🔴 How to Qualify Design Clients & Position Your Work - AMA with Chris Do | Live

it's Thursday and we're back for another edition of AMA this time we've prepared so it's going to be a lot smoother I hope and let's make sure our mics are working Aaron's in the shop Aaron say hello hello everyone can we cut the Aaron there we are Aaron looks a little scary this is his police lineup right all right what are we gonna do today guys what are we doing look at this I got cards I've got your questions and if you're one of the people that I tag uh lucky Chen Rachel Macy or Massey Vincent La tag Anna Maria Marco Eric Peterson who else we got here Anna rubinsky and I'm sure I'm butchering everybody's name I apologize in advance and gupreet Danja I'm sure I messed that up I'm going to be answering your question anybody else that's tuning in plus there's a special one that I'm going to be talking about Chris Jones who's kind of coming hard at me with his dispute that the whole pricing value thing doesn't make any sense to him and we'll get to that too and plus we'll answer any of the questions that you have and maybe we'll do like a little live call hello can you guys hear me yeah we'll do that we'll do that too we'll take your calls live on Facebook via Facebook Messenger so when I prompt you guys to call me all my Facebook profile okay should we get the show going we all good guys all right let's go all right so let's uh let's open up the show with lucky Chen lucky asks how to get notice as a potential designer without actively seeking customers um well let me just rephrase that question a little bit I think he just wants to get attention from potential employee employers or freelance clients so what do you have to do to do that Aaron what do you think he has to do what does Lucky have to do to get work without actively seeking customers I think when he says actively seeking he's probably meaning cold calling or doing cold emails or something like that and lucky if you're on right now I'm gonna turn my Facebook on if you're on ring me up on Facebook okay call me right now lucky I don't know what time zone you're in but if you're tuning in maybe you have this opportunity and everybody else get ready to call me Aaron what do you think sounds like he needs to put himself out there and some process stuff oh okay he has to get his work out into the world now Aaron I noticed something about you I just need to point something out first of all you have a lot less hair and you look a lot thinner it's not just the lighting it is dinner and you're looking very vascular today just want to point that out you've been hitting the gym what are you doing why don't you show us a muscle or something show the old muscle that's right he's looking good ladies single are you single I'm single single ready to mingle yeah okay anyways this is not a dating show let's get into it how to get notice as a potential designer without actively seeking customer we've talked about this before you guys the way you're going to get a customer is you have to be found you have to be findable how are people going to find you right now and the thing that I've mentioned many many times already and we'll we'll do it again because maybe you're tuning in for the very first time instead of berating you I'm going to say you have to be on platforms where people go to find designers now if you're a graphic designer a great place to be found is Instagram Instagram is a great place for people who do things visually okay so start posting process document your work be a documentarian of your own creative process and share little bits of it it's nice to see finished projects but it's much better to onboard clients than share your process and this is the perfect place to share process not necessarily in your portfolio show sketches show drawings show your research show your inspiration what else can they show Aaron maybe models or prototypes you've built what do you think oh the ladies chiming in right now they're like okay there you go is that better you have to say something all right so here I am let's come back to me so you guys the other way you can get noticed is to start putting your work up on the hands we've talked about this many times before you can also do it on dribble but behance is my preference a lot of people go there myself included go there to find potential designers illustrators artists to work with calligraphers logo designers identity designers it doesn't matter what country you're in to me it doesn't if you do good work and you show a consistent body of work what's consistent maybe three to five pieces something like that Mark is everything cool three to five pieces and you need to spend time presenting the work in a very professional way use beautiful mock-ups and if you've done a drawing that was like really loose and grungy redraw it make it really presentable think about each one of these things as a potential way to onboard a new client all right so lucky that's it for you let me go on to the next one let me see if anybody else is here okay so Rachel Massey if you're in the house why don't you give me a call she wants to know about how to qualify clients what do you do to qualify your clients okay and maybe we can open it up for anybody that wants to ask additional questions about what lucky asked about about how to be found how to get notice um if there's anybody that's asking a question based on that right now feel free and Aaron will field your question anything there Aaron so far nothing on that topic nothing on that topic should we give it a couple of seconds or you still do look like a serial killer right now the lighting on you well that's not my fault The Usual Suspects right now well we need the lineup behind you okay are we monitoring both Facebook and YouTube Aaron yeah okay well you know what we're gonna move on so let's talk about how to qualify clients I'm gonna put this down because I want to talk with my hands all right here we go you guys noticed the lighting on the side a little separation now so I'm not like bleeding into the black it's not just a floating head anymore okay that's oh here it is Vince on the tag Vince on the tag since you're on call me Vincent call me right now I'm gonna text him right now okay we got a question here okay about uh what you were hoping someone would ask about okay go ahead who's that from uh Mark Malik okay Malik he says my dream design company is holding a Friday bar tomorrow so I guess they're meeting up at a bar somewhere okay and he's thinking what's the best way to make a good first impression his company is hosting a Friday bar the company he wants to work for oh I see I see okay and he has this opportunity to go there so what should he do well should he prepare anything what should he say if he talks to someone okay I'm not the best person to ask about how to break the ice in a social Gathering that's really tough my suggestion is go there with a friend make it a little bit more comfortable for you and try to have a real conversation with somebody try to find out what's going on in their lives don't go in there with the intent to sell something or to thrust a business card in somebody's hand those I don't personally like those kind of interactions I would suggest genuinely asking people about what they do at their what they do at the office what their challenges are what try to discover what their pain points are okay well you know what I'm gonna move on because Vincent is on and I'm gonna call him right now so Vincent here we go let's see if this works I have Vincent's question here so Vincent you know you need to remember come on Vincent Vincent come on Vincent pick up the phone okay Vincent doesn't want to pick up the phone all right we'll come back to Vincent later all right um we got some more questions here about the same topic yeah okay go ahead is Facebook ads to an article you write or a website a good idea that's not about what we just talked about getting clients getting just getting noticed getting noticed getting noticed yeah that's like really aggressive now we went from doing social media doing content marketing sharing our process to straight up hitting advertising I believe Facebook ads are a great way to generate interest towards an article You're Building possibly even go to your site but I think the best thing you can use a Facebook ad for Israel to promote a valuable piece of content now a lot of people think that if I send people to my site they're going to buy just remember guys there's micro transactions that happen little levels of escalating levels of commitment that people are going to make so before they go and hire you they want to get value from you first they want to see your work they're going to check your references they want to see what clients you've worked with so I want you to think about in those terms so if you created a valuable piece of content maybe create an ad and send traffic there just so that people can learn about you to know that you're genuine that you're an expert that you can actually provide value to them I think that's a great way to have a real relationship with somebody okay we've done that ourselves the topography manual that we put out first we created as PDF and then we turn it into an animation I think we boosted that via Facebook just because we want people to know like we're good designers and we know how to animate as well but the point of it all is to have them look at something that's not a commercial not an ad I'm not trying to sell you anything so that a real relationship can begin and matter of fact today design taxi picked up our animation on their blog they featured the typography manual on their blog so you see how that works and then they're going to send more eyeballs more potential clients and designers towards our site and that's what we want okay so I try to call Vincent and Vincent won't pick up let's see who else is on here I'm not seeing anybody else oh hold on Anna Marie I'm live so let me try and call her Anna Maria Marcou hopefully I said that right it's ringing guys oh she's gonna answer hello Anna hi Anna can you say something please your cameras are you pointing at the ceiling hello is she giggling are you giggling I hope she turned off her camera crying no crying on the show and I'm gonna call you up call me back when you're ready Anna Aaron's saying get off the phone all right call has ended so someone just threw us a donation and a question okay what's the question Jonathan Jerome thank you Jonathan Jerome and his question I want a job at an agency like RGA where I can get really strong feedback on my work is this a good direction for a designer unsure of his Focus that's like four questions in one that's a complicated one so he wants to work at RGA so we assume that RGA is a great place to work at that you're going to get really direct feedback on your work I assume anywhere you go to work at where there's a infrastructure or some kind of hierarchy that they're going to give you feedback that's not a problem when working with a company so I I like that as an option if you can get a job there I think you're going to find out really quickly if that kind of work is going to be in your future or not because sometimes we have these ideas about what we want to do and we actually do it either we're not interested or the people who are working with don't think we're good enough to do that work okay so that's the best that I got for that hopefully that works for you let me try to call Anna again Anna come on Anna let's try this again all right so we're going to move through these questions in a little bit we I didn't even get to answer the question about that Rachel asked Rachel Massey what was it um about how to qualify clients oh I'm gonna answer that come on in I don't think she wants to answer the phone now I'm gonna give it two more seconds and we're hanging up I got some good questions here hold on hold on to your questions I want to answer the questions here first we'll ping pong back and forth yes I'm just building them up so build them up Aaron just let me know build them up okay here we go here's the next question this is Rachel Massey and I have already asked this question maybe you guys have had a chance to think about it and maybe I'm gonna prompt you guys right now so here's our question and then I want you to type in what you think the answer is okay and I'll give you a Beat then I'll tell you what my answer is and then you we can compare notes and see if we're talking about the same things or not so Rachel asked I love to hear you talk about how to qualify clients as a business person if at all okay so yes most definitely we need to qualify potential clients potential clients they're not clients until they hire you okay now you guys go ahead and type in the answer right now how do you qualify clients what are you basing that on let's see are any answers coming in and just read them out either on Facebook or on YouTube Aaron I'm looking okay so far it's just