🔴 RAW: Logo Pricing Challenges Roleplay & Selling Design W/ Social Proof | Live Stream

Key Takeaways

hey guys what's up what we're going to be talking about today is centered around logo design how do you charge more how to work with people off site and we've got a whole bunch of people in the room right now in the live stream if you guys want to join us uh we will include the link in the description notes I believe or Auto can take care of that got a couple new people on the team today and and of course it's been wild to just get us here but let's get the show on the road this is raw [Music] all right we're back we're back we're back okay you know we got a bunch of people in the room I think we're going to go in with your questions and we're going to do a little role play when appropriate so I think James you are up first so let's let's jump into the room and let's hear what James has to say everybody else hit mute James turn on your mic let's rock and roll I can't see the Facebook James no not Sharie James where is James did James leave all right James I'm GNA give you five more seconds and we're moving on to the next person we just fress my Channel all right um grait why don't you go you're number two hi Chris um so I'm from West London UK and my question is uh how do I leave um this current networking organization that I'm in at the moment whilst being able to sustain my business um because it currently feels like a second job um it's eating up more time than I'd like and the organization is saying not to leave as they feel that is the be all and end all uh to sustain a business hold on one second I have to tell my team to shut the f up I can hear you guys I can't concentrate okay can you guys mute your mics or something come on it's I I can't listen to two people at the same time all right sorry okay let me get the details right um you're in a networking organization I don't really know exactly what that means so can you tell me a little bit more about what that is um so basically um you it's it's basically groups of uh networking groups around the world um you pay a membership fee you attend every week um and you have to do like a 60c pitch go there pitch and is basically um passing referrals within within that group um passing work um and yeah it's basically a weekly thing but there's so much more involved within that group okay how much do you pay to be part of the group um well this is my second year but initially the fee was about £700 is that the annual fee 700 yes all right I need to write that down and why do you want to leave it um well the first year was really good and I've got a contract out of it but now my role has gone to being um so you have like three people that chair the meeting um and I'm basically one of the people um that chairs the meeting every week um it's just basically starting to grate on myself and my business I've started to put my business aside I see and concentrate more on the networking I see so it worked out well for you the first year and now you're kind of in an administrative role or something like that and it's taken away that you need to to on your bus right yes okay so what's stopping you from leaving what do you what do you concerned about um well it's the organization or the people within the organization um and I'd say a couple of friends that are saying not to leave because they feel that um that's my my main source of income so to speak but it's actually not okay so you're saying that your friends are saying that it's going to have a negative impact on your business if you leave but you are selling me right now it's not going to have any impact on your business so I I don't understand what's the what's the struggle why are you struggling with this decision I guess it's because I've just renewed so I've put money up front for the the next year okay um and obviously I've taken a bigger and a more um prominent role within the group um and I'm just finding it hard to leave I guess I don't know I guess I'm scared thinking what's going to happen if I do leave okay this might be one of those classic situations where you write down the things that you're afraid of that's going to happen and what you have to gain it's a risk reward thing okay so let me let me go through it with you right now in my mind okay if you stay um uh you what do you get what do you get if you stay besides recouping the money you've already spent um recognition by who the people in the group and their contacts and that what value does that have to you that recognition um I don't know I can't answer that question you see so like as I just listen to you talk about it I think there's one thing right look if I spent money on something I feel like I want to get the most out of it but if I'm not going to get anything more out of it and there's no way I can get refund then I'm just going to have to cut my losses you know I just have to say okay I made a decision I'm going to move on it's just money I'm going to go make more money somewhere else and right now the thing that you need the most of is your time you need to be able to focus on your business so it seems to me like it would be best for you just to leave yeah they're not helping you generate any more business and you're putting more time in to get no more new business and you've already spent the money so unless there's a way for you to get a refund I I just don't know why you would stay anymore yeah no that makes perfect sense a couple of people have said that to me as well and I I think I need to just bite the bullet and just um and do that yeah yeah you bit the bullet now you have to lick your wounds you you already spent the money right so just go uh it look how much how much time are you spending a week on this um I'd say at least two days two days a week on his networking group yeah yeah so 2 days is 16 hours right so 16 hours where you could be productive yes absolutely okay what do you think your time is worth like an hour like what's your hourly rate what do you what do you think you could charge um hourly rate at the moment is 50 pounds 50 pounds okay that's going to be a number my math is not going to help me out here so 50 time 16 it's a lot so that's like 90 no 80 