What (Not) To Talk About

How your target audience can guide how much you reveal about yourself and/or your politics.Deciding which boundaries and guardrails make sense for you, your work and how you want to roll. The advantage we have as soloists—but don’t always use—when deciding how much of ourselves to share.One technique to deal with clients who have disclosed something distasteful to your core values (but you can’t fire them yet).Quotables“I'm not saying no to (talking about) chicken vindaloo, I'm saying yes to ‘Let's talk about pricing today’.”—JS“If you're doing B2B to big corporates—unless you're running a politically oriented law firm—then you're probably not talking politics.”—RM“I don't know how to build a business or help someone build a business where you really don't care about your clients.”—JS“We’re soloists—we get to decide…we're not working for ‘the man’ getting a salary and having to serve whoever comes in the door.”—RM“Maybe you're not there yet, but you will be able to become increasingly picky over time (about who you take as clients) and it's delightful.”—JS“If you can't say goodbye right now, then you put them on the list—they're the first one that's gonna go, and you'll find somebody else to replace them.”—RM“Just write something that you want to learn a lot more about. Pick that as your central topic, and if you’re really excited to learn more, you don't have to be an expert.”—JS“Think about glass or plexiglass so you can see them, but they can't touch you. That negativity, that thing that you really don't like, can't touch you—that's a technique that therapists use all the time.”—RM

Re-Evaluating Leverage

Packaging Your Expertise Differently

Four primary ways to assemble and deliver your expertise—and the pros and cons of each.Shifting your mindset while shifting your service and product packaging, AKA how to move upstream confidently.How to conduct a listening tour of your ideal clients and buyers for focused direction on (re)packaging and price points.Integrating what your audience most wants from you with your genius zone.Quotables“You have this expertise that produces results, but you're used to delivering it in just one particular way… 
How can we come up with some different ways to assemble it and deliver it?”—JS“There’s the fear factor: If you're used to getting $50,000 to build something and now you’ll get $5,000 to outline it, you’re thinking ‘where am I gonna get the other 45,000?’”—RM“If you're an order taker and you disagree with the orders, it's like the world telling you to move upstream.”—JS“Think assessments which allow you to shift your revenue and to productize your knowledge into something that's easier to sell.”—RM“It's not that difficult to add some kind of upfront design or architecture phase to whatever the thing is that you normally build.”—JS“I like listening tours where you're going to people who are your ideal clients, and you're asking them about the biggest problems they're trying to solve—and you find out more about that, so you get a sense of magnitude.”—RM“I like to ask historically, have you tried to solve this in the past? How much money or sleep have you lost because of this problem? Things like that, because they can answer that. Like they are the expert on those questions.”—JS“Instead of just looking to what other people are doing, we have to really understand what our audience wants from us.”—RM

The Anti-Vanity Metric

Why profitability is the ultimate anti-vanity metric that will give you a quick read on the health of your business.How to start thinking about your time as part of your profit equation.One way to value your business that will rewire how you think about its profitability. The thrills of desire-based planning—and learning to consider and manage opportunity cost.Quotables“It's so easy to get wrapped up in ‘Oh, my podcast downloads are increasing’, or ‘My mailing list is growing dramatically’, or ‘My website traffic is going up’. None of that matters if you're not increasing your profitability steadily over time.”—JS“It's really tempting to just think that as soloists, we don't have any real costs so we don’t have to think about profitability.”—RM“The thing I do like about an S Corp is it is financially separated—the business and your personal money is separated. You have to run payroll, you have to pay FICA, you have to do all that stuff.”—JS“You know how much leverage you have when you try to sell or even think about selling a business. What is this actually worth if I'm not here?”—RM“So you can take your $245 million and put it where the sun don't shine because you are wrong and I'm not gonna do what you're asking me to do, which is bad work.”—JS“It's what I think of as desire-based planning. You ask what do I want? What is my desire? Who do I want to serve? What revolution do I want to lead? What new thing do I want to learn?”—RM“Given that constraint of not the entire full tube of toothpaste, you get creative about how you're gonna get that last bit out.”—JS“The thing that always makes me sad for people is when I see them not making decisions because they don't know what to do—so they do nothing.”—RM

