How to Charge More for Logo Design

Chris Do: The thing is a lot of people are unsure of themselves. They're not confident in what they can do. And that's the sad part because I think a lot of creative type suffer from this low self-esteem or imposter syndrome.

We look at the things that we do that give us joy that are easy for us to do as something that we feel guilty about when we charge other people money. No other profession does this, right? Somebody that comes in to repair your house or any other kind of trade, they don't sit there and think, "Well, I love doing this. What can you afford?" And that's not what it's about.

What designers tend to do, especially when it comes to logo design, is they look at what the competition looks like. The most widely publicly available competition comes from sources like Fiverr, Upwork or whatever that's called. I forget all these sites, but they're brokerages for creative services.

And, of course, the brokerages don't really care about the end user, the client and the creative person. They just care to make the money in between. So, it really doesn't matter if the client ultimately gets a good product or not. It doesn't matter if the creative people have a sustainable way of making a living.

When you sit there and you compare yourselves to people who are cranking out logos for $550 or even $500, it starts to set the mindset that this must be the bar. That this must be the fair market value for this work, and it's not at all. Okay?

Now, when we say that brands are important in the 21st century economy, meaning that we trust people who believe what we believe, and we get to know them, we get to know how they treat us and the experience through a little mark. And that mark is a signifier to say, "This is the brand experience you're going to get versus a different one." That's why we buy branded everything. Toilet paper, shampoo, soap, the commodities, right?

When you go and talk to a business owner, and this is important, there are people who are in business, but I don't consider them like business people. They're hobbyists. They do what they do. They craft things, and so they're not really thinking about the business the same way I would.

When they come and ask you like, "Hey, I need a new logo. Our business is growing and taking off, can you do this for $150?" And, of course, they're in their best interest to negotiate you to spend as little money as possible, because they're thinking about buying supplies, about doing everything else in their supply chain that is important to them. And so they're looking at it like, "Let's spend as little money as possible." And so they plant the seed inside your brain that this is now worth $150.

Now, it's very hard to negotiate $150 up to $1,500. That's a 10x difference, right? In a situation like this, the number one barrier to your business right now is money. Most people that come to you cannot afford to pay you what's fair. So in this instance and in this instance only, it is your obligation to bring up the price upfront. Watch how this dynamic changes.

Instead of them coming to you and saying, "I've got $150 to do this, can you do it?" When they ask you, how much do you charge? At the very beginning of the conversation, you should say, "Before we go too deep, I want to let you know, I charge somewhere between $2,000 to $4,000 to do a logo. Is that in your budget?" And they're thinking in their mind like, "Oh my god, that is so much more money than I have. Maybe I was just being too cheap or naive about this."

Now, They start to negotiate themselves versus you doing it to yourself. Now, they're sitting there thinking, "Okay, what can I afford? What can I do without? Maybe I don't need those fancy napkins. Maybe I don't need those kind of flowers. I can go with the other arrangement. I need to do this because this is important to me."

They're negotiating against themselves in their brain, and your duty is just sit there and put on your best poker face and wait. Now, what happens here is a lot of creative types will sit there and like, "I have some free time. Maybe it's $1,000." They start to negotiate the price down right in front of the client's eyes.

And once you do that, once you show hesitation, the client starts to think that maybe you think I'm a mark, maybe you think I don't know what I'm doing, and you're going to try and call me for some more money than you've ever been paid. So, they're like, "No. You know what, I got $50. Can you do this or not?" And in your desperation, you'll probably most likely say yes.

There's lots of dynamics that are going on here. So, let me recap real quick. First, bring up the issue of money upfront. Second, do price bracketing. Bracket more money than you're going to ask for, because inevitably you get negotiated down, you need to be somewhat flexible.

If you want $1,000, don't start 1,000 because you'll wind up at 500. Okay? Start at a higher number. What you want to do is if you're thinking 1,000, say 1,000 to 2,000. The worst that you'll end up is 1,000, and you might get 2,000. More likely, you get $1,200 and you just keep doing that. Okay?