that's 80 800B yeah a week and you've paid 700b for the Year this is where that term Pennywise pound foolish comes in right where you're trying to recoup and save your 700 pounds but every single week that you stay in the organization it's costing you 800 lounds worth of opportunity that you can be out there working on your business if you multiply that across the year you are ups and down on the worst investment you've ever made wow in one week in one week you would recoup your money and I I'll share a story with you guys okay to help you put this into context I get into disput sometimes with people and I can get into a long drawn out lawsuit and even though I feel like I'm in the right where they've wronged me they've broken the contract or they've misled me I will actually pay to get out of the contract because the time in which I spend trying to resolve this is just not worth it let's say it's $20,000 that I'm going to pay to to get out of this mess even though I don't think it's my fault even though I think the other person should be paying me I'm going to pay that amount mostly because I'm going to get tied up for five months I only need to get one client and one client for an agency like ours is going to be around $200,000 so I'm not going to give up 6 months to save 20K I'm just going to move on with my life I hope that helps that does thank you so much thank you okay all right let's go on to uh sir Jones or is James back James are you back did something happen to James did he somebody assassinate James James no okay going once going twice let's go on to Sir Jones sir Jones you're on live let's go Aon are we going to cut anytime or just are you going to cut to the screen or anything yeah you're you're just too focused on all right let's go sir Jones What I would like to know is I would like to wait wait wait sir Jones during uh the pre-show you know what you got to do gotta introduce yourself man I am sir Jones I am a firsttime and I'm from Dallas Texas beautiful what's your question my question is I would like tips uh actually um for charging more for a logo I charge 400 now and I would like to charge a thousand okay so as far as negotiating tips negotiating tips okay maybe we need to do a little role play but I have a few questions to ask you okay okay all right so you're charging $400 now and how long have you been able to charge $400 for logo um I recently revamped my prices probably about a couple of months ago so how many clients have you been able to sell $400 logo too uh three three okay that's not bad and when you do this do the clients feel really satisfied are they happy to pay you and the work that they get from you uh yes one of my clients uh the they they do a lot of um they do they create a lot of different other businesses and they have like an Enterprise and they have other different things and I do all of their logos beautiful okay so what's stopping you from talking to the next client and asking them for 800 uh fear what are you afraid of uh of losing that job I'm more confident in being able to talk to them and know that they'll be comfortable and I'll be comfortable with the $400 okay let me ask you something can you lose something you never had uh no you can't you can't so I think we need to change the mentality a little bit here okay a lot of people say I'm going to lose this thing I'm going to lose this thing well it was never yours uh before that person reached out to you that person didn't even exist in your world your reality so I need you to think about that in in our line of work we come across clients of all sizes and shapes and some of them are really big we're talking about six figureure seven figureure engagements but I know prior to that moment in which they called us or emailed us or reached out to us I didn't know anything about them and you kind of have to act like that okay there's another thing I want you to think about is if clients aren't saying no to you enough it means you're charging too little since you raised your rates to $400 nobody's saying no you you book three clients to keep raising the rates until people say no and then what we're going to do is this there's a there's a line that I want to share with you I I thought it was particularly poignant and it was said by Todd McFarland the most successful comic book artist of all time in terms of his business okay Todd McFarland super influential he said that when he was trying to launch Todd toys McFarland toys at Toys R R Us everybody told him you can't charge $699 nobody will pay more than $5.99 you can't charge $1 more just $1 more not doubling the price and he says yes you can the way that you sell $699 figure is you give somebody $6.99 worth of value or more okay so there's this Gap you're charging 400 today you got to keep raising your rates until you get the push back until you have to find yourself having to level up as long as the person feels like you're delivering the value or more they're going to do the deal with you okay I don't want to let fear [ __ ] you from trying new things trying a different type face changing your prices trying a different technique whatever it is try things and that's how you're going to grow your sandbox is going to get bigger and bigger there's another way we can think about this is um in in the early days of the world uh people were geographically locked to a certain kind of radius from where they were where they were born and as we got braver and More Adventurous that Circle started to expand and we kind of think about it now it's kind of silly like we we can jump on a plane and be anywhere in the world within a few hours right you get on a plane you could be anywhere and I want you to think of yourself like that are you these kind of early settlers of an area do you only travel 5 miles away from where you set camp or are you willing to go beyond that and so what we want to do is every single day and every single way we want to expand that Circle expand your knowledge expand what it is that you're interested in your activities and hobbies your clients the clientele different verticals in terms of the markets you want to get into expand your pricing interrupt you one second okay hold on hold on hold don't