Brian: You know how important an offer is. Alex o Moseys kind of popularized this but freelancers yet today still suck at making an offer. And I think it's because a hundred million offers is an amazing book. Alex Moseys a genius when it comes to crafting offers, but I think most freelancers get overwhelmed if they see something like that and they say, how does this actually apply to me as a freelancer?

Brian: And we see a lot of different issues come up when freelancers start to try to craft their offer. They are selling their service or their craft instead of the outcome. They are muddying up their target audience because they want to appeal to a lot of different people. because chances are, if you are struggling to get consistent clients, then you think you need to work with a lot of different types of clients.

Brian: And so you end up saying you're going after small business owners which is not a niche. and we also see Franken services where you are putting together a lot of different services because if I sell more services to more people, I'll make more money.

Brian: These are all like common things you heard me talk about before, but when it comes to like crafting an offer. If you don't get this stuff right, your entire business is going to suck. This is the foundation of everything. This is also why Alex or Mosey published a hundred million dollar offers as his [00:01:00] first book, even though he wrote two other books.

Brian: First the book he's about to put out, which I think is gonna be called a hundred Million Dollar Money Models, something like that. He hasn't actually told what the title is, but I think that's what it is. He wrote that first. Then he was like, oh, in order to actually do this, they need leads.

Brian: So I'm gonna write a hundred million dollar lead. So he drafted that book is his second book. And then he is like, well, none of this matters if they don't have a good offer. So then he wrote and published How Million Dollar Offers First and only years later, he published these other two books.

Brian: That's how important offers are. He delayed his books by multiple years this is, how important. It's the offer is everything. You're gonna have low close rates if your offer sucks because it's too convoluted to sell. You're gonna have feast or famine ups and downs because of your lack of clarity that your clients have because your offer sucks so bad, and because you're generally known for absolutely nothing.

Brian: If your best fit clients cannot easily repeat back who you help, the results you promise, how you deliver, you're probably doing this wrong. we have clients who come to us to help them get clients. That's what we do, is we help clients with client acquisition. It's meta, but you understand they come to us and we don't even understand.

Brian: we've worked with hundreds of freelancers at this point, we don't even [00:02:00] understand what the hell they're doing, which is why they need to hire us in the first place. And if we can't understand it, there's no way your client understands it. So we're gonna go through a five piece offer framework in this episode.

Brian: It makes it super simple. It's the best starting place for crafting your offer. And if you can get this right, you will have more leads because you were actually known for something. Once you have those leads, you'll be able to easily filter those prospects or those potential clients. Because you will have a clear understanding of who's a good fit and who's a not.

Brian: So you have fewer unqualified calls. You'll have streamlined operations because you're not trying to do a million different things for a million different people running around like a chicken with your head cut off. And you'll have more pricing power as a freelancer, meaning you could raise your rates because the value is so clear and so obvious what you deliver, and it's not hidden in a bunch of deliverables that the client doesn't understand or even care about.

Brian: So if you're new here, if this is the first time you ever read the show or if you're new-ish. Hi, I'm Brian Hood. This is Six Figure Creative podcast. This is a podcast for creative freelancers who are trying to earn more money from their creative skills without selling their soul. I bring influences from a lot of different areas.

Brian: I've mentioned Alex Ho Moey a couple times. I have a background in software as a service. My background's [00:03:00] even further back to that is music production, and we have a team of 10 people. We're hiring our 11th right now from all over the world with a lot of different backgrounds. In order to bring their unique perspectives onto the show.

Brian: Speaking of which, this is the first show I've had a guest on, call it, a guest, more of a co-host on and for freaking ever, it was years probably since I've had a guest on here, I've just been doing solo shows. Mr. Steven Hudson is on the show. This is, one of our coaches at Six Figure Creative at Atle Spot Design.

Brian: He's like, I call my middle child because he's our third of five coaches. So, uh, he has a freelance copywriting background that's, what he did for about a lot of years. He's actually was a freelance copywriter for us. We hired him as a freelancer to write copy for email list. He was head of marketing for a seven figure SaaS company and he also worked closely with one of my favorite podcasters and marketers Kasam Oslo, who, if you know who he is, he was, the co-host of Perpetual Traffic Podcast for a long time, which is, you know, kind of where I learned my paid ad stuff.

Brian: So welcome to the show, Mr. Steven.

Stephen: Thank you very much. What a great intro. I'm super happy to be here.

Brian: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're gonna talk about offer crafting. So this is actually an episode you brought to me you wanted to talk through because, you've worked with [00:04:00] probably the most clients of any coach in the program.

Stephen: Dan probably has the edge on me, I'm right there. I'm, I'm right close next to

Brian: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: you've seen really bad offers and you came with a really easy to do framework to help people kind of solidify what their offer is.

Brian: And we're gonna kind of talk through it on this episode. We're gonna kinda do a deep dive on each element, but it's pretty straightforward. Just give an overview of like the five parts, what the five parts are, and we'll kind of talk through those. And I'll let you kind of lead the show on this so I'm not talking this entire damn episode.

Stephen: Yeah, sure. This came out of like you said, a lot of coaching of our clients and them coming to me over and over saying, yo, here's what I do. And trying to find a way to help them get really, really clear on fixing their offers. Because most of the time, I'd say 95% of every freelancer that comes in our doors they don't really have an offer.

Stephen: It's all over the place. They've just been saying yes to everything that they have to say yes to, because that's just what they've kind of been trained to do, or that's what they are used to doing.

Brian: Or that's just what necessity brings because they have to pay the bills.

Stephen: Yeah. They have to, and, that's how they start and it just kind of grows organically.

Stephen: But they never stop [00:05:00] to think, you know what, okay, what's my actual offer? And they come to us 'cause they want to. Be better at marketing. They wanna get more mature, they want to kind of go to the next level with marketing. and that starts with this clearly defined offer. And in my entire marketing career, I've done a lot of offers done a lot of like different courses and different products and all that stuff.

Stephen: All of them have, if we wanna like boil it down, they have these five things. And so the overview there, the five kind of critical things, is you need to have a who, a specific person that you're targeting or target demographic, they need to have something that they want and you need to know what it is they want.

Stephen: And so that could be, you know, whatever your service is going to get them. The transformation that you

Brian: And we'll, talk through, the specifics of each of these in more detail, but. that's probably the, biggest challenge I think for a lot of freelancers is coming up with the, promise or the want or the outcome.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. And then there's a problem keeping them from getting that want. Then there's your solution. So what is your specific solution to that problem? And then how are you delivering that solution? So is it a, coaching program? Is it a service? [00:06:00] All that kind of stuff.

Brian: Yeah. And there's also different ways to frame your service. Like I love hybrid type things. Things that are not just one thing, but they're a blend of things. And the cool thing about that, if you make a hybrid kind of, delivery method, then you are not directly compared to anyone else because you are kind of the only one with that unique hybrid approach.

