How To Price YOUR Work (Full Whiteboard AdobeMAX)

The buyer determines value, the seller determines price. You get to determine the price, they get to determine value. So when we're talking to clients, we need to know what they find to be valuable, right? And when we find that, selling becomes really easy. If the client asks you, "How will I measure that?" I'm going to tell you the phrase that's going to save your life.

What is up, everybody? Thank you very much for being here as part of Adobe Max 2023. This is the first year in which I've actually spoken at this stage, so I was super excited. But I couldn't say I was excited because, you notice, the first day's keynote, everybody was excited. So I'm like, I need to say something a little different.

But today, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about how do you price your work? How do you put a value on a thing that's intangible? And it's something that people in the creative space especially suffer through. And if we don't learn how to have those kinds of conversations, we will forever be on the wrong end of the negotiation. It gets really emotional for us. We have an uncomfortable relationship with money, and I want to try to get through this, okay?

So I wrote some questions up on the board here, just to kind of kick, uh, kick-start the conversation, which is: How do you price your work? And how do you, how do you measure this? Because if we can't quantify it, it becomes very difficult for us to communicate to someone who thinks in a quantifiable universe. You think in the realm of art, style, class, taste, upskill, brand, very intangible things. So I would like to have a conversation with you today and hopefully shed some light on this and give you actionable tools that you can apply literally the next time you have a conversation with a client about the price of your work. How does that sound? Good? All right. Energy level's not so good today. The internet's like, "He's talking to nobody. He's talking to his son. There's nobody here." Okay, great. All right.

So, who here does a thing for themselves that they have a difficult time negotiating or communicating the value of that thing to another person? Anybody here? Okay, great. So we need to get the microphone to you, and we'll start talking. Okay, you do know the drill. You, you will be on camera. You will be recording for all of history and time. So don't worry, it'll be okay. Sort of. Okay.

And you, the best moments where people were really tough with me, and they get to be that person, and you have millions of some fans, I guess you maybe not your fans, but you have millions of people looking at you. I work with creative services. I do my own freelance stuff, and then I also help with an agency and pricing their work. And I think there's two different models that we use. You're, you're not an invited person, are you? You work for, right? I do both. I, I do freelance and I work for somebody. Okay, so let's just talk about your independent business, okay?

No, one of the words I would like for us, and I use it too, I'm sorry, because it's the part of the parlance, and it's for us to eliminate the word "freelance." I have a whole bit on this, I'm not going to bore you with it, but let's call ourselves independent business owners or a business with a, with an employee of one. That's fine. Because a freelancer is a person who sells their time for money, works in somebody else's rules, and is hacks differently. It's all very different, okay? I know it's the C popular term that we all use, but maybe if we keep using it the wrong way, we'll never get out of this, okay? All right.

So, Nick is an independent business owner, right? And what do you sell? I sell graphic design and layout and project management. It's all, it's all part of the independent business like that. You're doing all of the half. All right, Nick has answered this question exactly the way I hoped he would. He sells rainbows, he sells everything, okay? So he said graphic design, layouts, and then he started listing out like 15 more deliverables. So the first problem is, we need to like hone this into something we want to focus this beam of light, which is great. But what, what we know is the more complicated you make something sound, the harder it is for somebody to remember it, tell someone else. And for many of you, word of mouth will be your most powerful tool to get other people to hire you, to create more opportunities. Because what you want to do, you want to have more opportunities than capacity, right? Everybody understand this concept? This is, um, David C. Baker concept. Your confidence is when your opportunities exceed your capacity to do the work. So right now, if you have one opportunity to do a job, your confidence is probably not great. But if you have 35 opportunities and you know you can only do three projects, your confidence will go up by a ratio of like 30 over three, which is your confidence score will be 10. The goal in running any business is to have more opportunities than capacity. So what we do is we drive down capacity, our ability to do the work, and we drive up the opportunities, right? Makes sense, everybody? This is basic stuff, supply and demand.

So whenever possible, we want to create artificial scarcity if we can. And you don't have to be artificial about it. So scarcity works in your favor here. Everybody understand this? Like when, when there's a line to get a t-shirt and and they can only process so many people at a time, the line gets really long. And then other people walking by who don't even want a t-shirt or a print get in that stupid line because we're all sheep. Old you all understand that? And then you get the shirt, like, "Why do I wait in line for 35 minutes for the shirt I could have got for like $1 down the street, less if you go to the fashion district?" And my time is worth $60. Like, our mind doesn't even work anymore because like, "Free shirt, let's go get a free shirt." Okay.

So when we can signal to other people there's more demand than in this capacity, we will do something good for ourselves. And we start to go on the right side of this. This is business economics 101. We understand that. So what we want to do is we want to focus your ray of sunshine, R life. We really need to do this so we can burn a hole. And that's the focus part, okay? So of all the things that you do, you do, sorry, if we were to list it all on a piece of paper and we went to your accountant, your bookkeeper, whoever, I said, "Of all the things that Nick does, what is driving the biggest revenue for his business?" What would they say? Solving problems. No, you got more abstract. I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to make me draw like a whole scene, a cloud. Now we're into a cloud. That's what this is about. It's this is an art class. Okay, I think you're in control of the situation. I've lost control, and this always happens when I go live. Okay, all right, all right.

So he's like, "I solve problems." What kind of problems do you solve? Trying to communicate, what's his name, feelings, visually. Instagram. That's what I got to work with. He's trying to communicate feelings visually. He's getting more abstract. He started with graphic design, then he's a problem solver, now he's communicating feelings. You were, you were at the keynote, right? You want emotion or do you want specific? I want to get specific. Giving you both. Please give me something super specific. Like, when, when a person comes, logo. A logo. Thank God you got there. Okay, Nick. Nick makes logos that have a lot of feeling baked in it. It solves a business problem. I get all that. And it's under the larger umbrella of graphic design. Now I've turned this thing into an umbrella. Okay, rainbow umbrella. Okay, now we get that. Now people can remember that. And they can, okay, that's fine.

So when you talk to a client prospect and they ask you, uh, "How much do you charge to make said logo?" How does the conversation typically go? Give us the, uh, abridged version, the shortened version of this, and I'll write it down. Somebody will reach out wanting some sort of logo made for a bakery. A bakery. Okay, let's stop there. They're reaching out via social, via Zoom, phone call, old school, knock on your door. It's usually like a friend of a friend or know me in the community referral. So what we're going to call that, WMA, Word of Mouth Advertising, which is pretty much how most of you get business. WMA, right? Word of mouth advertising, referral, social media, something like that. Okay.