interrupt me are we good yes okay so we don't even need to role play right you haven't even asked yet I need you to just get over over the hurdle of asking like you want to try new foods you want to date different people you want to read different kinds of books that's what you need to do now Aaron what's up we're going to have to cut the stream and restart it we're having a issue with Facebook live uh why just Facebook live yeah we're still good on YouTube yeah screw Facebook live we're fine okay I mean sorry I don't mean screw Facebook we're not on Facebook so you know we're not on Facebook we'll we'll upload this video later to Facebook it just didn't happen let everybody know on Facebook go to the YouTube stream give the link all right we're going to keep going right yeah go ahead all right sir Jones do you have a follow-up question or anything are we good uh we're good okay uh Otto do we have any questions from okay tell me about it cont what do you recomend with prospects who don't have their budget are these people Tire kickers okay let me try to understand this first of all Tony thanks for the Super Chat donation I really appreciate it Tony Lopez his question is what do you do with clients that can't afford the project is that the question didn't you just read the question to me yeah what do you recommend with prospects who don't know their budget oh who don't know their budget oh okay all right for everybody that's tuning in this happens a lot people actually do know their budget and they just don't know that they know it already so the the very simple solution to this problem Tony is for you to do price bracketing let's figure it out right are we a Neiman Marcus kind of person are we a Nordstrom are we a Kmart what are we how much money do we have so they're like I don't know you're the expert you tell me so if I tell you that the logo is going to cost between $3,500 to $5,000 are you okay with that budget no oh that's just too much okay so where are we then oh I have $2,400 to spend okay I think I can work with that or you know what let's see what we can do uh to make sure that you get what you want but I need to get you know 3500 whatever it is you need to work out so as soon as you put the number out people all of a sudden get really wise as to what the real budget is okay so even when people say they don't know what their budget is they do they know all the time you just got to put a number out to feel out the situation okay what's another question you want to type anything else this one okay here we go here's another question coming in I just want to let the live stream people know on Zoom Josh you're up next and I'll call you in one second okay get ready here's the question how do I sell myself as a strong graphic designer when I'm fresh out of school and don't have a lot of professional experience how do I sell myself all right now here's the thing the the term strong graphic designer I just want to break that down a little bit you can be a strong graphic designer when you're in school have never been to school or 50 years out of school being uh related to school in terms of the timeline really doesn't matter you have to ask yourself and you have to be really honest do I have the skills to measure up to the people that I look up to that I would consider a strong graphic designer and that's up to you to determine who you look up to okay and if you don't have a lot of professional experience I would be very transparent about that when I'm getting into a new field I I don't try to hide that this is new for me I just let them know I'd love to help you out I think I have some really strong design ideas to help you I just don't have a ton of print experience or designing brochures and if you're okay with that I'd love to work with you now chances are the person's talking to you because they've seen work you've done and they already like the work so being honest and straightforward I think is the best medicine for this kind of stuff okay um let's go now to Josh Lopez Josh you ready hi Chris I'm Josh Lopez from bendor I new to working with remote workers what tips and tricks do you have that I can use in my business okay what kind of work do you do development you're a developer websites M okay is your background in computer science or are you self-taught self-taught excellent okay so the kinds of remote workers that you want to work with are they more developers are they creative what are they all developers oh all developers how do you get new job leads I don't know yet I'm I'm brand new oh you're brand brand new yes okay so you don't have any new business to speak of no okay now why do you feel like you need more developers when you're a developer yourself uh just in case if I get overwhelmed with work okay are there certain areas of expertise that you're not comfortable with just yet like an e-commerce thing or something like that um I've been doing Drupal for eight years but web uh WordPress is difficult I haven't use that as much okay so you're looking for WordPress developers yes okay excellent um do you know where you can find them no I don't all right so the first thing that you need to do and I'm going to say this to everybody that's in business whether you're a solopreneur if you've got a small agency or a really big one you need to build up that Rolodex if you will of people that you can call a database and what you want to be able to do is scour the internet and if you spend a little bit of time searching and poking around communities certain peer groups you will be able to find these people pretty quickly the other way you can do do it is just ask people in in the in the community hey who do you guys know who do you guys like who do you trust so you have to do a little bit of real world networking to be able to have people trust you and share the resources with you people tend to get pretty Thrifty when it comes to sharing their resources because they're afraid that the mo the moment in time that they need that person that resource that you're going to take them and they're no longer available to them and that's why they're going to be a little bit Cy and just a little dodgy with you okay so if you form a real relationship