one way those are two statements that don't necessarily belong together so this is where you having listened to this problem intently can say back to them I'm sorry I'm having a hard time reconciling these two things that you want I understand both epic and intimate I can't figure out these two things overlap can you and then we have a discussion about it and then we help them to think through the problem oh I see what you're saying I actually really wanted to be an intimate feeling it's how the production value of the epic I don't want to have a thousand people and lens flares and explosions I don't mean that kind of epic so they just didn't choose the right word see because it was difficult to think and they're also afraid of you my business coach Kerr McClaren told me this many years ago and I didn't understand it at the time they are more afraid of you than you are afraid of them so they fear sounding like an idiot because you already the expert they looked at your work prior to making a call so they are pretty reserved at giving you information for fear of sounding stupid so you have to create safe space for them for them to tell you what it is that they're thinking and to help them correct themselves if they're wrong it's not a battle trying to prove your might and your will and your knowledge over them that's actually the wrong thing to do but create safe space Alec I see you whispering that you want to talk you know we can hear you until you do that it was just a silly comment about how this is a high-definition version of the YouTube channel for us anyone's wondering if this is what it's like to be here like it really is exactly the same but just like Chris is pretty much the consistent Justin crispy 3d detail this will be VR in the future people will put on the head right sit with Chris we're working on that in our future nice yes two episodes from now right yes soon I have a follow-up okay thanks for that funny comment and observation can you see Alec in there mm-hmm okay good I just want to make sure that there was just here a random voice before the follow-up though the chats going crazy on these hats the u2 u2 got going on yeah can you maybe provide us some insight on what this hat is this is purely coincidental that Chris the - Chris's are sitting next to each other is the - Zach sat next to each other the world just explode did it almost happen God you just show the room out of the way he's like no can't happen doubling up on the Chris's so this is a hat it's an abstraction it's a graphic created about Rollo who's also a pro member and he's really just first of all the sweetest guy in an excellent designer - big fax right big fax like that that little fax and so we had communicated to the community that our mission is to educate a billion people to help them make money doing what they love without feeling gross about it so I started this hashtag one B minus 1 1 billion minus 1 meaning if our goal is to hit a billion can I count you as one and then people started using the hashtag and they now start saying - 1 - 1 so we're making an official thing so rules like hey I got an idea why don't my design this hat will sell the Hat it's 35 bucks if you buy the Hat all the profits will go towards a scholarship fund to help people who are in need of the things that we do and I think that's a beautiful sentiment shout out to roll because he's amazing he is pretty amazing well I have the mic I didn't kind of a follow up question and it's just kind of come from sitting here watching you in person and it's like how are you this smooth like how do you develop this like this sort of rapport with a client right cuz like as if I'm a client and I'm sitting in a room with Chris and every time I say something he has like the perfect response it's like oh yeah that feels great but a lot of us aren't that smooth like a lot of us are like do you know then we're gonna try to come up with like a clever Chris thing and we're gonna be like you know just just fumble it completely so it's like how do you develop the ability to think so quickly or to not speak as quickly as a lot of us will want to to not look like a fool essentially that's an excellent question Alec let me try to see if I can do justice to the question most of the time when people are speaking I'm spending a lot of energy believe it or not listening and I've been lucky in this way and I think I now realize that this is an advantage that I have that some people do not I think a lot of people have competing voices in their head and they want to respond so badly because I think somewhere in life they were told if you respond you let the other person know that you know what they know it's a demonstration of we're on the same wavelength and same intelligence is happens all the time you ever try to complete somebody's sentences before and then when you do you feel like whew we're on the same wavelength right but that happens after you spent a lot of time with somebody like you grew up together and your best friends and this is an amazing thing and twins do this obviously but when we do this with strangers and clients chances have we choose the wrong word so the first rule is never try to complete the clients sentences he's pretty funny too the jokes are just as funny in real life okay so the other day that was a funny haha perfect timing I was trying to set it up so somebody could do it since he has the mic he did it excellent that was a great plug a loop finisher beautiful job the first rule is don't try to complete their sentence because what if you do complete their senses and naturally you get it right you don't know then if they're gonna tell you more good information why would you end that basically you're your game plan should be to gain the inside track when you're talking to a client you have to realize they're talking to at least two other people besides you at least bare minimum just the rule of three we need three people three comparisons three things to measure up so we've we know we like Alec or not if he's smart if he's charming and funny okay and the way that you gain the inside track is to let the client give you valuable information now there's information and there's valuable information there's a difference so by asking those calibrated questions by asking those calibrated questions you can get the valuable stuff out so first I pause I don't want to complete your sentences and I'm focused almost always on you and I find that if I do that as long as you are able to structure enough complete sentences that makes sense everything I need to know is already in the question that you've asked all the clues are there you just have to go in and you have to pick them up I also will give myself a lot of time in space to think it through before responding immediately most of us feel that we have to fill up all the dead space so we had this natural reflex to say um like you know the fillers we all do them I try not to be okay in the silence and the first thing that I did when you asked that question was I bought myself some time and what did I do you guys remember no I just got a really good question yes he was paying attention right I just say that was an excellent question and I want to be able to construct an answer worthy of the question that's like 30 seconds of me thinking right then and there but also lets you know acknowledge you I'm here and maybe the next things I say I'm conditioning you think that I've really considered it right I think also something I noticed when you said that that's why I remember it is it made me feel real good it was like oh I asked a good question yeah see that's how it works thank you thank you one thing has helped me is to also repeat and summarize when working with clients is kind of a different way of like helping me get time to speak like you're saying Chris but then also to your point to also meet you know affirm to the client that I was really listening to them and sometimes they do correct me and that's okay but they generally appreciate the effort that I put into listening to them and it does set me up to enter you know their concerns succinctly or maybe I you know ask some follow-up questions I I do the same thing a lot and I find that actually I found a lot of value when they correct me because it means I made a wrong assumption right and so I can if I finish their sentence maybe they wouldn't have corrected me in the same way when I'm saying what I'm hearing is you're saying this this and that the other thing I get a lot of times when I do that if I do it right not every time but if I'm on the top of my game and I'm channeling Christo oh I'll say it and they go like oh that was better than I could have said it and that's really weird to me because I'm like I'm just saying what you said but in the vocabulary that I have right which is usually more of an artistic vocabulary so I'll say so what you're saying is and like they'll say something like epic right and all-sec so you're saying is you want this to be something that inspires somebody to take action because of the you know whatever excites them to to further inquiry based on this and they're like yeah that's exactly that's way better than I said it and I'm like well it's just your words like I'm just preparing back to you what you said but just using a vocabulary I have as an artist versus or as a you know you know a video guy right or whatever else it is take action blah blah blah these words that I have that you know they're not using yeah I think Zak said it really well I'm gonna summarize and put a pin on this one because you need to know this from the book Socratic selling it's called full value listening full value listening what that means is that whatever the client says matters every word they say matters so the way that you let them know that is you do something called playback playback is a summary of what they said usually starts with it sounds like it sounds like appears