You got to bring that money up front. You got to talk about it. And the other concept is you got to just be really silent. Be confident. Be comfortable in talking about money. I suggest that you go and practice talking about your creative services and money with anybody that you bump into.

Practice it with your friends, your family, your mom, your schoolmates. Whoever it is that you're going to talk to just say, "I'm going to charge I'm worth this amount." And just keep doing it, because the first time it comes out your mouth, we joke about this, it feels funny and your tongue betrays you. When you say it, it's like, "Oh ..." And it sounds not confident. You have to say emphatically as if the sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and that's the way it is.

Ian Paget: I think that's amazing advice. So, for everyone that's heard that, I think it's worth watching that YouTube video as well. I'll put it in the show notes with this episode. Yeah, if everyone took that in the industry, we have no more these $5 Legos and everyone will be pricing now their work accordingly. I think that's amazing advice, Chris.

Chris Do: I have a little 13 year old boy, and now he is smarter than your average bear. He's very much aware of design and aesthetics. I've done my best to help introduce him to lots of things. We're out yesterday spending some time together, and we walked by a bunch of restaurants and cafes, and he's like, "Dad, that's a terrible logo. That's a terrible one."

He was just telling me like, "Why are there so many bad logos?" And this is part of the problem, right? There are under-qualified people willing to do work for less money than they should. They lack the training, because essentially, everybody can use the computer. Even my son can make a logo. Not a good one at this point, but he can recognise a bad one really quickly.

People need to realise this. If you're running a business, this is the first impression that people are going to have. When we walk down the street and we're trying to find your restaurant and the logo is poorly designed because it's too thin, it's too complicated, I can't find you. At some point, I just give up or we walk right past you.

Think about all the business you're losing just because you have a poorly designed logo. It needs to be attention grabbing. It needs to communicate some part of your brand essence and draw people in. And then it needs to be consistently applied throughout. There's a lot of value there.

Now, they used to do this here in America, but I don't know if they did this in the UK, but they would have sandwich boards outside, these A frame things that fold open and are propped up to direct traffic in and they would write something clever or they would literally have a person barking at people and say, "Come on in for lunch. You want a pizza?" And they would draw you in.

What do you think your logo is doing? You wouldn't send somebody out who's mute to do that. You wouldn't send somebody out who couldn't speak the language. That would be a disaster. So, your logo is that person who draws people in, especially in these kind of mom and pop situations. Ian, I have a question for you.

Ian Paget: Yeah, sure.

Chris Do: Since that video that you're going to link and share to people, in case you haven't seen it, I'm a little surprised by the reaction that I got. Now, it's surprising that, okay, a lot of people saw it, they thought it was great. A lot of people said it was like mind blowing and altered their perception of this whole value-based pricing thing. But some people are saying to me, a lot of people actually, "That's so unrealistic. You're so arrogant. You're so this."

I'm just curious, if you could channel some of that energy, because I don't have an opportunity to speak to them. They just dropped whatever it is comment, these trolls, and then they never stick around to intellectually have a conversation with me.

Ian Paget: I guess where people are coming from ... A lot of the clients that come to me, if say I was to pluck out a figure of, say, $20,000, they don't have that money. They might have $500 or something. So, there's that side of it. And then I guess there's also ... I guess people are nervous that there's so many other people that could do the same thing. That there's this potential risk that if you do go in with a price that's far too high that you might lose them. You might lose that potential client.

I think that's probably where people are coming from. I mean, personally, I think value-based pricing is the right way to go above a certain threshold. In my case, I run my business part-time. There's only a certain amount of money that I need to make each month, so I am treating it to some extent as a hobby, but it is becoming profitable. At the moment, I just have a fixed price that I provide to everyone. I mean, that's a few examples of where people are probably coming from.