Making Learning on The Client’s Dime Ethical

How do you/they disclose that there will be real-time training happening?Your role as the buyer when your seller isn’t coming to you with full disclosure and pricing options.Assessing the impact on your authority when you tell your client you’re not an expert (and the surprisingly positive view most buyers will take).How not to fall into the employee mindset trap—and what to do instead.Using new challenges as a way to move up the food chain with your clients.Quotables“Should you always warn the client that you don't have experience in something they've asked you to do? My answer to that is yes. Why wouldn't you?”—JS“When you’re on the buyer's side…asking those pricing and cost questions up-front—even if your person isn’t bringing them forward—makes the working relationship so much better.”—RM“It might be an opportunity for you to learn on the job, but you should give them some kind of picture of how long you think it would take so they can at least have an estimated price.”—JS“When I heard ‘I worked those hours and you owe me’ that told me their mindset was an employee mindset versus a business owner mindset.”—RM“Never accept ‘I have no idea’ as an answer.”—JS“We want to be business owners, perhaps partners in what they're doing. We don't want to be a vendor, and we don't want to be an employee.”—RM“If you are a commando type and you are the person that they call when they don't know who to call, you can be dropped behind enemy lines and come away with a win.”—JS“When you don't know something, that’s your opportunity to move up the food chain.”—RM

The Services Buying Journey

How the emotions they’re experiencing impact how they perceive you and the choices you’re offering.Why you can charge more (and sell faster) when you’re referred by someone your buyer trusts.Why your buyer compares your price to something totally different (a car, a trip, a fill-in-the-blank).How your buyer thinks about the increments between your price tags (and how to apply that to your pricing model).Why some buyers will pay more for speed—and how to set yourself as their premium choice.Quotables“There can be a whole bunch of emotions wrapped around the delivery.”—JS“We didn't ask what it cost—we didn't care.”—RM“Bob can charge a lot more than the next person who does what Bob does because you got a referral...If you didn't get a referral, you're Googling for a generic category or solution.”—JS“When they gave us the final number and the guy was out of earshot, I looked at my husband and said ‘well, that was a weekend away’.”—R“They purposely put you in a scenario where you're highly likely to say yes to anything reasonable.”—JS “The fact that they were so specialized…and so prepared for whatever happened —I was impressed with them (and would buy again).”—RM“There's a very small list of things that would not be like this—where you've got a problem, you want it fixed, and the faster it gets fixed, the more you're willing to pay.”—JS“It was like magic.”—RM

Dreams Of The Soloist

The four aspects of being a soloist that you’ll want to consciously examine now—and revisit over time.How to discover whether you’re a good candidate to hire employees for your business.Setting financial goals for your business and deciding where your “enough” lies.Incorporating time off into your work life (and the magic of boundary setting) in a way that fits your personal vision.Building the right amount of flexibility—for you—into how you work, where you work and when you work.Quotables“Being a soloist is awesome…it allows you to have some dreams that would be really hard to achieve when you're working for somebody else.”—RM“If you don't have your objectives defined or the vision for what these four things are going to look like in the future, then it's really difficult to decide what to do.”—JS“Ask yourself: Do I enjoy the idea of leading employees? Do I want to inspire them? 
Do I want to show them how to do things? Do I want to mentor them? Do I want to listen when they have issues?”—RM“Once you replace your salary, then it's like, all right, do I need more and/or how much more do I want?”—JS “There comes this point where you start to look at the future and you think, ‘I'm gonna do this for the next 20 years?’”—RM“It's not like you need to alert the media and be like, ‘Okay, I'm not answering email between these hours or on these days.’”—JS“If you don't think about the intention for your business, if you don't examine it, then it's easy to let your business start to run you instead of the other way around.”—RM “How much time do I want away from doing client work—doing delivery—so that I can either work on the business or play with the kids?”—JS