to be it seems like what you care about in this case is to be corrected sometimes because that makes sure that the assumptions that you made were accurate and if you just repeat two or three words that they use it demonstrates you've listened it is important that you use the same words you can fill in the gaps but those three words that they use are very very important in sales it's it's it's about building a rapport Jordan Belfort talks about this he says if a person who's in the market for buying a home when they walk in we want a lovely intimate cottage and you say I know exactly what you want I have this really neat little home for you it seems like you're saying the same thing but to them it's like are you are you listening to me I want an intimate cottage and you didn't use those words back it starts to make them feel a little strange like you don't really understand and we see this we see this all the time so in a social experiment if we were talking and if a show were saying something I said I got it I got it got it but I use different words she would start to feel like no you don't got it no you're not listening to me you're listening to something else and this causes concern for me I'm afraid of working with you now and this happens all the time so the opposite of what you think is true instead of completing someone sentences and predicting what they say to demonstrate that you understand and you're on the same wavelength you're actually drawing bigger divide between you and the other person while listening to them not trying to complete what they say and playing back what they said that's how you demonstrate it that we're on the same wavelength that's really critical and I think what helped me do that was your advice on note-taking and taking notes while they're speaking and jotting down those words so that you can repeat them back of verbatim because it's a lot harder when you're trying to like remember like your whole sentence and all this other stuff and everything they've ever said and then Kris is sitting here making a note as I'm saying this so that he can repeat it back to me but so yeah note-taking is I think how the practical like physical way you get you achieve that if you don't have a fantastic memory like I don't I'm sure many of us don't even if you did when you write down notes to be able to say back to them verbatim it's signals to them I am really important you notice how important people have assistants what is assistants do they have notebooks and they're writing out every single thing they could be writing on pizza tinder whatever it is they want to write it doesn't really matter but it's signals the other person it's important enough to write down you'll notice this too during a lecture or workshop somebody's talking and then when everybody starts writing me as a speaker that must have been good because every writing something down I think you also see like one person will write something down and then everyone be like it's really good that what do you write down like right it's a signal or or when they all like this little slides you know when they do this slide I'm like I don't know I also take a picture or at least pretend like I'm in the know you wanna say something can you hand in the mic I would actually like to argue with that please because I personally think that paraphrasing or rephrasing is a very important technique when you're talking with someone because as not a native speaker and you can hear this from my heavy Eastern European accent I cannot possibly get all the words right all the time so saying exactly the thing that clients said back to them and always work because I not always understand what do they mean so for me like the technique which works very well is actually taking what clients said and expressing that the same thing in my own words just to make sure that we are kind of on the same page and it keeps you know it gives me like a little bit of freedom you know not to be perfect not to get like all the words right and say like everything you know that I expect to hear from me but at the same time it helps me to keep conversation flowing and actually get on the same page with a client using my own tools and my own vocabulary okay I want to speak to this I think we're saying similar but slightly different things so allow me to attempt to clarify something here there's no point in paraphrasing or phrasing or using the same words if you don't understand the words that's actually how you demonstrate you don't understand that's like when I'm trying to be cool with my kids and I use the same slang they use like that don't that's just don't do that right you understand when a client uses a word that you know they're not quite sure of rather than trying to say it in your own words I would just ask them there was a word that you use that I've not heard before can you tell me what that means in plain English because I'm from Eastern Europe and I want to understand that actually is another signal to say man this is full value listening happening right now and I'll tell you the danger of trying to use your own words explain is oftentimes that does the opposite of what you want it was like there's gonna be a language barrier there's gonna be really tough because he or she does not understand my wife does this to me all the time all the time it drives me nuts I'll say something immediately after I say it she'll try to say it know her own words and it's nothing like what I said nothing like what I said in you know 20 plus years of marriage this is like okay we're not even on the same planet right now that's the problem rather than say like define that word for me and so I understand it and this is a clever trick by the way a lot of clients use words they don't understand so by being humble transparent and honest and I don't understand what it means to the word transgression what does that mean and then they or they can't explain they'll choose another word do you really want to trap client like that I don't want to chop clients I to do to try to understand so they use the word they don't understand what if I truly understood that word I'm gonna both operating under the wrong understanding it's not a trap it really is I don't know what that means can you explain it to me and then they can either explain it or they choose another word and oftentimes the second or third word is actually more accurate this happens all the time in interviews I used to do talking head interviews where we're shooting video and they would say something and it's not great and this is a trick I learned from doing workshops they would say I'm sorry could you just say that one more time in the second time they say it's smarter and shorter just I didn't get that just one more time please can you rephrase that a little bit and by the third time it's a great soundbite and the camera crew now we look each other got it that's it right there it's always the third take so that's we're doing we're asking somebody to think and articulate and think and articulate that's what's happening it's not a trick I gotta ask you a follow-up do it on this it's very easy for a lot of us viewers and students to hear listen with intent listen fully ask good questions in the real world sometimes if not most of the time if you're not as experienced it transitions into burdening the client with a lot of questions that are leading nowhere and they start to feel like we're just going in circles why aren't you getting it you're supposed to be the professional you're the most to be expert can we get to what I need you to help me with so how do we avoid being a burden and shifting all of the heavy thinking work to the client versus being a clear problem solver in the way we communicate there's many variables that you introduce there that you're new that you're inexperienced and that you want to be thinking and talking about strategic things yet while you think the client interprets that as burdensome and we're not sure of any of those things just yet let me get into this okay I have experience I talk to clients I thought I was doing a great job until my coach told me you're not doing a great job and I'm like what do you mean and he told me how can you guess at what the client wants why don't you just ask them what they want and after some practice we did it and it changed the entire trajectory of our company by learning this one basic technique of staying in the conversation unafraid of it taking longer than you want because it's not about expediency it's about understanding and I choose understanding over speed every single time and it became our competitive advantage this is how back in the early 2000s we went from being a 2.2 million dollar revenue company to a four plus million dollar company in one year we made the jump just by learning to how to listen to ask questions and so we started to acknowledge the fact that he became somewhat uncomfortable for clients to talk to us for that long rather than change our approach we just told them it's gonna be uncomfortable and it's gonna take a long time transfer so this is also another technique you need to be aware of when you say when you give voice to a feeling or frustration you diminish the power of that frustration and that feeling you remove the intensity of it so by saying at the beginning of a conference call our process is truly to understand what it is that you want what motivates you what inspires you so that we can come back to you with a solution that matters to you the only way we know how to do this is to ask you a lot of questions some clients find this process to be uncomfortable but it's the only way we know how to work and they say yeah yeah that's usually what they say like yeah yeah don't no worries and then we get into it and 45 minutes into a 15-minute call or deep into it and we're unraveling all kinds of stuff an hour and a half in thank you we don't have any more questions do you have