more questions now okay guys stop stop asking the questions answer my question how do you qualify clients or values value what does that mean just value okay what else questionnaire a questionnaire so you're going to Quest ask them these kind of questions like what's in the questionnaire though you're answering a question with a question so on their budget okay so value budget by experience you'll just sends a bad client how do you know it's a bad client how strong their handshake is is that what they're saying yeah I'm reading what they're saying someone who pays you for your work goals experience goals experience okay time money value time money value engagements minimum level games Jacob good job on the minimum level engagement you must be reading the win without pitching Manifesto or been watching our shows most absolutely okay well someone asked why do they want to work with you something you you said right why do they want to work with you well you ask them that like what are they going to say for you to qualify them though that's the thing okay what are you gonna say we have tons more I can read them off or you can continue if you find a good one or not okay do we two more three more go ahead um budget deadline value the relationship you have with them Market Authority presence work history okay if they have a good brief all right those are all pretty good answers I think oh Anna Marie hold on don't don't call me right now I'm about to answer something and I'll call you right back Anna Marie okay now here's the thing in the real world we form friendships and relationships with people who have what who have a who have common interests shared values and beliefs so then you have to Define what those beliefs and values are so that you can determine if somebody's a good fit for you the first thing I want to say to you guys is this just because a client comes calling doesn't mean they're a good fit for you you need to just understand that right out of the gate so many of us operate under the scarcity mindset that as soon as a client calls no matter what they say no matter what they do whatever their beliefs are how crappy their products and services are we're ready to jump so we have to just realize that first not everybody calls you is a good fit for your business just like everybody that you meet isn't potentially your life partner just think about it in those terms okay so you're going to ask questions to determine if there's a good fit for a lot of us it's going to be about the budget okay so what is the budget that you want to work in now for a company like ours we know that a client needs to have somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars for us to do work with them it's just because we have a big operation there's lots of overhead and we have to hit our monthly overhead number and when we don't do that we're going to lose money so we know it's right around a hundred thousand dollars okay it can scale up from there so you just kind of need to know that so when I'm talking to a client whether I'm in person or over the Internet or any other form video conferencing telephone I will ask them before we go too deep into this I don't want to waste your time I want to make sure that we're fit for each other how much money do you have for this Initiative for this logo for this branding project for this website redesign for this marketing campaign how much money do you have and oftentimes they're going to say something like I don't know you're the expert you tell me and most of times they do know they almost always know right and they're reluctant to say because they think you're going to take advantage of them so if they say we have ten thousand dollars you you might go for 12. so there's that reluctance and that's totally okay so what you do is you say well in my experience for that kind of work it's going to be between this price and that price so you can say it's going to be between five to ten thousand dollars and then you're going to get a feel for them and they're going to say okay yeah we do have that so now we can continue the rest of the conversation what's the rest of the conversation well what are you looking for now that you have the right budget they might come back and say well we need 45 versions of the logo or we need to make this project last a year and that's not going to work for you either so now I'm considering time schedule resources deliverables number of revisions I'm also looking at am I interested in the work that they do their product their service their app whatever it is so if they do something that say harm children I might not be interested in doing that and then I thank them for the time and I possibly can recommend or refer them to a friend or somebody else that is interested in doing that and I feel this way okay just like in relationships for every guy there's a girl out there for you for every girl there's a guy out there for you I'm just not the right person I'm not judging you I hope you don't judge me and that's totally okay okay now I'm going to jump back in I'm going to call who is this is that you hi hi did you put on your pants is this Anna it's all right let me turn on the volume here okay I'm gonna take this off so people hold on first of all I want to say hi hello can you see me okay I'm gonna show the people here all right guys okay so I have your question here so this is pretty cool when the technology works you guys um all right so here we go I want to look at you now okay I have your question in front of me because I'm going to read it for the people okay and then if you want to ask a follow-up question we'll do this I'm going to put you back on hold on a second look at that come on lock in all right here we go you okay you're fully clothed all right you're good well I'm happy to see you too where are you from okay she's originally from Romania and now she lives in Vienna I've been to Vienna once before it's beautiful beautiful country okay here we go um how do you handle a first meeting online or in person that you just that you don't just come out of the gate and ask for something right that's kind of what you're asking for because you heard me talk about this when people friend me on LinkedIn when they ask like they want to sell me something right away hey do you want a health spa package for you and your wife do you want to buy this book or we can help you optimize your SEO and all these kind of things I get really turned off by that personally because you don't know me we haven't even established any kind of Rapport so you know what I do I delete those emails and if they come again hard I'm just going to block them and unfriend them instantly okay so this we're talking about how to ask for something that you want right can you hear me okay how do you ask for something that you want you don't want to seem too pushy and you don't want to sound weird or suspicious those are words that Anna said right weird or suspicious there you see that guys we're the suspicions and it's okay all right so on one end of the spectrum is a really pushy salesperson on the other end of the spectrum is a person who can never get the question out and so they never get anything it's like you stand in that room and there's that pretty girl or that handsome guy and you've been you've been eyeballing them the whole time and you just think oh my heart skips a beat for you and you never ask then that ugly person that jerk comes in and asks and you're like oh my gosh they're going out on a date it's because I couldn't ask okay so somewhere in between these two is where you want to be and I'm going to tell you a technique that I use and it works quite well all right what you want to do is to break the ask down into little Parts little pieces little levels of Engagement okay let's just say you build websites what do you do Anna oh she's an architect okay oh this is a little bit trickier let's pretend you're not an architect that's too hard okay okay fine fine now we can do an architect you residential commercial both more commercial okay so who might you meet that you're gonna ask for a project who might you who might you meet developer okay okay here's how I want you to think about this guys we're gonna take the will you hire me question and we're gonna break it into little chunks okay so the end of it you're gonna say will you hire me that's cool that's fine so we're going to build up to that so you're gonna start with something like I noticed that you you develop a lot of projects and are you ever looking for external help you ever feel like you've got too much to do so I'm trying to establish need is there a need for the things that I do you see and then they're like yeah you know what sometimes we get really busy and then you're like oh oh okay there's opportunity here sometimes we get really establish need first okay because you want to help them solve a problem so what you're doing is you're you're asking open-ended questions to surface a problem that you potentially can solve so now we're building a bridge from cold like I just met you to I'm going to ask you for a job okay yeah you know actually yeah we we work with several architectural firms and then the next question might be something like uh are you 100 satisfied with them oh wait wait so you have a need for the work and now you're opening it up for like yeah I can get in there so when you say are you 100 satisfied now why did I phrase it that way I phrase it that way because nobody's ever 100 satisfied nobody it's like it's either they weren't responsive the work didn't really meet the caliber I was hoping for they were too expensive uh you know what I just I want change you know they're getting really predictable with the work you're like wow okay well just to let you know I'm an architect and I would love the opportunity to show you my portfolio to show you what our firm can do can we set up a meeting at some point if you have 10 15 minutes I would love to do that yeah okay most people are gonna see yeah cool here's a business card you exchange it and then you follow up right away okay they're all the same they really are you know you're gonna you you gotta remember this you guys when you're working online whether you're working with a person a human being in a room or online you have to use the same kind of rules you wouldn't just come out and blurt it out I know the internet makes it so it could feel like you've got a lot more courage and you can just say things that you wouldn't normally say in real life but I don't know that's a turnout for me right so people who I mean this is a word of warning for all you guys that hit me up people don't realize this but I get hundreds of comments and messages a day and the first thing they ask me is can you review my portfolio can you review my portfolio well I could but then there's like a hundred more that I didn't review today and I'm not going to I just can't I don't have the time but had they just turned it around and said you know I'm a big fan I would like to help you in some kind of way and here's what I do and I see what you do would this be of interest to you establish some Rapport like give me value before you ask for things back you know it's like don't come up to a stranger and say can I borrow 20 bucks it's kind of tough right there's a there's a law of reciprocity so the first move you should do is offer something genuinely and see what happens okay I hope that helps you guys Anna I'm gonna say goodbye I know it's really late and now you can go back to bed I'm sorry for waking you up and fumbling around the phone and it's all good okay all right good night okay you're welcome bye okay let's see that worked out all right that was pretty good Aaron yes Vincent latag he's here okay Vincent La tag I'm gonna try to call you one more time Vincent Aaron Vincent are you ready let me ask him okay ask the question Aaron who just any question well anything you want yeah open it up so someone asked about uh terminology what are some basic business terminology to learn that designers can use to talk with their clients okay that's a really good question give Vincent hang in hang on there I'm about to call you in one second get your microphone your headset get it all ready get your lighting good get your makeup on put your clothes on be ready okay here we go what are some basic business terms that you need to know to be able to be conversant with another business person okay I'm going to give you some other terms but first thing I'm going to do is tell you to do this go out and buy this book it's called the 101 things I learned in business school 101 things that I learned in business school that will give you kind of a really broad overview of some great business Concepts okay this is how business works now if you're not sure or you can't afford it we've done a book review on the 101 things that I learned in Business School where I pulled out a few nuggets so you can look at that okay and plus you can also go to my Facebook page