with people they're more likely to say you know Josh is not a bad guy I I want to work with him I think he's cool I don't mind giving him some of my resources and hopefully you're able to reciprocate now the thing that you don't want to be is just a leech all right you don't want to just be a person who jumps into relationship is super transparent about what it is that you're trying to do which is to basically steal all their resources and give nothing back to them you wouldn't want anybody to do that to you so don't do that to other people now when you're able to build up a roster of five six seven people that you think are going to be uh like your secret weapons when when you get too much work then you you're able to use them now let's say you've got that little list going already what you want to do is you want to then interview them you want to talk to them and their communication style should be very indicative of how they're going to work with you in the near future so if they're slow to respond if they give you short CT emails this may not be a good fit for you and unless you like that kind of style now I think for every kind of company there's another person who's a good fit so I'm not I don't mean to say that everybody that's got that super aggressive style is bad if you're super aggressive you like working with super aggressive people two pieces in a pot it makes total sense so what you want to do is you want to start to communicate with them cuz what you're trying to imagine in your mind right now how is it going to be to work with this person moving forward how is it going to be chatting with these people once twice a week for the course of three months and if you get a bad feeling you either address it or you make note of it and say you know what they're not going to be my first call they might be my third call or I may never call them okay now then the next way to deal with this is to do a Skype call with them if you can because a lot of people especially if you're working remotely English is not their first language and there's a lot that is lost in email people who even are native speakers don't write uh great emails okay okay so if you get on Skype you can talk to them and you could read their body language the little micro expressions like what's going on are they leaning back are they leaning forward and that way you can get a better sense of who they are and how they communicate and what I would do is say to them this is where transparency really helps okay and my name is Josh I'm a brand new developer I'm starting to on board some new clients I want to know what it's like to work with you I don't know what I don't know so if you don't mind just you know be a little bit more patient with me explain to me how you do what what you do what the pitfalls are uh how do I screw this up how do how do we make it this to be a fruitful and collaborative relationship you know what's the best relationship you've ever had those kinds of things you can ask very open-ended questions and if you guys want more of this you should tune in to our our million-dollar proposal Series where we went through all the ways to work with a partner and if you watch that we go really deep and that'll give you more answers into what it is you're asking okay hey Chris that's how you work with remote developers yes we got a donation from Ben Chadwick yes Ben Chadwick thank you what's the question and he says how do you show the client the value of strategy before designing a logo process the value of strategy okay let me write this down I think I know Ben Chadwick Ben what's up man thanks for your support he wants to know how you sell the client the value of strategy before you do Identity Design that is a really deep question and I think what a lot of you guys want to know so let me see how I can figure this thing out so that we don't bore every single person that's not interested in that okay now let me explain what strategy may or may not mean to each one of us and I know what it means to me now logo design is the thing that you make there's a whole process before you actually make something that can be valuable if you do it correctly and this is where you're going to need to level up quite a few notches here because these aren't things that I was taught in school so even if you went to a very prestigious excuse me design school this may not be part of the training that you received I'm just saying you know over 20 years ago when I went to school this was not part of the curriculum and what we're trying to do here is we're trying to solve a communication a marketing issue a user experience issue a re a new issue something like that and the logo is only one part of the solution you guys need to remember this okay like if you buy a product with a logo on it you think it's very valuable because the logo is on there it sort of is but not really it's everything that the brand has done the brand promise the user experience how people connect to that brand they want to join that tribe of Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders or they want to join that tribe of Nike athletes of perform genuine athletic performance they want to join these different tribes okay then the logo um and in in in our community is placed on a pedestal because we think it's the holy thing this is everything and it's not it just happens to be the thing you make and so there's a lot of kind of self-centered importance based on the logo so let's rewind here this whole strategic thing means that you have to get into a lot of things you don't yet know in terms of how to help them increase their business how to how to improve the user experience and user experience can can mean in a digital sense like how you move to the website and get what you want it could also mean how do you move through the store or you've got a problem and and you want to call customer service and that experience is not great you want to design the best possible user experience so these are a whole lot of skills that are really super complex for me to explain on a call like this but if you do something remotely close to that and strategy is not just asking them what colors do you like what brands do you like cuz