Brian: So we'll talk through that a little bit as well. 'cause I just have some stuff on my mind around that, that I've seen some clients do that. It's really cool. But I will say this, you said courses, products, you've helped as a copywriter. But every single freelancer has these five elements, whether they think they do or not, you might have like.

Brian: 10 of each of these five elements, which means that's how complex your business is. But also literally any other product or service in the world has these five elements to some degree. at a certain level you do have multiple kind of avatars. You're going after multiple types of like goals or promises or problems.

Brian: Like it can get really complex as you get to higher levels. But I think a good way of looking at it, and I, I heard on a podcast this morning just saying like, the 1, 1 1 until you're like, at a million dollars a year, you have one problem to one person for 1 million in revenue, something like that.

Brian: And I think most freelancers are sub 1 million in revenue. So you can likely scale to six figures, [00:07:00] multiple six figures with just one of each of these things. And again, we'll talk about the other side of this too, how to keep yourself from being bored. 'cause that's the big thing that people push back on this.

Brian: So let's talk through each element. So first one is who And we just kind of briefly touched on this. The biggest issue here is. You want a single ideal client, preferably with purchasing power, someone with actual money or funds here. Ideally talk through what you see with your clients when working through, like, trying to figure out who the, who is.

Stephen: the most common problem is the who is everybody, you know, Yeah. who is multiple people within a certain demographic, but it's just too broad. you want to get to is, the question I usually ask my clients is, does your client think of themselves in whatever term you just came up with?

Stephen: And we will give an example here in a minute, but one of 'em was, you know, he was going after like personal service providers, and that would be people like, hair salons and massage parlors and barbershops and all of that kind of stuff. I'm like, no, barber is walking around thinking I'm a personal service provider.

Stephen: Like they don't resonate with that. They don't connect with that. So you have to be so [00:08:00] specific in who you're targeting so that when you make an ad, when you are talking to a room full of people or whatever, they hear it and they go, oh, that's me. He's talking about me right now.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: That's what you're looking for.

Brian: And I think the litmus test for this is do the people refer to themselves or think of themselves as this word or this phrase? And I think sure, like. I'm a small business owner, I guess. what is the actual definition of small business

Stephen: It changes if you, if you go by the government, it's like anybody under 50 million or something like that. But.

Brian: that's what I'm getting at. It's like definition of small business owner according to Google's ai, which is the thing that shows up first. Now in Google searches a small business owner, someone who owns and operates a business typically with fewer than 500 employees, which is like, sounds massive to me 'cause I've got 10 employees and I'm like, man, that's cool.

Brian: If you go to like indeed says 500 entrepreneur.com says 500 Everyone says about 500 employees. maybe that's the actual cutoff. And if that's the cutoff, then can identify that. But so does someone at 400 employees. But do we really identify the same way to the same messaging?

Brian: And if you're trying to target. A small business owner with 10 employees versus [00:09:00] one that has 400 employees. Can you imagine the messaging difference, the problems that type of person has, just the complexity of business at 400 employees versus 10 versus two? So I think the closer you can get, and this is something we will talk about more later but there's like, the broad market, which is, is maybe small business owners A more narrow market could be something like coaching businesses like mine or, you could go something like, the beauty world. then you go down to your actual niche and that's the area we wanna live here for this.

Brian: for me, it's like a marketing coaching company that's a little more, niche or narrow, and there's a lot of those. Or in the skincare world or the, beauty world. It could be like a skincare product or a small niche skincare product. it's a lot easier to sit down and map this stuff out if I'm talking to a specific client or a specific use case.

Brian: Actually talk about yourself as a copywriter.

Stephen: I had one thought as you were talking. You actually did this really, really well when you started this podcast. You started as the six figure home studio,

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: now we're going after creative freelancers. '

Brian: Yep,

Stephen: that's the natural evolution.

Brian: yep,

Stephen: have to start really specific, and then as your business grows and you actually succeed and you have an offer that's working, then you can start [00:10:00] to expand.

Stephen: But you have to get really, really narrow first. So I feel like this podcast is a great example.

Stephen: And coaching business is a good example of that. Like you have the creative freelancer kind of umbrella, but if you just started there, you wouldn't have had the expertise, you wouldn't have built up all of the trust and the authority and all of that stuff that you were able to get because you started super, super small and very specific at the beginning.

Brian: Yeah, just going back to my background, even before the podcast was the six Figure M studio. I was a, small home recording studio and I was recording heavy metal bands,

Stephen: Yeah.

Brian: my, who, it was like heavy metal artists. It wasn't bands, it wasn't all artists. It wasn't indie bands, independent bands or unsigned artists.

Brian: It was just, metal bands it was mostly independent actually, but there were some label bands I worked with and I turned that into a multiple six figure a year business outta my home basically.

Stephen: Well, and, for me, like as a copywriter, I have written copy for so many different types of businesses. I've done, SaaS companies, I've done, coaching companies, I've done course brands, I've written for influencers, [00:11:00] plant-based and whatever, the reason I said that was there's a plant-based influencer wrote floor, and then a, like homesteading, all about like to tail, that whole thing.

Stephen: If you know what that is.

Brian: nope.

Stephen: parts of the animal,

Brian: Got it.

Stephen: like totally different things. you know, but when I was freelancing, I knew I, that doesn't work if I'm just saying yes to everything that comes in. I can't streamline my process. People get confused.

Brian: or even your portfolio is screwed because now you're talking about like snout to butt and all other like plant-based or vegans and like, oh hell no,

Stephen: This guy, there's no way he could talk about this.

Brian: Yep,

Stephen: me really focused on, course creators I had a great portfolio. I had a couple of really great case studies really three that I could show

Brian: yep,

Stephen: in the course space.

Stephen: And they go, oh yeah, you know what? You're doing great. I wanna hire you. those would sell that for me, but it's because I was so specific.

Brian: Including like doing multiple six figure launches as a copywriter, which is hard to do.

Brian: Yeah.

Brian: Alright, cool. So that is the, like first piece is who, who you do it for a single person. and I'll, I'll just quickly address this just because we're planning to talk about some of these at the end, but it's just worth [00:12:00] talking about.

Brian: Now most people don't want to narrow on one who but there's something I call niche stacking. You will not get anything to work really well if you try to focus on too many people at once. You are one person, you have only so much energy and limited bandwidth and limited power, limited marketing prowess.

Brian: And so if you're trying to be all things for all people, that gets really convoluted very fast. But if you can just focus on one and you build that up, you can do what I call niche stacking. And that is, I'm getting this built, I'm known for this, I can do really well with this, and now I'm very interested in this other area, or I got a really cool referral in this other area that I'm interested in, that I'm gonna go all in on and build a really cool case study on and then use that to build in that area.

