Creating a Consistent Income

Ian Paget: Something I'm keen to talk about on the podcast is sales and making money, and I know looking on your Instagram feed, you have said that you can help creatives create consistent $20,000 months within 90 days with your program. And that's a lot of money. I know not everyone's in the position where they can get to that figure of money, but I think this is a good conversation to have. The focus of the podcast is making a living from logo design, so I think this is a really good topic to dive into. So kind of as an opening question, and we'll see where this takes us, how does somebody get to the point where they can make $20,000 a month? That's a lot of money.

Hayden Burgess: That is a lot of money, I guess, to put in context, mate, when people start working with us, they're already going, they're not starting from zero. And I've found with a lot of clients that I've worked with, it's often just a couple of small tweaks and they might already be doing say seven to maybe even kind of 15 a month, but it's really sporadic, it's up and down, and they all say to me, it's feast or famine, I'll have a great month and then a hard month. So what I help my clients with is I guess, kind of making it more streamlined and making it more consistent.

So to answer your question, if you're going from like a standing start to 20K, that may seem like a reach, but most people that come to me, and I make sure I qualify them first of course, are already doing seven to 12, maybe 15 max. So it just a matter of a couple of small tweaks. It might be, I'm looking at their pricing. It might be having one new kind of strategy to generate an extra client a month. It's often small things. And that's what makes the biggest difference in any business. It's the small things you do every day. It's the small sales and marketing stuff that a lot of us leave until the last minute, or we'll get so busy with work and we'll have so much client work on that will just drop it all for three or four weeks, and we won't start again until we are quiet, until we've signed off on those projects, maybe. So does that answer your question?

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does. So for people listening to this, on the podcast I have done episodes about getting your first logo design clients. And I think this interview, it doesn't make sense to go into that staff. I've done that on the podcast before. Getting your first client, that's relatively easy. And I do think, once you've been going for a year or so, you start to build a reputation, you start to get those clients, you start to make some money, but in order to properly make a living doing this, to get to that point where you can quit your job and focus on whatever you choose to do, be that logo design or graphic design or anything else, I've got episodes that should help people get to that point.

So I would love to dive into some of the stuff that you are able to advise on. People that are already making a good amount of money and are doing well, but they're having those inconsistent months. And I know sometimes I have months like that, sometimes I have months that are really good, and then I have other months where I make half that. I've got friends that are in that same situation. So you mentioned in the introduction about consistency, so to make that consistent income, what tips do you have to help type of thing?

Hayden Burgess: So tips around creating consistency, I guess for me, there's a lot to creating consistency, but really one of the most basic things in any business, but I think in particular for creatives, is that first off, and if you're talking about a brand identity and designer, if you're talking about a photographer or a videographer, whatever type of creative business, most of us, we love doing the creative work. We love kind of coming up with ideas and brainstorming with clients and kind of sitting on Illustrator and designing stuff and creating cool stuff. And we don't, a lot of us don't see ourselves as a salesperson, or we don't see ourselves as someone who can, I guess, kind of market themselves. So one of the first tips I think to creating consistency is actually working out where are your clients coming from first off, and what are the activities that are actually kind of generating new work and actually kind of mapping those out and kind of measuring them.

So what I mean by that is if you're getting work from Instagram, which I know a lot of my clients do, it's creating kind of consistency and it's kind of measuring where things are coming from so that you know if you do a certain type of post on a Monday or a Friday, that could generate you a client. What I find is if people do work sporadically, if they do sales activities, they do networking sporadically marketing sporadically, they get sporadic results. So I think my first tip is if you want to get more consistent months, it's mapping out where's my work I'm coming from, is it from my network? Is it from Instagram? Is it from leads from my website and actually working out what are the key activities I need to do and put into my week to make sure they happen? Does that make sense?

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does. So if I'm understanding right, each time you get an inquiry monitor, I don't know you would log this so maybe you can expand on that, but monitor where those inquiries are coming from and whatever's doing well, focus on that, do more of that. Am I understanding that correctly?

Hayden Burgess: I mean, I think it's important to measure where your leads are coming from a hundred percent, if you want to do it that way, of course. What I'm really trying to say is that creating consistency means you're doing sales and marketing activities every week and not just leaving them till the last minute. And you're measuring where your leads are coming from. So you're going well, I got five inquiries from Instagram last month, I got five from my website. How can I optimise that? So it's working out what are the key sales and marketing activities I need to do and making them happen. So that's the super fundamental thing. And that kind of harkens back to what I said before. It's not about leaving that stuff until you're quiet, until you're finished off two massive projects and you need to go out and find work. It's planning and to your week that you're consistently planning seeds with people and consistently lining jobs up.