any questions for us now a lot of people think then when you go away and work on the pitch deck or the proposal that's where you want it the battle is won here as often times they say in fights like in boxing the outcome of the fight was determined in the gym it was not in the ring the gym conditions the body when the body's condition and the training has been done the confidence to win the will to win is already there instinct will take over for the rest so the outcome has already been predetermined this is why the betting line in boxing fights will change quite drastically during the weigh-in which is the day before and up into the moments when they walk in Yosi trepidation and you'll see like that they don't have a cold sweat they're a little bit out of shape there's something funny going on and they could feel it right away it doesn't always work out that way but most of them it's a pretty good indicator that the fight was already lost to begin with can i yeah yeah you go in the Roderigo okay um I think the other key though to that whole thing is having clients that value what you're doing the you know value getting clarity essentially because there's a lot of clients I think a lot of the people are watching this perhaps are dealing with clients that are like I'm not gonna have an hour phone call for $100 logo - you're right right and so I question I think once you know if you if you are demanding you know a certain amount of money or a certain amount of respect or solving a big enough problem for the client then yeah this is a great time to dive into that but we're most thing like I think you're gonna push people gonna be like why are we I just wanted the video I'm paying you $200 can you just get me the video I don't know why I'm spending two hours because chances are their time is like to them worth more than that what they're paying you to get this video done yes whatever it is thank you for keeping this conversation super grounded I'm talking to clients that are from multinational multi-billion dollar companies in six to seven figure budgets it's worth the time right because I fortunate I found the same thing but I know like so when I'm working with a really large company you said two billion dollars or even a million and up I find this to be the case that they're willing to sit with me for you know hour to hour I'll do three one-hour sessions easily and I don't get pushed back on it but if that client if I if they say like hey can I get an update on this thing or can I do this change and I'm like yeah let's sit down and do three hours of strategy they're gonna look at me like I'm nuts right yeah and so I just wanted to put it in context for people watching this and that are gonna go and and try to implement this and then be like the client didn't want to sit down for three hours for you know this logo I was doing on Fiverr not that there's I don't necessarily get anything necessarily wrong about doing something on Fiverr I think it's a great way to start and cut your teeth and learn the type of clients you want to work with you know what sometimes you have to learn that the hard way but especially if you're young and you don't even know your own skillset but oh yeah just to put that in context for people that are gonna take and try to apply it this is getting spicy and I want to ask another question because of his context building but I don't want to overtake it no one second afraid I need to add something to what Alec is saying Alex Alec is completely right $100 logo or whatever it is don't try and over produce this thing it just doesn't make sense you're actually killing the client and yourself so there's context we need to kind of keep things relative to what's going on and when you start to develop the real skills and this kind of thinking what you want to do is reduce the one and a half hour question down to two questions that's it take your two best questions than ask them upfront why do you need a new logo why not do nothing at all why would you want to work with me and then let them tell you and that's it right I think it's because it's also not worth your time too with someone for true two for three that's right and and when you're getting with you such a little Montag that times probably better spent getting to the next five or bid right right so now you've mentioned it three times so we'll go on the end it too but that's okay you want to say something before I ask my morva follow-up based on on the conversation something I recently dealt with is the actual had a really great conversation with the client and they're like send me the bed we talked numbers before last and they're like same in the proposal and then I got ghosted and I guess and now I'm one of the process of following up and I kind of were taking a turn but I kind of like what's your process and following up with a potential client that you really haven't heard back from but seems super eager to get started okay I want to do that but I need to stay on topic with this before okay I want closure on that yeah I'm writing it all right mom so you know we got designers out here videographers all these people that are coax UX we've got people out here ocean craft yeah we got everything we got all the creatives we pretty much do not everyone is dealing with 6 million 1 million but they are dealing with $100 thousand dollar projects and they're trying to do the thing where they're like I'm gonna ask two questions I'm gonna make sure that the client feels that I got it quickly and they don't dedicate an hour and a half and then they're suffering on the back end with endless rounds of revisions and now what we're saying right now is like yo don't sit for an hour and a half with a client that's paying you 200 to a grand because you want to flip that quick and not over produce so my question becomes how do we ensure that in those two questions we get enough information to not be burdened with a lot of laborious work on the back end because we didn't gain enough clarity on the front end let's roleplay let's do it now after hours we don't [Laughter] chill relax lives and it's just like deep conversation you could you can cook dinner for whatching dishes Pro Group after hours what's up you can shampoo your hair you can do whatever it is you want roleplay it now has got real real okay but that is a problem right I don't know I know let's try Who am I you try and then I still have to get back to the fiver question but let's do that and then hungry girls questions so now we're stacked up with content here okay let's go somehow this is what give me the setup and then I will play the vendor and you'll play the client give me the setup video I need a video we need to build awareness in the community on the business no no I don't mean like give me the problem framed again and then we'll jump into it yeah the problem is we said that with these lower budget clients we should be able to get the discovery sales engagement out quicker because it's not worth our time so the problem becomes when we do that we suffer on the back end with ill communication not enough communication and then these endless rounds of revisions that happen so we we are now still having to do the hour and a half after we've created something got it yep alright so this setup is the client doesn't have time doesn't want to give you time and if you do the project you know it's gonna go sideways and you're gonna pay for it one way or the other and it's not a 600 dollar project a thousand dollar projects yeah okay go ahead someone said who brought Drake Ozzie he's a thousand yeah just to keep it relevant yeah pretty much anybody in America a thousand elevated that seems like yeah you're starting now just right yeah yeah so good start it up what's up Chris hey Mel I'm super glad you can take this call I was hoping that you could cut up one of those banger videos that you make that I see on your website I'd love to do that for you what's your budget I have a thousand dollars a thousand bucks is this video important to you I think it will be if you do it what problem does this solve for a thousand dollars we're trying to build awareness no one's walking into the to the store okay so how much awareness do you want it to build you know I'd like to have at least two to three people walk into the store an increase of two to three people a day a day sorry a day yeah and so what kind of business would that generate for you our average product sells for about a hundred bucks so you're looking at about 200 to 300 dollars worth of increased revenue okay so let's say 250 we'll split the difference that sounds good to me times thirty days right three days a month on average does that work out to me that's $7,500 of new revenue for you a month mm-hmm just spending a thousand dollars seemed appropriate for $7,500 of revenue per month it's more than ten percent right a month are you gonna do a thousand-dollar video every month maybe if you do this one good okay I'm a little concerned this is not enough money and I'd like to share with you a quote I love from a business philosopher champ Jim Rohn it's like we if we want a major effort if we want a major result we don't want to have a minor effort and so it feels a little disproportionate doesn't it when you say that quote I think it does you can't just roll right in you can't I mean you do business you don't want to you don't want to overspend and there's are you gonna guarantee me $7,500 a month I'm not saying that at all hmm I'm just trying to measure effort versus result okay when somebody comes to me and they say I don't have a lot of money to do something my first instinct is say let's not do it it's not important wouldn't that be your instinct - yeah where else can you spend your thousand dollars to make a bigger impact on your business because I don't want to take your money to do something that's not important is it important or isn't it I mean I think it's important not $1,000 important don't break well can you elaborate on what you mean by not $1,000 more like if you look at the expenses and things that you spend on personal and business where does the thousand dollars rank in the things that you spend is that on the high-end or is it on the low-end like how much did that refrigeration unit cost you and how much does the a/c and when you want it to new to do the polish floors and what did you spend on that and how did that have any material impact on your business you see what I'm saying now I do and I saw the BMW parked outside the 5-series the m5 and I think you see what I'm saying that was really important to you so I find that in my life and my experience that people tend to spend money on what they value mm-hmm that mean that makes perfect sense don't you think like if you like a fancy pair of pants you'll spend the money for that and if you don't you'll buy the cheaper version so when somebody comes to me is that I have a real business problem Chris and I want to spend a thousand big smackeroonies on it I think I don't think that's a real problem and let me just caution you on this I know what happens a lot of times businesses like yours see other businesses produce video and then we have video envy and then we create it just to created to say like yeah we're keeping up with the Joneses I don't know if that's good use of your money now in order for me to do this properly I'd probably have to spend quite a bit of time sitting down talking to you about what the purpose of the video is what your goals aren't how it may or may not work and if it's gonna even be targeted to the right people that's gonna take a long conversation but it would seem disproportionate the length of that conversation for your time and my time to talk about a thousand dollar problem what would you like to do I don't want to spend more than that then you shouldn't but I'm probably not the person to do that for you then and I would encourage you not to spend that money with anybody not just me what would you like to do probably find somebody that can do the video for $1000 that is your prerogative would you can you recommend anybody yeah I hear there's a site called 5 rate to do for 5 bucks thanks Chris you're welcome best of luck well so I think that's a very advanced conversation first one jump in I feel like no you think like we were watching and starting out it's just like I think with you Chris and you're so I mean if you reverse that I love to see Moe do the exact same thing and like I'm able to have those conversations with clients now but like I do so much roleplay with like my sister and doing these separate things in these calls cuz that's what really helped me it's like when you taught me how to talk about money yes that was such a big thing but it's just like for a lot of people starting out it's you're so hungry to get that $1,000 job when you're doing videos for 200 bucks and 500 bucks in finding somebody comes and I think that's where like going back to me says this is where we kind of get that short end of the stick is that we didn't have this type of conversation and we end up taking that job for $1,000 huh and now we're spending hours doing revisions and not really talking to the and not getting to where we really okay so are you saying to me how do we go that I cannot accept no I have to take it well I'm not saying you don't I'm just trying to talk I'm in coral plate like that too I'm just trying to like tell people on the Internet's have an understanding because I think it's great like you know somebody called me the other day and they're like I found somebody that those videos for 80 bucks Mike you hire him if that video is good let me know cuz and yeah plenty of work but if you want me to do it it's a minimum $1,000 per video he's always gonna be 6 grand I'm like yeah or spend your $80 and you could get whatever you want for that but I can't help you with that right and I just know for other people you know for then return away a thousand dollars it's such it's a lot of money for some of them but it's like but it's things learned from the program is you got to have a runway to be able to tell people no but also being able to ask his educated questions perfect I want to respond to that Nimmo and then I like okay you didn't have that thousand dollars before they called you you were gonna make life work regardless don't fall into that mindset like now just because I call I have to close the job that puts you in a horrible disadvantageous position don't feel like you have to do that I have another way if you had set the parameters as Chris you can't say no to the client you can't refer them to five or you must book the job I've got another way to do it should we jump back in okay he didn't give me that parameters head man I did no let's do it so we're not gonna do it from the beginning okay it's just you want to spend a thousand bucks right and that's it okay where we at in the conversation what kind of at there like I didn't want to do but you're like that's all I got okay I really really don't want to spend more than $1,000 I understand thousand dollars is a lot for you I hear you're concerned I'd like to propose something else please I'll do the video for you for free if we get the results that you want I'd like a percentage of the results can we do that no risk to you at all that sounds fantastic what's the percentage that you're thinking well we're talking about measuring the difference between traffic and revenue that you get there's lots of things that can control so all I want to do is get paid per new customer walks in your door how about since you say each customer is going to spend $100 with you let's go half 50 bucks no risk to you I take all the risk and I rely on your honesty what's the hesitation I'm concerned that you're gonna make a banger video all I do is make banger videos mom I know I see them on the portfolio bro in facts big facts that's why I called you to begin with yeah and then we're gonna get a lot of clients in the door and then I'm gonna be out 50% of that revenue what if it exceeds a thousand it's gonna exceed a thousand that's the whole point I take all the risk you know Peter Drucker is I've heard of it all profit comes from risk mm-hmm I'm taking all the risk or you can just pay me one worth and you keep all the profit what are you worth 4,000 that's the minimum you need time to think no I was gonna break yes what am i what am I getting for 4,000 a Bangor video I'd like to know what a Bangor video consists of show me behind the car later but are we realistically now entertaining our $4,000 budget I'd like to put an on exceed clause on the percentage that you get so we're going back to the so no no no we're not going back I appreciate the fact that you're taking on all the risk but I'm also wanted to be wary that if if you get me a lot of clients that you're not banking $10,000 for one video because it might not even cost you that much and ask you something if I can bring in a long line of clients for you you're saying please don't do that no not at all I'm saying bring me the long line of clients I mean but that's what you're saying to me like please help me do this but if it works so well I don't want to pay you any more you just said your minimum level of engagement is four thousand right let's say that exceeds 4,000 aren't you getting paid more than what you need I see what you're saying yeah there must be some confusion here I can say that the two options that we have on the table right now is you pay me $4,000 we're done you keep all the money from that point forward that's it you just pay me upfront easy-peasy the other one is I do it for free but I take 50% of all new net revenue because I'm taking all them no limits no limits or make you sleep better at night how about for the first year does that make you feel better you're wise businessman I can see that you're doing the calculations in your eyes right now and you're doing the calculations if this works you're gonna bring in this much money and you're gonna pay this punk kid this amount of money so you're probably thinking it's a better and more prudent decision just to pay me the 4k it's your choice I think we can stop but no you pick a choice pick a choice I want to ask more questions and I don't want to extend the I want to yeah I want to extend the role play but I can I can go meta for a second and say that when you said that and you broke it down at the end my inclination was to go for the fourth I know my inclination was to be like I don't want to I don't want to risk it why don't you just say that then let's go back around the role play and say that just my Jew inclination is like what if no just you know I'm really liking our back-and-forth here and you seem really confident these bangers that you're creating and I feel like you're gonna get me more clients and it's gonna be worth more than 4,000 so I'm gonna take the 4000 let's do that then let's do it okay so I'm gonna submit a proposal to you mm-hmm you sent me two thousand dollars up front a week ago that sounds good done okay so that's how I did get not that okay you have your mic here one thing that's right George one thing they think is for people just starting now yeah it's something that you did is that everything is a negotiation just because they proposed to you that that was a one thousand dollars like it doesn't mean you have to do everything to their certain expectations maybe they want a one-minute video you could like hey I could do a 30-second video for a thousand dollars and it just don't get so caught up in the fact that just because that's what they're giving you if they're not meeting you at your price you don't have to meet them at their deliverable and you know what you propose you know I think it's still something very advanced for someone that's starting out but if you are just kind of getting you know yourself out there don't be afraid