If leads used to just land in your lap but now the referrals are drying up, here's you to find better clients by switching from low-ticket freelancing to high-ticket consulting.

We'll take a look at both sides of the coin:

* How to make your current clients more profitable

* How to find new high-ticket “consulting” clients

If you're positioned exactly like everyone else, saying and promoting the exact same services, you will probably end up lowering your prices to get clients. This is not only exhausting, it is also unsustainable.

The next 20 minutes will give you real-world practical examples of how you can make the shift from freelancer to consultant as fast and as pain-free as possible.

It's not just SAYING that you have a different job title. You have to DO something different. Here's the roadmap.

Ready To Get Better At Marketing?

Don't pass on this opportunity to have a free one-on-one call with me so we can get in control of your leads.

One this call, you'll come away with at least three things:

* What you specifically should be doing to stand out from the crowd

* What you should be saying on your website so people see you as a consultant

* How to raise your prices without worrying about losing the client

This will be the best 45-minutes you've ever spent talking about your business.

Schedule Your Call ➤

From Losing Everything To Having Everything In Less Than A Year

When that divorce happened, I lost everything. I didn't have one dollar. I was living on a friend's couch. I was terrified I was going to have to leave The Keys. I love it here. Through your mentorship and some others, I met who taught me about gratefulness, mindfulness, and positivity I took a risk.

Now, I'm a charter boat captain in the Florida keys. I've doubled my income. I spend 6-8 hours on a sandbar meeting people from all over the world. We had the quarterback from the Denver Broncos on board, Jimmy Butler from Miami Heat… I'm dating the most wonderful woman in the entire world.

Here are my seven big takeaways from talking with Jim.

My Big Takeaways

Jim and I had a great conversation about the impact your mindset has on your relationships, your business, and your life. We also talk about how to put your mindset in action with some simple, practical steps. It's not easy. It's hard. But it is not complicated. Here are a few of my key takeaways from the conversation.

Allow Yourself To Believe Even If It Feels Delusional

Jim has this incredible story of the last 18 months of his life. He got hit with an avalanche of crap that hit him really hard. He worked really hard. He said, “I had to throw down to get it. It took everything I had…” That's so inspiring to me. But hard work alone is not enough to make these transformational changes. It also takes the right attitude and mindset otherwise you stay stuck in the nasty negative feedback loop. To break out of the loop allow yourself to believe that success is ahead, even if you feel like it's delusional to think differently at first.

Anxiety vs Excitement

The feeling of anxiety and the feeling of excitement is literally the same, exact feeling with only one difference – whether or not you believe the outcome is going to be good or bad. If you feel like the outcome is going to suck, you've got anxiety. If you believe good things are coming, you're excited. Therefore, the way you flip the switch and turn your anxiety into excitement is to change what you believe the outcome is going to be. This is what mindset is all about.

Get Clear and Specific About What You Actually Want

Rather than just sitting around wishing things were different, write some stuff down that you want to see happen. Then keep that stuff in the front of your mind and start acting like it is guaranteed to happen. Jim made a list of things he wanted to see different about his life. I believe a big part of getting what you want is knowing what you want. As Jim points on several times, it's still hard and you've got to give it everything you've got. But if you don't even know what you want you'll never get it.

People Make A Huge Difference

Another really important point Jim makes is to surround yourself with the right people who will believe in you and support you. I also firmly believe this as well which is why I put such a strong emphasis on our DoubleStack community. Everyone in the group believes in you and supports you on your journey to building your business.

Crap Doesn't Last As Long As It Seems Like It Will

When you're in the crap it seems neverending. But what I've found to be true, and Jim underscores this point as well with his story, the nasty part of his life really only lasted about two months before the turn-around started. Jim got divorced and within five months he:

* Fell in love with an amazing, awesome, beautiful, supportive, and inspirational person

* Got his own completely remodeled apartment in the Florida Keys

* Got his captain's license and became a charter boat captain

* Left the worst job in the world where he was breaking his toes on pallet jacks and now has an awesome job at Florida Keys Digital

He says,

Here's the situation. You've been working with a client for a while and you're getting them good results. Their social media channels are growing. Their website is getting more traffic. The email list you built for them has become their main source of leads. Then you get a call from the client. They want you to lower your rates because feel like they could hire someone to do what you're doing for less. What do you do?