So it's just making sales and marketing a real fundamental part of your workflow. Because I think aside from the creative work we do, the sales and marketing we do to generate them clients has to come second. There's some admin stuff, there's some client management, there's all that kind of stuff. But if you really want to grow your business, it's working out what are the key activities for me and making them happen consistently, not skipping a day. Because I guess the other big idea, Ian, is that when you talk to potential leads, potential clients, people who come to you or people you speak to online, not all of them are going to be ready to buy from you straight away. It's a fundamental thing. Like if you get, say, 10 leads or 10 inquiries, in general, five of those will probably never buy from you because they'll just kind of shopping around maybe, or they just want to get a comparison.

Then you got five left. Two of those are probably going to buy from you and go, "Yeah, I want to work with you now. I'm ready to go. Let's start next week." But three of them are probably going to work with you, but they won't sign up for the next 90 days to two years. So what it comes down to I think is creating consistency. And the second thing you can do is just realise that not every client is going to be ready for you right now. So the seeds you plant, how you nurture them, if that's via your email newsletter, if that's via posting a regular content, however you nurture your client, make that of your workflow. And that's a second way to create more consistency, realise that not every client's going to buy from you straight away and realise that you need to nurture a lot of people along that process, because people might want to work with you, but they don't have the money or maybe it's a time thing, whatever that looks like. Does that make sense?

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does. So I'm just wondering in terms of logging where the people are coming from, are you using any particular tool for that or just using like an Excel spreadsheet?

Hayden Burgess: Yep. So we, in our creative growth program, we have a tool that we share with our clients and it's really just going, okay, let's map out your activities for the week. We are already getting homework from how can we kind of leverage that? And what are the, it is we need to plan into your week on a Tuesday, on a Thursday, so you know they get done. I don't know if it's been in your experience, but in my experience, when we get busy, we don't undo that stuff.

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Hayden Burgess: But that's the thing, creating consistency is something that will come five years down the line, and depending on how fast your business grows, how many people talk about you, there's going to be a certain point and if you're one man or one woman solopreneur, if you are a small studio, if you're an agency that you'll get to the point where consistency happens anyway, because you've just such a good name in the market, right? But something you can do earlier on is actually go like I'm going to treat this like a serious business, I'm going to do my sales marketing activities on the regular, I'm going to map out which ones are working best for me. And you can start to build that consistency that way.

Ian Paget: It makes total sense, really. Like if you want regular clients, you need to do regular marketing. It's interesting, I'm at a point where I'm quite lucky in that I've been able to have a regular recurring income from clients without having any proper plan.

Hayden Burgess: Really?

Ian Paget: And I'm probably lucky in that sense. But some something I am doing is creating content consistently. Okay. I did have some time off earlier in the year, but over the past, like eight, nine years, I've consistently posted on social media. I've consistently created content. What you are listening to now, or what we're doing now is creating content. So creating podcasts, putting that on my website, stuff like that, even though this content isn't directly targeting my potential clients, it does in itself help with building authority and building a reputation and building authority on Google, on social media and stuff like on search engines.

So I am consistently creating content, but I just made it part of my business. I just made it part of my daily activities. And like you said, that doesn't come straight away. I remember when I first started, it was just you do it now and again, when you kind of feel like doing it, but when you are taking it more seriously, and I'm lucky in that this content generates an income, that income motivates me to keep creating content. So it becomes a self perpetuating thing, but yeah, if you want clients, create content that is attracting those clients consistently.

Hayden Burgess: Yes, yes. A hundred percent. And I think that's something that I learned, and this is something that I teach the people in our program or I kind of, I don't kind of drill into them, but I encourage them to do it, is that when you're creating content, that content's purpose is to raise awareness about you and your brand and your services. At the end of the day, it's to help you grow your business and to find clients. If you help people along the way by giving them ideas and giving them things that can help them in their business, that's amazing. But the whole purpose of creating content is, as I said, to raise awareness, but to also to help you find clients and to help clients find you. And I think the mindset around that is when you are selling work to a client, you are helping them. You're adding so much value to their business.

So I think if you can help them along that path, if you can create content that prompts them, if you can create content that gets them thinking that's the exact challenge I'm having, then they move faster to work with you, they solve their problem and they get a win. Do you know what I'm saying?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Hayden Burgess: But yeah, the content creation thing, I notice a lot of, I see a lot of designers of all types, all types of creatives, I see a lot of the time that they're creating content that seems like it directed at other designers. And if that's an audience for you, like if you're an educator perhaps, then I totally get that. But what I've noticed is that I see a lot of people creating content that isn't relevant to their market and wouldn't make their market go, "I'm having that exact same problem right now. That really could kind of resonates with me because my branding is not attracting the right type of client."

So I think the big thing with content, as you said, it is consistency. It's not being sporadic, it's having your face out in the market so people think of you and when the timing's right, it's one way of kind of nurturing them so they go, "Oh yes. So I was just thinking about Ian. I was just thinking about Hayden. I'll give him a message." But I think it's about being clear with your purpose, for whatever content you are creating. I mean, the podcast that I do with a friend of mine, that's not aimed at my market, it's aimed at other creative because I want to share, and I'm helped them as much as-

Ian Paget: Exactly you are creating content for other creatives, because you have a service for those people.