Chris Do: Okay, that's great. Let's take one of these at a time. I heard a couple different things here. One of which is my clients can't afford that. I put out this tweet a while back and I got some attention. I said, "Luxury brands don't change their prices to meet their customers. They find customers who can afford their price."

And you have to think about this. What kind of brand are you? You can walk into any store. They have prices on everything. And just because you can't afford it doesn't mean that they're going to change their price. It doesn't work like that.

And you can go in and you can buy. Here's the in orders of magnitude concept. Okay? You can go and buy a light fixture for $10 at Home Depot, which is a hardware store here in America. They have another light fixture that's $100 and one that's $1,000. That's probably where they're going to cap out.

But then you go to an architectural supply store, and the prices can start at 1,000 and go to 10,000 and 100,000 to a million dollars. They all illuminate the room. One is made from sapphire glass, is designed by a well known Italian designer with a big name. And the company is known for high end fixtures so that when somebody walks into your home or your office or hotel and they see that, they're just sitting there saying, "Wow." They're in awe because they know how valuable and expensive that fixture is and it gives them that feeling like, "Wow, we're at a really nice place."

Guys. This is serious. As opposed to going to some shabby chic place and they've got $100 light fixture, different feeling. This is really comfortable. This is non-pretentious or unpretentious. Each thing has a different price point. The thing that I want you to think about is, why do you feel so compelled to meet the client at their price point? Why are you so flexible?

The first thing here is if you find clients, which I imagine a lot of you will find, clients that can't afford you, don't go to meet them. Think about the work that you're doing. Think about how you're positioned in the marketplace, and go and find clients who can afford you. Because for every price point, there's a client out there who can afford you. I'm proving it to you right now.

Before I go and tell you a little bit more about the prices we're charging today as opposed to the price we spoke about in the video. I want to get into a couple other things. First, just because somebody can't afford you doesn't mean anything. You go find somebody else who can afford you.

You have to say no a lot to find your yes. Because otherwise, you're getting stuck in that place. Now, here's the thing is you do a logo for somebody and they pay you $500, let's say. Well, they're going to tell their friends, "$500. $500." You're going to get a lot of $500 logos. And maybe that's cool for you, but you're going to be doing a lot of it.

I'd rather do fewer jobs for more money and deliver a better customer experience than to do a lot of jobs. I'm not the Walmart of logo design. I want to be like the Rolls Royce of logo design. I'm mixing metaphors. Sorry, I messed that up.

Ian Paget: I know what you meant.

Chris Do: Okay, let me do that again. I'm not the Hyundai of logo design. I want to be the Rolls Royce. The Range Rover of logo design. That's where I'm positioned. Tell me a little bit more of the other objections. You can get a little angry at me and you can push me back a little bit so that I can understand why people are so in love with being there.

I'm going to probably butcher this expression. You are not what you believe, what you believe you are. When you say, I'm not worth this, then guess what, you're not worth that. Totally true. But in my mind, I practice this form of self-hypnosis in a way where I say, "You know what? I'm going to charge $10,000. Let me see what can happen there." And then we do the work and then nobody complained. "I'm going to try and charge $18,000. Let's see how that works."

Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story. I coach a community of people. It's about 170 people now, and that's the official count, but I coach a lot more people than that. One of the things, they're like, "Chris, this is not possible. You cannot charge this kind of money."

I said, "You know what, I'm going to prove it to you." At that point, the most I had ever charged was about $18,000 for a logo. Just for the logo. Style guides cost more. Applications cost more. Strategy cost more. Just for the logo. I decided to very publicly post on The Futur website. You can go and buy stuff for The Futur for $100, $200, $500, whatever.

Ian Paget: I've seen that.

Chris Do: I just posted this thing. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Ian Paget: Yeah, I do.

Chris Do: I just put this thing out there. At first, I put it at $18,000. And then Ben asked me, "Well, how can you design a logo for 18, Chris? Don't you have to do strategy?" I said, "Yeah, we'll do strategy light." He says, "Well, we need to charge more." I'm like, "You're right." I go back at the price, and I think I changed it to 25k or something like that, or 20k, because there's a lot of work there.