Christo business designer and I have some terms that I'm starting to Define why is it important to understand these terms you might ask it's important because we need to speak the common language so they're going to speak the business the language of business and you're going to speak the language of design it's almost like you're speaking French and they're speaking German and you can't see eye to eye so don't expect them to come to you go to them okay so learn some of the business terms so you might learn the term Roi which stands for return on investment meaning if I pay or spend this amount of money what kind of return will I get so if I spend a hundred dollars on this marketing campaign might that yield 300 in revenue for us so that's a 300 Roi return on investment that's one term you need to know another what's another term you hear me say or Jose say what's another business term RFP okay RFP our RFP stands for request for proposal this is different than a budget and a schedule a lot of you guys produce estimates that have a budget a schedule and what deliverables are an RFP has things in it like customer testimonials they want to know how big your team is they want the biography of all the team members all the key players they'll want to know about your process and you're going to need to answer very specific things in the RFP we sell a whole kit that teaches you how to respond to an RFP so we're not going to go too deep into that but these are the beginnings of learning about business terms you might learn about gross profit versus net profit what revenue is who the c-suite are that's the CEO the cro the CMO the people in the C Executive Suite okay that's what that stands for things about alignment you know like getting in alignments like we see eye to eye key stakeholders the stakeholders like who are the stakeholders well there are the investors the marketing team the the technology officer the CEO the chief Revenue officer those are stakeholders and the employees and the customers are stakeholders what else sow sow is called uh that's short for scope of work that's basically defining what the project looks like in terms of what their expectations are scope of work are we doing 35 lifetime value shoot I don't know what that means overages overages um pay-per-click all these kind of whatever there's a bunch of times there's too many terms we're not going to sit here and do that I'm going to call Vincent latag right now and so here we go hang in there guys calling Vincent Vincent pick up he's connecting Vincent what's up man hey man all right he's on he's on guys here we go I'm going to show you turn off your speaker dude you got a little delay action go you got to turn off your speaker okay one stream at a time all right that's a cool voice he's got a cool voice you like his voice Aaron likes your voice man all right Vincent you don't know what question you asked but guess what I have your question Vincent see that do you know right there boom okay here we go all right here's what Vincent asked let's see if he has a good question he's got a good voice let's see if his questions any good he said should I focus on local or International clients he says local they're mostly low budget but possible for more clients International High budget but there's a lot of competition on the market right because you're working and competing against everybody now both he's he's stating they request the same kind of work all right so Vincent since I have you online you can just talk to me here it's almost like you've answered your own question should I work with local low budget but there's lots of low budget work do you want a lot of low budget work Vincent do you want a lot of low budget work hey where you calling from oh he's from the Philippines what time is it there right now 7 38 am or 7 30 a.m okay he's in the Philippines um look I'm going to answer the question for you this hits a lot of people who watch this show you guys are in a different market and the design or the local economy there is not great they pay very little money because the cost of living is low so wages are low everything is low and there's no way you can change that ecosystem it's very difficult and you may run into some really uh wealthy entrepreneurs who think on a global scale and they see you as a local person that they'd like to work with and support the local economy every once in a while that happens and I can see that happening but it's not that often you're much better off going after International clients from the U.S from Australia from the UK from Canada okay so a couple things you need to do you need to appear as if you're based out of one of those countries okay so that means your site should be in English okay you can have an alternate side in your look in your native language but have it be English speaking or you have to have English there and you need to make sure that it's proper English and the grammar and the spelling is correct appear as if you're an international player on the market and that's going to help you out a lot now there is a lot more competition but the reward is worth it okay now I love fishing so I'm going to use a fishing metaphor for you okay I don't like going out on the water with tiny little hooks with tiny little bait and catching tiny little fish because I'm out in the sun all day long and I'm just baking out there and it's it's no fun I'd rather use a bigger hook bigger bait and Target bigger fish that doesn't mean I'll catch as many but the one I catch will feed me for quite some time and bigger fish they're a lot smarter they're a lot more picky about what they eat and when you get them on the line they fight a lot more they're pulling and they're resisting but when you get it in when you get that sucker in the boat it's really rewarding there's some stupid comment online somebody okay Aaron pull yourself together be professional here Aaron okay all right so if your work isn't good enough if your work isn't good enough you need to start working on it so that it looks like everything else that you're seeing now it's a lot easier to do this than you think a lot of you guys see work from Big Global Brands and from multinational companies and you're like wow that's so good I wish one day I could do work like that well guess what reverse engineer the project reverse engineer okay literally take some of their work so take some of their comps in their design and redo the whole thing exactly the way they did it learn from that okay there's this thing I believe in this Theory right like your your hand knows what your mind doesn't quite perceive just yet so it'll start to learn it'll start to make certain decisions and hopefully that little light bulb goes off where you start to see like oh they chose that typeface they chose those colors they arranged it this way oh look it lines up to their Grid in this way their choices in photography are different than yours and sooner than later you're going to learn how to do work just like them all right that's where the money's at that's where the opportunities are be an international player okay that's all I got for you I'm gonna bounce it was nice seeing you okay do you have any follow-up questions for me is it related to this question all right go ahead ask away because um go ahead I've been posting content in unreadable hands in YouTube and I'm getting some email emails from Prospect clients however um all of them have just a low budget so I would like to confirm if I'm on the right track but uh my problem is that um those clients uh just um this one uh just need low they have low budget for their projects okay so yeah get to your question what's your question dude uh possibly uh I wanna confirm as I'm on the right track of getting those uh big clients okay see what you get there and all right here's here's your answer you are attracting low-paying clients because I'm going to tell you this it's gonna hurt you are you ready put your guard up okay it's gonna hurt you because I'm gonna hit you right now okay all right because your work attracts low low paying clients it means you like you you look your work looks like it's low budget okay when you work with International Brands let's say for example if I went to European site right now and it looked like it was work done for Nike for Coca-Cola for Apple low budget clients are going not going to call you because they're like wow he's really good he must be expensive so what you have to do is you have to learn how to build up the gate the gate says I do high quality work for some of the biggest brands in the world now you're not going to be able to do that right away obviously because if you had big budget clients you wouldn't be talking to me right now right so here's the deal I told you learn copy borrow steal until you can figure it out start to change your work and then do a couple of spec projects you could totally do spec projects you can do something that that's just self-initiated for Adidas you can design an app if you want you can design a couple of t-shirts you can do whatever you want for any brand as long as you don't claim that you did it professionally that's totally okay now a lot of people are like oh I didn't know that was possible it's like well you know what who told you it wasn't possible you got to do everything you can to make it in this world without lying cheating and stealing but other than that you're good all right make some spec projects for big Brands make it look super sexy follow up with me on online someone sometime when you actually have it and show it to me okay all right I'm gonna hang up on you right now okay take care man be well yeah bye-bye all right let's see who else is online Aaron you got some questions yeah it's about that topic okay go ahead hit me so this guy super chatted us here so so okay drop it on me he's an in-house I don't feel like I have uh so his portfolio and the work he's been doing yep is not that cool like he's not proud of it but he gets paid to do it okay so he's wondering what's his name oh no I'm kind of mixing together like three questions okay so basically it's about if you don't make really cool work how can you get those good jobs you know how can you seem really high budget you can't you can't you you said at the end do spec work like your own thing yeah that's the only way yeah well let's let's look at it like this what's a discount uh retail operation in the clothing business right what's a discount place for clothing yeah Ross Ross okay let's say that I walk into your operation your place of business which is your online presence and it looks like Ross and for those of you guys that are in America you guys know what I'm talking about Ross Marshalls it's kind of the same thing JCPenney that's enough you don't have to add the social okay no offense anybody that shops at Ross Marshalls or JCPenney I used to shop there my parents you know we were poor at one point in time it's fine and Aaron's like all right so let's just say that that's what your online presence looks like where maybe the display isn't all together that's the problem and sizes are all over the place and there's bins of unfolded clothing lying around you know and then when you go say like there was one time in my life that I just desired 501 jeans from Levi's and they would have this stamp on the back and the stamp on the back label would say irregular it means that it didn't pass the inspectors at Levi's so then they instead of destroying them they sent them to a reseller like Ross or Marshalls and basically there's some kind of imperceptible flaw about them maybe the stitching was a little bit off or something weird happened right and you're not going to go pay full price for those things now let's take the opposite end of the spectrum let's say you go to like a really high-end shishi Boutique that is hand curated by somebody on Melrose or on Beverly right something like that well when you walk into those stores like everybody looks beautiful they're very presentable the store is immaculate it's clean lots of wide open space you know you walk into an expensive store when you only see like four racks of clothes because you're like wow those four racks of clothes pay for everything that's in the store versus say like a Salvation Army where they've got wall-to-wall racks okay and that's a different kind of presence so you have to look at your work kind of like that are you in the discount bin or are you going to be in the Ultra Premium bin and you have to start to elevate your taste level you have to start to present your work as if it were really expensive you're not going to be able to attract high paying clients with low low ping looking work okay how do you get there well you do what I just said to Vincent you emulate the work that you admire from the from the companies that are doing at the highest level be like them it's a lot easier than you think because it's hard to invent something but when you have a Target to hit copy it learn from