Be A Contributor, Not A Guru

Shifting your mindset from “I must be a guru” to “I want to contribute to the conversation”.Battling imposter syndrome and perfectionism by thinking about expertise from your prospective clients’ point of view.Adopting the consulting mindset of “I’m here to help” vs. “I’m awesome at this”.How to speak up and contribute to your ideal audience long before you feel like an expert or an authority.Quotables“I try to point out to people that if you know way more about your area of expertise than your ideal buyer, then as far as they're concerned, you are an expert.”—JS“If you're earlier in your career when you go out on your own, you can think ‘Oh, who am I to call myself an expert?’”—RM“The reason I started thinking about perfectionism along with imposter syndrome is because you can combat those things by helping.”—JS“Is the guy who does my WordPress site the world's expert on WordPress? 
I doubt it. But I don't care because he gets whatever I need done.”—RM“’I'm here to help’ versus ‘I'm awesome at this’ is like automatically going to put you in more of a service posture, more of a consultative mode.”—JS“If you never say no, you're not a consultant.”—RM“When you show up, it's not about pitching or seeing how smart you are or anything like that. It's about finding out if you can help.”—JS“If you don't have a comparable level of expertise with somebody else—say the “guru”—that doesn't mean you don't have plenty of value to add to the conversation.”—RM

Fighting The Busy-ness Monster

How years of conditioning have wired our brains to believe that more and/or harder work is always better than “sloth”.What happens when you move away from billable hours, where more work=more money.The importance of building some structure—for example a system for lead generation—so you’re always “gardening” whether your business is in a peak or valley.Why you want to hold a big picture vision beyond your business to keep you grounded and focused.Quotables“It's not uncommon for people to be like, ‘I could never not be working like ALL the time.’”—JS“We've been sold with this idea that if you're not booked that you are failing.”—RM“You could be doing well, but if you don't know where your next client is coming from, that's not a great feeling.”—JS“You want to find that balance of how much lead generation you need to do on a regular basis. That becomes your system—and you work the system.”—RM “If you're complaining about how busy you are, then that's a sign that you don't want to be that busy.”—JS“We have a different version of what’s “enough”, but some people don't have any version. Like ‘it's never enough’ is their version.”—RM“If busy-ness isn't making you happy, then you know what monster you need to slay.”—JS“The gift of having a business like ours…is that we have to reinvent ourselves because at some point, there is a sea change around us and…we have the opportunity to change before it takes effect.”—RM

Hiring Employees Is Not The Holy Grail

Three ways to scale your business with employees (and when it makes sense for them to be contractors instead).How to think about and map your monetization strategy when you have employees—and why cash flow is queen.What to do instead when you think it’s time to hire your first salesperson. The four steps to create personal leverage in your core business—with or without employees.Why your business deserves to be structured so you can live and work in your genius zone.Quotables“Hiring employees is held up like a milestone in the journey of every entrepreneur.”—JS“Having employees changes how you think about your business day to day.”—RM“Minimees are inexperienced versions of yourself where you're gonna mark up their time, bill them out and make the profit off of that.”—JS“(When you’re thinking of hiring) you first want to map out your monetization strategy.”—RM“If you're billing by the hour, just shut this episode off because what we're gonna talk about next is how to deliver more with less work.”—JS“You can hire a whole bunch of employees and go broke five times faster than you would otherwise.”—RM“What would you be considering hiring employees for? It's always because you think they're gonna create leverage…to make your business better.”—JS“I always wanted my employees to make plenty of money because it meant we were all really successful…I paid them based on the outcomes they met, and we could all make a lot of money.”—RM

Soloist Women Mastermind

As a soloist...How do you grow without complicated systems? How do you monetize your expertise in as few working hours as possible? How do you work not only consistently but joyously from your genius zone? And how do you make a lasting impact with the revolution you're leading? Soloist Women Mastermind

Making Email Work For You

How to think about email as a tool to spread your ideas and share your expertise.Why simple is often best—and what to focus on to keep it that way.Basic automations that will allow you to help more people at scale (without overcomplicating your life).Creating the client and buyer experience that stays true to your brand and message (hint: you’ll want to test how it’s working).Quotables“If you're in the business of changing people's minds… it's a pretty good strategy to do it slowly over time, like drip information out in digestible bits, until finally it clicks.”—JS“We want email to work for us. We want it to engage people in our revolution—engage them in buying things from us, learning things from us.”—RM“Having things scheduled in advance and set to go out on a particular schedule is really useful from an impact standpoint, because you can help people for free at scale.”—JS“A welcome or nurture sequence…is where you're bringing them in a very nurturing, welcoming way. That's really important when we're talking about expertise, authority.”—RM“The cautionary tale is it's really easy to overcomplicate this at the beginning and think that you need to know every move each person makes to get it customized to the situation.”—JS“There's just something different about when you look at your emails from the buyer's point of view.”—RM“Periodically I'll have a big jump up in subscribers and it'll like, push me into a new category price wise and I'll be like, eh, maybe it's time to prune.”—JS “It's the brand experience—what do you want people to experience as they go through these different emails with you?”—RMLinksDitching Hourly with Jason Resnick 