And I just put that out there and I just sent the link to everybody in the community. They're like, "Oh, my God, the cahoney is on you. What are you trying to do?" I said, "You know what, you guys will see." And they're thinking, "Who's going to whip out a credit card to buy a $25,000 logo from our site?" I said, "It's not about that. It's about changing the conversation in the broadest possible way."

If people are talking about $5 logos, why isn't anybody talking about a $25,000 logo? If more people talked about that, at least then there's a frame of reference. There's context for people in the marketplace like, "Wow, yeah. I saw the thing on The Futur. It's 25k. You're asking me for five. That's a pretty good price. Thanks. Let's do the deal."

It was done almost as a joke. Okay? But guess what, we're getting inquiries on that $25,000 logo, which we can't do, to be honest, because it has to be much more than that. But I'm just trying to change the conversation. What you think you are, and that's really important. Now, the story I wanted to tell you is this. Is we're in the contract phase for $140,000 logo right now.

Ian Paget: Just the logo?

Chris Do: Just the logo. And the rest of the job is even more than that. How do we come about this number? Because I was thinking, "You know what, I want to get to a six figure logo job. I can do that." There are companies out there, multi-million dollar, billion dollar companies that need our work. They realised how important their logo is. They really do, because they're saying, "This doesn't reflect who we are. We work with Fortune 100 companies." They want to make sure that they feel like we're in the same league as them, so we need help. I said, "Great."

We've already met with the chief marketing officer. And that led to us talking to the CEO and Chief Operating Officer of a really big company. We know we're getting really close here. Each time you move up the ladder, you know you're getting closer to a yes. Because if your price was out of control, if you weren't qualified, if the work wasn't good enough, if they didn't feel that you had enough experience, they would never bring you to the top people, because their time is very valuable.

And we're at the contract phase right now. Meaning, I dropped the paperwork, boys. Ben Burns and I, we sat down, we worked out our contract. It's been submitted, and I believe it will be green lit pretty soon, because we're in the contract phase.

Once you're there, you know you're in the final stretch. We're about two feet away from the finish line. We're just waiting for them to say yes. And then I'll be happy to report back to our community. "You guys, you see, you don't think $18,000 is real? How about I add another digit to that?"

Ian Paget: That's amazing.

Chris Do: And we'll be there. You know what, if you had asked me a year, two years ago, "Chris, what do you charge for logos?" I'm like, "I don't know. 5,000, 10,000 bucks. That sounds like a good price." I wouldn't have been able to tell you that we're going to be able to do this. I'm just trying to find out where the ceiling is on this, and I don't think we're going to hit the ceiling.

Now, this is probably going to make a lot of people angry and I can tell. Channel their anger and talk to me.

Ian Paget: Okay. A client pays $5,000, and then we have another client that pays $100,000. Are you doing anything differently in terms of the service?

Chris Do: Perfect question.

Ian Paget: Are you providing more, or the same?

Chris Do: Well, what do you think? What do you think the answer is? I'm curious.

Ian Paget: I mean, to be fair, for $10,000 say, that's already a lot more than what I'm offering. I feel like within that money, I would be able to spend enough time to do something good. Add another zero. In terms of the amount of work that I'm doing, I would imagine it would be the same. But from a service side, I feel like they wouldn't to be more. I felt like there would be more layers. I feel like the client would expect more for that money.

Chris Do: Yeah. You would be right in your expectation, but I'm going to tell you right now, there's nothing different that we do. I know people are going to fall out of their chair. Now, let me clarify some things before I get all the angry emails, okay?

First, I want to say this is I don't care what I get paid, I'm still going to make you the best logo I can make you, period. And I'm not going to accept the job unless I think I can do a good job for you. I'm not changing necessarily my skill level or experience because the job is lower budget, so I know that.