to change the scope of the work to me you know something what you consider is fair yeah that's where I'm gonna push this back okay that's excellent I love that the pro group is so pro that they're doing the meta commentary on top of the meta commentary that we're doing and tastic we're just looking out for the for the young spot for them you know everything is being explained and I love the grounded conversation I love the meta commentary this is like the you're watching movie and you're getting the directors commentary while watching the movie as we're making the movie that's how crazy this thing is so I just want to let you guys there's some good news when we first started however long years ago we started this live stream it's 66 people it's been slowly steadily growing we're at 309 which is a lot for I would like to think that the other 200 plus people that aren't here though we just don't even know but these conversations happen on a Friday night they generally happen like it's the end of the week people are at home and they love the after-hour series because you can chill there's things you can do and I know this is gonna sound super creepy it's gonna sense but it's hilarious we have friends fans that are in far distant places like Poland and they said every time I see after hours is on or off the lights I get some wine I put on a comfortable sweater and they just listen and I feel like I'm right there with you like this is a dinner party we need to change the title this is the after dinner party or whatever it's called after hours dinner party okay so I know Alec wanted to add something to this so Alec oh and then oh sure okay Alec a notion is that I don't I don't know what part I was adding to it I think I pretty much lost it okay that's fine okay so I shouldn't back Tasha ahsha Zach and Stanley okay so my question is little when are you on this or are you starting a new thread I was on the old thread and want to connect let me hear your thread and I'll determine if it's a no thread or a new thread but it's relatedness also because the way you are confidently replying to clients that is based on that question that how did you think while talking it like I saw when Jack was asking you question and you buy time to think you in your head but to us next but you at the same time you are talking so how did you do that do you okay that's on topic that's on topic how do you do that yeah means we need to think we need to have time to think and then talk for generally for non experience people how do you do that smoothly like a butter yeah I love it I love it okay it should be done right now guys no just a focus just to hear it's just justified love all right here we go smooth like a butter when I'm talking to mo I I do feel the pressure I feel a lot of pressure I'm gonna be honest with you because when I'm dealing with the client it's actually the easiest thing to do when I'm doing it live in front of you with 300 plus people watching knowing that this would be recorded forever there's a lot of pressure so there's a lot of mental control that's happening to say stop thinking about Asha and how she's gonna judge you stop thinking about Zack how he's going to stop thinking about what alec may say and tear you apart later just be here for Moe and in my mind as an illustration you guys are starting to dim out the picture and you're starting to fade away and it starts to stop thinking about the internet and not caring what they think and I just have to be here right now to be 100% present - what mo is saying I'm gonna lose myself in his words and in the words are the answers I also know while we were setting it up I'm gonna be very honest with you while we're setting it up I knew that I couldn't accept saying no so I had to figure out my mind well what's it what's another way of saying no let's get really creative with no mmm so I'm gonna make him say no not me how he's gonna say no and how do I rescue this so it's very hard to for somebody to say no to free everybody loves free but there's a price to free I needed him to realize that correct and that's all so I'm gonna lose myself and mo I'm gonna stay here and it's a lot of work just to quiet the other things like to not worry about what people think and what people miss read on camera sometimes or maybe they're reading it correctly I'm just lying to myself which is like what a cocky mofo that's all they're thinking and they say it in the comments all the time like that dude is just like glues II think he is and part of just the emptying of that and finding myself in this Lane mostly for Moe and you'll see like my expressions start to drop I'm just here and I'm gonna enter in some kind of trance flow state and I just want to listen that's all check my armpits later you try right yeah laser focus okay Zak you want to say something but on this because yeah it's not on this then it's Audrey goes okay god no just a high-level observation when it comes to talking like in a sales conversation just kind of watching you guys talk is like I think one thing that all of us can can do regardless of skill or experience level is quantify a conversation that for a lot of creatives is typically abstract in nature you know make me a video or illustration and you want to try to quantify that as soon as possible let's get numbers that's how can we move the needle customers things of that nature and then the second thing is I think we can take risks like Chris you made the point earlier we're losing we're not losing anything we didn't have in the first place so I think if we you know can approach sales conversations trying to quantify as soon as possible and approach it with an ability to take risks we're gonna be able to move the needle not for just ourselves but for our clients as well beautiful they're saying we have to keep half of your beard you must you must be just ovulating I'm sorry oh I see I see no you're in the weird spot okay awesome okay I kind of Stanley I kind of have a follow-up because 4motion people and for us as UX product people it's very easy to look at what we do and convert it to the benefit to the customer right so we kind of can say that okay I will do it for you this will have this certain result that I will deliver but some of us create some more abstract product I will say that can't be converted so easily to the benefits so you can't have this tangible results like that's gonna bring you clients you don't know that so what do these people can do okay I think I heard this from Blair no or Jonathan start I heard this from Jonathan Stark he said because it's difficult to measure it does not mean it's impossible to measure how do you measure customer satisfaction you just put on a scale and then you establish that as a baseline and then the Delta is what you're hoping to improve now notice something here when I was talking to Moe as I do with any client I don't determine the metrics for success I just asked them what's it gonna do and they give you all that they want and we're mostly emotional creatures and we use the logic to kind of rationalize what it is we're feeling so in Moe's mine he wants to make the video for what reason to send more traffic to the store that's really what he wants I'd even say that because I will not even dare to say that making a video is going to increase your foot traffic by 2 per day I wouldn't so most people have something pre-baked in their mind why they're even doing this to begin with and then you work off of that so what kind of abstract thing do you make that that you think is applicable I don't you don't you just think but the illustration right an illustration yes you're helping anyone yeah it's a tough concept right because you do something in it your roleplay very far from everything right you know roleplay hours so if you do illustration all you have to do switch out the word video with illustration with whatever it is and it's still the same exact formula you'll see and then you'll take the two videos and they overlap them and it'll be almost the same thing it's all it it's like what why do you need this illustration what's gonna do for you well you know I want to beautify the lobby of our hotel mm-hmm oh so do you think your lobbies not beautiful it's not right now we just we want to make people smile we want to do whatever so that there could be a baseline there there's a feeling that you want to evoke well and what would you rate the feeling right now and the current Lobby one out of ten it's a two what do you hope it's you increase to a six if we do that what would that do how many people walk by oh we want to Instagram mobile Lobby yeah but then I would say I have like $50 to do that so it's not an important problem again okay you see it all all roads lead back to me getting more money from you I wish you guys could just live here with me we just do this every day someone wrote role play with like five exclamation right it's gonna lead right back there you can't escape it it's like the black hole okay so you can kind of always bring in back to money right I think I can or I can think I can show you the door those are my options no really think about that what was the hardest deliverable you had that happened that was hardest to bring to the value do you remember anything like that no but I can tell you that I've had some really tough client calls before where the first words out of the mouth is you're not right you don't have the team and you don't have the expertise I still got the project okay yeah when they're that combative I could do it and luckily for us we record all our calls so I had that thing transcribed and I'm looking through them like oh my god this is everything that the pro group needs I just have to go through it because it's pages and pages of conversations an hour and a half long conversation I'll give you the high level structure some of which I've already shared with the group it's for a large entertainment technology