that okay I don't mean copy it and put it on your site but copy it and then when you feel like you got you've got the the recipe on how to create that again apply it to something that you're doing on spec all right let's move on you got another Super Chat question or no yeah sorry let me re-ask this one all right go ahead it's from Patrick okay and it's ask away I'm an in-house only creative and I don't feel I don't feel God eating make make a good sentence man so I can read it here dude sorry I don't feel like I have a portfolio because my CMO makes me do things I cringe at everything has to be big and bold how do I get my CMO to buy into good design you don't you can't convince him like he can't convince you unfortunately right now the power structure is such that he is the boss or she is the boss and she gets to make the decisions that's the bottom line you have to respect that otherwise you're being insubordinate you're not following the chain of command okay now there's one strategy that you can do which is to do the work that they ask you to do and then show them an alternative but if they're what is it called their preference is for things that are big bulky and whatever it's because they're actually working with the clients and that's what the clients need and after years of doing this kind of work they've learned that if you'd show them anything else they're just going to get mad at you so a lot of people who are say lower in the totem pole like they're just starting out you have these delusions that it's all about the art it's not it's about making sure that clients are happy when you have your own clients you'll know what I'm talking about okay but what's the solution to that the solution is this when you do work that you don't like when you go home do the work that you like until that work is so good that other people are going to call you for that kind of work it's a pretty basic formula you cannot expect other people to make that leap for you you have to be able to do the work and then close the gap all right that's all I got for you dude if there's anybody else that I had said you know reach out to me on Facebook hit me up right now text me on Facebook Messenger Emma I'm gonna remind you who else is left here Eric Peterson Anna ruinska and gu prit dungeon now I understand we have an international audience so that you guys might be in some weird time zone right now weird in that we're not here okay this ain't no he says he's here um but let me get through my people first okay Samuel hold on all right here's the next question and this one is from Eric Peterson yes sir oh okay you want me to look at the camera instead of the card that I'm holding well that's kind of hard to do man let me hold it right here like this you want me to hold it for you no I got I'm trying to put on my superhero face here all right tactics for presenting Eric Peterson says sometimes I'm good and sometimes I'm bad you guys ever have a problem presenting Aaron yeah all the time like all the time my whole life what happens why are you bad at presenting because I'm I know it's right in my head but when it comes out it's nothing like it what does it come out like I don't know but it's not what I intended it to be that's the problem like I know I have the right answer and I know I know what I want to say but when it comes out it's not at all what I want why do you suspect that it doesn't come out right why do you suspect that what's the reason do you have a hard time communicating to your mom right I know you're getting it so you know where I'm going I feel nervous and uncomfortable why do you feel nervous because I'm afraid that they're gonna judge me differently or you know they're not going to give me the chance and the benefit of the doubt to try to understand what I'm saying they're gonna take everything super literally I don't understand you all right I'm just kidding no I'm just kidding all right I'm gonna tell you some things here okay you guys uh when you're around people that you trust people who really love you people who would not judge you it could be an older brother or sister a sibling of some sort it could be the best friend from school it could be your parents your classmates something like that you're gonna feel really comfortable around them and the reason why you feel comfortable around them is because you don't have anything to prove to anyone they accept you for all your ugliness for all your crude humor for everything that your shortcomings they accept you and so you feel very comfortable to be yourself now when you get into a room with people that you want to impress the people who have power over you your boss somebody a potential client who has money you now you're giving away all this power that you have and you're going to start to act differently because instead of just being you you're gonna try and put on this mask and you're going to walk around thinking that people can see the mass but they actually just see you right now so here's my thing if people don't like you for who you are move on with your life you have to just be able to own who you are that doesn't mean that you come out raw and rough but at the core of who you are people are either going to like or not you're not gonna be able to hide that from them and there's really no point okay so the first thing is you have to get into that mindset like I don't need this work okay I don't want to impress you I'm not trying to prove how smart I am I don't even have all the right answers oftentimes I'll go into a meeting I'll say a few things first of all there's a self-awareness thing that you can just say right off the bat and what you're going to do is you're going to tell people I'm I'm really grateful for this opportunity I've been up all night working on this deck so I might not be that clear and if I'm not will you just tell me and I'll do my best to explain it so then there's a level of self-awareness that you're going to put out there and that kind of disarms the room like wow this person's so aware of who they are they're not trying to impress us and then you can get into the presentation so a couple things you need to do one the presentation should be worked on days in advance and you should look at it over and over again so you know your own material it's not like you have to rely on the deck to be able to say what it is you're going to say and if that's the case I suspect you have too many words on the page the tendency is words on a page are like a safety blanket and you don't want that because you're going to cling on to it and you're not going to let it go okay so what you want to do instead is to use visuals with as few words as possible now most of you guys that are watching this channel you're visual people so this is great you're a designer you're an illustrator so tell stories visually the cool thing about that is that you've ever played this game when you're a kid and you would stare at an album art or just some random illustration that you found and you'd make up stories about it with your friends or your brother and sister well it's kind of like that your images are prompts for you to talk about something and they remind you oh yeah in on this slide I'm going to talk about the importance of brand and there's a story that goes along with this so it might be a picture of somebody that's that you're talking about so if you have a quote from Nelson Mandela we'll put that there and put just a few key words that reminds you what to talk about that way you won't get choked up on trying to repeat exactly the same thing again that's a very difficult thing to do okay so there's an awareness thing there's about practicing knowing your material really well there is uh kind of doing visual storytelling using pictures to prompt you versus words those things will help you out a lot and lastly you got to practice practice practice I I was not always comfortable speaking in front of the camera some of you guys have seen the first episode you know what I'm talking about I'm not being falsely humble or modestier it was not very good so if you keep practicing you get more comfortable doing what it is that you do all right so that's that's all I got for you that's Eric Peterson Eric thank you for your question next question Aaron why don't you take one okay go ahead fire at me um let me see on camera okay how about uh a lot of people have asked this question in different ways bring up your energy dude come on this is my energy man you you know that's what you get all right uh we need the Pooh go ahead okay so let's say you're talking to your designer and you're talking to a client and he likes your work but he he doesn't want to pay that much how can you like Jiu Jitsu him with words into paying you more you can't there's got to be a way there is a way well then trick your way into it well no how can you talk to him what can you say to him or ask him a question or a series of questions or what way should the conversation you drive the conversation to get paid more all right look when have when has somebody in your in real life when has somebody been able to convince you to pay more than what you're prepared to spend can you tell me a time that that's happened to you Aaron yeah tell me when like a pair of shoes well talk me through it use more than just okay like I mean I'm thinking like a pair of Nikes I'd pay more for a pair of Nikes than I would for Skechers yeah but that's a different thing altogether you're gonna pay more for Nikes versus Skechers now now we're gonna get like another Camp all burned on that because the brand makes you feel like it's worth it that decision was already made before you walked in the door I'm talking about like when you went in to buy like the mid-tier model and they up sold you on something when did that ever happen did you guys ever go to like Best Buy and go to buy the entry level computer or stereo or something and a salesperson starts laying this on you and you start to feel really pressured okay that usually doesn't work it doesn't work on me however the opposite works okay check this out you guys if you go into the store and you're looking for a stereo and you don't know what you're looking for and you have let's say a hundred dollars to spend all right and you ask the sales clerk hey I need to buy stereo I've got a hundred dollars to spend and they might ask you tell me more about how you can use it what room is it in what kind of features do you need and you start talking about this whatever then he goes over to the 200 stereo he's like you know what you don't need this model because this model has Wi-Fi has Bluetooth connectivity it can be expanded it's got 300 more watts per Channel or whatever and sooner than later you're like what do you mean I don't I shouldn't buy that are you saying I can't afford it well maybe I can't afford it and now that you pointed out all these features maybe I want that instead it you're like no no no no don't the model you want is this one and it's a small one it's a crappy one it's ninety dollars if it's in your budget now he's created a desire inside inside of you to think to think you know maybe I want the bigger better model and he was able to articulate to you the benefits of the other model so that's a little bit of like reverse psychology on you right there and what there's an equivalent to that it's basically when the client comes to you you're basically saying you can't afford this higher end service or product that I offer so then they almost have to prove themselves to you so that's a strategy that does work but really honestly I think if you want to get more money you have to do work that in the market space or Marketplace is perceived as being more valuable all right so if you design just a logo there's a fair market value for that but if you design a logo with an identity system that's a little bit more money and if you do research with that and naming or you do messaging and then you do full service branding that's worth a lot more because the marketplace is willing to pay more for that so people who are out there looking for a new brand they're more likely to have a bigger number in mind than the people who want a quick logo to slap on something okay so that's we got to get into positioning all that kind of stuff I hope that answered that question I'm sure we can go really deep on that topic but people are not calling me my friend Gary Brees is hitting me up here Gary how are you my friend long time no speak I did a whole episode on you Gary Greece jelvin bass wants to talk to me okay I got two more and then I got a crazy one that we're gonna end on okay so we have about another 10-15 minutes it's getting hot in here you guys it must be Aaron he's so hot so hot okay Anna rowinska Anna rowinska I believe that's how you say your name Anna if you're online right now hit me up okay hit me up are you online Anna rowinska or gupreet gopreet danjal Daniel something like that if he's Indian yeah dungeon Jean Taj Mahal okay