So now they're interested. Somebody has recommended you. These are good things. Things are working in your favor. And what is the next step? Just give me the high-level step. Discovery, understanding what they need. So what does discovery sound like to you? Sitting down and trying to intake all of their needs for this logo or what the brand is about, and just understand really what is it, what are the inputs that they want to include in the output? Okay, it'll help me if you just give me the high level, not the detail. So we'll, we'll, we'll do a 30-minute call to see if we're a good fit for each other, okay? Is that okay? Yeah. So that way, everybody can plug in what you do specifically. Okay, so let's say you do a 30-minute, we're going to call this a fit check. And I want to use that term very specifically, a fit check. Because they get to check if you're a good fit for them, and you have to check if they're a good fit for you. I'm sure there's a bunch of businesses you want nothing to do with, just because they come calling. So this is the second concept: we must be discriminating sellers of creative services. Meaning, all these people, I don't want you. These people, I want. So if you don't fit here, you deserve someone who's going to be excited and passionate about what it is that you do. I'm just not that person. Everybody understand? We, we mistakenly believe that just because somebody comes calling, we got to do their business. We think we have to close this client, and it's not the case. The more discriminating you are, what are you doing? You're communicating scarcity. Okay.

Now, 30-minute fit check. When you get to the point when you're talking about money, how does that usually go? I'll get the fit check, and then kind of take time to deliberate, and then come back and sit in another call where I'm like, "Okay, this is what you said you want, right? This is what I can offer you," and then go over logistics, okay? And then after that, the price. Okay. Okay. So what you're going to do is you're going to punt. There's the football to a second call because you need time to think, right? Okay. I don't want to presume. Do you watch our content? Sometimes, some, I, yes. Okay. But not as much as you should, probably. Because we know, do we know what he has already done wrong, everybody? No, because you're like, "I do the same thing, brother. What are you talking about? I do the exact same thing." Okay, okay. We'll continue on this journey. I'm going to map this out, and then we're going to see all the ways to correct later. Well, yeah, well, course correct. Okay.

So you, you're like, "I'm ready. Let's do another call." Now you have, I presume, some kind of bid? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Do you send the bid ahead of time? No. Okay. So you're like, "Okay, I have a bid for you," and then you do what? I walk them through what is included in the bid, okay? And show them flexibility, if that's, if that's necessary, depends on the project. And then, okay, show them just kind of affiliate the price with the product and the final deliverable. Okay. So you're going to tie the deliverable. Yeah, that's a package, everybody. We draw this in a scale, and we're going to put a dollar sign here so we know this, right? So if they feel like they're getting more from this and less of this, then they're going to do the deal. Yeah. If they feel that they're doing more of this and less of this, they say, "No deal." Mhm. Okay. You guys know that show, "Deal or No Deal"? No deal. Deal. We want to put more weight on this, yeah. Okay.

So typically, what happens then? What's the next step? I don't know. For, for me, usually, what is the right step? I don't know. For, for me is, we close the deal, we get the bid, and then you start protection of the project. So they say yes, and sometimes they say no. Yeah. And then they, so there's a couple of options. Option number one is they say yes. Option two is they say no. What's the third option, everybody? What, maybe I'll think about it. Let me get back to you. Let me talk to my partner, right? Okay. This is very good. And so if we were to rank the kinds of answers that we can get, what is the best answer we can get? Nick? Yes. Yes. It has to be yes. This is the number one answer on the board. What's the second best answer? I think the order that you have here is the order some people think maybe is a really good answer. And often times, maybe it's just a time killer. This is a vampire. They suck your time. I think it's worse than no. It is worse than no. Okay. So if we know we arrive here at the end, why do we take so long to get here? That's the question. To give them a, to give them a price back and get to this negotiation stage. Okay. Well, why don't we do this now? Sorry, I'm clarifying. I'm trying to understand why you're, if we know we need to talk about this, why does it take so many steps to talk about this? I think there's a balance between understanding what people want, and then there's also this existential fear. I love the truthfulness. Speak to me. Is it, am I pricing too much? Am I pricing too little? Does this, you know, there's there's a lot of yes, head voices, anxiety.

All right, let me ask you this. For those of you who have worked with clients, want to work with clients, have a business, do a side hustle, how many of you guys feel this existential fear, this inner dialogue between, "Am I worth it? Is it too much? Is it too..." Raise your hand. Let me see you. And everybody who has not raised their hand, you're liars. That's okay. We know who the honest people are. Check and make sure the majority of you raised your hands. The rest of you are rich. Correct. Rich in life. You say rich in life, brother. I get you. Okay.

So here's what I want you to do. Okay. The longer, okay, let me ask you a couple questions. When you ride a roller coaster, what is the scariest part of a roller coaster? You guys can yell an answer. You can participate. Go ahead. The apex. You know, it's that part. I don't think it's apex. It's the part where you glide for half a second before you drop. It's a moment of anticipation that creates the greatest fear. But once you're in the drop, you're good. You're probably like, "Oh my God," but you're okay. It's all the other D, D, D, D, D, D, and then you close for a little bit. You're going to feel the drop where your stomach goes into your throat, right? So if we know that, could we just warp to the part where we drop? Wouldn't that be better? That's why there's rides that go straight up and they go straight down. Yeah. And then people are really cruel. Have you seen those videos where they put them in the drop and they're like, "Oh, there's something wrong with the machine," and they hit the button, and then people will freak out? Have you seen that video? It's awesome. Cruel person. Loves his job. I love that. Okay.

So what we want to do is we want to skip all this stuff because the hours, the days, and the minutes that transpire between the moment of first contact to this point creates more anxiety, gives your brain more time to freak the F out. Is that okay? All right. So what we, we want to do is we want to just rip the bandage off. Now, before I tell you what the answer to this problem is, and I will, I promise, I want to ask you this question. And the question is this: Where in the real world do you go when you want to buy something that you can't find the specs or the price? Where does this exist except for in the world of creativity? I want to know. I'm asking for real. Real estate. Real estate? Really? Let's challenge this. Matt also wants to make the video. I like that. Okay, Matt. There are four homes for sale. The, the broker calls you or the agent calls you and says, "You want to go see these four homes?" What's your first question? Liar. What do you mean? Tell me. Can we throw the mic to him here? Can go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, just tell me more about them. Do they meet my criteria? What is your criteria for buying a home? Well, it has to have a good view. Uh, it needs to be in a quiet neighborhood. I want to have four bedrooms, a big garden, probably a pool. Keep going, keep going. Yeah, swimming pool, gym. Gym in a house? No, it doesn't. You buy your own gym equipment. Room for massage parlor. What do you want? No, that that's good. Zen rock. We're good there. Yeah. Okay. That's all you need to know. That's the first. You said, "What's the first question you asked?" Yeah, that's the first question I asked. Criteria. Yeah. But criteria has a thousand sub-questions to it. What is the one criteria that matters the most? You're asking the wrong person. No, I believe I'm asking the right person. Any person who wants answers quickly is the right person. Price is a a factor, but it's not the first a factor. Yeah. So I have a $25 million home to sell you. You're going to go see that home? No. $15 million home? No. Yeah, it's the factor. Why are we pretending? Now, you can go up above that a little bit, but not like three times. Usually they say, "What's your maximum budget?" Right? Yeah. But you know, here's the thing. There's this thing that's called Redfin, and you just search by price point and by neighborhood, and it's really big. It's not at the bottom. It's not like, "Does it have a pool?" You know, because we know that if it's out of your price point, there's no point for you to go and see it. It's a waste of your having time. Because I can show you beautiful homes that have all these things, but the number one criteria, I would argue, is if you don't know the price, you're wasting my time. And that's why almost all real estate shows your price. Only the homes that are more money than you can afford don't show you the price. Because at their point, they're like, "If you have to ask the price, you cannot afford the home." Scarcity. That's where we want to be. That's where we all want to be, baby. I do need to know the price. Send my agent in. You know, video conference me in because I don't even have time to see it. Right? It's price. So we failed.