Hayden Burgess: Yes.

Ian Paget: And in a way I'm doing the same thing. So-

Hayden Burgess: Exactly, exactly. So I think it's kind of different, but I guess my ideology or my idea around that is that if you are a graphic designer and you want to create content that appeals to your market, you need to create content that appeals to them. So what are their pain points?

Ian Paget: Exactly.

Hayden Burgess: And what are their challenges? So they can go, I know an example, we, in my other business, which is our family business, we've been doing that for a long time now, all we do is a simple email and newsletter every fortnight, and generally we'll generate the least one client out of that because we'll be like, here's a key problem that a lot of people in your market might be having. Here's what happens if you don't solve it, and here's some ideas on how you can solve it. And we always have people saying to us, "Ah, I was just having the exact same problem. Let's have a conversation."

So I think the idea, I mean, there's a lot of facets to creating content. If you are a designer creating content for other business owners who could, who could buy your services, there's a lot of parts to that. You want to engage with them, you want to entertain them, you want to educate them about things they haven't considered. So yeah, there's a lot to creating the right type of content, I think.

Ian Paget: So you mentioned about finding pain points and challenges.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: That's easier said than done. I think something that, I mean you can share your thoughts as well, but something that's coming to mind for me, based on past conversation throughout this podcast is the idea of niching down. So if you have a specific target audience in a specific industry, it's easier in those cases to figure out what these pain points and challenges are. Because I think a mistake that a lot of people make is that they have a product and they want to target everybody. But it does become a lot easier when you're like, okay, I'm going to hypothetically target, I'm going to use schools because I know this guy, Craig, that specialises in schools and for whatever reason, that's come to mind straight away.

So when you think of, okay, so I'm a graphic designer, I want to serve schools. That becomes easier because you are isolating that particular industry, and I'm assuming that people listening to this will start thinking of things that schools might have. There might be the school books that people use, the uniforms, all that sort of stuff. You can serve your client by offering those things as some kind of package. So you create a package that's for a school startup package, and it includes graphic design of a syllabus or whatever. I mean, you can start to understand that particular industry so that you can create products that serve them so that you can solve specific problems. So is that the type of thing that you mean with this when you speak about pain points and challenges?

Hayden Burgess: Yeah. Well, totally. I mean, at a deeper level, like if you want to go that deep, you can specifically talk about the pain points of one in industry. I mean, so I've been doing sales training and sales coaching for about eight years now and I guess going from working with different types of business owners, anywhere from robotics companies to scientists, all sorts of really interesting companies to just working in the niche that I work in, a hundred percent there's pain points that are specific to my niche and will be specific to you if you are working a niche, EG schools, but there's broader pain points that you can still talk about if you are a designer who's starting out who doesn't want a niche, or hasn't got to the point where they've just kind of naturally niched from the type of clients that have come to them.

So those general pain points are the same. Like your clients aren't attracting the item type of client, their branding has put them in the wrong kind of position in the market. Those are the types of things you can talk about if you are kind of servicing a wide range of different markets, because at the end of the day, people want to work with you because they want to grow their business. If you're going to do a brand identity for them, if you're going to create a logo for them, they want to have something that makes them feel confident, kind of gives them something they can stand behind. But at the end of the day, it's something that's going to help them make more money and grow more business, oh, sorry, grow their business. So to answer your question, you can go that deep, but you can still, even if you aren't niched, you can talk about general pain points that good branding will solve for a client.

Ian Paget: So would you basically sit down and try and figure out what those pain points are?

Hayden Burgess: Yeah. So to put it in context, one of the things that we teach in our program is we teach how to break down your clients, like what you actually do for your clients, and to the problems that it solves and to the issues that come from those problems, the solution, like what you actually kind of do for them and the benefit. And by doing that, it helps people get really clear about number one, the, the right types of questions to ask when you're in front of a client, because one of the things that we really work on with clients is going, hey, what are the key questions you need to ask that aren't creative questions, they aren't around the vibe, they aren't around what you're going to do for them, but more around why is it important for them and how is it going to positively affect their business. So that, yes, if you wanted to do that, what I would suggest you do is sit down and map out what are the actual problems I solve for my clients? How does working with me positively affect their business? And what are the issues if they don't work with me?

Because I think the clearer you can be about that, the easier it is to create content, the easier it is to talk to clients. And I think it solves one of the biggest problems that I hear all the time in our industry, in that people don't know how to articulate the value of what they do. Like they don't know how to clearly explain to a client why they need to spend X amount and why they need more than just a logo, why they need a secondary logo, why they need this and that, you know? That was a roundabout way of answering your question.