that's not really moving the needle there either that's just helping you to define the target you of things that the client likes okay and if you can actually do this there's lots of value there and it starts by asking the clients some open-ended questions and letting them know you are not just a logo maker you're a strategic thinker and you can do things to help their business grow and flourish and by the way I'll give you a nice logo at the end of this but we're gonna we're going to create a lot more uh touch points uh it could be the website it could be rewriting the copy deck brand messaging it could be helping them with a keynote or PowerPoint presentation so they can raise money like series a or series B Run fun fundraising all right that's when your value increases dramatically by 10x by 100x and that's what I've been able to do and I I hope that I'm able to share with you guys at some point in time I hope that makes sense guys that was super deep uh Ben Chadwick set me for the Deep question we got another donation we do yeah from darar okay hold on to that donation let's move on to our live stream audience and we'll we'll jump back I believe Jay is up Jay Josh are we good by the way hey Chris um my name is Jay and I'm from Barbados uh my question is how do I I guess critique my own work like just trying to figure out if what I do is good enough aside from hearing you know well this is a good design I love it you know yeah so here's the thing and you guys have heard me say this before when you have a really clear goal you have really clear results a lot of us start the design process without knowing exactly where we're heading so it could be endless searching endless revisions even for us forget the client even if you're doing it just for yourself so what I like to do is to try to Define some goal that is less subjective and more objective so how do you do that well when you before you start off designing anything you should sit down and think about what it is that you're trying to say what are the brand values what do they what are their beliefs what are you trying to communicate what's their ethos okay and you should write these things down commit to that go ahead I do a ton of that and I remember you stating in one of your videos um I think it was a recent video a day in a life of designer where you said to the guy if he doesn't learn anything during the research process yep um you know he he isn't doing his job as a designer logo designer so I do T of design I do you know the background of the company everything else I think it's just me personally being too a bit too hard myself or wanting to push more to get to standards of DS that I admire well I think that's a good thing but you kind of have to be careful about wanting to achieve Perfection I'm not sure it's attainable I think the fire that I kind of hear inside of you the desire to grow to constantly research and learn and to build things that are better than what you made yesterday that's a good thing but also on the flip side if you let that say that my work is never good enough I think that could be dehab it could suck the wind out of your sales and I I I I might need a little bit more information this might be moving into some kind of like therapy session and we can do that but um you know I see you laughing there yeah I mean it kind of feels like that right here's here's one thing maybe that I can say to possibly help you here I want you to look at the world in a very specific way like what you allow to enter your mind you have to be very careful okay from the things that you read the people you surround yourself with the podcast you listen to the things that you watch because the world is full of negative people the world is full of people who say you can't do it that you're not good enough that you're not worth it and the people in that world could even be related to you it could be a teacher it could be a sibling it could be your parent and you have to be very careful about letting anything into your mind um if if I can give you any if I can give you like one big idea today I want you to be extremely careful to be this amazing gatekeeper like I'm A Game of Thrones guy you know so whoever is the baddest night in the land of uh the Game of Thrones World okay in the Seven Kingdoms you need to be that person in terms of letting things into your mind the things I let in my mind are things that make me feel positive that affirm what it is I'm doing to help me to grow and help me to um uh solve problems and challenges everything else I just get rid of I don't have time for that so even when people throw a negative comment at me I try to find like what's positive about that and just let that piece through okay like here's an example Matthew one of our creative directors here he put together a 24-hour day in the life kind of thing and somebody like commented on YouTube with super troll said oh man that's fake as F right that's so fake and and and I talked to Matthew I'm like God what is wrong with the trolls dude we understand that's an extraordinary day not every day you're You're Building supercomputers of course that's not what we're trying to say and Matthew is like he's like I took it as a compliment that what I do today seems like it's unreal to you okay cool that's how he heard it and I love that so he's got his guard up you know he knows what to let through and that's awesome okay so what we want to do is look at this like when you make your logo and you feel like I'm making a lot of progress it's not where I wanted to be just yet but when I look back I've made a ton of growth and that's what I'm going to focus on that's going to fuel my fire that's going to keep me pushing forward that's going to keep me up at night keep me motivated keep me involved in this profession it's going to drive my passion everything else just get rid of it okay are we good yeah um I think you touch on the point where you know um yesterday you were talking with Melinda about having to prove something to someone and I think that happened to me before with a couple of Tours um I just always wanted to prove that you know well this is it and this is better than you know what at White Z is doing and I