Where it gets painful for me is I'm trying to do a good job for a client, but I'm looking at the budget, I'm like, "Wow, I've spent way too much time, way too many resources. I'm going to be upside down on this job." I'm still doing it, but I'm not feeling happy about it. The key to feeling happy about doing a lot of work is to charge more.

In terms of the actual work itself, I promised them one really good logo. That it's thoroughly explored and thoughtful. It has a timeless quality to it that is versatile, that captures the essence of their brand. I'm going to do that. Okay? The process is exactly the same. It starts with some sketches, it starts with discovery.

We will look down, we show them some options. We put them in context. And what I mean by that is we'll take the logo and put it on a building, put it on a computer screen, uniforms, make some patterns so that they can make a more informed decision as to whether or not this logo is going to work for them.

Here's a tip. Here's a pro tip for you guys. Those of you guys that design really simple logos, the common question I get from people is the clients think it's so simple, like you just typed it on the computer and truthfully you just did. That's not worth anything because they could have done same thing, but that's not true.

The way that you make your logo seem more valuable, more unique is you don't change the logo, you just put the logo on stuff. Put it on an airplane. Put it on a bag. Put it on a package. And then they start to say like, "Wow, that's a nice logo."

The simple the logo, I suggest, if you're not confident enough at this point in time to show it on a couple applications. It's what Michael Bierut will do. That way, something that's set in Helvetica, all lowercase with a red check becomes a million dollar logo.

Big companies understand this. They're not looking for something that's got all these fufu details and frivolous things. They're not looking for that. A lot of designers think, "I need to keep adding and adding and that's how it's valuable." I think it's the opposite.

You keep taking away until you get to the core and there's nothing left, but the essence. For this logo job, we will do applications and we're going to do a really nice job. We have a lot of templates. We might make some new ones, so that the client can visualise their logo living in a space. And then they'll make a decision.

I think there's three rounds of revisions. It's like every other logo job we do. And then we'll put together a usage guide, and that will be very thorough. Maybe the one thing that's different in that small companies don't have a lot of usage applications, so we don't have to show that many examples.

Bigger companies, because it's going to be distributed with a lot of partners and vendors that we need to help them make sure that it's consistently applied and created. Okay?

Ian Paget: Okay.

Chris Do: Otherwise, it's not any different. If they want to fly in or they want us to go do something with them, we're more inclined to do it. Yeah. Just because the budget can afford that. If we want to do something that's really unique. Let's say we want to present the final logo to them as etched out of metal or something, I can go and pay for that, not even bat an eyelash. It's cool, we could do that as a gift to the client.

Ian Paget: Okay. Going back on something that you mentioned, in terms of when you present the work to the client, you mentioned that you present one option. Now, I've seen there's so many different ways of doing it and everyone I've spoken to have done it in slightly different ways. Are you literally just presenting the one? Or are you presenting the process of how you got to that one?

Chris Do: Yeah, let me clarify here. I'm not always presenting one logo. Now, what I am doing is I'm taking iterative steps with the client until we reach the point of the conclusion of the one logo. It's not a mysterious process at all.

We start with words about what we want the brand to stand for, how the look and feel should be, the tone of voice and we work through all these things. Then we create a mood board to say like, "In this universe, this is what it looks like to us. And here's a couple of ways it can look."

And then through that, they're like, "Yeah, that feels about right." Or, "Maybe that's too austere, or that's too busy. And we're not doing any work yet. We're just curating things that feel right. Now, we're going to get to work."

Ian Paget: You're your client on a journey essentially. With the word association essentially, that's narrowing your direction. With mood boards that's then narrowing it down even further. The final options that you come ... I mean, I guess in your team based on that mood board, you're creating internally numerous different options. Am I right?

Chris Do: Yeah. Well, let me clarify here. What I'm trying to do is to set precedent for the direction that we're going in so it doesn't become a surprise. When you go watch a movie, you come in sometimes with expectations. And even if it's an outstanding movie, you could walk away saying, "I wasn't feeling it."