Ian Paget: Oh yeah, exactly. Well, I know when I speak with potential clients, I have an imaginary script. I literally say the same thing. Every single client, I literally say the same thing to them when I have that first conversation, it just, it's not written down, but it's embedded into my brain. And when it comes to logo design, something that I really drill on is the idea that the logo needs to be very versatile. And that goes into the understanding the problems and challenges, because there's loads of graph designers out there. If you need a logo design, there is every price range for every person from free to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So at the cheaper end, one of the problems that you tend to see, and this comes from understanding the market, is that those logos are not versatile. The functionality of those logos haven't been considered.

So something that I speak a lot about when I speak with clients is that you need the logo to work effectively in every scenario. So if it's a fashion company, so a clothing company, and I've spoken to a few of them recently, that's one scenario where you need it to be incredibly versatile because you want it to be able to work effectively on the outside of a store, you want it to work effectively on clothing, but there's going to be scenarios where the, like the handle on a zip or a button, what if you put the logo on there really tiny? You want to make sure works effectively, and that comes down to, like you said, what are the problems and challenges and understanding that, and even though I personally don't yet target a specific niche or industry, although I have seriously considered that and I have been thinking of ways of gradually moving over to that. But when it comes around to just that one thing, understanding things like that, what I've just spoken about, is exactly the type of thing that you are talking about. Someone comes to me, I'm able to highlight a problem or a challenge that they probably would've faced, and I able to speak about it. So the client knows, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think most people know in their head, like most graphic designers, they know what good branding will do for a client, but sitting and mapping out that and actually being clear about it, you've got two things. If you talk about logos needing to be versatile for many different, and really functional, so they can be used on garments, et cetera, et cetera. That's a content piece right there. You know, like you might have clients or people in your audience who don't know who already have a real basic logo that they got for 30 bucks off Fiverr or whatever, how much they spent, and they haven't ever considered that. And that's a content piece I'm right there. And it's also something like you said, you can use in an interview as opposed to saying, "Hey, you know, your logo needs to be versatile."

You phrase it as a question, you say, "Hey, look, I know from working with a lot of clients that one of challenges a lot of clients have if they have done their own logo, if they've got something done cheaper, is that it's not as versatile, and what that means for them is that it's not as functional as it needs to be, they can't use it on this and that. And it proves a challenge because it's hard to read in the clients and their clients can't identify them. What's been your experience with it?"

Ian Paget: That's a good idea. It encourages conversation.

Hayden Burgess: It does.

Ian Paget: It's interesting that you mentioned that, because I was just about to say one of the challenges with creating content like this is it takes ages. I find that type of thing a long time. Like I could dedicate the entire week to that. But one of the challenges that you have is that you have your client work, you kind of need to focus on that, because they paid you, you feel a sense of like you need to get it done. They paid you. So you focus all of your time on that. And then you get into this situation where weeks go by, you haven't done any marketing.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: But you actually bought up something there where we come up with this idea really quickly, so we've spoken about how a logo needs to be versatile. You turn that into a question and that is a question that could so easily just be posted on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn.

Hayden Burgess: Exactly.

Ian Paget: You don't have to prepare a whole article. You don't have to create social media posts, Instagram images. You don't have to do a podcast. You don't have to do any of that. You just created a very quick question. But actually what you're making me think of is that you could turn the answers that you get to those questions into content as well.

A hundred percent, man. I'm all about the kind of milking the content and all about reusing it.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Repurposing it, exactly.

Hayden Burgess: Repurposing... that's the word I was thinking of, but I mean these are, there's an age old copywriting framework, which I teach some of the guys in my program, it's not mine, but it's something that I think is useful for them, which is just problem, agitate solution, which is, hey, you've got a problem, a lot of companies out there, their logo is not very versatile. That's the problem. Then you agitate that. So one of the challenges with that is if you want to branch out and you want to put it on different kind of surfaces, or you want to use it for different things. It means it's hard to read. It means your clients don't identify with it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I'm agitated a bit, and then look, here's the solution. When you're thinking about working with a graphic designer, here's some things you need to consider around what you ask for what you need, what information you need to give them, et cetera. So I think the problem agitates solution framework is a super easy way to create content. And one of my clients, Shay, last week, she's amazing. She does brand identity and also web. She did a story post on that and it was just, here's the problem, you have a website that's not converting. Are you getting lots of a unique and visitors say, but they're not turning into leads. They're not filling out the form. And then she agitated in the second story post, and then here's some ways around that. Here's some things that you can do. Also, I can do it for you and it had a call to action at the end and she got two clients out of that.

So, and the reason I say that is I think like...

Ian Paget: Nice!