Next one. What's the other example in the real world where do you go to buy something where you can't find the price nor the product description anywhere? I know there are a couple places, but not a lot. Eric. Art gallery. Art gallery. Yeah. Really? The art galleries. I go to, the price is right there. There's something called the price sheet. Art art museum. Art museum. Not for sale. I've been to art galleries without the price, without the description. They want to have a, a discussion first before they tell you the price. Really? How do you feel about that? Um, as an artist or as a collector? As a buyer. As a buyer. Um, I think I don't like the initial like opaqueness of it. But me neither. Yeah. Why is that? Tell me about your feelings. I think that you should go to an art gallery also to enjoy the art. But if you're, if you're buying, yeah, you want to know the price. Because otherwise, you can move on to a gallery down the street that has the prices. Now, I know you're an artist and you may have more knowledge about this than I do, but I've talked to people who are on the boards of like Moma and things, and they tell me how this art world works. It's totally crazy. There's a, there's like behind the Iron Curtain kind of thing. And when you know what, how it really works, you'll be shocked. Almost all the art that you want to buy is already pre-sold. You didn't even have a chance to buy it, right? So there's this whole way of manipulating art and art prices and how it gets into galleries and museums. We won't go there. But the feeling that you talked about, this opaqueness, does it make you feel comfortable or uncomfortable? As a buyer? As a buyer, we're only talking buyer. Uncomfortable. And anybody here feel really comfortable when they're not given the information that they need to make a decision? I didn't think so, right? So when you're in an uncomfortable state, are you more likely to make a positive decision to spend money or less positive? Yeah, less positive. Yeah. So this is the problem. We're so scared to talk about money that we're creating is uncomfortableness and opaqueness. Because the person who called up Nick, they might need to know this right away. And Nick, not by by design or by great intention or kind of nefarious means, is delaying that process for as long as possible. And I know when I go to buy something, if I need to know that information, I want them to tell me ASAP. Okay. So we have to get over this idea that talking about money is a bad thing, that it's uncouth to do this, that you're some kind of money-grubbing capitalist pig. And you might be, and that's okay. But we got to get over that idea.

Okay. Now look at this here. This is the heart of what I'm going to talk to you about today. Is what am I getting relative to what I'm spending? Okay. Now, who gets to determine value? Is it the seller or the buyer? Who gets to determine value? Buyer or seller? Buyer. Okay, I get some answers. Buyer. Anybody else want to say seller? You do. You want to say seller? Why? Can you hand her the mic here? Because the buyer doesn't know as much information as what the seller is providing. Let's test your theory. Okay. Um, in a different class, in a different room, we would do, we would do like critical, uh, critical thinking skills. And this is what we'd normally do. I'm just going to take a second to do this. Okay. Before you say something, the first thing you should do is think your thought. Try to just prove yourself wrong right away. If you can, then you don't think that thought. Okay. So let's say again, what you just said. I said the seller knows more information about what they're selling than what the buyer is getting. Okay. And therefore, therefore, the seller determines the value. Yes. Okay, perfect. Okay. Do you buy NFTs? No. You know what a non-fungible token is? You've heard of this thing that the tech bro has been talking about for two years? Yeah. Okay. Aren't they really valuable? Um, would you like to buy one? I know people here who will sell you one right now. As a buyer, you're, I don't know much information. So I wouldn't even think to kind of. But, but the seller knows all the value. Yeah. It's what you just said. The seller knows value, right? So would you buy it? You know the answer. Just say. The internet's waiting. Um, no. Why not? Can you repeat the question again? All right. Well, I'll just help you out here, okay? You wouldn't buy the NFT because you have no idea. It has no valuable to value to you. Yeah. To you. So who gets to determine value? The buyer or the seller? Eric's going to tell you it's worth $110,000. You're like, "Well, to you, it is, but not to me." But you're going to have other buyers. Wait, hold the mic to your mouth. But you're also going to have other buyers who actually know. And each buyer has a target. And each buyer has what? The same decision. Decide if it's valuable to them. Right now. Not, not Eric. Eric can do whatever he wants. So here's the thing, okay? The buyer determines value. The seller determines price. That's what that. See, words do matter. Yes. You get to determine the price. They get to determine value. So when we're talking to clients, we need to know what they find to be valuable, right? And when we find that, everything is so easy. Okay. All right. Are you come along with my party here? Yeah, yeah. Okay, good, good. Because I'm going to run out of paper soon. Let me go to the next page here. Not that one.

Okay, everybody. In order for me to get you to the promised land, you have to understand the logic argument here. If somebody is not in agreement, I would like for you to argue with me right now, or forever hold your peace. Really. I honestly, I'd like to debate with you. Anybody? You guys follow the logic so far? Okay. First of all, we're not freelancers, we're independent business owners. We need to talk about money early. We need to understand what the buyer determines to be valuable. So the entire sales process, it doesn't matter what you're selling, is what is valuable to you. Okay? What is valuable to you? When we know this, everything is so easy. Now, I'm going to ask you honestly, how many of you begin your sales conversations with a mindset, "I got to ask this question or something like this to understand what's valuable to them?" Do that. You do? What do you say? Can you hand on the mic? Is Ethan? Go ahead, Ethan. Yeah, so like, for any particular project, like, what is the main thing you want to get out of this? What do you want to achieve? What is your KPI for? Okay, this KPI. What you want to achieve. What's your next question? Good job, job. Um, Al, so yeah, Nick, well, whatever they tell me, it's like, I'll go like, timeline. How quickly do you want to achieve that? Okay, timeline. What else? And then like, outside the logistics, like at that point, I'll just guesstimate a value based on. Oh, you screwed it up already. Do you watch our channel? Yes. Watch it again. Yeah. Okay. But just watch this replay, and we'll figure it out. All right, okay.