The Pricing Seminar

Hello Dear Listener!I’m here to let you know that registration is now open for The Pricing Seminar.You need to know that TPS is not a DIY video course that you download and maybe someday finish watching.No, it’s an interactive online workshop where you will learn by doing. That’s right, there’s homework and people to help keep you accountable to doing it.As a group, we walk through the process of conceiving, researching, designing, marketing, pricing, and selling to clients who are anxious to buy.So if you’re ready to finally start getting paid what you’re worth, enroll now before it’s too late.Lessons start Monday, and folks from over the world are already connecting in the private community.Go to https://thepricingseminar.com to enroll now.It only takes 60 seconds to sign up.That URL again is https://thepricingseminar.com.I hope you’ll join us! 

Clients For Life?

How the retainer execution model rewards a clients for life strategy, but can keep you on the gilded hamster wheel.The required mindset shift as you move away from strictly execution to higher value consulting.How to think about dandelion projects where you stay in touch with client team members as they scatter to new companies (and which business models can easily leverage this).The altitude shift from “hands” consulting to advisory work and why that tends to down-shift client longevity.Quotables“Think of a retainer as charging a periodic amount…for a given set of deliverables. An advisory retainer is not that. An advisory retainer is where you are not executing—you are giving strategic advice.”—RM“The thing about this sort of ‘hands-on’ retainer…it's like a job. It's predictable and safe and probably can be a lot longer term than an advisory retainer.”—JS“When you start that transition (to advisory)…it feels like ‘wait a minute, I'm not doing enough for this money. I need to be busier.’ You have to make a mindset shift.”—RM“Think about a dandelion project—where a buyer brings you in, and you do good work for them…and then that team from that company disperses, and they go to five other companies.”—JS“It's different working with the CEO than it is with the director level of a function. Your impact is bigger. Your potential influence is larger. And the price of failure is higher. That's why you don't come out of school and go coach the CEO.”—RM“The easiest sale is new stuff to old clients because you already have trust. They already know you're legit. They already know that you deliver results.”—JS“Growing your altitude…allows you to operate at a much higher level. And by the way, that level is exceedingly lucrative.”—RM “I've got some students who've done internal systems for gigantic brand names—like names you'd recognize—and they've just oozed from department to department.”—JS

Leveraging Your IP with Erin Austin

How to think about your intellectual property and the steps to take to protect it under U.S. law.When you might decide to give your content away to spread an idea vs. keep it close for revenue generation.The role of registering and monitoring various elements of your intellectual property.How to decide whether you’re ready to license your knowledge (hint: it’s not for beginners).Using licensing to scale your business and create a saleable asset.Quotables“We use intellectual property laws to provide a legal monopoly on using our intellect.”—EA“Under U.S. copyright law…the copyright applies at the moment of creation.”—EA“If that trademark has secondary meaning in the mark—like everyone associates it with you—you really do want to make sure that you get protection for that so that you don't lose it.”—EA“Make sure you are monitoring use of that (trademarked) term on the internet. So if people are using it and you're not asking them to stop using it…then you can lose it.”—EA“There is a perception that IP or intellectual property is a product and it's not a product like a book or a course, or even a licensing program. IP is the exclusive right to exploit your intellect.”—EA“When we are experts, we are creating intellectual property every single day, because intellectual property is the fruit of our intellect.”—EA“A license is anytime I'm giving permission to a third party to use my intellectual property.”—EA“Obviously it (licensing) is not for beginners. It really is for someone who has established their methodology, that you have a record of success of happy clients where you do have these processes in place.”—EA“The key (to make your firm saleable) is making sure that it's something that can run without you…you wanna make sure that you've developed that independence.”—EALinksErin's website Think Beyond IPThe Hourly To Exit podcast