company and they wanted us to have expertise in technical things like they wanted to know who our technical director was what how many software licenses we had how many seats they wanted to know every person on the team they wanted to know all this kind of stuff because they feared that we didn't have the capability to do this in an hour and a half long conversation I took them from a note to maybe to a yes and you just move him through that and the way that you do that is you fully embrace all their objections you don't fight it at all okay in Chris Voss's book never split the difference he calls it like an argument audit or something like what are all the arguments that some of you would bring up to you what would they say okay so we should know this so every person here every person listening should be able to write down if you've done business for any period of time the three complaints or arguments that somebody's gonna bring up to you and what might those be so you guys got to do two right now write down like every client interaction mo has or Chris has or Alec what are they gonna say they always say the same three things too expensive and you'd have enough experience no guarantees that's what it is right so here's what you do let's say those are the three things too expensive no experience and no guarantees okay that's what you're gonna do then you need to figure out what you're gonna say to those three things now I can do this because I've had a lot of practice 20 plus years of practice will do that to you I'm trying to condense that knowledge and information to you guys so you can do it as well so you doesn't take you 20 years maybe two not two weeks it'll take you less time okay I did write a beginning a call before we go any further I'm just going to you know I'm probably gonna be too expensive I probably don't have the kind of experience you are looking for specifically and I can't guarantee the results all those things are gone now literally they're gone they're gone I've already vocalized these things right now and what do they say now and now we can have a real conversation so in that conversation with this I think was in $700,000 project I told them that I don't we we told them if your primary concern is that we don't have technical directors that we don't have enough software licenses that our render farm is inadequate and we may not have the right experience to do this exact thing that you want you should hire someone else but let me ask you is that more important than creating a video project that is artistically done that tells a great story that achieves the results that you want so now I think you have to make this decision do you care more about technical specs or artistry and I will say this every time we've done a project was exactly the first time we did that kind of project and you don't have to take my word for it but I've been in business now for at that point probably 19 years and I haven't dropped the ball too many times you get to decide you take the argument off the table for me from you anytime that like men you just say that not really enough security no I don't think so but I'm pretty good at doing that though I have to say yes you are saying that I'm not able to do your job I didn't say that I mean time not enough experience to do your job if if so here's another powerful rhetorical device that you can use right you use the hypothetical if it's a conditional question if this is important to you so you force them to say is that really important to us then you start to entertain maybe it's not important to us I didn't say it wasn't I'm saying if this is important to you X Y & Z then you probably shouldn't hire us and then it makes them think well what's the alternative to that okay so here's what I would say - like like if I was young again and it's like talking to a girl like I want to go on a date with her if good looks matter T if six-pack has run into you then you probably don't want to hang out with me but if you want a future oh oh see see how that works it's just that easy because u-turn u-turn u-turn a trait that they wanted and you make them turn against themselves because you know why because it's hard to think and it's hard to make decisions so they think this is what they want but truthfully they haven't really thought it through okay Mike - Zak no no I just want to move that on the shot then you get the conversation over done it over with and then you don't have to go through that hour and a half of them then raising those objections and you don't even get to write a proposal it's like sure go ahead and do you object then you're free to go on your way you see yourself so much more time yeah but there's an art to this right I'm trying to thread the Rodrigo like I got a eat problem and I also threading the I don't want to do for less than what I want to do it for so there's the art everybody that we do role play with like no fu I'm out well yeah that's an option but the technique the artistry is getting them to move from position a to position B C D and E and wind up where you want them to be in a suicide rhotic process of asking very calibrated questions in a hypothetical form to move them from one place to the next and it makes small steps with them that's why it takes an hour and a half but when you have a six-figure high six-figure job on the line and an hour and a half is worth your time if you think about this what kinds of things cost seven hundred thousand dollars that you can buy really expensive cars that's about as much as I can think of well ok a house not in California that's why it's like it's not on my radar right then the sales process is really long if you say the house is like we got to go through inspection back-and-forth negotiations all this kind of stuff then you got to go through escrow it's like a lot of stuff before we can buy that and I'm trying to close the call in an hour and a half which would be record time even when you go buy a car that's a $50,000 car it takes a lot of time there you got 75 pages of documents to break through in sign so you can't go into the game thinking this is the way I closed the thousand dollar job to try and close a hundred thousand dollar job it's a different game that's another big thing that my business coach shared with me I thought I was playing in the major leagues he says you're playing in the feeder League I'm not even call it the minor league yet look wow new rules new game then when we made it to the majors he's like this is the all-star game kid this is different the game changes new rules and you can't play the way you used to play that's why the college all-star crashes and burns in the pro league happens all the time it's a different game you were the big person on campus now you're just a little person with no experience okay I just want to make a quick quick comment did you say that back mic was too low yeah okay okay when Tom we speak because we've been passing in people speak at different volumes yeah the audience just wants us to hold the mic up a little bit better you guys have to be super consistent good doesn't offend me no that's on it's on you guys just have to be consistent yeah yeah it was off got Wow okay I was enough Stanley yeah I got sabotaged yeah yeah okay so you're reading the comments you know yeah cycling okay okay okay you know okay we need to get too hot Riegel's question and then we're probably gonna need wrap this up because before you know it's gonna be a four-hour long livestream we got Weaver's quick quick couple things just to make sure that this point doesn't get lost which is Audrey go said something yeah you're teaching those pretty advanced level concepts you have to be self-aware you have to be present there's lots of things you have to have the communication skills the vocabulary the mindfulness there's a lot of stuff that's going on but some part of this you could steal you could borrow and you can apply and you can make a lot of money the best thing I can say which he already said it and I want to point it out is you gotta practice do not let the call with your client be the first time you try these things you're gonna fumble all over yourself you're gonna sound really forced inexperienced and you're gonna agitate them like you can't believe her egos lucky because he has a sister he works with but that's one of the things we have in the pro community I thought you were gonna say I'm practicing with my peak performance partner how come you don't have one I had one that didn't work out it didn't work out but it's like I'm gonna my sister's about to leave it sucks moving to so there's been a lot of things within my business you know for me I spent more time me working with her and nature in her course it to me was more important and then before I joined the progra that's just I was like I'll watch the videos whatever and then I joined the group and there's a little bit different I mean that's a perfect bridge then okay so you watch the videos that we release for free although it's not free for us to make it's free big fact I'm just telling you guys okay that you do that you get a couple of wins and eventually you can afford it you join the program so I would encourage you to work with the pro members because they've also been trained your sister was taught by you so she's gonna kind of do what you taught her to do and this is where the beauty of perspective and distance and somebody comes in from a different industry a different state to different country says you ought to really love what you're doing could did you ever consider these two things and it changes your whole game that's what we want one thing that we learned from from hanging out with each other for last week some of us is that we want to create this feedback loop a good feedback loop where I do it and you do it we're learning from each other and we keep doing this and we elevate so we can go from the feeder to the minor to the