Rates For Web Design and Online Marketing Are Dropping

The truth is, the rates for technical services are falling. I talk with web designers who have been in business for years and they're saying that they can't win new clients at their current prices. They can't even keep the clients they already have unless they agree to lower their rates. This is bananas because they are better now and deliver higher-quality services than when they first landed the client. So, they are feeling very frustrated because they are investing in developing and advancing their skills but they are making less money than before. That's upside down.

The reason for the fall in prices is easy to understand. The supply has gone way up – especially over the last year. More people are working from home and getting into web design as a business they can run on their own. The market has gone global with easy access to people all over the world through Fiverr and Upwork. There are easy DIY options available. And then there is you trying to compete with all of that.

Why You Are Justifiably Frustrated

You're correct in believing that you do better work. You've been honing your skills for longer. You're able to generate better results than all the newbies just entering the space. So you shout at the email your client just sent you in disbelief wondering how they could be making all this money – money that you are generating for them – and it is way more money than they are paying you. How could they possibly ask for you to lower their rates?

Looking Through Different Lenses – Rates vs Results

The problem is the client and you are looking through two different lenses. They are looking at your value through the lens of hourly rates for services. You are looking at your rates through the lens of results.

They see your rates as being higher than other people's rates. Therefore they conclude that you're too expensive.

You see your rates next to the awesome results you've created. Therefore you conclude you're giving them a very fair price. If anything, you're probably undercharging.

How NOT To Fix The Problem

The temptation is to write up a new proposal with lower prices. Maybe you remove some of the services or reduce the number of hours so you're not just doing all the same stuff but for less. But this isn't going to solve the problem of you and the client looking through different lenses. This approach just means you voluntarily toss your value-based lens aside you agree to look through the client's “rates-based” lens. Don't concede your value-based position. 

Unpack The Client's Goals

The only way I've seen situations like this resolve favorably is for you to have a “goals conversation” with the client. You have to figure out what they want. Then you figure out what achieving those goals are worth to the client. Finally, you price your work in relation to the value of achieving those goals.

To make this work, however, the goals have to be specific and measurable. For example:

* Increase sales of new organic face cream by 10% over last year

* Increase the number of leads from 30 per month to 40 per month

* Reduce time spent on support calls by 15%

If you have been working with the client for a while and know their business, you can even suggest some goals based on what you know they are trying to do. This will further underscore your position as a consultant.

You will…

* Make more money

* Get better clients

* Build your business faster

…when you learn to stop pleading for work and instead start pitching your solutions.

In the next few minutes, you'll discover the difference between pleading and pitching and how to make the shift.

After you make the shift you're going to find that not only is it easier to find clients you're also able to charge dramatically more.

Pleading For Projects Is Miserable

For years I used to get RFPs (requests for proposals) and spend hours writing up all the details of what I would provide and why they should pick me for their project. I'd gush about all the past projects I had completed, how I'd be super responsive to their needs, offer great customer service, etc. Basically, the proposal was just me pleading for work.

Writing proposals like this is miserable. It feels like you're begging. You're putting in gobs of time for free upfront with no guarantee of work. Meanwhile, you're not doing any paying work either so you're feeling that stress too. Then you have to worry about the price. Go too high and you lose out to cheaper bids. Go too low and you can't stay afloat even if you win the project.

Have You Ever Written A Proposal For A Stupid Project?

I was writing a proposal for another one of these RFPs. It was for a ski lodge that wanted to get more guests by posting local news and weather on their website. It's was clearly something I could do, but I firmly believed – and time proved me to be correct – that this project would not achieve the objective of attracting more skiers to stay at the lodge.

So, I'm sitting there trying to convey that I'd get the data feeds working, I knew all the languages involved in the integration, blah blah blah… All the while knowing that nobody goes to a hotel's website to get their daily news.

This project would be somewhat time-consuming and, therefore, expensive and it wouldn't drive more traffic, it wouldn't generate new leads, and they would not see any increase in the number of guests staying at the ski lodge.

I also realized that they didn't need me to do this work. Anybody who could integrate a couple of APIs could easily do this work for way less than what I wanted to make on the project.

I was almost an hour into working on the proposal and just couldn't do it anymore.