Brian: So now I have two niches that I'm working in. So between niche stacking and just normal referrals you get that are in just all these other areas that are outside of your norm, you can still work with other shit that keeps it fresh and keeps it fun and maybe brings other areas that you can start to build up.

Brian: It's not no for, it's actually not even, oh, for now, you can still say yes to everything, it is saying no to messaging all those other things. For now you're just trying to be laser focused with the who for now.

Brian: And that's [00:13:00] just for now. We can do it more later. Now we get to the second part of this and that is the kinda want or promise behind what you do. Talk about that.

Stephen: the want and the problem are both the two most important things to define. That changes everything else about your marketing, because what they want if you're targeting somebody who wants, like for us, for example, we target people who want to make consistent six figures, right?

Stephen: we could target something totally different. Maybe the want is they work less. That's their desire. That's the promise That completely changes our offer. It changes the problems that we're gonna be speaking to. It changes our solution. It changes all of the different copy and messaging that we're gonna be doing.

Stephen: So the want is really the most important thing that we, can decide on. And we have to get really specific. I would say if you're struggling to figure that out it's what do they want from you? That's the first thing. It's like, okay, if you're a web designer, they want a new website and they want that because blank.

Stephen: Like, what does the thing that you provide get them? It's on the other side of that, that's [00:14:00] usually the want.

Brian: Gimme an example of that.

Stephen: an example would be, let's say if you're a software company, sas, like you're a web designer for a SaaS company. what they want is they want a higher conversion rate on their product.

Stephen: Like their kind of main, like the landing page they're driving all of their ads to, So in that case, they want higher conversions on their paid ad landing page. That's a very specific thing. And even that, I could go a step further and say they want more signups, they want more trials, they want more new users, you know, signing up for their, software.

Stephen: So

Brian: yep,

Stephen: this case, I would probably say what they want is more users.

Brian: yep.

Stephen: with like an earlier thing, but then it's like, okay, but what does that thing get them?

Brian: It's kinda like we talk about the five why's. It's like the five why's gets to the root, cause, or root problem or root desire. And really, you don't always need five, but it's like. They want a website. Why do they want the website? they want more trials. Cool. Why do they want more trials?

Brian: Because they want more users. Why do they want more users? Because they need to make more money. Whatever you can go way too deep. And it gets way too, like why do they want more money? It's because they have a deficiency in their soul [00:15:00] and they wanna be the richest person in the world, and so they're gonna burn all the bridges in order to get it.

Brian: Like, God, no, we

Brian: don't need to go that deep.

Stephen: proud

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Why do they wanna make their grandmother proud? Because they've been a loser their whole life?

Stephen: because

Brian: know.

Stephen: immigrated here, the, you know?

Brian: Yeah. whatever it is. Like, we don't have to go that far, but you wanna get to as close to the money as you can generally as a freelancer, especially in the B2B space, the closer you get to the money and the why, the closer you can tie what you do to how they get an ROI.

Brian: Once slash promise my litmus test is how close can you get to the money

Brian: your once slash promise? And then can you state it in 10 words or less what it is you're actually offering? So it could be I can help, get more trials, which leads to more clients or customers or whatever, if it's the SaaS thing.

Brian: they want, you know, multi-six figure product launches as a course creator, you know? So your promise is that, and it might be an implied promise through your case studies. You're not gonna say, I'll give you a multi-six figure,

Brian: you know?

Stephen: Yeah. And you know, for me, we have several examples of like this whole process together,

Brian: Yeah. We'll, really tie it all together at the end with this.

Stephen: for me, it's like who am I targeting as a copywriter? I was targeting course creators. What do they want? They want [00:16:00] more core sales. Easy. Right?

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: usually boring.

Stephen: also my thing. If it's like super fancy and all that, it's like, no, there's, it's usually like the simple base thing that they want.

Brian: That's five words. They want more core sales.

Stephen: Yeah. There you I.

Brian: Yeah. Alright. Yep. So that we talked about who, we talked about the want or the promise of behind that. The third, part of this framework is the problem. So what is the pain or the problem that holds 'em back from this? Talk through this,

Brian: Steven. Yeah. The, the problem is where there is so much creativity here. So to use my copywriter example, I'm targeting course creators. They want more course sales. There could be 20 different problems in their business, 20 different things that are holding them back from making more course sales. It could be that their ads aren't good.

Stephen: It could be that they need more organic traffic. It could be that their content isn't going as viral as it needs to go. It could be, in my case, that they're not getting the most out of their email list. They don't have a. Automation's in place. Their email is a mess. Everything's disorganized.

Stephen: So there's just [00:17:00] this, gold mine of their email list that they're just sitting on, they're not using it well. And so for me, I focused on that problem. I focused on your problem is that you're not making the most of your email list.

Stephen: and even within that you could get more specific. This isn't a hard and fast thing.

Brian: Yeah.

Stephen: like hard and set rules. Like you can get really specific or you could be a little more broad. but like you could get really specific and I could say it's your automations, it's your welcome sequence.

Stephen: I know freelance copywriters, who they are just about welcome sequences. That is all they do for course creators,

Brian: ' cause they're very important because I know myself, like, we have 50,000 plus people on our email list, probably over a hundred thousand in the lifetime of the list. just about every single one of them went through that welcome sequence or that nurture sequence in the beginning. So it's, it's a high leverage thing.

Stephen: It's so important. Yep. this guy, like course creators and coaches, that's his who, the want, they obviously want to increase their conversions. They want more customers, they want more sales, and the problem is the welcome sequence. and

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: just dialed in.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: so specific, you know, and [00:18:00] he's, doing great.

Stephen: He's thriving because his offer is so clear. as soon as somebody else hears that, a peer is needing help with their welcome sequence, they're gonna send him to that guy. And it's super easy to make ads to call out because you're so specific.

Brian: yep. And even to add to that, you mentioned mailing list as another thing, like underutilized mailing list. That goes back to the who as well when you're just trying to get like laser targeted, like a course creator with underutilized email list or course creators with a 50,000 with person or more email list.

Stephen: Yeah. Because you know, as a freelancer, especially a freelance copywriter in this world, the money's in the list, right? So the bigger the list, the bigger the money and the bigger the money, the more you can charge as a freelancer. That's really close to the money when we talk about the want and the promise and the who,

Stephen: it's a good qualifier too. because if a course creator has figured out how to get 20,000 people on an email list they've got a couple of basic things Right. it kind of filters out a lot of bad fit clients just by default.

Brian: And we're talking about copywriters right now, but every niche has [00:19:00] something like this

Brian: in it. we call it like a proxy to success. Like if they have this thing, they're a good client. If they don't have this thing, they're a bad client.

