Daily Content Machine

At some point, no matter how successful you are or have been, something has worked. Something was working well for you. What was that thing? What was that thing that has worked well for you? What worked in the past that you stopped doing for one reason or another?

Maybe you stopped because you got distracted. Maybe it was shiny object syndrome. Maybe you got bored of it. Maybe you simply didn’t recognize it was successful at the time.

When you look back, you’re going to see things that went well and things that didn’t go so well. Identify what worked and do more of it.

There’s a lot of things.

So many ideas and projects and things you could do. Some need to be done, some should be done, some would be nice to have done.

Even of the things that truly need to be done, there are simply so many that if an entire weekend opened up for you tomorrow, you’d still have more than you could possibly accomplish in that time.

I know because it’s what happens to me on my sabbatical. I take every 7th week off, like I’m doing right now. That’s where I have these mini sabbatical episodes. For an entire week, I’m free from my normal obligations.

There are so many things I can do during this time! It’s not just a weekend but an entire week! Surely I could get caught up on everything.

When you’re not actively working to better yourself, it seems like the worst case is simply that you will stay in the same place.

But our skills are entropic in nature. They stagnate, deteriorate, and get worse over time. It’s like going to the gym and working out. You can't just get fit once and ride on that for the rest of your life. You will slowly lose what you don’t maintain.

This also applies to our skills and what we do. You’ll go through seasons where you’re focused on one thing, but what's happening to the other skills you aren’t focusing on? There's no guarantee you can go back, pick up where you left off, and be just as fresh on things.

I’ve put together 8 ways to be constantly improving and keep those skills fresh and relevant.

Ever feel like it’s hard to get motivated? You’re not alone. I recently received this message:

“The hardest thing that’s keeping me from pursuing my passion is being able to sustain my enthusiasm and drive. When I hit an obstacle, I simply lose heart and shelf my ideas. I often feel my ideas and projects are beyond my ability to accomplish. I hope you write about ways to stay motivated and to persevere until you make it.”

I think a lot of people can relate to this. We get short bursts of inspiration here and there but often nothing that’s sustainable.

In this episode, we dive into finding drive in the first place, then six ways to stay motivated.

One of my values is only buying things I can afford. I have a very strict no-debt mentality and have always purposed to live within my means.

When it comes to business, I’ve always been bootstrapped. I don’t like the idea of selling equity or ownership. By taking on an investment, I would have a sense of obligation to an investor because they are expecting a return.

I’ve already decided not to take on investors. That’s all well and good. But what if someone wanted to donate money no strings attached? Here’s where it gets interesting: someone has expressed such an interest.

Nothing’s official and no actual offer has been made. I haven’t accepted or received anything. But the possibility of it brought up a very interesting discussion. What is the different between an investment and a donation? Should I accept a donation? How would a donation change things? Should it change things? What if it was anonymous?

One of the things I came to realize is that when you follow The Overlap Technique and Relationship Marketing, you are putting value out into the world. It’s easy to get so caught up in the giving that you don’t know how to receive. The conversation in this episode was insightful to say the least.

There’s a reason more people don’t quote projects using Value-Based Pricing: it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. Value doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are a lot of factors to consider.

There’s your time, project costs, duration of the project, value relative to market averages, project risk, expected time to realize value… in total, we cover 9 factors that affect a value-based price.

This is complicated stuff. Justin is helping me develop a tool for Value-Based Pricing to be included with our course at ValueBasedPricing.com that will help you with all of the percentages and the math. Of course, a tool by itself can’t do everything for you. That’s why in this final installment of our Value-Based Pricing series, we take you step by step through every factor that you need to understand.

There was so much in this episode, that we went well beyond an hour and started pushing an hour and a half. I was about to cut it off because we’d been going for so long, but there were so many questions in the chat, I decided we would stick around and answer as many as we could. It ended up being 2 hours of solid gold.

I know there are many of you who are not Community members and don’t get to listen to the live stream, so I thought you’d appreciate that we took extra time to answer nearly a dozen questions from people wondering how to do Value-Based Pricing and included this extra segment in this episode for free.

We’re back for part two of an epic three-part series on Value-Based Pricing. In part one, we went over five steps to getting started with Value-Based Pricing.

In this episode, you get unprecedented access to the exact messages exchanged between the professional and the client—read word for word.

You’ve wanted to learn how to position yourself as an investment rather than an expense to your clients—that’s what this episode focuses on. You’ll hear exact phrases used that sold a very valuable, high-dollar solution to the client.

I don’t think you can find another episode like this on the internet when it comes to Value-Based Pricing. You’re able to listen to a podcast where someone who is executing Value-Based Pricing talks about it with the person they did it with and you get to hear inside the client’s mind—who also happens to be a professional.

We’re reading real messages exchanged that resulted in a difference of tens of thousands of dollars in the project’s pricing. This is highly-useful information applicable to anyone in client services who wants to learn to price on value.

It's time to stop trading time for money.

Over the course of the next three episodes, I'm going to teach you how to do Value-Based Pricing.

For this series, I have a special guest, Justin Michael, with me on the show. In this episode, we break down 5 steps to getting started with Value-Based Pricing. We take you behind the scenes on huge project we just finished.

Justin is a developer. We’ve been working together for half a year on different apps and features for the Community. Most recently, we completed seanwes talk: a completely custom chat system that’s a hybrid between real-time chat and long-time archivable content.

When I first approached Justin with this project, I didn’t know how much this would cost. I initially had a figure of $20,000 in mind. When Justin came back with a quote for nearly $50,000, I was a bit surprised—that is, until he explained.

Once I understood, I happily wired him the initial payment even though the quote was more than twice what I was anticipating.

What was it that made me spend $30,000 more than what I expected? That’s the power of Value-Based Pricing.

In the next three episodes, I’m going to break down this process for you. If you’ll lend me your ear and attention, it’ll be more valuable than any college course you ever took.

120 episodes ago, we had what we call the Golden Episode: e024 Finding Clients While Maintaining Professionalism. It’s time to revisit the topic of professionalism and lay a solid foundation.

You may have heard me talk about my upcoming course at ValueBasedPricing.com. Up next on the podcast, I'll also be doing a multi-part Value-Based Pricing series where I teach you how to price on value.

However, you can’t just start pricing on value immediately. You need to lay the groundwork of professionalism first. You've heard me touch on professionalism a lot in the podcast, but this will be an exhaustive breakdown on how to set yourself apart by working like a pro.

You'll hear how to attract clients instead of chasing them, establishing your process, filtering with your questionnaire, setting expectations, invoicing, presentation, and a lot more.

Fear of failure isn't the only thing we have to worry about. Fear of success can keep us just as paralyzed!

The very possibility of success can be incapacitating. Say you attain success... then what?

How will you evolve?

What if you make enemies?

What if you're forced to continue a path because you succeeded?

What if it means more responsibility?

What if it means more vulnerability?

What if it changes you—and not for the better?

I never considered myself someone who feared success—neither did Ben or Cory. Maybe you don't either. But after this episode, we all realized there were deeper fears beneath the surface that we didn't even recognize until we did this show.

We help you identify and overcome some limiting beliefs you may not even realize you have right now.