major so the all-stars really fast and that's one of the beautiful things about a group any group doesn't have to be our group anyway okay so how would you advise on that to have most effective big performance partner because I recently insistency I'm sorry to cut you off consistency you know we have rules about it right if we are dedicated for consistency but people are like sometimes they're busy of course everyone has their they're not that busy business know cuz you schedule and when I started the group almost 20 to 25 people requested personally on the message like okay and me and me and me and I created the group so how I'm how much you're talking about a subgroup no it's a ppb group for one does one one two one one two one one accountability partner only violent conduct why so this was gold accountability yes your time with something very different okay you just need to find one person you set the date at the time it's locked into both your calendars for the foreseeable future okay then you don't schedule anything else this is how it works and you only do for 30 minutes some of you guys go bananas on me and due to our calls and then it's like what happened to your life and it's like this is your new work wife or work husband it's just it's too much 30 minutes ten minutes a person talks five minutes of feedback switch ten minutes and five and then you end and you get off that's how you maintain this thing consistency it's like going to the gym for 30 minutes every single day that's how you have to do it so you're telling just to practice this before going to client and you practice that with the performance partner you practice everything you learn always until you figure that you've learned it and then you move on to the next thing okay okay it doesn't have to be this specific skill or task but you have that performance partner to hold you accountable and to practice and give you honest real feedback that's it I don't think that's me I think this is off topic what we're doing here but just for pro group I feel the same way as you is I think that's a whole other topic for Wednesday for us how to find our peak performance partner and how that works because if we're to new people there are two new people form as partners we don't know how that flows I think there should be an onboarding situation you might work as smiley for a week to kind of understand what the process is like and then you could go from there but I know start my with you and you never done it before we just know read a theory about how it works or watch the video on the thing it doesn't work that way for us but I feel like that's totally separate yeah okay I'm gonna do one more and then we're gonna try and pose we'll follow up yeah so you said somebody Koziol and yeah I know he wants to make it real real okay you're talking about you sent the bid what's the way to follow up because they ghost it on you yeah right yeah see I knew that cousin wrote it down okay good job what happened between the conversation and the proposal like why did you send a proposal did you get agreement on the price yes okay what was can we talk about price yeah it was talked about it was gonna be $12,000 for six videos okay and they said what did they say to you they're like when can we get started and what do you say I said next week we just need to get 50 percent deposit and sign the agreement form to like send us the agreement okay let's modify the language ever so slightly okay you're a great student what I would just say when can you get started as soon as I get a check for 6000 no proposal what do you need up do you need me send you an invoice for a 6000 once you have agreement proposal screws up things in some ways okay and Blair talks about this all the time you say what you say is the proposal so you either get agreement or you do not get agreement and if you don't get agreement there's no proposal the proposal is just to back up to the agreement you've already got agreement so when they say when can you start it as soon as you send me $6,000 when can I get that Tuesday do you need anything for me to get that no great they'll say no we need an invoice and we need a proposal a document what do you need to see in the program I want them to tell me exactly what they want to see ok so don't mess this part up and now I'm gonna give you a real story right now okay I'm driving from my house and the Pacific Palisades to office in Santa Monica without any traffic's about 7 1/2 minute drive I live relatively close to here as I'm driving my phone rings in my little mini cooper and usually do not answer the phone I don't recognize the number but for some reason today I answer I'm like Hello client identify himself oh I got your number from this person and I'm like who is this person why would they call me start talking about project ID on my way into office this is a 7 1/2 minute phone call I find out they need a logo and they want to talk to me about something and we're getting towards the end of the conversation and I tell them is how I like to work what kind of money do you have this is where this conversation usually goes sideways because I was like I've already spent 7 half minutes talking this person this is Chris we have a hundred thousand dollars said great I don't know what I can do for that I can do something are you ready to start he goes yes send me an invoice I parked the car I walk up the stairway I go to my executive producer at that time it's Tobin say Tobin I need you to write in verse $400,000 what is the for just write the clients name is Senate $400,000 what's it for don't worry about it when the client says I'm ready to buy you just do that I see if you sent a proposal and this job goes sideways you've lost us $100,000 they told me literally just send me an invoice for a hundred thousand dollars so they can get in procurement and get the money going and they said we'll fly out there in two weeks so the timetable is moving really fast right now and they're gonna send six of their executives CEO CMO CRO CTO this is a different kind of group of people and if you took this and you plugged it into normal production machine that we usually have they sit there like let's write a calendar let's you would just totally screw up the job when the client says they're ready to go find out what they mean okay you may have put something in the proposal that scared them I don't think you did I just think they were just a little anxious on this here's the next thing you need to know the clients life like yours is complicated one minute something is very important another minute it's not we should not mistake a non-response as the job is dead or a reflection that we've done something wrong in fact has nothing to do with that stay out of the results if you did everything according to the playbook you've done a great job now it's the time to follow up that's what you really wanted to know how do you follow up how would you normally follow up in a case like this I would call to see I were gonna get the call to be able to read them and then when I did call it to him he's like hey got the proposal it looks good I'm just waiting for Dave which was his business partner whatever you think we're gonna go over it like great when should I call back he's like next week which I didn't call back and he didn't answer voicemail correct well she somebody somebody answered but then they were like I can't hear you and they kind of hung up it was kind of a good something like that so you just dropped him an email like hey man you're just checking in tried giving you a call he's gonna see if you have any thoughts on moving forward to the project and that was it and I just that was actually today so that's kind of it was so fresh in my mind right yes I was like hey let me see what Chris would do differently in that situation you've done everything right okay I would now move it into the backburner stage which is to put little reminders in your calendar to probably just ping them with an email now I'm going to advise you on something that's straight up from Chris Foster's book I need you to phrase it like a no kind of answer okay except asking for a yes like when can we start I want you to see if you can get a double negative so they can say now and he says the single most effective email headline or subject line that you can write is are you ready to give up on this project move that's it so you're going to get a no answer from them and there's a lot of psychological reasons why no is more powerful than yes right do you have you read the book yeah that's something like asking no questions I thought that such so genius and even how he uses examples of like just getting triggered people say no it's a lot easier in town to say yes right you're you're buying it to commitment you're just doing what you want but the opposite so you're asking a double negative so you say are you ready to give up on this project and you may say something like that when you're ready to move to that stage okay now I don't know in the marketplace whether $12,000 is a lot for a company like that for me it's like I'm already moving look because I'm worth of trouble right mm-hmm but if it were then I probably want to put just regular email reminders or calendar reminders and I've done this so the project that you guys have seen probably is oles and that was a nine-month long sales call it literally was that long first it was two weeks to remind me and then a month and then three months and then my last reminder and on the last reminder as soon as I sent that within 24 hours he said I'm ready move forward and that was literally like my this is it you're wasting your time with his client reminder and that when they said we want to do it I just I for anyone watching still I'm not sure I'm like people we still left after like three hours but for anyone watching still I just wanted to back up Chris on some of this and tell you like it's legit like I've