There's a couple of things. Ethan got off to a really good start. He really did, right? Everybody, where did he fail here? What step is he missing? He's missing a critical step. Come on, guys. I know it's day two, we're tired. I know. Come on, we just need to be sharp for one hour, then you can go back to being, you can back go back to being brain dead. Okay. Hand, hand the mic to Jen. Oh, budget. No, no, no, no. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. Budget. I want to, I like. No, no, you're missing something in here. Do not, do not listen to Dro, who'll lead you down the wrong dark path. All right, you fell for it. See, don't trust Rego. That's the moral of the story. All right, watch this. He's like, "How, what is KPI?" A key performance indicator. No, I know what it stands for. Oh, but explain it to us in normal terms. Oh, so what they get out of it. That's like not the thing. Like, how their business gets better. That's not really KPI. Okay. There's another word for KPI. We'll call it success metrics. Okay. Does that make sense? Those are terms. Okay. We have to be careful about the terms we use because they kind of, um, frame how we think about things. How do you measure success? That's a very important question to ask. Okay. Yeah. Let's just say they say, "I want a piece of art." That's the, that's what I want to get from you. All right, we're going to get a piece of art, right? Because that's what, what you guys sell. How, how valuable is this to them? It depends on what their success metric is. How have, how has this conversation gone for you in the past? So like, say it's a website. Like, what, how many, like, how many new visitors to your site do you want to get in X timeline? Okay. And then what else? And then what else do you talk about? Um, what issues are you having with your current website? Okay. How do you want to improve your say, CMS workflow? CMS. Yeah. Okay. What else? Anything else? Um, what are your problems with your current design? What do you love? What do you hate? What do you want to fix? Okay. This is pretty good. Yeah. All right. Are we, are we good here? No, we're not. No, we're not good yet. Okay. All your questions are not helping them to surface what is valuable to them. It looks like it on the surface, but I need to know. So here's the question I would ask, right? Oh, you want me to build your website? The question I would ask them is, "Why is this important to you?" You're missing a "why" question in here. Why is this important to you? What business problem does this solve? How does this improve your bottom line? How does this generate more value to your business? If you don't ask that question, how can you find out this answer? Because problems with your existing design do not necessarily tie back to that. How is your CMS working? Do not tie back to that. Directly, indirectly, it does. What issue? So when they tell you an issue, you must say, "How is this impacting your business?" And if they say it doesn't, what do you do? Cry? Then I don't offer that. Well, you move on. Yeah, move on. Then you say, "Well, what does matter to you?" Yeah. The whole point is, all our questions should be leading us to this promised land of what is valuable to you. Now, here's the thing. Every prospect that calls you, that reaches out, whether they're buying an NFT, an art piece, a website, a logo design, a video, a photo, they already know what's valuable to them. First of all, their time is very valuable, so don't waste any of it. They just don't know how to communicate that to you, and they're scared that you're going to take advantage of them. So we're going to do is we're going to enter into this conversation sensitive to that fact and help them talk about the things they don't want to talk about. So you have to have the verbal skills to ask these very basic questions that do not require fancy language. "Why are we having this conversation today, Mr. or Mrs. Client? What problem are you trying to solve in your business? How would this improve whatever problem is you're trying to get rid of?" Does that make sense? Yeah. All right. Yeah. So now we know what kind of questions to ask. How many of you are asking that question today? A couple of you. Good. Are you having success? Okay. Are you having any problems I need to help you with? Can you communicate your value to the client? Can you? I didn't say that right. Can you communicate your value to your client? You have zero friction when it comes to the buying-selling process. Let's go back to Ethan. Ethan, you're going to ask the clients, "Why? Why are we doing this? Why is this important to you? What impact would this have?" What would they say? Then they said, "We'll sell more units." Perfect. Yeah, you just got to a value question, didn't you? Yeah. Is that the kind of questions you usually ask? Yeah, but I can't seem to phrase it right now. Okay, fine. You know what it's called? It's the brain fog of being live on Instagram and the internet. It's a real thing. Yeah. People get like significantly not as intelligent when they're on camera. Okay. So they want to sell more widgets, right? Yep. Okay. What do you do then? Well, figure out how they're selling them currently. No, do not go to solutions. Stay in the problem. What is valuable to you? When you understand the problem clearly to the point in which the clients end, nod and like, "That's it. That's it." Then you can talk about solutions, but not before then. Okay. Okay. What you want to stay in this, uh, diagnostic phase for as long as you can bear. And you can bear a lot. Mhm. Okay. Do not rush the solutions. You don't even understand it. They want to sell more widgets. What question would you ask them? What, talk to me about the widgets? No, detailed question. We don't want that. Okay. I'm going to help you out. There's only one, one word that's boxed up here, and that word is value or valuable. So we want to talk about value as much as we can until we understand the full value. Because in our mind, we have this scale of value. This is the value one right here, right? The more we talk about this, the heavier that box gets. I'm going back to your videos now. You see what I'm saying? You haven't really studied the videos the way you need to. Yeah. All right. So stay on this. You're selling more widgets, fantastic. What's the next question? How much are your widgets? Okay, go on. So if you, no, I'm trying to go to solutions. Okay, brain fog again. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's fine. We're going to keep moving on.

Okay, so does any, does any, you want to Ali oop, have somebody help? Hand the mic to him. Go ahead. Say your name. Kristoff. Kristoff. Christof. Kristofh. Okay. What do you want to say? No, I mean, I would have said, "How many more widgets?" No, like, "How many more?" Could be a question. So you have something to calculate. Actually, value back to value. It's pretty logical, right? Okay. Hold on to the mic. If you want to sell more widgets, how many more? This is a symbol. I think it's a, is it a Greek symbol? Delta. What is the difference? That's what we want to know. Because there are clients here, and they want to go to here. Yeah, yeah. So what is the delta between where you are and where you want to be? It's a very basic question. So Ethan would ask, "Okay, how many more widgets do you want to sell?" And they, he, they can give it to you as a 2X, a 1.3X, a 6X, whatever. They can just give you a number. Most people will not say 6X because they know they're going to walk into a value trap. Okay. And then you just say back to them, and this is hypothetical. It's a beautiful way to phrase something. "If you achieve this, how much would that, how much would that, what impact would that make on your business?" It's a hypothetical. It's an easy question to ask, answer. "If you were able to double your sales of dead widgets, what would that do for your business?" "Oh, I'm going to make another $100,000 a day, a week, a month, a year." They're like, "Oh, a month." Then you should be grinning from ear to ear like the Cheshire cat, right there. But don't show it to them on the outside. Just stone face the whole thing. "$100,000 a month." Is that net or gross? You got to talk like a business person right now. You know, if you don't know what that means, look it up. Is that gross or net? Just, you only need to know a few terms, everybody. Okay. They say that's fantastic. It's gross. And you're like, "That's gross. What are your net margins?" Talking like a business person. "25% net margins." "Oh, you're okay. Fantastic." So by my math, you're talking about $25K a month times 12, that's a lot. Okay. You've just done the value conversation. So you're here at 1X widgets, you want to be here at 2X widgets. Over what time span do you want to achieve this result? Okay, six months. What makes you believe you could do this? We got a new product. We, the website needs fixing. We know that our conversion rate. Now you have a clue. Our conversion rate is say 2%, and if we just converted at point, or that's not 0.2%. We can just convert it to 3%, we're going to do great. That is something as a web designer developer you can work on day in and day out. You measure that every single time. You do some A/B split testing. It don't matter what the site looks like at that point. All you care about is what they care about. What is valuable to you? Okay.