wanted them to see that yeah I mean we have to be very careful in comparing ourselves to other people and often times we mistake our beginning or our Middle with somebody else's ending you know I've been doing this for 20 plus years if you were to compare what you do today with what I do that's an unfair comparison because we have to look at where I started and where you're starting and then if we want to look at like that at least it's a fair comparison okay it's it's of in our culture and I understand the way we learn things is we try to associate something that we don't know with something that we do and we make these weird connections you know when somebody tells you a story you're you'll reply oh that's just like the Three Little Pigs that's just like uh the boy who cried wolf you're constantly connecting these things now that's how we understand the world that's very natural but the part that can be very negative is to say oh my work doesn't measure up to something that Michael bayut designed or Marco Chase or somebody else and that's going to hurt you okay all right Zach we're letting people in okay all right Jay I'm going to move on Sharie you're going to be up next we're not going to go to you just yet and we're going to do a little role play with sharf as I promised as I promised but let's go to the questions we have we have a question what's the question besides oh here it is it's there do you want to read it yeah I'll just read it okay cool all right it helps me to to know what I'm doing okay besides starting a blog and having a website how do you promote yourself as an independent Design Studio okay there's a lot in here so leave this title up here for me to just process here so you're looking to onboard new clients you're looking to build awareness around what it is that you do I I'd like for us to change the word one word in particular how do you promote yourself promote yourself seems like I'm going to talk about me I'm going to talk about my projects and how cool I am and everything I do is great right I want you to just destroy that for a second just get rid of it get rid of it I want you to think of this how do I create value for the people that want to Value me how do I create value for the people who I want to Value me okay what we have to do is stop looking at Social Media Marketing content marketing our website and all that kind of stuff as a way to sell ourselves into other people and what they're doing if we can give them a tool a resource anything that we can think of a white paper a video how-to an explainer that helps them in their life they're going to seek us out okay there's there's different kinds of marketing there's outbound marketing and there's inbound marketing we have a whole sales course about this where we go super deep but let me explain it to you in a nutshell okay outbound marketing is you're going to send emails out you're going to cold you're going to look for cold leads and try to turn them into warm leads you're going to do an email blast you're just constantly pushing information out into the world and you might even do cold call and you pick up the phone you're like hey John I do you need the service that I provide and that's what you're doing inbound marketing is you have to create something of value so that people who are searching for it on Google find it and then see what you're doing and it's helpful to them I would rather you focus on inbound marketing because I'm not hardwired personally and I think a lot of creative people are not that a type Alpha type sales you know just talking to people and hitting the pavement and okay with rejection that's for a very special kind of person I'm not that kind of person okay so I think what we want to do is try and create something that's valuable for other people so if you're in the web design business let's just focus on that for a second if you're doing web design what would be valuable for somebody who's looking for a web design firm maybe you have uh some kind of web design audit as a service that you provide to people where you can look at their analytics and see if they're converting you can make some recommendations you can do best practices you can do a study of website that are high performing versus low performing so then when people become informed they're going to look at you like the thought leader like an expert and they're going to seek you out and that's really important so if you're hiding in your studio space and you're never doing anything to let anybody know what you're doing that makes it very difficult for people who value you to find you and often times you'll sit here and think this not you specifically but you guys okay you'll think this like why did didn't they hire me cuz I could have done a much better job that logo is not very good that website refresh wasn't very good the one big key difference between you and them is that they were able to be found and you weren't that's a big difference okay all right let's move on we good we're good all right um shareif what's good in your hood hey Chris I'm Sharif I'm from Cairo Egypt and uh yeah I currently charge uh $500 for a logo and I've uh only started doing that two jobs ago okay and I've got uh actually one job ago let's say one job ago I'm sorry okay I've got a lot of push back when I did that so I want to charge more now so I don't know how to respond to the push back since the average is quite lower than actually 500 okay and are you selling to a local client or a uh International client uh a local client okay I don't know what the local econom me is but what do you think people can afford in the local market or what they're willing to pay as fair market value for the work that you do uh they they would be willing to pay they can afford to pay as much as I want to charge but it's just that the the amount other people uh other graphic designers are charging is much lower so they feel that they can just you know get the same thing for Less okay what do you think the difference is between what you do and the people who charge less than you you H I don't know the way I uh I'd like to think that my work is better but the way the client sees it they I I position myself as uh perhaps