How To Know Your Worth & Charge It
Episode #110 with Chris Do
Overview
How do you handle a call from an interested client if you know that they’re also looking at other companies? What price do you quote them? How you handle this call might determine the entire future of your business. No pressure, right? Today, I’ve got an amazing guest who will put your fears and worry to ease.
If you haven't heard of Chris Do, he started doing motion design back in the 90s before it was even a real thing. Chris is the CEO and chief strategist of Blind and the founder of The Futur. He has immeasurable amounts of experience in the world of video and works with some really amazing clients. Chris’ work has even won him an Emmy in Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation.
This not to be missed interview is about challenging the way that you approach new work. We talk about how you can create competitive estimates and how you should communicate the value of the work that you do. Essentially, this chat is about how to close that deal over the phone, and it’s probably not by doing what you think.
Chris illuminates so many important aspects of closing the deal. From proper mindsets and faith in yourself to recognizing and communicating exactly what your value is. We go over why you should steer clear of hour-based billing in favor of value-based pricing and even why it's a good idea to send your prospective client to the competition first.
In This Episode
- The three most common struggles that creatives face and how to overcome them
- Why it’s crazy to use hourly billing rather than basing your price on the value of your work
- How you can sell your client on a fixed rate when they would prefer an hourly based package
- The three questions that you should always be asking when closing with a potential client
- The most valuable mistake that Chris has ever made in his career and what you can learn from it
- Unrealized opportunities that creatives like you have that you may not be taking advantage of
Quotes
“For some people doing the work is super easy. So they think, that was relatively easy, so I should charge relatively little; if it was really hard I would charge more. I think a lot of creatives suffer from creative guilt.” [13:06]
“If you’re in that phase right now where you’re charging based on hours, you're going to realize something really quick - it puts an artificial limit in terms of how much money you can earn. There’s only so many hours in the year that you can sell.” [24:05]
“If you can get the project done and delivered and perfect in two days versus two weeks, that should be more valuable to the client. So the incentive to work faster, more efficiently is not there if you’re doing it by the hour.” [29:53]
“Believe it or not, the more you try to convince the client not to hire you, the faster they want to hire you.” [33:05]
“Maybe the most valuable mistake that I seem to still struggle at and make consistently is that I partner up with people. I’ve learned over time that I’m not a good partner. I don’t take direction well. I want to do things my way, and when I start to compromise I start to lose that fire, that spark that gets me up in the morning.” [38:40]
“One day you’re going to realize that you have a lot more gifts to offer the world than to exchange your time for money.” [40:25]
Links
Follow Chris on Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Behance | Linkedin
Follow The Futur on YouTube | Facebook | Twitter
Hourly Billing is Nuts by Jonathan Stark
The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns
Follow Studio Sherpas on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
If you haven't already, we'd love it if you would take 1 minute to leave us a review on iTunes!