Brian: And

Brian: in some industries it might just be, I talked about this before, but like, in the bant episode back in episode 368, the Secret BS detector for bad Leads.

Brian: In that episode, I talk through kind of the different proxies you have for what's a good leader, a bad lead, but a lot of these things in this five part framework can kind of tie into that. So go through this process first and then go back to bant and think through how these things all tie together.

Stephen: Yeah.

Brian: So that's the problem. This is the thing that blocks them from the promise of the thing they want. And I, I think the best way of looking at this, again, the litmus test here, is the pain urgent or expensive, or preferably both. will speak to my music producers here for a second.

Brian: 'cause that's my background. I know that's not necessarily B2B. And so there's, it's not super close to money. 'cause a lot of it's passion project tied. And if you're doing labels, maybe it is closer to the money. But in this world, it's maybe not a monetary pain or problem or a monetary want or promise.

Brian: But I've seen cases where it's even more powerful when it's not tied to money because [00:20:00] If you look at the mercenary versus missionary mercenaries they just want money, but the first sign of challenger pain, they'll just drop their weapons and run, you know, in war. you're working with clients who are

Brian: mission based, yet they're missionaries, they're mission based, it's frankly much easier to market to those people because you're speaking to their mission and their desires and their goals around that. So when you're talking to really good musicians who, their whole goal, their entire life is to put great music out in the world, build a fan base, whatever, they're more mission based.

Brian: It's not for the money or the fame, or maybe it's for the fame, but not for the money. That can still be an incredibly powerful thing to market to. So don't feel like you're limited in the B2C space, just because you're not in the B2B space marketing for money. So let's move to the next thing here, and that's the solution.

Brian: So we've got, again, we've got who it is, what the want is, or the desire or the promise is. Then we've got the problem and now we're onto the solution. the solution is obviously what you're selling them. So talk through that.

Stephen: Yeah. I'd say the best way to think of this is it's your solution. For example, we have a client who he does really cool custom hand illustrated design, like branding design. It's super cool, [00:21:00] it's super unique. if he were to define all of this, and then his solution is like branding I'll improve your brand.

Stephen: That falls flat. This is where you can boo. Yeah. Boo commoditize service. This is where you turn into

Stephen: a button seat. Yeah. And you just, you blend in with everybody else and why would anybody choose you Over anybody else. So this is your chance to actually stand out this is where it's also, I think, most important to really understand your client.

Stephen: you should be talking to your clients. You should be reading what they're saying on Reddit and forums and everywhere, so that you can really understand what they're after. So you can craft your solution to that. But for him, his solution is to do a, custom hand illustrated, handmade brand design to stand out so that you're like really unique.

Stephen: You're not just, blending in with all of this other generic branding basically. So it's your specific solution that you've kind of identified, because ideally you're an expert at this, right?

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: you know, this space, so you know what they need. So package it in a way [00:22:00] that it solves their problem it's from you.

Brian: Yep. Litmus test here is, kind of two things. One is clear before and after, but a side litmus test that's even more powerful is, is it a unique before and after or at least unique in the market. So

Stephen: Yeah.

Brian: everyone else is selling one thing, maybe that's a before and after you're selling another thing that is also desired but unique that, again, differentiates you from the market.

Brian: So you're not another button of seat, you're not another commoditized offer. I can't just go on Fiverr and get this right now, which is what you don't want. You don't wanna lumped in with Fiverr freelancers, no offense to those people,

Brian: I will help any of them. That is the place where prices go to die, race to the bottom, and if you can be compared directly to those people, chances are your solution is not unique in any way, shape, or form.

Stephen: Yeah. good example of this is, there's a web designer in the program who is targeting, I think like higher end construction folks, like contractors and people like that. She knows that world, that space really well. her solution is, it's web design, right? She could just put, I'll build you a new website.

Stephen: That's the solution. Again, boring, bland, just like everybody else, her offer is a two week website. That's really [00:23:00] easy for the, uh, owner, the client to go in and like, make text changes if they need to or like add a new team member or whatever. And it comes with training and all of that on how to do that.

Stephen: So it's kind of like, Hey, I'm gonna get you a really great website in two weeks. you know, it's her approach

Brian: also looks to the problem of that specific niche where if the problem is. They feel like their website's being held hostage by the web designer who they don't know how to use the software or they don't know how to change anything. And they feel like it took for freaking ever. So it's like, now I've been waiting months for this thing.

Stephen: Mm-hmm. She's solving the problem in two different ways with her solution. one being making it easy and quick.

Stephen: Mm-hmm.

Brian: speed is a huge thing. And if you look at Alex Mo's, value Equation speed to Result is a one of those big components of the value equation. And then the second part being you have full reign and full control over this.

Brian: Once it's done, I'll train you how to use it so you can go in and change anything, take anything out, add anything without it being held hostage by your web designer. So that's a, a, way of you making your solution unique to your, ideal client.

Stephen: Yep, yep. Exactly. And she's able to do that because she knows her clients really well. She

Brian: [00:24:00] Yep.

Stephen: really well. So she knows like there's the big problem, which is that they want, you know, their website is out of date, but then there's all of these other little problems that you just listed off that you have to

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: when you're kind of crafting your

Brian: And you said, Hey, you need to know your clients well, obviously you get to, to know your clients the more you work with them. And if you're new, it can be difficult. Then you said, Hey, read Reddit, learn about your, clients on Reddit. That can be hit or miss and that's worth doing. However, if you look at something like chat, GBT, it's trained on like the entirety of Reddit.

Stephen: Yeah, can be a really good place to start the sort of research around solutions or problems or wants, or promises, like just having a conversation with it. You don't have to be crazy with it, but just, I mean, I love talking. I have a podcast, 200, 300, I don't have any episode 370 something episodes at this point.

Brian: So I love just the turn the mic on and I just brain dump what I'm thinking into there. Convoluted as hell, doesn't matter. It understands everything that you're saying to them. It's actually the best voice to text of any software that's out there. chat GBTs, voice to text on there, and then you can brainstorm that way.

Brian: If you're a verbal processor like I am. If you're a written processor, maybe like Steven, you're really good with. [00:25:00] Talking and writing, so you're one of the rare ones. But maybe you're a, written processor where you need to journal your thoughts or detail them out and write them all out in order to have them, also a great place to do that.

Brian: But it can be a good place for just basic customer research when you maybe don't have the customer or client

Stephen: Yeah.

Brian: research in person.

Stephen: Yep. to add to that, I would say nothing beats talking to real people. And so. Do your best to just pick up the phone and start calling people. Is

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: anybody in your network that is even slightly connected to somebody who is in your ideal niche? See if you can talk to them. be honest.