Hayden Burgess: Yeah, it was cool. But the reason I say that is because I think sometimes we're afraid to push people's buttons. We're afraid to talk about problems that our clients have because we feel like, oh, that's not right, that's not nice. You know? But my philosophy with sales is, and especially when you're selling creative services is you are creating something so valuable for a client. You're adding so much value to them and their business. If you can help move them along and get them to that solution, to that win, to that outcome faster, that's better for you. Because when you get paid, you get a new client and it's better for the client because they get all the amazing things that come with having a professional brand that makes them feel great about themselves, that means they track clients. So don't be afraid to talk about those problems and push people's buttons. What's stressing them out? Why are things not working for them? Because that gets them to take action.

Ian Paget: So we've spoken about the money side of things. We've spoken about how you monitor where your leads are coming from and briefly about making content. And I've covered those topics in more detail on other episodes, but something I haven't done much of is the actual like sales side of things. So the whole, so you've created content, clients come to you, you now need to convert them into a sale. And I think that's something that's hard. Do you have any advice to recommend to listeners on that side of things?

Hayden Burgess: Yeah. So like that's a massive thing to unpack, but it's something that I'm really excited and I love talking about. So thanks for asking that question. So a lot of clients I work with and a lot of creatives, they don't like to talk about money with their clients because they're worried that if they make income claims, if they make claims about I can help you make X or Y or Z or he here's how what I'm going to do for you is going to create this result. They're afraid that the client will push back and go, well, how can you prove that? How can you prove that my branding or whatever will attract new clients for me, that'll help me grow my business? And so I think a lot of us, we don't talk about money and we think, well, what we do is somewhat hard to measure, the results are somewhat intangible, which I totally agree. It's harder to measure the effectiveness of a brand maybe than it is to measure the effectiveness of a highly responsive and website, say.

But the first thing I would say is if you want to get better at sales, get comfortable talking about money and asking your clients about what they're doing with their business, what their financial goals are. Because really, if you want to convert, I get a lot of people come to me and say, I convert people, I'm really easy. And I say, yeah, but are you charging enough? And they go, no, well I know I'm under charging. I'd like to charge more, but I just don't know how to justify the cost then to the client. So the first thing I would say is get comfortable asking your clients about money, say like, what are you actually kind of looking for? If we do this project together, where are you looking to be in the next year with your business? How much are you looking to grow your own revenue over the next year?

Questions like that. How much does an average client spend with you per visit or per month? What's a lifetime value of a client to you? Because really sales is about connecting two things, an emotional and a logical reason or to put it another way, and an internal and an external reason. So if you are selling a brand identity design, or if you're selling a logo, say, and you want to charge them, I don't know what, say $5,000, the client needs to understand two things. They need to understand they want that logo because it makes them feel good about themselves and makes them feel confident in their business. But they also need to understand how that logo is going to play a part in helping them to generate income. If they want to convert an extra say kind of one client a month, what does that mean for them?

And I think that's where I approach sales a bit differently. Because even though I'm a creative as well, I've been fully ensconced in the business world for almost 10 years now and if you want to put your prices up and you want to sell better, one of the things you need to understand is you need to ask your clients about money and you also need to be able to show them a return on investment. So there's a lot of kind of mystery around how you sell. But one of the first tips I would say to you is get comfortable asking them what are their financial goals? How is what you're going to do for them, help them achieve those goals? What does an average client spend with them? Because you can kind of get those figures and you can start to build a case. And I build a return on investment equation so they understand, well, if I spend $5,000 with you or even say it's $10,000 with you, there's a high likelihood, then I'm going to convert an extra one or two clients a month. And that might be $20,000 for them say per month. So money is number one with sales. Does that resonate with you, Ian?

Ian Paget: It does. Do you ever find that clients aren't willing to talk about those figures?

Hayden Burgess: They would be, if you didn't ask them in the context of like a greater questioning model. So we teach our clients a questioning model, which is basically broken down into four parts, which is the first part is you kind of set the frame. So you set yourself up as a consultant by just simply introducing yourself and letting them know that the focus is going to be on them but that then you're in control of the core. And the second part of that is really planting seeds and looking for potential challenges. So because a client may know they need a logo, but if you can attach that to a business growth goal, if that's something they may be kind of missing out on, so it's a loss or a gain, then that gives them more, what's the word? It gives them more understanding and more reason to really want to work with you. Does that make sense?

Ian Paget: Yeah, it does. I'm finding it really interesting because I'm probably an ideal customer for your services because I tend to have a script, like I said, and I've got to a point where I'm comfortable saying a certain figure.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: And I feel a bit awkward saying a figure above, I'll be completely honest, I feel really uncomfortable saying prices above a thousand. It just feels weird. Well, I've got a head trash because there was a point when I started out where I was quoting like 50 pounds and I would have people saying you're not worth that. I literally had someone saying I can get a lot cheaper than that.

Hayden Burgess: Oh man.

Ian Paget: And I find that hysterical now because that is like bargain basement prices.

Hayden Burgess: I know.

Ian Paget: Yeah. And I'm at a point now where I'm charging way more than that and I just have this weird, I just feel awkward saying prices above a thousand. I do that frequently now, but I still feel awkward.