That's why I deliberately go to watch a movie without having to watch trailer. I don't want to read reviews. All I want to know is the Rotten Tomato score, and I'm good enough to go in there. Because I don't want to come in with my expectations. I want to be perfectly open to what the movie experience was supposed to be like. The story that's going to be unfolded before my eyes.

In this way, it's the opposite. Because I don't want surprises. In this way, I want the clients to know what to expect. It's a romantic comedy. You like romantic comedies, don't you? It's starring, I don't know, some famous actress that you know. "Oh, yeah, you're right." And it's set in England in the 18th century, let's say. "Oh, yeah, I like that a lot." And here's the twist, love it. Let's watch the movie. That's your logo. There's no surprise there at that point.

At the very beginning, I said, "It's going to be a romantic ... I hate romantic comedies. I had a really bad experience with my ex-wife. Let's watch an adult drama." I'm like, "Okay, adult drama it is." I'm setting the expectation. I'm also narrowing the field, and it makes the process that much more streamline.

I don't want to explore 50 logos that don't work. I only want to explore one if possible. So at this point, I have a pretty clear idea. The team has a pretty clear idea. But guess what creative people, they like to interpret things differently, and so they try things. This is where I'm open. I say, "I wasn't expecting that, but that's interesting."

That does solve the brief. It does live in the world of 18th century romantic comedies with that plot twist. I get that and I'll work with them on that and then we refine. And anything that I feel like it doesn't fit, I say, "You know what, redirect. Redirect. This is not it. Tell me how this feels like what we just said. These are the words that we committed to. These are the mood boards we committed to. This does not fit in either. You need to keep doing this."

At that point, internally, we make a decision. How many of these are viable solutions to the problem that we're asked to solve? Oftentimes, it's not many. I might show them the exploration. Nobody does it better than Michael Beirut, and some of these large branding firms that charge six figures to do a logo. They show you the entire process, but you're not allowed to pick that process. You're only allowed to pick the final thing.

Ian Paget: How do you know internally when you have hit the nail on the head essentially? How do you know when you've ... I guess, how do you know that the one is the one?

Chris Do: Well, you know the one is the one if you did a really good job of defining the problem. Now, I can't remember where I read this. I think it was in The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. And he said that he sat down and did this visualisation. He thought about who his ideal mate was going to be his wife. How tall she was. If she was athletic or not. The colour of her eyes and her hair.

He talked about the education. He visualised everything. And then after he realised that he made a super concrete in his mind, "This is the woman that's a perfect match for me." He realised then that woman would not be attracted to him the way he is, so he needed to become more attractive to her. And he says, eventually, he found that woman, fell in love with that woman, and they were married and are living happily ever after.

When you have a very clear picture as to what you want, it's pretty obvious when not yet comes up. No, no, no, and then yes. Now, what am I looking for in that logo? Because this may sound very abstract to people who are listening. I'm looking for certain things. Does it have too many tricks? Yes. I don't want that. Will it stand the test of time? Yes, I want that. Is it bold? I want that. Is it too ornate? I don't want that. Is there an idea in there that won't get tiring for the client? Is it big enough where the company is going to go and things that we don't even know? Or is it too limiting? Okay, I'm looking for that.

You can see if you have a set of criteria as to what it is you like and don't like about logos. You also have criteria ... This is the problem we're trying to solve. It's very clear. You'll know the one. It's not hard to see then.

Now, most designers that I know don't start off with that clear objective, and so they just go through this path. It's almost like painting. They just keep working on the painting until they feel okay. It could be a day, it could be a month, it could be a year.

Ian Paget: Okay. Basically, at that point, internally, you would have a logo that you know is the right one. Fingers crossed, the client is going to be really happy with what you've done. But have you had to experience where the client has come back and not like that direction? And if you have done, how have you gone about dealing with that?

Chris Do: Yeah. I think I've shared this before. Earlier in my career, I've had two clients that didn't like the logo work we did. What they said to me was enough that I didn't want to work with them, so I resigned the account, I refunded their money and I went on with my life, and it's happened twice. I would say that was within the first five years of our business maybe for seven years. I can't remember.