Stephen: You're not trying to like swindle them or like, pretend you're better than you are. Be like, I really wanna work with these people, so I'd love to hear just what your struggles are. You're coming not to sell them anything, you're just wanting to learn. or you could just start calling people.

Stephen: I had a client start doing that. She wanted to work with architects and she has some connections in the architect space, but she was like, I'm just gonna start calling people. So she just went on Google, just started looking up architects in her area. She just started calling people. I got six or seven of these like client discovery calls where she was able to really like talk to [00:26:00] real people, hear what they were saying.

Stephen: All of that. So there's no excuse you have past people you've worked with, you've got chat chief pt who knows the entirety of everything on the internet. And then you've got real people who have their phone numbers online that you can call.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: So one of those three options, choose it.

Brian: we give our clients, who need it. some questions and frameworks to go through, whether past clients to do customer research. But again. Anything's better than nothing. Just start with talking to them and asking 'em questions of things you're curious about, Last one on the list here, number five here on this list of like five things to go through. Is delivery method. so this is how you're actually delivering the thing that's giving 'em the solution that they want, that solves the problem that they have because you made a promise to them.

Brian: This all goes, this is backwards now. So how are you actually delivering this now? this is probably the one that's least relevant on paper for freelancers, but I wanna talk about this. So explain this first.

Stephen: Yeah, this is, exactly what you just said. It's how are you delivering it? Is it a service? are you a consultant? And so you're offering, like coaching calls or consulting calls. Do you have some sort of like membership or mastermind people can join? it's the actual thing. Like [00:27:00] how are you

Brian: Yeah. It could be physical product, digital product.

Stephen: yeah, it could be

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: in our case, right, it's a coaching program, this like hybrid coaching program that we have, but we could just as easily be an agency

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: about how that offer would completely change. but the delivery method is just kind of that final piece.

Stephen: And it's Yep. how you could have, uh, what's called like a value ladder of things. So, you know, a lot of people, like if you've got your core service, but somebody comes in, they can't afford it, you could have like a smaller kind of like entry level offer, right? So instead of, okay, there's the done for you service, which is what most freelancers are gonna be.

Stephen: you could have like paid audit, right? I did that for email marketing. People would be like, well, I don't really know about this. I'm like, well, how about this? You pay me this. I'll come and I'll audit your email account and I'll, give you everything. I'll tell you exactly what to do, and then you can then do that.

Stephen: Or you can hire me to do it, and I'll tell you how much it'll be for me to do it. You know? And so that case, everything else is the same, but the delivery method is different. And so the pitch is different. The offer is different. How you talk about it is different. So that's the [00:28:00] delivery method.

Brian: Yep. And most freelancers are gonna be like, oh yeah, of course I do the done for you. It is a done for you service. And I'll push back because this is where hybrid can be really cool, really powerful. I'm, I'll give a couple examples. Just like one example, music production space where obviously you're gonna produce a band or produce an artist, then you're gonna, it is a done for you service.

Brian: But in a lot of cases, we found that there can be some hybrid stuff going on where you have a done with you component to it. Where maybe if you're a, uh, mixing engineer, mastering engineer, or maybe you do a full production, maybe you take certain elements of that and make it hybrid, for example.

Brian: We have clients who are located in one area and they wanna expand to nationally, internationally, but obviously you can't record artists internationally unless they fly to you, which I've had people fly to me, so it can be done. But in order to save costs, you can then offer remote production where you are either actually offering the service through the internet, which there's tools and things that allow it for that.

Brian: Or in a lot of cases, clients want to learn how to produce music. So you do a hybrid done with you solution where you're teaching them the production elements, coaching them through it, doing [00:29:00] it actually not recording for them, but teaching them how to record and then reviewing their work. And then when they work all done, then you're mixing and mastering it yourself.

Brian: That's just one example of kind of a hybrid solution. There's a million permutations in, combination of that, in that space, in other spaces. Actually there's another one. met this one in a coworking space. It was web design company, they were called Design Live.

Brian: they were accepted into Y Combinator, which, if you dunno what Y Combinator is, it's like one of the biggest like, most well-known incubators for startups. And their whole thing was they will design the website, live with the client on there and talk through each element. So they're basically teaching the client about web design, how to actually build the site as you do it.

Brian: And that way they're able to continue to do it after you're all done. So you're basically teaching the skill and delivering a, final thing all in one, and it made a unique offer for them. So these are just different ways you can meld together different delivery methods and not just be like, I'm just a service.

Stephen: That's so cool. I love that. there's so much creativity that you can do here. I'll say too though, that you want to have something that people actually want, right? That they're willing to pay for. I saw this all the time in the course [00:30:00] space, and I see that with other freelancers too.

Stephen: They're like, should I make a course? I want passive income. And I'm like no,

Brian: Yeah, I was gonna say, please God. No, don't do that. Don't do that.

Stephen: how that works, first off. But number two, first question would be, is anybody asking for that? You know, is there an existing market for a course about the thing you wanna make a course for?

Stephen: Okay, maybe there is. Great, is there any evidence that anybody wants it from you? you have to make sure that whatever the delivery method is, whatever you're thinking of, that it is validated. That's

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: right? Product validation or validating the offer. And that could come from, if you have an email list.

Stephen: out an email saying, Hey, I'm thinking about offering something like this. Anybody interested? You could even try pre-selling it, right? I'm gonna open up slots for this thing on this time. you get a founding offer, so it's discounted, and then that'll give you an idea like, do people actually want this thing or not?

Stephen: you know, there's a lot of ways you can look at it, but also just looking at your industry, how are people used to doing business? if you go too far outside of kind of the established norm, then people are gonna look at you weird and they might [00:31:00] just feel a little off about buying from you because you're like, that's just this, not how we do business.

Stephen: So make sure your delivery method is kind of in line with expectations and it's something that people, will pay for that method.

Brian: you don't want to try to go down that passive income route. Like I was listening to podcasts this morning. It was just. I listen to Hermo too much. I'm sorry if I name him, I, I probably named him too many times. lemme just comment on that really quick. I used to read books all the time, listen to podcasts all the time, do all this stuff.

Brian: And then I, found Hermo stuff like 2021 when he first released, a hundred million offers and I started following his stuff and he's made me the most money of any like person I've followed. So like

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: Like that's the person I probably listen the most, watch the most, consume the most, the person I've spent the most money on as far as coaching, consulting, like spending an entire day with him, like that kind of stuff.

Brian: Yeah. So it's heavily influence on what I do and what I teach and what I believe and what I think. So that's why I bring him up all the time. So you're like, shut up about Hermo Bryan. That's why,

Stephen: It um, yeah, it works. he was joking about. People will, spend hundreds of hours to [00:32:00] make a hundred dollars in passive income, quote, passive income when they could have just spent those hundreds of hours making tens of thousands of dollars as a service provider.