experienced this in my own life where not only about there's two points made one of them was you know you don't know what what they want or not and and if they're really gone and by just reaching out like I've had plenty of clients like you said six months later eight months later be like oh we're ready now right and life happens like I have people that said like oh yeah sorry but my you know daughter was getting married and then this happened and that happened and you know or you know the project got delayed so we just bumped it to the next quarters budget or whatever it is and then the other one was when the clients ready to close just send them an invoice like a lot of people like I can't do that I can just send someone an invoice for X amount of money like that's insane right they I need to have rules right they need the rules so they know that I'm gonna get the job done and but like legitimately I've had clients do the same thing I know client literally call me and go like so if I don't use up the last of this month's budget and you're gonna get this actually more often than you'd think if you're working with large clients like if I don't use up the last of this month's budget I lose it so what can we do like I like your work and I really like what we've worked together on I just need to use up this budget and like that's a fun call to get because someone just wants to give you money but like it happens like in and in that case I literally that like hung up the phone sent an invoice and like cool I made a PM it no contract people are asking for success stories from pro members I don't know how much time we have that was kind of a success story but it was like it was it they people want to hear real like how has he but yeah like a real quick win that has happened to you not a theoretical I use this technique and it worked okay so we don't turn the mic so everybody think of your quick success stories I kind of wind down this conversation okay now everybody has to say anything I also want to give some it's been a massively long livestream here who are these people why are there so many people in the after-hours what happened to Ricky and Jonah they're still here they're cutting stuff sheíll boys are here today they're still here hashtag still T okay this is the pro group and we're doing these kinds of things where we're having community meetings and we're having out this office this is the first one of this kind or maybe the second one really but we're gonna be doing these more frequently my goal is to get this into a quarterly kind of thing where you guys have enough time to learn implement and make money it's important so then we can come back and we may be moving these meetings around all over the world and I would love nothing more than to do that some of the people have followed me from New York and we're gonna keep the spirit going but this is a home base for us okay so these are the pro members they're part of our coaching group and if you're interested that I think the guys will provide links and information down below now to wrap it up to wrap it up if you have a success story of something you've done what you've implemented and what it resulted for you let's do that keep it super short cuz I want to get as many voices in as possible okay not like you want to pass the mic or you want to start I'd like to start a piggelin I can so I went from doing literally stuff at for Fiverr and then watching Chris and then moving on to charging upwards of $20,000 $30,000 for for work it's a it's not a quick dream but the success one success story for instance would be I had a client call and we had done a couple projects for them a year ago and they're calling the next year when they had a new budget and stuff and so they asked what can we do and I said XY and Z and and but first I need to sit down and really do some strategy with you and really plan it out and they were like oh we already have a plan and I was like I know that you've self-diagnosed this and they're a big company and I'll make sure I'm sure you've you know you have like an idea of what you want but I need to be sure before I operate so if I was a doctor and you came to me and you said I want you to call my leg and I do I'd be a bad doctor right I should I should confirm that this is really what we need to do so we went through that process and that was a its own thing and then we ended up making the the content that we came out with which was the appropriate content via what we had discovered and by the end of it it's like they flew me out to their to their offices for to see the thing I was making at the conference it was gonna be on put me up in a hotel and then told me like I saw them for the first time and they give me this huge hug and I was like what the heck I just made a animation for you it's literally an explainer video and they're like haha thank you so much this meant the world to us and it'll open up our eyes and all this stuff now I know that sounds insane to people but it's a slow process like I said but it's exactly what I've seen through doing this and through learning this and this is all pre-pro group just off with the free stuff not to knock the pro group because it's awesome but that that was just what I was able to get the free stuff thank you great story thanks for sharing let's keep the story's a little bit shorter it just just out of brevity you like trying to get this because I'm sure many of you guys have something really important to share go ahead so super short today I got a email confirmation that a proposal had been signed and so I wanted it yeah a little bit yeah this was tying off of the things that we were talking about today number one when the most important things I learned was that the price is a creative act you can't just you know walk away from things so talk to this guy he's got five grand for a budget for strategy identity and a single landing page cool but we established the values 20 grand so I said okay what if we lease this out over 12 months and if you do the math so it's 1665 a month for this stuff times 12 months at the end he has a buyout option for five grand the total of that is five grand more than what we initially give the value at so two things that I want to pull away from this price is a creative act that you can learn through implementation and practice and number two adding a deadline to your proposal which was today serious kicker for them to get moving and get with the action so I would be my success story so this proposal is valid till today mmm at 4:00 p.m. or whatever exactly urgency will do that to people hmm okay great job next no Stanley if you want the mic you just took the mic so don't offer it to somebody else speak into the mic please so actually the reason why I'm here it's kind of the perfect example of the success story right I guess I'm here because I got invited to Silicon Valley to the Samsung headquarters I was supposed to make some random design for Samsung conference in Berlin that's like some super smart conference in Berlin that's not even important and instead of making some random concept I found the guy from Samsung and I asked him hey what are you doing right now guys what are the things that you are trying to achieve what is important to you and how does the whole situation of your company look like and he told me like oh actually you know we're kind of going hard on this big big thing right and he explained me how how does it look like and why do they focus on it and that's it oh that looks interesting maybe I can focus on this and do some concept basing on this one so I created and I prepared a concept for bigsby and they liked it so much that they send it to headquarters in San Jose and they liked it so much that they invited me here that's the reason why I'm here I actually read so so the whole thing and I was on the most important conference of the Samsung SDC we had a booth and it was actually the most popular booth on the whole conference so I believe that that's the ultimate success story right just by listening and trying to understand instead of just making beautiful I loved everything about that except for the length I got okay that's good I got one for you super super short super sweet okay all right when we started we were charging like $1,800 per website with your course and between you and mo teach us not to be afraid of the price we were able to land a thirty thousand dollar website deal Wow okay Zach's up next right I'm from the you know the school days like ogee back in the day that's right that's right I went from just kind of being a graphic designer and then watching your guys's videos and when you and Jose and basically I started off doing you know 510k websites to now charging 30 35 K with for the agency I work for just for strategy UX strategy not even do name deliverables or anything of that nature so that's all for the future and squat and that is the perfect delivery length of the story good job who wants going axe is that it let's wrap it up okay I don't see anything on once twice guys first of all thank you for sticking around if you made it through the entire live stream you have some endurance in you and fortitude if you're not just find the sections that work for you hopefully we'll be indexing this and potentially cutting down some segments from this this is the pro community and thrilled that you guys are here I just feel extreme connection to you so thank you all for showing your story and being so open this is so awesome thank you very much oh my god

Channel: The Futur

Views: 37,324

Rating: 4.9603357 out of 5

Keywords: after hours, deep dive, real conversation, business of design, the futur, chris do, pro group, pro members, discussion, business issues, role play, roleplay, role-play, graphic design, creative, creativity, q&a, questions and answers

Id: 7snev8P4ENU

Length: 127min 38sec (7658 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019