So, I quit.

Pleading vs Pitching

I've never responded to another RFP. From that day forward I quit begging for work and started pitching ideas and solutions.

The truth is that people like you and me have a far better understanding of what our clients need than they have. All they know is that they want more clients or more revenue. They (usually) know what their overall business objective is. But they have no clue how to get there.

So, rather than being lead, I started leading.

Instead of showing up as an implementor, I showed up as a consultant.

Instead of thinking my client was stupid for asking for dumb stuff, I recognized that they were doing the best they could but they needed help.

I stopped suppressing my better judgment and started offering authentic help.

Pleading Doesn't Die Easily

It is hard to shift your mindset away from pleading and into pitching. Pleading wears masks. For example, pleading will disguise itself as “discovery.”

It's easy to think, “I'll talk to the client and find out where their pain points are. I'll ask them questions like: What are they struggling with? What features are they looking for? What are their goals?”

But step back and look at what that produces. The only difference between this and responding to RFPs is that they just giving you the RFP orally. You're just trying to pull the RFP out of them before they have had a chance to write it down.

What makes you different from a low-budget, garden-variety web designer?

If you want to charge more, what makes you better than the lower-cost alternatives?

As you’re answering these questions in your mind, are you coming up with answers your clients would understand or are you coming up with reasons only tech people like you and I would appreciate?

In the next few minutes, you’ll discover three ways to set yourself apart from the low-cost competition by underscoring your value without overwhelming your clients with technical buzz words.

The key is to help your client understand why they’ll get better results (not just a better website) because of you.

The Goal Is To Win High-Ticket Clients

The key to building your own 6-figure business is not to crank out more “affordable” websites because:

* Generating that many leads is too time-consuming and expensive

* Your marketing budget is too small because you’re competing with Wix, Squarespace, Upwork, Fiver, and everybody on Facebook

* Cheap clients are exhausting, nit-picky, and demanding

* Nobody gets results because you don’t have the time to do anything meaningful

* It’s a moral challenge because your client could get the same business outcome for much less

The solution, therefore, is not high-volume. The solution is to go high-value.

But how do you communicate your value to your client without overwhelming them with technical details?

Here are three ways to differentiate yourself from all the low-budget alternatives. You don't have to do all three. You can mix-and-match these techniques. You'll find more leads and command significantly higher rates even if you just choose one.

Target Market

Simply picking a target market will go a long way to differentiate your business and set you apart from all the garden-variety web designers. For example, you’ll get more clients by saying, “I build websites for real estate agents” as opposed to just saying, “I build websites.”

The reason you get more leads simply by specifying a target market is that you’re tapping into the relational part of people’s minds. Saying that you build websites does not help the person you’re speaking with make the association between you and the people they know that you could help. As soon as you add your target market of real estate agents you have activated the other person’s mind and they can’t help but think of all the real estate agents they know.

As soon as you say, “real estate agents” the other person is going to start thinking about who they could refer to you and you don’t even have to ask. It’s almost an involuntary response.

Personal Experience

What about you gives you the expertise and authority to help the clients you’re targeting? To make this work, first, you have to target a market. You’ll never be able to create authority in every market. Nobody will believe it if your claims are too broad.

For example, you could say that over the last five years you’ve been a professional real-estate agent and, therefore, you know exactly what real estate agents need both in terms of their tools and marketing to generate leads, take listings, and sell houses.

Common Problem

Picking a job title or an industry is not the only way to define your target market. You can define your target market by a common problem that is shared among a variety of different industries.

For example, think of Angie’s List. Angie’s List has a very broad target market that includes plumbers, roofers, electricians, landscapers, cleaning services, painters, home remodeling businesses, and more. As broad as their audience seems to be they are successful because they solve a common problem that all of those business owners share. They generate leads for local service professionals.

When defining your target market based on a common problem,

If you're trying to build a long-term, sustainable business for yourself, there's a new pattern for success.

The Outdated Approach

The old story goes like this:

* You have no portfolio

* Build “friend and family” websites for very reduced rates

* Rely heavily on word-of-mouth referrals

* Get sporadic referrals for more cheap work

* Burn out

The reason so many people go down this path is because it used to work. This used to be the standard way to build up your own web design business. But a lot has changed – especially over the last year – and this pattern is now outdated and obsolete. In other words, it doesn’t work anymore.