Brian: that's just like a, funny, like true thing. But to add to that, there is a point in your career where you are just maxed out as a freelancer

Stephen: Mm-hmm.

Brian: you know, if that's you there's no question if that's you. And most of those people probably aren't listening to this podcast, because we talk so much about marketing client acquisition and less about kind of the next steps in your career once you hit that maxed out point.

Brian: But if you're listening right now and you happen to be that maxed out freelancer, that could be a really good time to shift to the done with you or do it yourself model. And I think, if you look at made by James, he's been on this podcast before. He was on episode like 204. How to generate a thousand inquiries per year as a logo designer with James Martin. I came out 2022 a long time ago. And he's since grown even more on, Instagram doing what he talked about on that episode. Actually, if you wanna listen that episode and then see where he is at now, a lot of what he talked about on that episode is what he continued to do and has been his success to this point.

Brian: But he's shifted from just done for you to now he's doing a lot of do it yourself or [00:33:00] done with you type stuff as a designer. And there's kind of two paths you can go with that. Maybe we'll have an episode of this more in the future. Path A is teaching people to do what you've done which is what he's kind of done.

Brian: And what I've kind of done here, like I teach the client acquisition side. He teaches the design side. Option two is teaching people to do it themselves. And I've seen that a lot as well, where it's like you're in a niche where people are a lot more DIY savvy. You're not working with business owners.

Brian: Maybe you're working with smaller, more, Budget constrained people in your world. And that's a lot in the, music space. And so you're teaching people how to self-produce. you're teaching people how to take a skill and develop it so they can do it themselves versus hiring you for the thing.

Brian: Both can work really well. Both can, exponentially increase your income by like an order of magnitude because you're not tied to time in either of those instances. But I just wanted to talk on that really quick. It's, tied to the delivery method, which is a huge part of this.

Stephen: Yep.

Brian: So let's walk through some real examples of this.

Brian: We'll do six figure creative, 'cause this is the podcast you're listening to. And then we'll go through music production and some design ones. 'cause those are like two big, niches we serve in the coaching program. But, uh, talk through six figure creatives. Example,

Stephen: Yeah. Six Figure Creative is the, who [00:34:00] is creative freelancers. The want is a consistent six figure year. problem is that they have no control over their leads and client acquisition. So the solution, our solution, remember, it's not just like the generic solution. Our solution in our professional opinion

Brian: Yeah.

Stephen: need to build a client acquisition machine.

Stephen: you could also call the solution as like a diagnosis.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: might even be a slightly better term because it's you diagnosing, what do you see is the solution to their problem.

Brian: oh, and to add to that, just the client acquisition machine element is because the machine is the holistic part, is a lot of different parts that all go together to acquire clients. And it's not just marketing. That's the big misconception. It's not just marketing.

Brian: Marketing is an element of a client acquisition machine, but there's so many other parts, offer being included, being one of those things that really matters when it comes to client acquisition. That all feeds into that, which is why that's our solution.

Stephen: Yep. So solution build the client acquisition machine and the delivery method is a hybrid coaching program. And so like I mentioned before, if you change any one of these things, we have a totally different offer and not just a different offer. We have a [00:35:00] different business completely. You change the delivery method from a hybrid coaching program to a full service agency.

Stephen: We could easily be a full service agency where

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: do all this shit for you.

Brian: It would be very expensive. It'd be very

Brian: expensive for you. Yeah.

Stephen: And so that's why we're not doing that. Like we

Brian: Yeah.

Stephen: it accessible. But I worked at an agency that basically was this but for course creators and we were full service agency.

Stephen: We were expensive, but we did all of this stuff. but we could easily change it to a coaching program and you know, that's its whole thing. So can do that or. If you wanted to the problem, let's say instead of no control over leads and client acquisition, the problem is that you are falling short on your, delivery, on your fulfillment.

Stephen: You're going over hours. So you've got like a backend fulfillment problem. Okay. Well, in that case, the solution might be something like, you need a project management operating system.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: and so that's, like an operating system where you've got all these systems and processes for after a client comes in the door to like fulfill really [00:36:00] well track your time and like all of that stuff, make sure you're profitable.

Stephen: But Yep. we could still do a hybrid coaching program, right? So everything else stays exactly the same, but now you have a totally different offer and solution. Because it's a, different problem that we're solving. So.

Brian: again, just to tell you how far you can shift things dramatically with just changing a couple things. we could only work with. Stressed out, multi six figure freelancers who are like at their upper limit of how much they can handle, and we're connecting them with VAs in order to get some of their time back.

Brian: and the solution to get time back is getting your first VAs or operations managers or anything like that. It's just like anything to get time back in that scenario, we could start to offer that as like almost like a, placement agency at that point.

Brian: That's a completely different business altogether there as well.

Stephen: it's completely Yep.

Stephen: like, when I was kind of outlining this for clients, I would often stop at the solution. I was like, no, the delivery method is really important too, because how are you solving the problem? what's your product, that matters too.

Stephen: So I've, seen this consistently in so many different ways where, even like a one degree shift [00:37:00] on any of these. It's a totally different offer. That's

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: so important to define early on. Cause it's gonna influence the entire rest of your marketing.

Brian: lemme give you a couple music production examples 'cause this is like, our biggest audience, music producer. Second is design. So we'll go, biggest to second to biggest here. so let's talk about who, these are based off of clients that we have.

Brian: So I'm not gonna name names, but it's just worth mentioning that. So

Stephen: You know who you are.

Brian: you probably know who you are. who is like indie pop artists. Indie pop artists. That's a specific genre or sub genre. And that's generally how we want to do it. It's, When you're niche down, it's because it's by genre.

Brian: In the music space, the want that they have is a polished, professional sounding track that gets playlisted and grows their fan base. That's like the general desire that most artists have or musicians have. The problem is their current DIY recordings sound flat, shitty, amateur. They don't compete sonically, they don't compare well to the, pro sounds out there.

Brian: So if they hear a song on TikTok or on Spotify or somewhere, it just falls flat compared to those solution is a full production package that takes their rough, what I call shitty poop demo. The song that they [00:38:00] just mapped out on the phone, you know, on like their little funny app and turns it into a full ready release track that holds up against major label productions.

Brian: And the delivery method in this case is remote production and mixing services, and that includes basically creative direction on the song and the structure and the style, the vocal production. The mixing, the mastering, all done via online collaboration in this specific person's case. I like to sum it down to one sentence.

Brian: 'cause if you can deliver it in one sentence, it's like the elevator pitch. You don't really use this anywhere, but it helps you clarify everything. And if you can clarify everything, it helps everything else that you're doing. I help ind pop artist Turn rough demos into radio quality singles that get playlisted and grow their audience all without stepping into a studio. So that's example one. example two. This one I'm actually, it's not based on a client. This is more based on if I change one thing, how does it change everything else? Just so you kinda have an idea of that same indie pop artist that's the who the want is a polished, professional sounding track that gets playlisted and grows their fan base.