Hayden Burgess: I think, yeah. Sorry.

Ian Paget: I never ask about the money. I never ask how much they're making, how much they're bringing in. And actually what you're making me realise is it gives me a good idea on how much they have available to invest and how much that could theoretically, say if they had a new identity and what they currently have now is poor.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: I know that that will probably, hypothetically bring in at least one new client. And if it's say, for the sake of it, in a state agent and they're selling properties that are half a million and they make 2% on that, the us a lot of money, and if they can sell one more of those each month by redesigning their leaflets and marketing material and store, then you should comfortably be able to charge that amount of money, because it's like look, that next month you are going to be able to get one more, you are going to be able to sell that one extra property that will cover the cost of this. And it gives you, it gives you the difference between people that have no money versus people that do have a lot of money. And it would probably make me feel a lot more comfortable to say prices above a thousand because it's like, yeah, you've got that money easily.

Hayden Burgess: Exactly. And that's the thing, that's what I say to people. I say, don't say to them, look, I know that if you get a new logo, if you get like a full brand identity that it's going to make you X amount. But what you can say is look, your identity is what attracts people. If that's attracting the right type of people or the wrong type of people, that's going to have an effect on your business. I know that this is only one part in the greater machine, which is all there is to your marketing stuff you do, your copy, all that, but I read a stat that was from the Design Council UK and they said that for every one pound spent on branding, a company can expect to make 25 pounds back in revenue.

So what I say to people in my group is you don't have to prove the stuff. You don't have to say to someone I'm going to guarantee you that you'll get one more client, but you know they probably will. So if they kind of push back and say, how can you prove that? Say, well, I can't prove that, what I'm doing for you is only one part of a greater system or greater machine, but what I can tell you is I can share this stat with you, which is from the Design Council, I can share with you a case study of a client who generated X amount of new work after working with me. So I think people are afraid when they're selling to make bold statements. And I'm not saying you have to, and I'm not saying, I mean, people don't expect you to prove that stuff, but if you can show them enough reason, then they go, oh, I see. It's an investment for me.

So a super simple example of this is I did a super simple logo job for a dude, I won't say [inaudible 00:39:47] obviously, but I charged I'm $1,600 in New Zealand. And before I even talked about the price, I went through our system which we teach, which is like, I'm setting the frame, I'm finding out his why, like what's the challenge he wants to solve through this project? Is there a loss for him or a gain for him? Creating an urgency, which is in the third part of that. So why is it important for you to do this now and not in six months time? And then at the end of it, I said, well, you've just said to me that your average client's going to spend with you about an X amount per month or per week it was, and I worked out that he was going to be making about a thousand dollars a day from this new business. His primary means of generating work was going to be these business cards that we did, so giving them out and talking to people, right?

So I felt quite comfortable saying $1,600, because I'd already found out that he was going to be making about $5,000 a week anyway. And using the collateral I created for him was going to be his predominant way of finding business. So, I'm just making sense, but I guess what I'm saying is getting comfortable, talking about business like numbers, people, we have a different language with how we talk about stuff because we understand it all. But most business owners don't, so it's talking about things in their terms and that comes down about return on investment as one of the primary things.

But going back to what you said before about charging 50 pounds for a logo, I think the other mindset shift is that if you are too cheap, people don't see the same amount of value in what you do. It's like if you buy a really, really cheap logo somewhere, right? And you go, I'm going to use this for a couple of weeks and it doesn't really matter too much. But if someone invests proper money in you, do you know what I mean? They go, I'm going to use this, I'm going to make the most of it, I'm going to listen to you. And I think people find when they put their prices up, their clients like start to see them in a different light. And I think you need to frame yourself as a consultant because I know, I've talked to clients before and you'll put the price out and they go, oh that seems like a lot. And there's immediately this divide between you as a creative and them as a real business owner. Do you know what I mean? It's like they see you as a different type of, kind of like an alien sometimes I think, you know?

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's been enlightening having this conversation because I've seen value based pricing conversations previously, I've spoken about on the podcast before, but actually there was a sentence that you said about five, 10 minutes ago, I can't remember exactly what it was, but how you explain how like redesigning the logo can make them more money using stats from sources.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: That's really clever because you're not having to say, hypothetically how much more money can you make if you get two new clients this month? You don't need to do all of that sort of stuff. It's just painting a picture of it using stats that's freely available, that's done through research, and able to present that back. It's interesting, because like I said, I don't normally, I've got to a point in my business where I have a set script that I run through, I kind of sell a product, I understand what I'm selling, all this sort of stuff. I can answer all their questions and things like that, but I have a set price, they can either afford it or not. And I'm well aware that there are times when I'm probably too expensive for them or I'm probably like I could probably make a hell of a lot more money, but I don't know because I'm not talking about how much money they're making. I'm not asking the questions that you are, and I like the way that you've asked them because it's not too intrusive. It seems very genuine. It seems more like a consultant. It seems like you are coming in and actually wanting to help them make more money, and that's the focus. It's a change of mindset.