And they both said very similar things and they both had very similar reaction. So now, there's a personality type out there that I look for in terms of somebody I don't want to work with. They're poor business people. They don't appreciate good design, and they don't have very good taste, so they rely on the opinions of others to help them make that decision. Those are not good client features or traits.

When I presented the first logo to this client, the first time I resigned the client, he was like, "Yeah, this is what we're looking for. It needs to be big. It needs to be theatrical. I want it to tell a story, almost like one of those logos that you see before the movie start."

You see these beautiful animations and it resolves to a single frame, it's almost like a piece of photography. Think about Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams company, there's a robot. It zips through a field of grass or wheat or whatever and it zips by and it stops and it says, "Bad Robot." It's almost like an illustration.

Or Valhalla Pictures which is like a Viking boat floating in space and landing. That's pretty cool. Or Bruckheimer Pictures, which is racing down a road and then a bolt of lightning crashes and then a tree splits and it says Bruckheimer Pictures. That's what he asked for.

We designed these really ornate, dramatic steel frames that could be that. I presented the logos to him. He goes, "Yeah, wow. Okay, these are cool. Yeah, let me think about this." I said, "Okay." He came back the next day. He's like, "I showed them to my wife and my daughter." I'm like, "Okay, red flag right there."

They don't get it. I said, "Yeah, because this is a steel frame and we're going to do storyboards and there's going to be an anime thing and it's going to leave in front of your reel. You want to attract these theatrical clients." He goes, "Yeah, you know what? I was wondering something." My interior designer, she'll show me lots of things, like 50 things, chairs, whatever. Can you do that?"

I said, "You know what, I don't work like that. An interior designer doesn't make you anything. Interior designer selects furniture, carpets, all these kinds of things, and then lets you decide. Who's going to make that? I can't pull out 50 different logos from companies that are not yours. How is that going to solve your problem? I just get the feeling that this is not going to work, and I'm willing to do this, and I've never done this before, but I don't think it's a good fit. I'm going to give you your money back. I think you need to find a logo designer who's going to do what you think you need. Okay?"

He goes, "No, no, no. Don't be so hasty. Why don't we just think about this?" I said, "Okay, well, that's up to you." He's like, "We don't need to go down that path." I'm like, "Okay, it's fine." And I knew it was going to happen. He's looking at whatever thousands of dollars he was committed to spending the deposit, and I knew what he was going to do.

So, the next morning, he called me up, he's like, "I thought it over. You're probably right. It's not a good fit. We probably shouldn't force this relationship and I appreciate you doing this." I said, "Great. Here's your money back." I'm never happier to give a client his money back.

A couple months later, I saw the logo, it's a piece of garbage. It looked like he went to Font House, downloaded like cracked house as a typeface, typed it out and that was it.

Ian Paget: No way. Cringeworthy.

Chris Do: Yeah, it was horrible. It was horrible. And every time I came by, I just cringed and everybody in company, these artists that work for him probably cringed too. He's not in business anymore, but hey, that's the way it goes.

Ian Paget: It sounds like the right thing to have done, because with your process, the fact that you are taking your clients on a journey and narrowing down to a focal point essentially, if the client is drastically changing their minds, if you don't desperately need the money, I think it makes sense to essentially fire that client and let them go.

In this instance, I've heard lots of different stories of how people have dealt with it. Some people will literally just do what the client asked and take the money. But I like what you've done in that case and you kind of stuck to your morals to some extent and just parted ways and let him make mistakes.

Chris Do: Ian, I appreciate you saying I stuck to my morals. This is not even a moral dilemma for me. It was like, "You're a stupid client. You don't know what you want. How can I help somebody who doesn't know what they want? And I'm not willing to go down this path. There's not enough money involved here for me to do this. I made the bad decision of selecting you as a client. That's my bad, and I'm going to pay for it. Because I worked on this, I'm going to give you your money back."