Brian: So the want is the same. The problem is what changes here. instead of the current DIY recording sound bad, the. The current problem for this specific [00:39:00] avatar is they keep getting stuck writing in production process. They're unable to finish songs. they get in these writer slumps or they finish songs that they're unhappy with.

Brian: They can't get a song they're happy with. So the solution has to change because that's the different problem in this case. So the solution is a structured co-writing and production process that helps them complete and release full songs. So this is actually loosely based on a client we have, it's not an indie pop, but he, does this exact problem with clients and he sells it on a monthly retainer in this case.

Brian: So delivery method is remote to creative coaching plus collaborative production sessions over Zoom or Daws Inc. his specific case, he does it on a monthly retainer. So he builds up recurring income with these clients to help them get a bunch of songs together until they have one worth investing money into.

Brian: And so the one sentence for this, I help indie pop artists finally finish and release their songs by guiding them through a structured co-writing and remote production process. So that's the music production examples. Anything you wanna add to those two things,

Brian: Mr. Steven? it's just, it's so cool to see, 'cause like you said, it's the exact same who, exact same want. You know, we've got a lot of music people in our program, right? And so some people might think like, how's it gonna work for me when there's [00:40:00] all these other people that you're doing this for in the program.

Stephen: It's like, well, 'cause you're different, You're different. You have a set of experiences, you have a particular set of skills, if you will.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: And so you wanna bring that to the offer here. And this is kind of like a way To see how that might shift. So you've got one guy who's way stronger in the writing and the production.

Stephen: Okay, great. Then like, let's create a focused offer around the writing and production.

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: are people out there who need that. They're stuck there, what's nice too is that they're even further on in the process than somebody who just needs help with the production side. So if you also do music production, but you've got an offer about the writing and production process, then that means you're, getting in with them early.

Brian: Yep. then if you help them solve that problem, they're gonna love you forever and they're gonna wanna do everything else that you have,

Brian: and you've, essentially created the product that you are selling outta thin air. You're selling production for songs that you help them write.

Brian: you want a fun fact, we're gonna move into design now, but you wanna hear a fun fact about the music side of things,

Brian: Steven?

Stephen: of course. Always.

Brian: our clients are coming up on 10 Grammys in this program

Brian: up to 10 Grammys in this program with clients

Brian: we [00:41:00] work with.

Stephen: 10

Brian: else that's, almost on the edge. We'll see if we get him over the edge. Almost on the edge. He's got five Grammys coming in. We'll

Brian: see.

Stephen: amazing.

Brian: Yeah.

Stephen: Cool. So we'll need to change the name of the program to be like, Grammy Award-winning, I don't know, something

Stephen: about

Brian: Grammys by design.

Stephen: by design. Perfect. Perfect.

Brian: next one is design. I'll, I'll help you. walk through this one, man.

Stephen: design. So I already mentioned this guy. He's the barbershop guy. So he's a brand designer, so his, who is independent barbers or like small barber shop owners.

Stephen: So they have probably like one to three chairs. They're relying right now on walk-ins and referrals and Instagram, all that kind of jazz. What do they want? They want a fully booked calendar. They want their seats full, right? With loyal people who are coming back and they're, spreading the word and all that stuff.

Stephen: is they don't stand out at all. Their visual brand looks like everything else in the area. And this is really common for barbershops. it's DIY, they're like cousins Sun, you know, 'em a logo or something.

Brian: Or, or they just got some cheap AI

Brian: logo.

Stephen: Yeah. Now, like AI logo, you know, because in their mind, it's not super important.

Stephen: [00:42:00] it's all about my skill as a barber when they come in and experience my thing. Like, they'll come back forever, but that's a problem if nobody ever comes in. So yeah, it really matters because of the built-in traffic that barbers get, with like Google listings and SEO and all of that.

Stephen: Like, they have to stand out,

Brian: like, so I have a barber I've worked with for years and I found him originally because I was just Googling, like on Google maps, looking for barbers near me. And you look at all the different barbershops and you unconsciously, 'cause I'm not a design focused person, but you unconsciously look at the overall brand and experience that that person delivers.

Brian: So it comes down to the design the style, the vibe and photography. I mean, photographers could also be placed into this kind of world as well as like how good is the photography in your shop? And. If you just look at like the amount of traffic you're getting from people doing this exact thing when they're looking for a barber, or in this case where there's been cases where my barber he had his hip replaced.

Brian: he's like 25 years old. I to get a hip replaced, like a traumatic injury earlier on in his life, but So he was out for a long time and I had to find a barber to cut my hair. So I'm Googling again, trying to do the exact same thing, but [00:43:00] years and years later.

Stephen: Yeah.

Brian: barbershops that just have shitty branding, shitty design, shitty everything, shitty vibe, I'm just gonna skip right over.

Brian: so you get all these free impressions on SEO, all these free impressions on Google Maps, and if your brand doesn't stop the scroll and make you say, oh, I'm interested in this, looks cool. Obviously reviews matter as well, but you're not gonna get the reviews unless you have the people in there in the first place in order to show off how good you are in order to then get the review in order to then rise in the ranks and start the snowball.

Brian: And it starts with brand for a lot of these people, which is why this matters so much.

Stephen: A hundred percent. I

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: that you just mentioned this could work for a photographer. So like, take this exact offer that we're listing right now. Swap in

Brian: Photography.

Stephen: swap in your service, you know,

Brian: That's for the solution? Yeah, for the solution. In this case, it's a different solution. It could be photography, but in, this, this is designer. So

Brian: go to the solution now 'cause that's the next step.

Stephen: they, they don't stand out at all,

Brian: Yep, yep,

Stephen: else stays the same,

Brian: yep,

Stephen: the

Brian: yep.

Stephen: is different. It's a totally different offer. it's so fun to play with. The solution in this case is he does custom hand illustrated brand identities. So instant, [00:44:00] like, whoa, that is not like anything else I've ever seen.

Stephen: It's totally unique to that person. Really cool. He's got like a punk aesthetic and like all this stuff. It's a really cool vibe. And so it's very much his clients like him. They want clients that are like him too. Like there's a whole like, kind of culture around that.

Stephen: So works really, really well.

Brian: And my barber is basically the same. It's like there's skeletons all over the shop. He does a, Halloween is his like favorite holiday. It's called black Heart Barbershop. If you Google it in Nashville, you can kind of see his vibe, but it's like one of the highest rated barbers here.