So I'm going to sum this up in a very simple way, and I'm just open up to Q&A, okay? The two B's you have to master: What is the baseline and what is the benchmark? Where are you now and where do you want to be? Now, if you're an experienced professional, which I assume you are, an experienced professional. If they say, "We want a 17X in 30 days," and you're like, "Wait a minute, spider sense is going off. That don't sound right. This sounds like fantasy land." I cannot promise you results. Do not sign up for work that you know you cannot do. That would make you complicit in something wrong. Okay? You're going to stress out, and that's a kind way of putting it. You're going to get yelled at in about 30 days when this doesn't work. So you have to say, "Well, um, what in the past makes you believe that this can be done?" No, no. Let's bring this to reality. You're a business advisor at this point. Why don't we set more realistic goals? In a time, in 30 days, I think we should try to go for 1.2X. Is that reasonable? Yes, it is. How much would I? Then you go through this whole thing again. So if you want to have a more successful, smooth, frictionless conversation about pricing your stuff, you have to find out what is valuable to the client in real terms. Now, you've seen me do this before. I didn't know what was going to happen. You're, well, Ethan builds websites. It's easy to measure value. But what if you do a logo where you can't measure the value? Is that what you're thinking, Nick? Just say yes. Yes. So now what are we totally screwed? Who here sells logos? Raise your hand. Okay, everybody who sells a logo, let's put our brains together. How can we structure, architect this conversation with something that's very intangible like brand or logo, because we don't know how to measure that sometimes? Okay, we're going to stick with a logo. Now we need to price a logo because I want to send you all home soon to be able to have this conversation, to have it frictionless, to be able to charge two, three, four, 10X of what you charge today and send me a small 10% of that. Is that fair? They won't nod. Mark, they're like, "No, it's a verbal contract, isn't it?" So tight. I give you free information, help you 10X your business, and you're like, "That's why I don't like to work with designers. You cheap bastards." All right, logo, logo. Let's charge for logo. Okay. You know, um, I was talking to Sean, Sean Canal, and he said, "Scared money don't make money." I see a lot of scared money right now. Scared money don't make money. All right.

How do we measure the value of a logo? So let's take this conversation again. Talk to C. I need a logo. What question should we ask? Huh? Why? Because I want to know the answer. No, I'm just messing with you. Can you say more than just one-word answer? Yeah. Uh, "Why do you want a new logo? What do you think it's going to do for your business?" Okay. Hey, pretty good. Somebody's watching videos, right? So, "Why do you need a new logo for business?" Do you ever ask that question? I do. What do they say? Um, they oftentimes just kind of reiterate a lot of like, what they think I think. Everyone says they, they say, "We, we need it for social media, we need it for our website, we need it for our marketing." All that kind of stuff. And what do you say then? I usually then start trying to pivot the conversation to why they got into the business in the first place and who they are. You're doing so good before, Jen. Oh my God. You only watch the first half of the video. So you know what she's, this is just like my wife. My wife's also named Jesse, by the way. Jesse, love you, babe. All right, I'm like, "Honey, these are the 17 steps you need to do this right." "Step one, step two." "I got it, I got it, I got it, babe." And when it doesn't work, I'm like, "Babe, I'm trying to tell you how to do this right." Yeah. So you're like, "I watched the first part, Christian, talk about value." See, you, I got this. AC, it right. Watch a long time. Come on, Jesse, you make me pull a muscle here. All right. Will Patterson. Hand, hand the mic to Will. Will, Will knows. I think, I hope. Will represent here. Go ahead. All right. What's the question? I'll be on the jet like, "Is still real?" Chris, his hair is up, but his mind is not. That's about right. Okay, all right. No, I, I won't put you on the spot. It's okay. Another logo person. When you're asked this question, "Why do you need a logo?" And they go, "Social media, marketing, website." What's the next question you should ask to focus on this part? Bring it back there. Okay, let's get, let's give it to Jen. What results are you looking for? Like, what's the measurable benchmark that we're that those are going to like, so social media, for instance. So you ask me, "Why do you need a logo, Chris?" And I say to you, um, "We need to use it for social media marketing and our website." So these are what we call like applications. Okay. Applications. There's a rule here, everybody. You want to practice intentional listening. Do you know what that means? Intentional listening. You listen to every word that they say. Every single word. You don't inject new words. You don't misinterpret. You don't try to repackage, right? So when you ask that question, "Why is this important for your business?" and you said, "To help me get noticed," and then you said, "Goldfish." Now what? Okay, okay, okay. So why is getting noticed important? What is it going to do for your business to be more noticed? It's going to help me sell more widgets. See, then you get right there. You introduce a new word, and you want details. We don't want to go into details. You designers, you're all freaking so obsessed with details. It's like you got an OCD with details or something. We only get into the details when we go make the stuff. When having a high-level conversation, you keep it high-level. You want to get noticed. Why is noticing important to your business? Because I'm going to sell more stuff. What kind of stuff do you sell? Now you're right back over here. Okay. Now, there's this other way of approaching the question is, you get them to prove to you why it's important to them. All right, little reverse psychology here, okay? Don't tell your clients this. I'm going to tell you, or say this. All right, if you tell your clients this and you say you heard it from me, then you can't use it on them, okay? Here's what you do. I, I do this often. I'll say something like, "In my experience, clients come and ask us to make new logos. Often times, they do not need a new logo. They're told like it's going to help with X, Y, and Z, and it's not always the case. In fact, I'm not even sure your logo is bad. Why do you want a new logo?" "What are you going to say?" "Now, I don't like the logo I have." "Why not? What's wrong with it?" "It's not getting me widgets." "It's not getting you what widgets?" "I'm not selling widgets with it, and you think the logo is going to sell you widgets?" "The logo is going to help me to get noticed, my widgets noticed, so that people will buy them." All right, let's do this. We're going to go down this rabbit hole, okay? Okay. You guys remember this? I know you guys are all like fish brain right now, okay? Your goal is