Now, you said something like where you don't need the money. Don't ever be in a place where you need the money. Even in day one, we got 5,000 bucks, we never spent it. I had money coming in from clients. I manage my expenses. I wasn't going to live like a baller life. I didn't buy a fancier computer than I needed. I didn't live in a place that I couldn't afford.

The amount of money that we needed to survive, meaning food, paying off whatever loans we had, making payments on my credit card, even if it's a minimal amount, that's all I need. Don't be quick to scale up your business and put yourself in a position and be at a disadvantageous position, because you need the money. Live with your parents. Live in the garage. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Keep your expenses really low.

That way when you walk into a room, they're like $50, you just walk right back out. You're not sitting there thinking, "How am I going to eat today?" And I've seen this happen to so many people. Ironically, as I was having this conversation with somebody else, the year that people go out of business typically proceeds or it follows the year that they've done the most business.

You're going gangbusters and the next year you go out of business. How is that possible? Because you keep anticipating that the business will be there, and you adopt really poor business habits and spending habits. If a client agrees to pay you 3,000 bucks and let's say a lot of money to you, don't go out and spend that money. Build up your runway so that you can survive for six months without any work. Before that, don't spend a dime.

Ian Paget: Great advice. Okay. Do you have any final piece of advice for our listeners?

Chris Do: Well, I'm still trying to understand this mindset of people who want to be at that $1,000 dollar mark. And they're saying, "Nope, screw you. I don't want to be at 1,000 mark. That's just the way it is." What only is, because you believe it to be true.

I don't sit there and look at, "Oh God, I got to compete with these guys that are doing $5,000 logos." I look at the Pentagrams of the world, The Futur brand, the Landor and Associates, the Siegel+Gales. They're doing six, seven figure logo designs. I'm not trying to look at how different we are, I'm trying to look at how similar we are. What skills do I need to acquire? What team do I need to put together to be worth that? What process do I ... What do I need to do to attract clients that are willing to hire those guys but would rather hire us instead? That's what I think about it.

Ian Paget: That's really fascinating, because ... What I tend to do with my work is I basically pull out different pieces that I set myself as benchmarks. I tried to make my logo look like those logos that I pulled out. What you just said then, and I think it's really fascinating probably for everyone else listening, you're doing it the same with your business model as well, aren't you? You're doing it the same with your business.

Like Pentagram, they're doing six figures. You're looking at them going, "How have they done that? What are they doing? How are they able to get that?" So that you can replicate that, put it in your business so that you could also get those same figures.

Chris Do: Yep. The one difference that I'm doing between what you just described and what I do is this, is you're looking at it from a craftsmanship level like, "That was a really clever logo. Great typeface choice. Great little flourish of detail." Something like that, right? I don't look at that. I just look at the business model, the philosophy, the mindset, how they talk about their work, how they position themselves, how they're seen as the go-to people.

When there's a design problem for a radio program or on TV, they call Michael Beirut. They're like, "What do you think of the logo?" Then he becomes this authority on the subject. And whenever he goes out and speaks, he's presenting more and more about their process. That's more important than end product.

The thing that I was talking about before in terms of Helvetica, lowercase, and then with a check mark, that's the Verizon logo, right? Any first year student could literally type in that same typeface, kern it and add a red check mark, and do exactly what Michael Beirut did. There's nothing fancy about that. But the process that leads to that is the thing that separates them from Michael Beirut and Pentagram.

Being able to document your process to formalise it and to speak about it in ways that sound like it's a really informed process is what makes Michael Beirut, Michael Beirut. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's a starting point. That's a tip I would give anybody that's listening to this what they should be thinking about.

Ian Paget: I've never heard that advice. Yeah, I think that's amazing advice, and I'm certainly going to take that myself. Okay, fantastic. Okay. Thanks for your time, Chris. I think we're wrapping up now, but fantastic.

Chris Do: Hey, you're welcome. Glad to do this with you.