Brian: I was with him since he started his shop, and he, cares a lot about this sort of stuff,

Stephen: Yeah. And the delivery method would be obviously a done for you service. know, you're branding, you're designing everything in there. So, I love that example because yeah, like, we actually have a, client who it's called postmortem plastics,

Brian: Yep,

Stephen: makes these like I guess, what is it, like 3D printing or like, polymer plastic based, like

Brian: yep,

Stephen: charms.

Stephen: So like at the end of key chains or knives, like he works with like the everyday carry crowd. A lot like

Brian: yep.

Stephen: like, stuff like that.

Brian: even like, [00:45:00] little tchotchkes for, Events to give away in bags, like brand bags that, like swag bags and

Brian: events.

Stephen: But it's with this like dark, kind of like, you know, morbid, kind of punk vibe.

Brian: Yep,

Stephen: stuff does, so there's like all, you know, there's like daggers and skulls and like

Brian: yep.

Stephen: that kind of but like, you could, do that here, right? You could say like, Hey, if you want, this type of brand identity, if you want this kind of aesthetic, I'll do that for you.

Brian: Same with Made by James, I mentioned Made by James before. He kind of has that same similar kind of aesthetic. A big, clean, fortune 500 company that wants a, clean corporate is not gonna hire made by James as far as I know. maybe he has worked with us, I don't know.

Brian: But from what I've seen from him, design and vibe and style wise, that's not his target demographic at all. And that's

Brian: okay. He,

Brian: He does really well.

Stephen: Totally. Yep. Absolutely. And then there's one more example here for web designer. So we just did brand design, but for a web designer. Another example is the, who is early stage SaaS startups. So usually like they're in pre-seed or to series A.

Brian: Which is gibberish if you don't know what that stuff is. But like

Brian: if you don't know what your customer is enough to know that, [00:46:00] then that's probably not your niche,

Stephen: Yeah, probably not, but they're basically, they're trying to get, funding. They're not going the bootstrap like self-funded route. They're trying to get venture capital and investment money. but they have a working product. They have some traction, but they don't have an in-house design or marketing team yet because they're still early stage.

Stephen: So that's the who

Brian: Which is really important, by the way, just like an important distinction because at a certain level, any company, especially SaaS, are gonna bring design in-house or web design in-house. 'cause this is a web design example. So if you bring web design in-house and they have the team to handle that, they're not gonna hire a freelancer to do that.

Brian: Or at a certain level, if they're gonna hire a quote freelancer to do that or someone not in-house, they're gonna work with an agency. So there is a sweet spot as a solar freelancer where you can still reach the business and you gotta know what that is for you. Are they actually attainable for you as a freelancer or, do you just have those big names in your portfolio because you worked in an agency where you've got subcontracted work,

Stephen: Mm-hmm.

Brian: have no way of actually getting those big clients yourself?

Brian: this is a really important thing of who you're actually targeting.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. the want would be a high converting website, you know, that drives, [00:47:00] signups and demo requests, investor confidence, all of that stuff. So they, want a great website. the problem is their website looks at DIY and unclear. So, I mean, for the want, you could even say it's not even necessarily the website.

Stephen: You could say they want more signups and they want more demo requests. So it's like almost detached from the website. And then you come in and you say, Hey, you want more signups, you want more demo requests, you wanna boost investor confident, it's your website. The problem is your website.

Stephen: There's almost some like customer education that happens there. so yeah, the website looks maybe unclear. They're using a hack together template, or they're using just some like standard template from Framer and it looks like every other SaaS

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: that's out there, you know, so it's just super boring and, unoriginal and

Brian: It's the same thing. It's like if you look like everyone else, then no one's gonna pay attention to you.

Stephen: Yeah. feels so common in SaaS too. every startup it's like you can count on the website's all looking the same. Yeah. And then the solution is a conversion focused website built specifically for early SaaS. so they've got, really clear messaging of really smart UX design and, you know, they're building trust and all of that kind of [00:48:00] stuff.

Stephen: And then the delivery method could be, in this case, a done for you web design service. and so you go from, outline to fully published and like live in three to four weeks,

Stephen: They're trying to have something that when the investors go and check out their website, it's there, it looks good, it's passable.

Stephen: It's kind of a minimum viable product to use SaaS language.

Brian: The important distinction here is like if this is the niche you're going after and you know you're a customer well enough, then you're selling not a website. Even though you're a web designer, you're selling essentially more, customers or funding in the future, which again. investors will pay more if you have a higher conversion rate on your website to trials and then trial to pay is higher and then you have more revenue. '

Stephen: Yep.

Brian: once you get past the seed round, you're gonna a rounds. Now revenue matters more than anything, which means they're gonna be very metrics obsessed.

Stephen: Mm-hmm. if you are not a web designer who is metrics obsessed and you have case studies to back metrics obsessed approach to design, it has to both look good and convert, then this is not your niche,

Stephen: Right.

Brian: if this is kind of how you operate and who you wanna work with, that can be really good. Because the website is [00:49:00] very close to revenue.

Stephen: Yeah. is like a couple steps away from revenue. It is from the homepage. And if you're actually helping on the, flow of signups and getting them into the actual product, you are incredibly close to the money, which means you can be incredibly valuable to

Brian: them.

Stephen: I love that. Yeah, so those are kind of all the examples. And so my, task for you listener is to, kind of write these out and just, kind of play with it a little bit and like

Brian: Yep.

Stephen: like, what do you think this is for you, right? We've given you some options, lot of different cool examples, but like, what does that look like for you?

Stephen: And like, do it three or four times, like change one thing and see how that changes the rest of it. this should be kind of like play and experimenting a little bit. But my guess is that after working on that a little bit, you're gonna come away with some more clarity.

Brian: Yep. And if you want our help with it, we have a whole team of people that helps all day, every day. so if you feel like you're just kind of alone in a void, alone in a, dark cave, like a weird cave creature, hunched over, foaming at the mouth, drool coming down your lip,

Stephen: so Yeah, I need a shower first, and then I need to get help from someone else, and I [00:50:00] need help in other ways. We're having help with this. Again, this is what we do all day, every day with clients by design. So just go to six figure creative.com/coaching, fill out the short application, we'll see if it's a good fit or not.

Brian: If it's not, we'll let you know. We still reject 50% or more of the people who apply. Not because we're mean, but because if we don't feel like we can help you, we're not gonna bother trying to help you, right? just makes sense. So go to there, six figure creative.com/coaching.

Brian: Fill it out, and, maybe Steven will be your coach, maybe he won't. We will pair you with, the coach that we think is the best fit for you, your, background, your needs, and if you've showered recently or not. So, that's all I got for you today. Thank you so much, Steven, for coming out here, man.

Stephen: Thank you. Super fun to talk about this.

Brian: All right. See you guys. Next week on the sixth Fear Creative Podcast. Peace.

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