Hayden Burgess: Oh, it is a hundred percent and something we're talking in the group on Tuesday and we have our calls on Tuesdays, and one of the guys in the group, who's our mutual friend, he was like, we can just talk about it in a demographic way. You know? Like you need to find a find out about their audience, about their demographic, their market demographics, et cetera. So it's just kind of weaving it into the conversation and the way that we teach it is that it's a very natural thing just to put into it, because you're asking them about their business goals as much as you're asking them who are you trying to appeal to? What's the vibe? What are the kind of key ... you know what I'm saying?

And it, yeah, it was funny you mentioned value based pricing. Like we've been teaching a model of that for years and years. And that's what I learned from my dad. And then when I started this business, I realised that it's actually quite a prevalent thing that people teach in our industry. So I was like, oh, that's good. I'm glad I'm doing something right. But I think value based pricing is interesting, because you can go kind of two ways with it. You can go, I'm going to price every single project based on the value. So I need to find out those answers and I need to go, well, there's a potential win for you of a 100K, so I'm going to say, well, what amount of that would you be uncomfortable to invest in our project? And then they say 10, 20% or whatever.

That's one way. But I think another way to do it is, and I think maybe a slightly easier way to do it and a nicer way to do it is to go, well, I've got an idea of how much I want to charge you. I've got packages say, or I have a rough idea, not everything's bespoke, I've got a rough idea that you need to spend $5,000, but you're creating the value by asking those questions. So they understand they can potentially make $20,000 say, so you're not pricing it based on how much you're going to make, but you are justifying the investment based on how much they could make. Does that make sense?

Ian Paget: Oh yeah. And I think that's a much nicer way of doing it because-

Hayden Burgess: I think so.

Ian Paget: It is interesting that you mentioned that value based pricing can kind of go in two directions and the first example that you said, I've kind of always had a bit of an issue with that side with logo design.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Because it's hard to actually measure the success of it. I think it's easy with something like a website, it's like if you can increase the amount of conversions and make certain amount of sales, you can measure all of that. And, and you can kind of to some degree guarantee certain figures because to be honest with a website, you can manage the conversion rate. You can add on tracking things that monitor traffic, where it's all going and all that sort of stuff.

So you can kind of to some degree guarantee certain aspects of that, and it's easier to speak about measurable goals because you're talking about sales. But with something like logo design, it's one of those things where, I mean to give an example, I had a client last week, I did a logo for them about a year ago. They wanted to change the A and would that actually make them any money? No, it wouldn't. It doesn't really matter. It's just like an aesthetic thing, wouldn't actually make a big difference, but I think that's the type of thing where it's more personal to them. They value it in a different way.

Hayden Burgess: Yes.

Ian Paget: But it's interesting that you say that value based pricing can go in these two different directions and actually that second nicer way that you said I can see how that would work better for logo design. Because like I said, I've kind of gone down the fixed pricing direction, but actually what you're making me think now is if I am able to speak about the finances and what they're bringing in, I could actually have different tiers of services. So I can probably create a lower end one where I know that they have less money.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Where in cases where they do have significantly more that's when I probably will feel more comfortable to say 5,000, go way above that thousand figure that I feel uncomfortable to speak about because I can understand where they are, what they're trying to achieve, and I can feel confident that they will make that money back easily if I can solve the problems that they have.

Hayden Burgess: Yes.

Ian Paget: And it becomes easier to actually have that conversation with them because you understand financially how they're doing. You can, because sometimes I do charge more like in cases where I know that I want to spend more time on the project.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: Like I worked with a company called Shark Bite. It's a game on Roblox. It's pretty big. Like Roblox is a huge game and Shark Bite's hugely successful. And just because of the nature of the project, I wanted to spend more time on it because it was more creative, there's more that I could do with it. So I wanted to charge more to justify that. And it's interesting that when you do start to understand pricing, and it seems pretty obvious really when you start thinking about it, but when you do have that true understanding, you can make the amount of money that you should do really from that client. So there's probably been many cases where I've significantly the undercharge because I've totally underestimated the amount of money that they probably will be making by me helping redesign that logo or that identity.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah, exactly. And I think you've actually brought up three really good points and I'll try and kind of dive into all of them, they'll be useful for anyone listening. The first being is that whatever you sell to your client, you need to sell them what they need, and I know talking to clients who have just started with me or people I just kind talk to in the market, they've often said I sell someone something because I don't think they can afford what they actually need. But my big idea is that I think you need to try and sell them the solution that they actually need. If they need more than a logo, if they need all the bits that come with it, that's what you need to sell them because if you them what you think they can afford, they won't get the same results. And if they don't get them the same results, they won't come back to you for more work.