whatever I'm sure I butchered that I apologize so sorry okay Anna I don't see you online hit me up say hello to me on on messenger if not I'm gonna move on okay here's your question uh Anna or Anna how to convince overseas clients to to work with you remotely like remote collaboration she's saying we currently mainly work with UK based clients however the work is usually carried out remotely anyways hence location from our perspective is not an issue from the client's perspective it could be it's true clients feel more secure hold on clients Anna clients feel more secure when they know who you are where you where you operate out of and they want to know that your team is in the building on premises because it gives them Comfort the bigger the engagement the more money that they spend the more assurance that they need to know that you're not you're a Flight Risk you're going to take the money and you go to Tahiti and see you later money and now they're stuck you have to remember that most people have a boss somewhere the bosses have a boss and so they're always worried that if they make the wrong decision that you're going to burn them so your job is to assure them the entire time that everything's going to be okay well how can you do this when you're working with a client in a different country the first thing they're gonna that's gonna come up with is responsiveness when we call you at 4 pm it's 2 A.M your time will you be able to respond quickly well you're going to say to them yes because if you hire us to do this we will adjust our day to match yours we will hire somebody who will be dedicated and focused as a uh an account representative a project manager project coordinator something like that who's going to wake up when you wake up and go to sleep when you go to sleep this is what I say usually and I say the benefit to you is this you have somebody to talk to a live real human being and the cool thing is when you guys are asleep we're just beginning our day so we can get a lot done so we're not sitting around waiting for feedback this is a benefit to you you have to be able to listen and hear what their objections are what's their hang up like what what gives them pause to hire you if you can ask that in open and honest way then work towards solving that okay next question let's go grepreet gurpreet where are you Caprice all right uh Aaron I'll give you one question ask me uh a medium level question man don't give me one that's too hard okay uh can you explain the symmetry of logic concept the symmetry of logic is this guys if you think a applies then a applies elsewhere and it has to be consistent for example if you think it's okay to charge a client more for something than what it costs to make you should also be okay paying somebody more for something than what it costs to make that's the symmetry of logic okay decino don't call me yet brother I I didn't prompt you to call me you can't just call me anytime all right does that make sense so what when when have we talked about something Aaron where I brought up the whole symmetry of logic thing oh my time is valuable if I believe my time is valuable then I should also believe your time is valuable okay and if you save me time then I'm willing to pay you for that okay so most entrepreneurs most business people find their time to be quite valuable because they can do things that most people cannot do so if you can do something that saves them time makes their life easier then the value of what you do just went up we need probably a more concrete example than that and I'm not thinking of one so that whoever asked that question you need to give me an example and then I can argue through it or you know what who asked that question hit me up on Facebook it was at the very beginning all right whoever asked that question if you're still watching send me a message on Facebook saying I asked that question I want to talk to you live and we could role play okay this is the whole point of us doing that but I'm going to move on okay I'm gonna ask this next question here asks how do I deal with an overwhelming amount of work and client feedback and it's not as quick as I'd like it to be so there's a lot of questions here you guys I need to do an episode on teaching you guys how to ask questions don't ask compounded questions because there's a lot to unpack there ask one direct question what was it again yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna read it the way he wrote it and then I'm going to reread it the way it should have been written according to me okay and I'm not an English major that's why I decided to do design okay kupreet asked how do I deal with an overwhelming amount of work and client feedback isn't as quick as I'd like it to be or clients who have paid a deposit but haven't sent it brief and it's been a few months how many questions are in here what was the second one I didn't get it the first one made sense well they've given him money but they're they're not moving the project forward that doesn't sound like a problem to me that's not a problem that's a good problem to have if people pay you money and they're not ready to start that's great as long as the check's cleared you just don't worry about it all I would do the second question is much easier to answer okay if a client gives you money to start a project assuming it's a 50 deposit and then they get tied up with stuff and they're stalled out on a project all you have to do is send them a very polite email it's like our team is standing by however we're going to do some other work right now since you are you need time to to work out whatever issues that you're working out and we will start whenever you're ready but we need two weeks notice so when you're ready two weeks out please shoot me an email so I can move the teams around and make sure we're ready to go all right now the first question is how do you deal with an overall overwhelming amount of work that's one question and the other question is the client feedback isn't as quick as you'd like it to be now let's deal with one thing at a time when you're feeling overwhelmed it's assigned to me that you didn't charge enough money for the project okay we do a lot of work we do a lot of work at blind and I don't feel it's overwhelming at all because they're budgeted appropriately when I start to feel stressed out over whether or not we're doing enough whether we are being overworked it's because we didn't have the resources to hire more designers or to get a new computer or a new piece of software to be able to do the job much quicker if I don't have the money to job it out and get external resources to help me like a modeler or somebody to track their shot or something like that it's because I didn't budget it properly so this is where you need to stand your ground to know what something really costs and to Pat it to some degree because that gives you some room to be able to bring in additional resources to help you okay so if you're feeling overwhelmed I suspect you're not charging enough money number two is the client feedback isn't as quickly as you want it did you have an agreement in advance how long it should take so what I like to do is ask my clients at the very beginning um how long would you like to have to give us feedback because I'm going to build it into the schedule now the bigger the corporation the longer they need because they have to run it by lots of people and you want them to do that because if they give you feedback right away it's very likely that somebody up the chain of command will make a different decision and then you'll have to do even more work and you don't want to do that okay so let's say it's two to three business days so if I show it to you on a Monday is it reasonable that by Thursday you guys will give us feedback they say yes we'll build it into your schedule and Pat it by a day so that you know and then you can charge accordingly because you have a team that's ready to work but they're going to sit around for three days so you need to put that in your budget all right a lot of this is about planning and having clear communication up front and an agreement with your client okay it's unrealistic for you to expect clients to work around your schedule that's a sign of an immature business person you don't know what you're doing just yet I'm not saying that's you but don't do that okay I got one last big one here Aaron uh you know what jelvin supercheck questions that I'd like to okay fire away Super Chat me dude so it's from heyo free is uh hey yo hey yo I've recently graduated from a university with mediocre back-end training but I want to do front end what are some good libraries to start learning with I don't know you're asking the Development question I don't know programming and that kind of stuff I apologize I'm not holding back information from you I don't know where one goes to get training for front-end stuff okay well where would you go to if you were a student to to learn about designing website stuff I go on the internet if I can find a resource on the internet okay you're probably a pretty smart guy you're probably smarter than I am to be honest because I don't understand coding at all okay I'm just saying take a drink here you guys my throat's getting a little dry I mean I don't think he's that I mean he knows you don't know about coding and stuff but kind of then your taste you know what no exactly the front end right and he's a backhand guy he's in front end like what it looks like no I think backhand's all about hooking into databases the front end is a lot of coding for what it does look like but you're still doing development you're not the designer okay the back end nobody sees right no one sees people see the front end I think I don't even know the front end from the back end see see how dumb we are okay yeah we should probably stay away from that I'm right thanks Mark Mark's got me mark thank you I appreciate that okay so Mark says I'm right I have a lot of good questions here okay okay hold on hold on okay so front end mark where would somebody go to learn front end dude okay he's saying Mark is saying go to Linda skillshare skillshare maybe team treat maybe there's a place called code academy I just made that up that's a good one yeah if it existed you go to the Khan Academy I think Khan covers lots of things like that you can take a course at a community college go back to school you know you can take a night class something like that you you might also be able to do it within the company you're working at right now if you want to do front end just say you know boss I will learn front end would that be valuable to this company like yeah yeah so can you sponsor me to go and take some courses or can I Shadow somebody who's doing that like yeah yeah okay let's do that now I know that doing things for the web and developing apps is a Hot Topic there should be no shortage of resources books online training search on the internet that's the best answer I got for you sorry you want your money back code academy yeah yeah does that exist already oh dude it's a lot every once in a while I guess and it's I luck out all right how do you guys like the lighting setup do I look alright how's my skin okay anyways let's keep going what's the next question okay uh there's so many of them and your skin doesn't look so good in this lighting okay we have to work on your lighting next time yeah no one really cared about me [Laughter] crap we don't care okay uh what are your thoughts on working for exposure rather than money working for exposure rather than money why is it mutually exclusive can you work for money and get exposure we're working on some really big projects for really big brands that pays a ton of money and for big bands too and we get exposure out of that now you guys be careful about trading for exposure when I say trading meaning doing the work and supplementing what you should be getting paid for exposure okay that's the lure that people dang in front of you you know it's like a little care it's like go for it be careful about that kind of stuff you guys in this day and age it's really easy to get exposure you can do it yourself all the platforms are open to you now back in the old days when exposure came from TV from traditional media like print like magazines and other sources like that when all The Gatekeepers held on to the information and the King makers would say you're good and you're good award shows would do things like that well today you can build up your own following so you don't really need them at all if you do good work put it out there and put it put some effort into packaging it and making it look good and then write a little story with it okay and give people a reason why this is important now I'll give you an example when you guys go to a gallery especially a modern art gallery a museum of some sorts and you see this Swatch of paint and it looks like somebody took 10 minutes to make it you know in your heart that