uh like I've been in the business for a while I've done this for a while and the clients I've like the client I've charged 500 was very happy with the work and actually came to me with another uh like once once more work now so I feel like when I do charge what I feel like charging I I can deliver on that okay what you need to do is you need to differentiate yourself from the people who charge much lower prices than you you can do that in a number of ways let me let me go through this now you look like a super young guy so when you say I have a lot of experience I'm like thinking oh come on man now either Mother Nature has been very kind to you okay Mother Nature has been very kind to you you have good genetics I get it how old are you man I'm 22 oh my God you're the ripe old age of 22 super experience uh shareif from Cairo Egypt yeah you look young because you know what you are freaking young let's just be real about that okay you are super duper young this is a kid all right I've been running my company longer than you've been alive okay I need you to process that a little bit I don't want to say I could be your father but I'm not going to go there all right so saying that you're super experienced that's fine let's pretend you're like 34 okay let's just pretend like you have you truly do have experience and you've seen many wars and now you want to charge more money I get it I get it all right let's go through this okay how can you differentiate yourself from people who charge less than you give me some ideas okay the the way I do it now is uh most of the people here uh most graphic designers give me short answers short short answers approaches them and asks for a solution and they just provide it immediately the way I do it is I try to diagnose the problem first with the client and I feel they they can see the value in that okay what else uh that's it so and I think that my work is better than theage well every you know I can line a bunch of other 23 year old 22 year olds in the room and they're goingon to tell me the exact same thing they're like forget about Shar I I my work is much better okay so anything see that my work like when I show like the client comes and they can tell they they like my work they tell me I like I like your work I want to do this for me but it's more it's it's more expensive than like it's it's way too expensive for me okay okay can you guys hear what he's saying everybody he just said the clients really think my work is great but they're you're too expensive that's like saying you're really a handsome guy but I'm not interested in dating you oh yeah okay you you you love my you love my work when you agree to pay the price I charge that's how I know that you really love it okay because you have to remember like people are polite and people who aren't creative think everything is great all right so here's how you are going to differentiate yourself and then we're going to get into the role play as promised okay okay all right okay you can differentiate differentiate yourself from others by working with bigger clients than they've worked with all right so if you worked with Nike with Sony with Xbox with Adidas whoever what you've got is social proof I want you guys to write this down social proof it's one of the principles of influence by Robert calini social proof we feel safer working with you because people that we look up to and respect have worked with you and that makes me feel more comfortable spending more money with you right okay have you been to our website have you been to the blind website just out of curiosity okay you see the brands we work with yep okay so right now I can out compete you without even saying a single word because the clients are going to say well my gosh they must be worth it because all these big brands have worked with them okay so that's one thing that I want you to think about okay so you need social proof now a lot of you guys are like well if I had Nike why would I be calling you right now on the Skype call why would I be doing that this kind of ridiculous solution it's like saying you want me to be 6'5 and I can't be there's other ways to get Social proof social proof we're going to go down the next level we need testimonials from your clients who love you who ex enjoyed the experience and thought it was wonderful we need those people are they on your site today no they're not well okay there's another problem there I'm just writing down all your problems okay I'm writing too and you said well the the client that I charge $500 to they love it they're giving me more work well get that client to say something nice about you and put it on your site okay so that's another way you get social proof can I say something you can say anything you want man okay usually when I visit the website for the graphic designer uh like a graphic designer's website and they have a testimonial of like a random guy not Nike or I feel it's a bit cheesy and I I don't really trust that I don't feel like I trust that if on your on your website and you're saying like I don't know this John hey that's my easy there that's my brother all right no I'm just kidding go easy go easy there John do where's the okay not that do yeah not that though John Smith you're talking about John Smith okay yeah and you're saying that anybody can manufacture a quote from somebody so here's how you make it have a little bit more weight it's gonna say um sharif's an amazing designer he helped us do XYZ he delivered exactly great customer experience my name is John Smith I'm the CEO of biotech.com whatever it is so put in their title so it's not some schmuck it's not my my auntie you know it doesn't you you have to give them some weight okay so be selective pick the right people you don't have to have everybody that's ever said something nice about you put it in there okay now you see when when your own reaction is when I go on a site and it's written by some little Rinky Dink thing I don't trust them it's cheesy in your words okay what do you think people are looking at when they come to your site small small Brands no testimonials no social proof yeah okay so why would I pay you more than the next guy I have no reason to next what