So I think really it comes down to understanding them really well by asking good business questions. I call them kind of business questions. I guess you might call them kind of functional questions, but understanding where they actually want to go with their business and grounding any creative conversation you're having and a return for them as much as possible. I think if you're going to have bespoke pricing, that's totally fine. As long as people are closing on that first interview. What I usually tell people is obviously sometimes you have to go away and work out how long something's going to take, how something might cost. But we always say get that commitment from them, and that comes down to ball parking it and going, well, it's going to be between X and Y. Are you okay to go ahead with that? I'll work out on the final pricing and work out on what you need.

Because I think one of the mistakes we make is sometimes we don't finish conversations or we don't, I guess kind of what you'd call advance the sale. So when you're with clients, I say to everybody that I work with, make sure you set the next smaller step. If that's you need to go away and put a proposal together, kind of get a commitment that they're good to go ahead once they find out their final price, as opposed to I'm leaving things open. It's like if you meet with a client and they say, oh, I think about it and you go, okay, cool. I let me know once you've had a chance to go over the proposal and we'll talk about it then. Something as simple as going, okay when would you be likely to kind of go over that and get back to me? And they say, oh, I'll probably Tuesday next week. And you say, cool, is it okay if I call you on Wednesday just to see if you got any questions? It's simple. Things like that, man I'm going on a total tangent, sorry.

Ian Paget: No, no, it's all good. It's all good. I mean, I've been in those scenarios where I've spoken to a client that's called me.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: And time has gone by and I've decided just to check in with them and when I've checked in with them, they've gone ahead. But if I didn't, they probably wouldn't have done. It's nice to keep that conversation going and speak to them. So I don't think that was a tangent at all. It's totally, totally relevant.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: We've been speaking for an hour.

Hayden Burgess: It's good. I think we're-

Ian Paget: How is that possible? That's gone really fast.

Hayden Burgess: I'm glad it's useful. I was going to say one other cool idea, and this is something I learned from my dad. It's the simple things that can get you more clients and will make the in life easier for you. One of the things that I don't know if everyone does this, but a lot of people would email a proposal and follow up with the client, as simple as going, hey, I've, I've put a proposal together, I'm happy to send it to you. Can we send it an appointment for the day after or the day after that to go through it and answer your questions? Or even better, I know a lot of people do this, but some people don't, deliver the proposal in person, so you can kind of walk them through it. It's those small things that can mean you don't get clients or clients muck you around or it draws a sales cycle out.

Ian Paget: Cool. Brilliant. I think this has been absolutely amazing. There's been so many really good nuggets of information in this that I found useful, so I can imagine that listeners will find it useful as well. But yeah, like I said, we've been speaking for an hour now and I know we can keep chatting, especially about sales and marketing. But yeah, I think what I would like people to do is go and check out your content, because I know you have a course, you've got a podcast, you've got all sorts of stuff. So what I'll do is I'll link to all of that in the show notes so that people can check out. Like I said, there's been golden nuggets in there, so surely in that course of yours, it's probably full of even more amazing gems.

Hayden Burgess: Thanks, Ian.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Hayden, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been really great to properly chat with you.

Hayden Burgess: Hey, no worries, and I apologise, I just did a maniacal laugh before when you said we were talking for an hour, because I was like, I could talk all day about this, but thank you so much. I've got a free group on Facebook, which I run, which I'm sure you'll post a link to, and I think my big thing with anything I do is whether it's selling, whether it's talking to clients, whether it's giving away free advice, it's really what we do, what I do, what you do. It's about adding value, and selling really is about adding value. And to get more confidence with clients is number one, having a process, and just as important as that is understanding that like what you do does create tangible results for your clients. And if you understand that, then it just becomes so much simpler and in turn that creates more confidence, you know?

Ian Paget: Yeah, exactly. I mean that's, at the end of the day, that's the beauty of marketing is that is not necessarily about just pumping out ads to startups or doing all this sort of stuff, it's providing helpful content so that people can know, like and trust you, and you can build a reputation. And then obviously once they get in touch, that's when it comes around to the sales call, and I feel we covered a lot of that. I've got other podcasts that go into a lot of those things in more detail.

Hayden Burgess: Yeah.

Ian Paget: But yeah, like I said, there's been several golden nuggets in this that's got my cogs going.

Hayden Burgess: Awesome.

Ian Paget: Hopefully listeners have got the same out of this as well, so cool. Thank you so much, Hayden. It's been good to chat.

Hayden Burgess: Hey, thank you so much, Ian. I really appreciate it. And I thank you from having me on. And last thing I'll say is I think the group you run is amazing. Like it's such a great resource for creatives, and when I found out I was like, wow, this is good people with really cool work. So yeah, I appreciate what you do as well.

Ian Paget: Yeah, no worries. It's everyone helping everyone. I don't see it as my group, it's our group, it's the community of people. So that's my goal.

Hayden Burgess: Awesome. Thanks, Ian.