thing costs millions of dollars well how do you know that how do you know how do you how do you assume it's valuable well I'm gonna tell you right now first of all it's in a place that makes you think it's value well it's in a gallery gallery is a big wide open space everything's done very Tastefully it's minimally done notice that in galleries they typically don't have carpeting it's usually a concrete floors exposed ceilings skylights beautiful lighting clean white walls all the doors are frameless it's a beautiful space and then you walk up to the painting and you're like huh I think I can do that and then you look down and you read something this is what it's called man mid contemplation mixed media on canvas the artist was doing XYZ and you're like wow oh that's really interesting that's an interesting reflection on society you start putting meaning to it because the words tell you there's a story involved you get to know about the artists this is what creates the value okay we've already done a video on this about tell stories this is what you need to do next question and then I gotta end on this Whopper of one everyone some guy said I need to fill light a key light my lighting sucks your lighting does suck and that's all right fine we'll keep them in the dark all right I got an iPhone should I use my iPhone to let you I don't think that's gonna help that's not gonna help all right let's keep going okay this is a good one how do I convince a client to Rebrand when they only want to rebuild a website their current mark is really bad the website will suffer from this fact any tips so basically how do you turn the conversation from I need a website into to what onto bigger things Rebrand okay like a bigger Rebrand okay there's a couple of things if you're capable of doing a Rebrand project which I suspect a lot a lot of you guys are not ready for that but why are you laughing because yeah it's true right everybody's like I'm not gonna Rebrand your site I'm just like you don't even know what you're doing yeah let's just be honest about it okay but assuming that you actually know what you're doing you know how to write copy you know how to design all the different touch points you know how to design a better user experience for the customer you're ready and now you're having a hard time okay that's fine I've been here myself and I'm still going through this process right now full transparency here okay so if somebody comes to you and says you know we want you to design the website the way that you do it and we've talked about this a very simple concept you Embrace and then you pivot you Embrace and you pivot okay so first you're going to say thank you very much for thinking about me for doing your website I would love nothing more than to do an amazing job for you thank you very much from the bottom of my heart okay now before we go into the website I find that if I ask my question my clients a few questions and learn a little bit more about what's motivating this request usually I find something much deeper that's driving this that might help you achieve your goal better than building a website can we explore this together maybe it'll take about 30 minutes and they say okay that sounds interesting let's go there then you go into full diagnostic mode and you ask like a really smart questions on a different episode we can talk about that's what this question might be yeah you see what I'm doing there that's a good answer man thanks thanks Aaron it's almost like I say this all the time okay all right is the Super Chat question or no no but it's not is it okay we're gonna I have to tell the story first okay because oh wait I have more questions to ask here all right hold on you guys let me let me get these two questions first see there's two questions here is like an animation from Keynote all right the question is coming up lucky Chen must be very lucky his name is lucky spelled with two eyes lucky says how do you get noticed oh I already asked that question how do you qualify clients I already asked these questions what am I thinking all right that's it I'm gonna go to the big one the mother the mother trucker this is the mother trucker question okay there's a guy Chris Jones he's been hating on me and he's been hating on the video that we produce Aaron you know which video we produce it's our top viewed episode ever the episode on how to price based on value or why charging hourly punish punishes people who are really efficient in experienced okay so here Chris goes on a rant so I'm gonna try to respond to Chris but first and foremost I'm gonna say this you guys I'm not up here telling you I have all the answers in the world or maybe I am but these are things that have worked for me and I'm going through a process right now and I'm sharing it with you in real time so if you check in with me in a year from now two years from now my story may change as it has if you watch some of our older episodes you'll see like when Jose asked me about marketing and sales I didn't know anything because we had sales rep that sold us it wasn't until I actually did it that it occurred to me what he was talking about okay so I say that first of all and realize this you guys I'm doing this because I want to help people I see people struggling in the creative space and I want to help people so if you don't think what I'm saying is helpful that's totally cool God bless you do what you do and be merry be well be whatever be fruitful do what you got to do I really don't understand all the people who want to come out and there's not a lot but they do get under my skin and I should be a bigger person and not even respond you know don't feed the trolls kind of thing but I I like to get in there you guys know me I get blood in my mouth and I want to fight all right so here's the question or it's less of a question and more of his retort to why he thinks I'm stupid all right so here we go Chris Jones Chris Jones if you're on the line dude I don't know why you would be paying attention to me because you're so angry anyways but Chris Jones says this okay he goes well he assumes I'm a millennial so first I say thank you because I'm not a millennial and I would love to be mistaken as a millennial I'm much older than you think okay so he goes well you must be under 40. so you're a millennial then he goes on to disparage millennials you know people who have an unrealistic or dis disproportionate World perspective and here he goes on to try to lecture me now why value-based pricing doesn't work he goes first you cannot ask someone to pay you an undisclosed amount that you inform them of at some point in the future based on your impression of the work you've accomplished what I never said that and he says this is because the value of the product is determined by the amount someone is willing to pay for 100 agree you're only worth what you can convince somebody to pay you totally true right and it goes on to tell me like I don't know like not like not what you're willing to sell it for he says thus your opinion doesn't matter this guy's like Spitting Fire at me Aaron second he says second like you guys on the internet get fired up I want you to get ready okay so hold off on any more comments or questions hear me out there's four points he makes and then let's have a discussion about it and anybody that wants to talk to me live on camera get on Facebook Messenger right now and I'll I'll prompt you and we're only going to talk about this okay he goes second an hourly rate is the equivalent numerical indicator of your fair market value fair market time value okay does that make sense so he assumes no matter what price you charge if you charge thirty thousand dollars all you have to do is divide the hours by uh the rate divided by The Hours by the hours right so if you work on something that's ten thousand ten thousand bucks and you spend a thousand hours on it your hourly rate is ten dollars okay but is there an interesting flaw in that statement okay and he has two more points next clients need to know what to expect billing wise usually in all caps people are on the tight budget and need to find people that can accomplish tasks for a specific amount of money or less true partially true okay and last point he he says or maybe this couple more once you do actually get a bonus for being expedient and exceptional and the bonuses it's called repeat business right rape you very much okay let's keep keep going here I got Mark laughing outside Mark Contreras not Mark Cassie different Mark same Filipino but different Mark okay he says you expect payment based on the outcome of X that's just you wanting equity in the work you've done duh don't you if you want an equity stake in that person's company and thus the long-term value of your work they will probably pay you with stock if you ask problem solved well I don't know what we're arguing about anymore it's almost like he's taking my stance and then he's arguing with me because he's really upset now he and I have exchanged multiple responses on Facebook so now you guys I'm going to open up the floodgates go and reign in your comments Aaron let's let's clear out the thing let's look at anybody that wants to respond and jump in here what I don't understand is this you guys if you're doing something and it's working really well for you right now God bless you just keep doing it don't listen to some jerk off bald-headed Asian guy who's talking to you on YouTube forget about it now are all those people gone just leave just leave okay don't you have better things to do to earn all that value that you're not creating don't worry about it now did all those people go the rest of you guys lean in a little bit come on in okay I want to talk to you now chances are you are hurting a little bit you're hurting because the internet has created a crazy Open Marketplace to take advantage of you because they realize the workforce is many and the need are few okay so then they can pay the lowest dollar amount for the work that you do now assuming this is a big assumption okay assuming that the work you do is actually really good that you have some kind of training whether you're self-taught or you went to school and we talked about this before a lot of people think self-taught means I got no training it just means you got training but it just wasn't in school you like picked up a book and you went cover to cover you went to a lecture somewhere you just did in a non-traditional way and that's totally cool okay assuming that you're good what can you do to change the dynamic of how you see yourself and how you present to your client that might make you more valuable that's what I'm here for I'm here to try and teach you some of the things that have worked for me and the people that I've coached now you'll notice you guys some people start dropping crazy amounts of money in the Super Chat function some people are starting to just donate and give us money they give us time they give us assistance they give us anything because we've been able to help them double their rate quadruple their rate we're helping them to get into discussions where they're looking at six-figure jobs and not you know low double digit jobs we're helping people and it's working for those people who want to try so all I'm going to tell you right now is what's it cost you to try a new concept now I know for a lot of people you want to believe it's not going to work the only thing that I have to say to that is you keep doing what you're doing until you get tired of it and when you're ready come find us come back I'll be here I'll be here for you I really will okay now let's respond to each and every one of these comments now okay Aaron do you have anything you want to say people are just hating on that guy Chris Jones Chris Jones my new best friend I'll go find him on Facebook if you guys go look up on our Facebook page on the future on the video about why charging hourly punishes efficiency he's hating and he's raining fire bombs man he's crazy he's crazy and I even tell him you know this idea of value-based pricing it's not even my idea if you type in value-based pricing you're gonna get a ton of people who talk about who explain it very thoroughly I just grabbed onto it and tried to explain it my way and to see if I can make it work okay that's all it's not even my concept it's not all right so here we go all right he says you cannot ask somebody to pay for something that's undisclosed amount we didn't say that he thinks like we're some kind of Samurai ninja some kind of uh super power person who can mentally control people nobody agrees to do a project unless they know what they're in for they would be insane so what we're doing is we're negotiating upfront about what we think the potential value of the project is he goes on to actually dispute his own thing he says that your hourly rate is whatever the fair market value is so that means your hourly rate changes and I am in agreement there bigger clients can afford more