what's another form of social proof you know oh you're asking me yeah I'm asking you it's not rhetorical uh I don't know perhaps a certain U brand that I've done work for performing like if someone sees that I've done work for a local brand and they they know of this local brand yeah perhaps they like and if it and that it's performing well they would like that I guess I don't even know what you just said what did you say if if there's a local brand that I've done work for and people see that on my website and they know that this local brand has been doing well lately okay would that help or uh well I'm going to tell you how to say that in a different language you can show proof of the impact that you've had in terms of the design affecting their business definely some ways that you can do this is you can show before and after that's a simple one like this is how ugly it was before is what I was able to make out of it and it was drastically different people like wow that's really good you can show that their social following engagement went up 300 1 76% because you started handling their social media posts you show evidence people are looking for proof okay all the time whether it's big Brands a testimonial from somebody that seems credible um evidence which what we're talking about right now and awards if your work is good enough to be recognized by an international body you you probably could put that on there I've won X statue trophy I've won this won that my work has been recognize okay first I have a question hold on hold on okay okay give me a second I've been published okay I'm in this book I'm in the best logos of the world volume 4 I'm in this magazine as the most creative guy in Cairo at 22 top 30 under 30 in Cairo you see what I'm saying what do what do you got you got any of these things no well okay there goes your social proof Aaron what's your question by away Aon hold hold on Aaron no I was just going to ask for share I mean you you threw a bunch of different things at him right yeah Sharie can't hear you so what what's your question so which one do you think like if he had to pick just one thing to focus on what which one should it be one thing of what I mean of these social proof things to try to get all right so Aon Aaron wants to ask you a question Sharie he says if you could just pick one of these things to focus on which one would you pick uh probably the one I'd say the testimonials I feel like oh the cheesy testimonials you pick that yeah okay good I feel like maybe I could think of a way not to make them cheesy yeah you you pick a good TI face they'll be less cheesy true yeah I was thinking comic s but I don't no you should go with Papyrus yeah Papyrus because Kyro yeah yeah you see all right sorry that's that's what we just use every day right and I like comic books so I use comic Sands I'm actually on my camera right now okay all right so all of you guys that are tuning in if you want to charge more get the social proof game going here get it let me make sure it's in Focus there it is get your Social proof game going all right have testimonials Awards proof that you've made a difference everybody says Oh My My logo is worth so much well prove it show before and after show results have evidence data okay have qualitative and quantitative data to support it show that You' you've been published and recognized by lots of people who are much smarter and better than everybody else that's how you differentiate yourself okay all right now that we learned that you're at the ripe and ripe old age of 22 and you've got tons tons of experience let's get into role play well you'll hear the end of it from me but not until we hang up all right so here we go okay let's do some little role play here okay we'll try Okay so a client's coming to you you want to charge them 500 bucks and they're just not going to agree they're just saying you're cheaper uh you have cheaper options right okay okay here we go I will be you want me to be the client or you want to be me to be you and you be the client who do you how do you want to do this in role play well now that you know my situation and that I lack social proof maybe I should be the the client okay you be the client so let's do split screen Aon let's get into The Rumble in the Jungle here we go all right so you're the client and we we'll kick it off all right uh so ask me a price question I'll tell you the price and then you could be the client I really want you to be the client I don't want you to be my friend okay I don't want you to be a sympathetic creative person go ahead here we go live audience and audience tuning in on the feeds get ready you guys got your knives out this is uh there's no gloves here here we go let's do it ask me a money question go ahead so ready okay hey Sheri so now we need the a logo for this uh new thing we're doing so so how much do you think you can charge us okay well based on our conversation and me analyzing your your business and Communications and marketing goals I'm thinking it's probably going to be anywhere between a th000 to $2,000 oh that's that's just crazy that's like last month we did the some work with another graphic designer and he charged us like $200 yeah yeah $200 wow you got a really good deal you got a really good deal Mr John Smith um I'm just curious though if it worked out so well why are we talking uh he didn't deliver like on the deadline immediately he was a little late but we we like the work after all I guess okay so you're okay with missing deadlines how much did that cost you in terms of opportunity when a deadline was missed have you thought about that uh perhaps but I guess like I'd be willing willing to pay a bit more than 200 to get people to submit on deadlines but not 10 times that okay well let's let's evaluate this let's I don't I don't want to let this go just for one second okay you're a successful entrepreneur how much is your time worth uh when when you're not focusing your your business when you're not doing business development when you're not managing your operations what what is that costing you I have to imagine is probably costing you in excess of $500 an hour am I correct yeah definitely okay so yeah we've done