To get notice, yes, yes, okay. I need you to stay in character. If you break character, it'll break the internet. Okay, your goal is to get notice, right? Is that true? Yes. Why'd you think about it for so long? Because it's not the, the true goal. The true goal, well, the true goal is to sell widgets, but in order to sell widgets, I need to be noticed. That's fine. Okay, okay, let's just stay focused on this. Of all the things that we can do to, to get notice, list them for me, please. What can we do to get notice? Uh, some ads. Ads? Perfect. What else? Um, you know how to get notice? Help her out, everybody. What, what does that mean? Social media. Social, I mean, gain a following. Gain a following. Okay, we'll call this what? Social marketing. Social media marketing. Okay, SMM. Social media marketing. What else? Don't pivot it right now. Stay on notice. I think gaining authority in whatever it is, that's the result of getting notice. Okay, how do we get notice? We are in the wrong conference hall. We don't know how to, to get noticed here. Everybody, aren't you here to get noticed? To learn how to get notice? To capture attention? Come on, guys. Do long. How do we get notice? What? We stand out. You want my jacket off? Get naked. Naked. This is the mother social media dragons here. What are you doing? Rel. Okay, all right, all right. We have a little problem here. Okay, hold on, hold on. I, I want all your answers. This is great. This is the stuff for internet fodder. Okay, this is perfect. I actually really enjoy the painful process of extracting information from you the most awkward way possible. I really do. I really do. Those of you who have been able to grow some social media following, what have you done? Connection. Okay. Post. Who said, said connection? That's just an abstract concept. Rel. Watch this. Okay, remember I said practice critical thinking, everybody? Before you say it out of your mouth hole, ask yourself, can I prove myself wrong? If you can, close the mouth hole. No, because why? I'll tell you why. Okay, I'm going to run a social media marketing class. I'm going to help you grow your followers to 200,000 followers. And you come, and the whole conversation is like, you need to make connections. You're going to be happy with that? Oh, they need to be meaningful. No, you're going to kick me in the face and say, what? That's all you can tell me? Make connections. Of course. What's that? Brand. So you guys are branding. Okay, okay, there we go. Now we got an action. Again, you can give away stuff, and there's another way for that. It's called promos. You can run promotions, right? Yeah. You can do collabs. You guys heard of these things? You can, you can do sponsored posts. You know, you can pay other people to talk about you, right? You can hire a PR firm to get more attention. Remember the PR firms? You can do a publicity stunt. You can do con. Who said that? Jess. You got all smart all of a sudden. You out of the brain fog, just like, let's dig deeper into this. It's like, come on. All right, now you understand. Okay, are we good? There's lots of things here. What's missing from this list? Sh. Okay, look, my team, you are not allowed to participate if we know each other. If you have my phone number, if we're in the DM, keep your mouth shut for a little bit. Let the awkward audience work through the problem. You know what I love? My wife, she goes sometimes to my workshops and my classes, and I'll ask her, what do you have? She's like, I have the answer. I'm a baby. You've been through this 14 times. If you don't have the answer today, we're in trouble, babe. We're in trouble. Our kids have no shot in the universe. All right, so our people, calm down. Garro, calm down. All right, come down. All right, we're missing something. What are we missing? A logo. Logo. Isn't that weird that the thing that we sell to get attention is not even on the list? It didn't even occur to us to put it on the list. Uh oh. We have a problemo. So if a says, oh, I want a logo, it's going to give me notice. How should you respond? Um, I'd ask if they tried anything else that's on that list. What list? The list that we just. Oh, so you, okay, they say they need a new logo. It asks, did you try promotions or giveaways? Perfect. Okay, so what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to hold a client's needs above ours. That's what it means to be of service to someone. And if you're here to sell logos, and the answer is clearly not a logo, you're not supposed to keep selling that anymore. In fact, you should not be selling at all. The main objective of having a sales conversation is to help the clients get clarity over their problem. And once we get clarity of the problem, we can say, oh, there's a misalignment. It doesn't fit anymore. Okay, so when they say, yeah, I want to get more notice, and that's why I need a logo, it's your duty and obligation, if you're running an ethical business that is in service to others, to say, of all the things that you can do, like running ads, doing promotions, publicity, content marketing, social media, and a logo, does it make sense for you to do this? You do not want to decide this for them. Like, you know what, what is your name? Tina. Tina. Okay, Tina. We're already doing all that. I still want this. You're back in business, baby. You're back in business. All you have to do is say it. They get to decide. Is that cool? Cool. Because like, for example, like you go see a doctor, and the doctor says, we need to do surgery. But you should probably have three other, you know, conversations. I already had those, doc. I want your opinion. You come highly recommended. I'm ready to go, baby. So like, okay, operate. Let's go. Okay, so they say, you know what, we're already thinking about this, and all of them told us, you need a better logo. They're arguing for you now. That's not going to run on these ad campaigns. When we're going to have to change our logo in three to six months? Why is that? It's going to be very expensive to change a logo that is not good. They're selling themselves again. You understand how this is? The problem. Why this conversation usually doesn't happen with you? Because you're in your hamster wheel. I got to sell logo. I got to sell logo. I got to prove it. Own. I got to explain all the reasons why logo is good. That's why I've said before, and clearly you guys are not listening to me. Stop selling. Start serving. Be of service to someone. They will sell themselves. Happens every single time. I'm getting a nod from the LA girl. I got. Why you hiding? I just gave you. I just threw a think that you don't have to. Okay, it's not bullets. You don't have to dodge them. Okay, right. She's a great. You guys understand this is what we should do. So then the real question for you is this. Not my team. Team, be quiet. Why aren't you doing it? What's holding you back? Clearly, this is not rocket science. I'm not showing you some weird stuff. Not some chokehold you've never seen before. It's just conversation. I want to know why. Adobe Max 2023. We're going to solve this problem right now, right here. We're going to end this problem forever for all creative people. Why, if you know this, it's super intuitive, why aren't you doing it? Please help me. Insecurity. What are you insecure about? Every true. I get a lot of face there. Mar. I think you touched on it. It was that existential fear. Is it the insecurity of if you ask this and you try to tell them you don't need this, that they'll actually take your advice and leave? Yeah. Yeah. You ever hear that expression? If you love something, set it free. If it doesn't come back, it was never yours. Set the client free. Set them free, baby. Let them fly. They'll fly face into a car, then come crawling back with a limb. I'm so sorry. I meant for you to design the logo, not discount logo designer. My bad. And you're like, well, I don't hold grudges. So we'll just charge you three times as much. It works. It works. Send them free. All right, let me tell you another thing about human psychology. What do we want the most? What do we want the most? The things we can't have. What do, what do we want the least? The things that keep chasing us. Human psychology. Later today, for those of you that are single, ready to mingle, you're going to be at some event. Somebody's going to be, hey, how's it going? What's your number? Like, can we connect? Get away from me, creep. Right? And then there's that person who's too cool for school. They don't even pay you any mind. You're, excuse me, do I know you? Can we? You see what I'm saying? It's human psychology. But what you do is you're chasing them. I heard Blair N say this. Wrap it up. You said you, I could have as much time as I want. Okay, 2:32. Okay, we're going to wrap this up. Okay. Blair N said this. When you're desperate, you're very repelling. You might even be repulsive. Don't be repulsive. If we serve the client, if we find out the benchmarks and the baseline about what they want, and we really listen with intention, we only use what they tell us, and we keep asking, asking the important questions, we will find out what is valuable to them. And in fact, many people who buy a logo, what are people who want to spend a lot of money on logos? Why do they want that? Why do you want that, Amy? Do we have to go somewhere? Is that why? No, they don't. They're going to be here all. Leave. If you don't want to make money, that's fine by me. All right, so if you want to stay, stay. All right, it's not us. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Okay. All right, Alex, coming out and buy some merch. Okay, anyways. All right, so here's the thing. How many of you care about your image? Raise your hand if you do. And if you don't, you should. I mean, let's work on it a little bit. All right, so people who are very image conscious care about their image, and the logo is one of the most important aspects of their image. Would you agree? Like when I buy a shirt, and it's an ugly logo, I put the shirt back. I'm sorry. I just not going to do it. I'm, I'm very, um, snobby that way. All of it has to go together. So you want people who are very image conscious, like they care about every little thing, they're detail-oriented, they're discerning buyers of high-quality goods. Then what you have to do is you have to look at your, you have to look at yourself, you have to look at your website, you have to look at your grams, and everywhere else you post. You have to ask yourself, am I attractive to that kind of person who is a discerning buyer? I don't know why I drew a hat. Sorry, my hand got out of control. Of high-quality goods? And you have to be really honest with yourself. I see your websites. I've seen them. They're not that good. So what you can do is you can use the power of design, presentation, mockups, photography, very important to make your logos look like premium, so you attract premium buyers. Okay, I'll tell you the mistake you make right now, okay? And you could just nod your head if you're guilty. Okay, here we go. Here's the number one mistake that you make, and it's not going to seem like a mistake. You're just going to drop, put your logos like this on a grid. That's all you're going to do. So what you're doing is you're just selling the mark and not what the mark feels like in application. So what you need to do is because these people don't have a great imagination, you have to close the imagination gap. You have to put the logo on things for them so they're like, wow, oh my gosh, this is a really important logo. We want this logo on everything. You follow? So you use photography, all the mockups, generative tools. It doesn't really matter how you get there. You have to art direct the heck out of this. I don't know if you know this, but Apple spends an incredible amount of money taking photos of products that they do not exist. They do not exist. That phone that's on the box, that is not the phone. That is 35 phones past it together. So it looks a certain way. The highlights, the shadows, the reflections. No one photograph can capture all of that. How do I know? I have friends that shoot for Apple. They're selling you this dream. You know, Steve Jobs famously walked into an Apple Store and said, why don't my products look like the way they do on the ads? He doesn't realize an army of retouchers worked on this. He said, change all the lighting in the store. And that's why their products look like the way they do. There's a beautiful soft box over all their products. They take those things into consideration. So it's closing the gap. So what you're doing is you're selling the romance of the logo, of what it can be, not the actual making of it. Because as you saw with text to vector, it's over. Only if this is what you sell. I sell the conversation. I sell the dream. I sell the potential. I sell my listening skills. The making of it is the easiest part. What, what are we making? Why are we making it? That's the hard part. That's what they'll pay you for. Does that make sense? Okay, I'm overtime. Let's spend more time. What do you want to know? What else do you want to know? Uh, especially with logos, like, sometimes it's not even about not getting noticed. It's more about like a brand refresh or like something to like keep up with culture or something like that. How do you measure things like that? Lucas wasn't here the whole time, were you? Uh, just say I wasn't. I was. It, yeah. Somebody help him out. Somebody answer that question. I believe we already talked about this. So they want to do a refresh. How do you talk about the value of a refresh? Hand, hand the mic over to Jen. If Jen doesn't get to, I'm going to throw myself off a bridge. Jen, tell them. You want them to sell you the refresh. So basically, you tell them, how this means me getting on the bridge. It's reverse psychology. You want to tell them, ask and tell them all the things that they. I want you to do it. Literally. Don't tell us the concept of it. Lucas wants to know. He goes, I wasn't here. Okay, so Lucas's question is, um, I want a refresh, and he's come to me and wants a refresh. Okay, hand on the mic. Hand on the mic. We're going to have to go through this painful process. It. So I run a company. I have a logo. It's outdated. I need something more modern. I need something more fresh to just give it a better look to keep up with current trends. So how, how do you think that this is going to, this refresh is going to increase your business or get you more noticed? Did he use the word notice? Noticed? Did he? No, I didn't. You know, from our clientele, we've been hearing a lot that our company feels outdated. Um, we might, it feels like we might be falling behind a little bit, as far as, uh, just current trends, and we want to stay on top of that. What is it that has made you think your logo is how to become current or trendy? Um, I want to say the font is outdated, some of the shapes, some of the gradients, maybe we want to go no gradient, just because of current logos right now are not doing that. Are there other things that you've tried to be more trendy marketing wise? Yeah, we try to do TikToks, we try to do X, we try to do Instagram, take it, uh, step it up with Reels. Still not working. Okay, can anybody identify the problem here with, with the way that the question's going? Anybody? Is this my original mic? Yes, it is. Okay, can anybody identify the problem? Okay, uh, Lucas, hot mic. Over to her. No, no, we need you. Just hand it. Hand it. We all have hands. Most of us. Go ahead. So my name is Alex. Um, I, what's your name? Alex. Alex. Okay, yeah. Feel like she was putting control in the client, um, and allowing him to kind of guide the conversation as opposed to using her expertise to guide it. How, how do you know that from listening? Besides because I said so. What did she do specifically to make you say that? Why, why did you come to that conclusion? It seemed like her questions were very open-ended and not specific. Okay, that's the problem. Your question. You're like on a fishing expedition. You're all over the place here. If you can do this right, it only takes one question. You get the conversation down that shoot again. You can see. So we have to practice your ability to ask questions in real time because you know what happens? People watch a role play. They write the script down. No other human behaves that exact same way. And you're like fumbling around. This is why it's not important to remember the scripts, but to understand the concepts. When you understand the concepts, right? So Lucas says, I need a rebrand, a refresh. You're like, great. Why is the rebrand refresh important to you? He'll say whatever. And you say, is this going to impact your business at all? How so? And you keep driving him into that. You don't introduce new concepts. It's going to go all over the place. Does that make sense? Okay, let's get it back to Lucas. Mic back to Lucas, please. All right, so Lucas, yes, how is refreshing the logo going to impact your business or will it? Just due to current trends, we feel like our logo is outdated due to the color, the fonts. I understand you're speaking like a designer, not like a client. Okay, gradients and like, oh, I don't want this. Client, this is a control freak. Okay, all right. What would the client say? Uh, simply, alarm's going off already. Come on. I'm not trying to go to a business route. Is or is that what we're? You go wherever you want to go. I just say you can't talk like a designer. Okay, let's say, um, it's been 50 years since I've updated the logo, and we, I feel like as a CEO, we look outdated to the public, and I would like to change that. Okay, as a CEO. So you have a lot of brand equity in this thing? Yes. So what kind of departure do you want to make from this? A big one or a small one? Small one. I still want the, I still want the public to recognize, okay, the company. Okay, you just put yourself in a new class of clients now. A client who's been in business for 50 years has hired a lots of companies in between. So now I'm on my, jack up the price, rate. Okay, in my mind already. All right, so we're talking about a big thing. So have, have you worked with other logo design firms before? Not specifically logo design. You must have. You've been in business for 50 years. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you, no, I have it. No, I have it. Okay, yeah, no, you have. I have. You, you're the CEO of a company that's 50 years old. Okay, that means you're at least 50 years old. Yes, because you didn't start when you were zero. Okay, so you're an older gentleman. Okay, distinguished. Okay, right. You know how to run a business. You've worked with creative agencies before? No. Yes. Okay, yes, I have. You're the CEO. You said you're a CEO, right? Yes. Okay, stay consistent with your character. Okay, okay. What have you paid for this in the past? 50 years ago, I paid $2,000. Okay, so you've not touched this at all since then? I have not. Okay. Have you hired any creative services recently? For other things, but not logo. Okay. Today, if you had to redesign it, what do you think the fair market value for this is? You know, $30,000. Okay. Are we solving a $30,000 problem? Potentially. So if you don't fix the logo, you're only going to lose $30,000? Is that what you're saying? No, in the future, if we keep on looking outdated, we might fall off and people might not care anymore. Okay, do you know how expensive it is to change a logo for a 50-year-old company? Website, social media, packaging, letterhead, uniforms, trucks, collateral of all kinds. Do you know what expense you're going to encounter when you change your logo? You must be aware of this. Yes. Yes. How much are you going to spend in that to do all merch and all the branding? Roughly, roughly $2 million, probably. Yeah. Okay, okay. You're going to just spend $2 million in the printing of this. Does this seem like good insurance against this spend? No, it doesn't. All right, you see the problem? Yes. How much should we spend against that? What do you think? Like, I'll help you out. What is 10% of $2 million? Uh, I'm not, you're a CEO, dude. Uh, what is that? $200,000. $200,000. Yeah, sorry. Okay, it's okay. It's all right. We're not magicians here. 10% is tough. I get you. All right, $200,000, right? Okay, okay. Is that a lot to you to spend? Yes, it is. Sure. Why? $2 million? No. All right, you already, I'm sorry. Two, $200,000. Stay focused, man. Yeah. Do you see that squirrel? Stay focused, dude. Is $200,000 allowed to spend against $2 million of printing costs alone? It does sound like it. It does or does not? It does. In what universe is 10% of something, of the printing cost, a lot of money? It's only, do say things like that. It's not. It's only 10%. Okay, so here's the good news. I don't think we have to spend 10%. Okay, but it's good to know that you're willing to spend $200,000. Coo? Yes. So I'm going to go away. I'm going to cook on this for a little bit. I'm going to come back to you with a bid. But let me just ask you this question before I go. If you get a proposal from me, yes, that is south of $200,000, are you ready to move forward? I would consider it. Yes. What's the, think about if it's south of $200,000? Yeah, you, we just said you, you're capable, you're ready to spend 200. If I submit a bid less than $200,000, would you move forward with that? And you're like, not sure. So why? Because I'm not sure how your logo could, how can I measure that your logo will be effective? As far as going with you. What if I go with you? How, how can I, um, how can I ensure that the new logo will create the conversion that I need? Oh, I thought you were looking for brand refresh, which you didn't mention anything about conversion. Should we talk about conversion? We don't have to. No, no. You do. You want to talk about conversion? You're killing the audio right now, by the way. I could just see the Instagram followers just going like, to nothing. You're killing all of us. Come on. Okay, okay, let's do a timeout. I love Lucas. It's going to make a hot piece of content. I guarantee you it will. Yeah. Here's the problem. Lucas is not a CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation. He cannot act like this. He doesn't even know how to speak their language. You see? So now the role play is totally broken. Right? So he's going all over the place. And if this were me with a real client, I'm like, I'm sorry, um, I think I have to like shampoo my cat. I'm so sorry. This is, I think you need somebody. It's not going to be me today. Right? Okay, because I try to ask you a simple question, and you're all over the place. 2 million, 200, 10%, you, this conversion, refresh, it's all over the place. 2000. Right? You know, maybe early set Alzheimer's coming on. I do not know. I'm not your guy. I would never say that. You guys, right? But you know, it's not the right fit. I want to feel good about working with you, and you're so unfocused right now. Yeah. One day's conversion. Because my fear is I'll take your $200,000, you'll feel great, and you'll tell me it's about bananas tomorrow. And I'm like, bananas? We were working on a refresh. Then we're working in conversion. Now you're saying it's about bananas? I can't solve that problem, right? I need you to know that you know the problem, right? Follow? Yeah. So you have to be brave enough to identify that and say, very politely, with a lot of diplomacy, you know, I'm sensing this is not a good fit. You deserve someone who's going to be as passionate about your project as you are. I just don't see myself being that person. Much respect to you. I wish you well. So does it end up not being about the measurements of if, if a client is like, how do I measure that? It, it doesn't even become about the measurement. It's more about, no, I'll find a good price. All right, this is a very good question, by the way. It's the smartest thing you said so far. If the, if the client asks you, how will I measure that? This is a really good one, and we're going to end here. Okay, how would I measure that? What should you say back, everybody? I only want the smartest people. How will I measure that? I'm going to tell you the phrase that's going to save your life. Hand him the mic. How do you measure that? Now say it louder, please. How do you measure that? Now, okay, you're really close. You're really close. My God. Okay, you do. Okay, okay. Give it back. I'm so excited. What are your goals? No, he was much closer. Okay, I'm going to teach you a secret. Okay, it's three letters. Three letters. And then you repeat back this statement. Remember I told you intentional listening? Do not introduce new words. If he says, how do I measure that? Do not introduce the word goals. You just change the conversation. Okay, he was really close. Tan was really close. You say, I don't know. How will you measure that? You just ask right back. What are you going to say then, Lucas? Mr. Smarty Pants. Hand on the mic. I don't know. How will you measure that? Um, through relevance of, uh, well, he'll give us a whole bunch of reasons how to measure it. Yeah. Okay, that's the beautiful thing. Watch. How do I know buying your product will make me happier? I don't know what makes you happy. Ah, okay. How do you know? How will I know this will make me taller? How? What size are you? What, you know, you just say it right back to them in their exact language. Because the truth is, listen to the question. How will I measure that? Well, I don't know how you measure things. The only way I can know is to ask you how you measure it. Mmm. I don't know is a very powerful statement. Yeah. You should use it more often. Yeah. And then you literally just repeat back what they say back to them. That's it. Like a monkey. You say right back to them. Do not change the words. Don't say, how will you measure your goals? Don't say, how will you measure success? Don't say, how will I, how will you measure KPIs? Just say it right back to them exactly the way they said it. Because they feel then you were listening to me. When you a new word, new words have new meanings. That's why it's a new word. Then you're not listening. You're not paying attention. And they want to know, are you hearing me? Are you seeing me? And when you do that, their confidence goes up. You follow? Yeah. Okay. All right. I wish I could stay longer. I, I, I can, but somebody else needs to speak. All right, thank you very much for being here, guys. Thank you. See you next time.