they have greater risk they have greater liability and they need this thing to last a lot longer and they're going to spend a lot more money to produce this thing the logo the design that you create and think about it like this let's say you design a case for a phone that maybe there's a thousand phones out there in the world so they're never going to print a thousand they'll print a few but then you design a case for a phone like the iPhone and there's hundreds of millions of iPhones out there so if you design something the manufacturer might try to do a couple hundred thousand pieces so it costs them a lot of money and they're taking a lot of risk to do this versus the other phone case manufacturer and they've only they're only sell 1200. their risk is a lot lower so the industrial designer that they hire they're going to hire two different kinds of people I believe okay because they have different risks and different needs one could argue there is probably no difference or little difference between one phone cover to the next that could be totally true probably not but could be true so the person who has more to risk is willing to spend more and they want to hire somebody that's got a big reputation who's got a lot of experience and that person will charge them accordingly okay now that same person let's say it's Johnny Ivey you know a buddy of his might ask you know Johnny can you help me design a little accessory for something I'm doing he's like yeah I'll do that and I'll only charge you X because first of all a it's his friend B he knows that that person in terms of the total lifetime value hopefully I'm using that right Mark the total lifetime value of his design is very low so he's going to charge differently this is all it's talking about that there's elasticity in terms of the pricing that you don't go in with a fixed price the bigger the client the greater the risk therefore the larger the sum should be okay there's nothing wrong with that I don't he's like saying like I'm the devil or something I don't get it okay um okay so we talked about the fair market value yeah it should be elastic and I'm not suggesting that you go in and say well I would charge you some amount of money after I finish well who does that it's bad for you it's bad for them you're exposing yourself to a lot of risk I am not saying that Aaron am I saying that who is saying that I'm not saying anything like that okay yeah they do need to know what you're building of course now here's his other statement in his third to last point where he's like people are usually on a tight budget they need to find people who can do it basically for that amount or less for whatever amount that they can afford or less so if you go in and you want to buy a new watch and you have 500 to spend you don't want to spend 600. you want to spend 500 or less okay so I'm gonna go with this first of all that people are usually on a tight budget says who says who some people can spend a lot of money some people can spend a little bit of money I don't treat everybody the same I think that's called stereotyping isn't it Aaron you know me I don't like the stereo it sounds like you and him are lit are have different worlds of the people clients you interact with yeah he's angry about something I feel like his because his clients he doesn't see them as like this huge person that you can kind of take all their money like he wants to help them and doesn't want to charge him too much I love that you know what my response to that is for every kind of client there's a designer out there for you okay so all the clients that want to pay six figures big budget projects that are on a global stage and don't mind paying that please call me for every other client that's like scraping by you can't afford a lot they're on a really tight budget please hire Chris Jones because I can't do those projects the world is happy and everybody in between works it totally works so why he's got to be angry at me I'm not angry at you I won't believe your life I have a question for you go ahead you seem really amped up with this guy you gave him a lot of your attention and your thought to answer these questions I tried multiple ranges because I thought he was at least being um how should we say this he wasn't just dropping firebombs I mean he was trying to articulate a point of view and I'm trying to understand that point of view sometimes I get a little crazy in my head I'm thinking maybe I can help point out the flaw and the symmetry of his own logic that's your main tool that's my main tool that's your man I try to do that and I realize some people cannot be helped do not want to be helped and they just want to complain they want to be angry and that's okay and I've decided now I said the last comment I said is hashtag you win exclamation point not going to argue with you you do whatever you need to do all right I just want to let you know Chris so many people are donating with the Super Chat and they're not asking a question they're just saying that this is great they really appreciate everything you do and oh it's just getting a lot of love I thought we agreed not to say number here well they can't hear him anyways but no okay junior thank you very much and thank you for everybody who supports this Channel and whatever you do and I'm not necessarily looking for money from you but ultimately if you do make money don't forget about your Uncle Chris okay don't forget about me I got kids you know it's a whole College thing it's expensive right anyways uh I'm not looking for that if you comment if you'd like if you help to spread the word when I ask you guys to go do something like follow this person or check this thing out if you actually do that that would mean the world to me and some of you guys who are a little bit better off in your life and you can afford whatever it is go buy a product we'll teach you how to make more money it's not a magic box I want to be clear about that some people buy our products and think it's a magic like leprechaun that jumps out and all of a sudden money starts raining out of your butt it doesn't happen like that and does it rain out of your butt no no but I can teach you things to help you change your mindset so that you can go out there and feel confident in what you do and you have the tools and the language to go and do battle every single day either against your competitors or to have a more informed conversation with your clients who you don't walk in there feeling entitled or you're not walking in there fearful or feeling needy all those kinds of things okay let me let me wrap up this thing with Chris Jones I have spent a lot of time responding to him but it's not really gone anywhere if anything it's devolved into nothingness okay um what else is here so there are clients that can afford lots of different price points it's not your duty guys listen to me it's not your duty to negotiate against yourself don't go into the room saying they can only afford so much like who does that you know you don't walk into a restaurant they look at you like oh you know we're going to give you like the the prime rib and maybe we'll do it for 12 bucks nobody does that assume everybody can afford you assume everybody has money to spend on their marketing Endeavors that they want to improve their products they want to build a better site because it doesn't reflect the value of the brand that they see inside designers are good at doing that kind of stuff assume that and then clarify the Assumption prove the Assumption by saying do you have between twenty to forty thousand dollars to do a site Rebrand or relaunch reskin do you have that no okay you know what you don't have that okay oh you you only have two thousand dollars you know what I know a guy you can call his name is Chris Jones hire Chris Jones he can do it he likes to work with clients who don't have any money okay I'm being a jackoff right there I'm being yeah maybe we should uh yeah I'm gonna pull that back all right um that's it are we are we done no we're not done done I'm gonna drink uh beverage go ahead go ahead oh my God there's an hour and a half already I just want to keep asking the questions how many people without watching on Facebook and YouTube Aaron uh looks like almost 300 on YouTube 300 on YouTube that's a nice number and on Facebook uh um it's hard to tell hundred yeah that sounds so good Facebook you guys come on well because the the Facebook had some issues with the internet was slow so I told him to come over to YouTube oh okay you told him that all right I don't know if that's okay uh you know what we can do is this ask me a few more questions and I'll I'll do a few non-business questions if you guys want to ask me something stupid and personal wacky I will be happy to answer it okay we'll do it rapid fire style so you guys I want to ask some weird questions things you want to know about me I'm happy to share with you I think I think so get those questions ready I'll prompt you when to ask the personal questions okay but right now Aaron's gonna hit me up with two more questions and then I think I'm done go ahead Aaron question number one uh okay here's one it's about the fonts you make for your clients okay do you ever create specific fonts for your clients for your blind people blind clients blind clients and if so do you sell them to only that client or do you kind of reuse those are good questions okay one we've never designed a font to use for our client never done it never been asked I know designers who do they're really good at designing typefaces and they make a good amount of money I think what they do is they license the name of that font or that thing to that client for that usage and the more ownership somebody wants to have it they want to have an exclusive license you have to charge a lot of money now I would suggest that you talk to an attorney if this is what you're doing because they'll negotiate much better for you than you would do for yourself now here's another case in point when the value of what you do is more than the hours that you put in okay like illustrators they license their work to you for a very specific application photographers do the same thing they'll ask you like what's the media by what's the usage what countries is it going to be in and they charge you a different price same photograph right same amount of effort same finger clicking but depending on how many people are going to see it and how often how long they want if they want an exclusive if they wanted to use an all media for the web for radio Print TV whatever it is they want to use not radio doesn't make any sense but then they're going to charge a lot more and that's going to Boggle Chris Jones mind okay that's one more stab at Chris whatever okay so if you're going to do that negotiate something if it's exclusive charge a lot more and what I would do is try not to give up the rights the intellectual property to the work that you do you can say okay I will Design you a custom font or a typeface font okay and we'll charge you I don't know what the going rate is let's say it's twenty thousand dollars and you can use this exclusively for a period of one year and and you can use it for this many hits on a website for the beyond that we're going to charge you more per hit you know so if you're going above a million to two million hits a month then you're gonna charge a different price bracket and you can do some research on font licensing from different houses foundries or for web usage and just copy their model it should work for you too and so once that year expires you can put that same typeface out on the market I would change the name so maybe that name is tied to their company right and that's my best guess at it I know there's some people that I could call I know there's some people I can call and ask about fonts specifically but that's not my area of expertise okay but don't sell yourself short don't negotiate against yourself and try to retain the intellectual property of what you do especially if it's something utilitarian that could be reused for something else that's it for that next question so we're getting a lot of people are just to let you know here that people are really interested in proposals okay examples of proposals I know you can't do that right now get on your knee and propose no you know what I'm talking about man no put a ring on it uh no okay I know what you're talking about on a different episode we'll talk about proposals different ones and we'll go deep into that yeah I'm gonna have to get on my deck and show you keynote and talk about it because it's weird for me floating had to be talking about proposals in front of you guys okay I want to let you guys know something though I'm going to be working with lynda.com on an exclusive piece of content and that'll probably be available first quarter next year it's all about the business of design okay I think they're going to be 15 videos five minutes each and it's going to be really cool it's going to be like this format except for it's going to be something like this so I got a request for an estimate now what and then I'm gonna spend the next five minutes talking to you about how to put together an estimate properly it'll be those kind of questions or hey I'm considering internship should I do it well here's the pros and cons here's what to look out for because not all internships are created equally okay next question now you reminded me someone asked about the summer internship here okay okay can you talk about that yeah we'll talk about the summer internship we kind of got really busy you guys we were hiring designers we were like shipping projects so we kind of dropped the ball on our normal recruiting for summer interns and so probably all the good interns have run out into the world and gotten a job already but maybe some of you guys still want to intern for us okay that's cool that's cool maybe you didn't get the one that you wanted we're here I believe the information is available on blind.com and somewhere on the site should be an inter internship thing and you get all the details so let me answer a few questions one do are are our internships paid and the answer is most definitely yes we pay our interns 10 bucks an hour to work for us for 40 hours a week it's a full-time internship they work the best for us okay and so you're gonna get paid 400 a week and we treat you like a temporary employee if you're sick or there's a holiday you still get paid we try to treat you fairly that way what kind of things will you be working on you'll be working on real projects for us just like everybody else so if that scares you don't apply okay we're not going to have you go get coffee you're not watching anybody's car you're not running anybody's errands I don't think but that's never happened okay and we're looking for all kinds of interns and and now that we have the company the future we need different kinds of people so if you have a marketing background maybe you're really great with social media something else you can come and work for us and you can enter the kingdom if you will all right here's the next question you're going to ask is is it available to anybody anywhere and the answer is heck yes remote hold on if you're from another country and you can get a visa to work here we're happy to work with you that's the only thing that we require that you have permission to work in this country okay we've worked with people from all over the world from Germany from the UK we've worked with somebody from India parts of Asia you know we work with anybody if you're talented if you have the right attitude we'd love to work with you okay and we're not looking just for Creative visual people if you're a good writer we'd like to work with you now if you want to work remotely that's a lot more challenging because it means that we just have to manage more so I would consider it if you're really really really really really good all right we'll work with you remotely okay but if you're working remote you're really just working for us to be honest and you're not really going to learn yeah I'll give you feedback the creative doctors here will give you feedback but it's not the same as being elbow to Elbow with other people from different disciplines from different cultures and ethnicities doing different things and you can look over your shoulders like how did you do that what are you using over there can I look at your file and that's what happens here that's the beauty of internships you're supposed to learn you're supposed to grow that's why you're doing it for less than what you would normally get when you're in the real world okay another question is there's no age limit on an internship there is no requirement that you're in school or you're out of school or whatever term you are in school it didn't matter to us you saying like that's a good one we're we're good on the I feel like I want to wrap it up let's now I'm going to prompt you if you want to ask any like personal weird questions like whatever I don't know what's in your sick mind if you want to ask it I'm going to answer it okay but really short concise questions one thought per question fire away Aaron what do we got so I got some here one uh here it is tips for finding your own design Style style smile I hate style move on you should be able to do all kinds of styles you guys next oh man just a lot of a lot of garbage yeah a lot of stuff come on guys clean it up I mean I'm really great questions come on ask good questions I'm gonna do a Captain Morgan here oh man my legs it feels good to put your one leg up on something yeah tell me about it I've been standing here and like all splayed out I'm tired okay here's a good one could you touch on the topic of directive meetings to engage the client in the process and vision of the work you are doing for them what sorry I was goofing around I kidding you hear you could you touch on the topic of directive meetings directive meetings that's not a light question no more business questions no more these are old ones so no I said personal weird goofy questions come on all right Mark fire away what a clean living what is clean living I love this see that's a good question clean living to me drink a gallon of water don't smoke don't do drugs don't drink alcohol exercise regularly be good to people don't swear how old are you I'm old enough see I like that that's easy what shampoo do you use I use soap I use it as a bar or soap because I get a nice little lather in my head genetics and I think small people are smarter next why is the rock bald well gone see I like these these are goofy and weird and you're all out you're all spent what else is there first thing you do in the morning first thing I do in the morning is I wake up and I think about what I want to think about so I think about like what did I do yesterday are there any ideas because I I use this form of thinking and working while I'm sleeping okay usually before I go to sleep I fill my brain up with stuff that I need to solve and then I go to sleep I wake up in the morning refresh with answers and that's the most amazing feeling in the world and I have a notebook and this is something a notebook right on my nightstand and I get up and I write down whatever I need so that I don't have to remember it anymore and this is something I've developed since going to college back in my teens or early 20s and it's worked out for me ever since I'm using the power of my unconscious or subconscious mind to solve problems and it's it's amazing okay then after that I spent about 10 minutes doing that then after that I get on my phone and I'm going through the social media I'm checking look what are you saying oh that's stupid come on let me respond to that oh I like that oh you're too kind that's what I'm doing well what's your biggest fear my biggest fear is the lack of growth like when I look back on my life even a year ago I don't want to see that I'm the same person that scares me the most it means I haven't grown growth is so important to me I want to learn I want to grow in every single way I want to be a challenge I want to see new things I want to be experienced with life Aaron is there a stupid question it's just funny yeah okay go ahead ask it have you ever have you ever thought about wanting to sleep with one of your clients during a meeting um next question is this thing live next question uh moment of your life the best moment of my life I don't like the best and worst moments questions but I've had many great moments in my life I think getting married having children hitting certain goals starting the future having conversations with you these things are wonderful to me I'm usually filled with joy every single day it's going to take a lot to rain in My Parade so that's what keeps me going okay I don't get a lot of sleep every night you guys I get about five to six hours of sleep every single night and I'm just full of energy and I'm ready to go okay now you guys know that I started the company in 1995. you could do the math and figure it out so I've been in business now running this company for 22 years 22 years that's older than a lot of you guys that are watching this channel so how am I still doing it how am I so fired up how is it that I meet younger people who just want to do like oh six hours here two hours there that's all they want to do they haven't found their calling yet so when you find your life's work your purpose your mission your joy your love you will be filled with energy and that's what I want for you what's your favorite movie my favorite movie one of my favorite movie movies is Miller's Crossing directed by the Coen Brothers It's amazing piece of Storytelling okay it's with Gabrielle Byrne look it up Miller's Crossing it's super complicated it's hard for me to follow all the characters one of my other favorite movies two of them they're science fiction one is Blade Runner of course Blade Runner has to make the list and the other movie is the Matrix part one only part one mind-blowing just so far ahead of its time and it was a genre mashup that just tickled me touched all the good parts right it had Kung Fu stuff it had anime and manga in it it had action sequences from Hollywood had sci-fi had trippy Concepts it was awesome and the they worked with a lot of comic book artists that I grew up loving next question what's your favorite deliverable Aaron you got to speak to Mike go ahead what's your favorite deliverable I don't have a favorite deliverable like your favorite job when you get a new client job you're like oh I love that I love getting paid if that's a deliverable whatever I can do with the clients are really happy with the work that I do and the work that we do and we've solved the real problem maybe something they'd even expect that makes me really happy okay that's a good one yeah go ahead if you had hair what hairstyle would you have I would have a faux hawk I would have a hair that would be like this you know like combed in together and just a little spiky that's what I would have short on the side I need to get a wig with like a mohawk that's what I need somebody sent me a high-end Mohawk I'll wear it what kind of car do you have what kind of car do I have I drive a Mini Cooper you guys and it's about 10 years old the the thing is I just sold it yesterday I have a brand new car now it is a Volvo XC90 hybrid so it I need the space because I've got two kids and a wife and sometimes my parents come by and stay the night and now I need something that can unpack more people but you guys are going to start to see more content produced from the car Aaron myself Mark we've been talking about mounting cameras because we have some of the coolest craziest in-depth soul-searching conversations inside the car we rushed back to the studio like let's try and recreate it and then it's gone totally gone so it's kind of like car karaoke but it's like car like insight and without in coaching and philosophy it'll be something like that design Church in the car something like that okay let's let's finish with one last question and I'm out like the guy okay what's the biggest mistake you ever made I don't know there's a lot of them there's a whole episode that we did with a pro group where I outlined the eight biggest mistakes that I can remember and I don't remember right now so if you want to know those stories I hate to say this you should join the Pro Group a lot of people are coming from YouTube and joining the Pro Group and we record a new episode and do a live webinar where you can talk to me and we answer questions and I do keynote decks and that kind of stuff but that's behind the Pro Group sorry that's probably a lame way to end this yeah people are starting to people are like tuning in and being like what the hell I thought this was about design well that's what you get Johnny come lately there was a whole business stuff you know now I'm like we can get goofy yeah right any other questions let's end it on a goofy weird one besides compliance oh this down was good favorite joke I don't have one you don't like to laugh I hate to laugh excuse me wrinkles yeah what else dude that's it that's it you guys we're gonna wrap it up thank you so much for tuning in for a super long extended AMA we got started late I apologize for that but we're getting we're getting this gear set up right like yeah it's really good and I just want to let you guys know a lot of people have been noticing the lighting change in the setup and it's looking really good right we're going to release an episode on how to set up this exact lighting setup up there down here there's a light there and there's a mic here that you guys can't see and we're gonna release that really soon as soon as we get off this Aaron's going to finish editing that and we're gonna get that out okay guys thanks for tuning in I'm Chris that's Aaron and that's Mark in the other room thanks for tuning in be well hate less see you guys later bye