Discover The New Approach

Don't put your time, money, and energy into something that's not going to work.

In the next few minutes, you’ll discover the problems with each of the five steps listed above.

Then you’ll discover a new approach that fixes all of these problems including:

* Why targeting is more important than portfolios

* How to charge full price even for your first client

* How to build your business without chasing leads

Ready To Get High-Ticket Clients?

If you feel like you're ready to take on high-ticket clients but are feeling stuck on how to find them, let's talk.

Schedule Your Call ➤

Quick Ecommerce Tip: How To Charge For Shipping

The first 8 minutes are dedicated to unpacking the best way to handle shipping rates for an e-commerce site. Shipping rates are a major speed bump in the checkout process. Smooth that out and you'll see a significant increase in your conversion rates and you'll be much more profitable.

The Truth About Landing High-Ticket Clients

What's the difference between “buying a website” and hiring you? In other words, how can you charge more than what your client thinks a “website” should cost without losing the job to cheaper alternatives?

The three biggest problems facing web designers right now are:

* A massive increase in low-budget competition

* Easy and very “affordable” DIY options

* Clients come in with very low price expectations

Most web designers try to rely on the portfolio and their genuine desire to do good work to differentiate themselves from the lower-priced options. But that only goes so far.

In order to move into high-ticket web design, you have to communicate the difference between just “buying a website” versus hiring you.

We're going to take a look at the five problems with “selling websites.” Then you'll discover the secret to breaking out of this price race to the bottom.

The Secret To Finding Better Clients

Connect with clients when they’re thinking about the problem not when they have already started implementing their solution.

You don't necessarily have to change who your clients are. The key is to change when you connect with them.

Quick Ecommerce Tip: How To Charge For Shipping

The first 8 minutes are dedicated to unpacking the best way to handle shipping rates for an e-commerce site. Shipping rates are a major speed bump in the checkout process. Smooth that out and you'll see a significant increase in your conversion rates and you'll be much more profitable.

The Truth About Landing High-Ticket Clients

What's the difference between “buying a website” and hiring you? In other words, how can you charge more than what your client thinks a “website” should cost without losing the job to cheaper alternatives?

The three biggest problems facing web designers right now are:

* A massive increase in low-budget competition

* Easy and very “affordable” DIY options

* Clients come in with very low price expectations

Most web designers try to rely on the portfolio and their genuine desire to do good work to differentiate themselves from the lower-priced options. But that only goes so far.

In order to move into high-ticket web design, you have to communicate the difference between just “buying a website” versus hiring you.

We're going to take a look at the five problems with “selling websites.” Then you'll discover the secret to breaking out of this price race to the bottom.

The Secret To Finding Better Clients

Connect with clients when they’re thinking about the problem not when they have already started implementing their solution.

You don't necessarily have to change who your clients are. The key is to change when you connect with them.

Here are some often overlooked but very important points for getting dramatically better results with Facebook ads. We’ll be looking at both the ad as well as the landing page receiving the traffic from the ad.

We're going over stuff like:

* How long should the ad be?

* How do you create a compelling call to action?

* What's the proper sequence for the information you're sharing?

* What's the right structure for Facebook ad copy?

Then we take these concepts and go step-by-step through a live example.

These tips are not for general awareness ads. Everything we’re about to talk about is in the context of ads where the goal is to get a conversion. We’re focusing on how to write engaging ads and create landing pages that convert so you actually get the leads you want.

If you want to improve your conversion rates and get better results from Facebook ads, this one is for you.

The Ad’s Only Goal Is To Get The Click

The only goal for the ad is to get the click.

It may seem obvious to say that, but from experience coaching hundreds of people I can tell it is not as obvious as it seems. One thing that tends to tank an ad’s click-through rate is diving too deep into teaching or selling.

If you’re landing page is a registration page for a webinar or an invitation to book a consulting phone call save all the teaching for the webinar or the phone call. The ad has only one job and that’s to get the viewer to click it.

Sequence Is Very Important

It is very important to expose your audience to the information you want them to receive in the correct order. You can have great information but if you share it in the wrong order it will lose all of its effectiveness.

For example, if you’re getting ready to go out on a date you don’t put your awesome outfit on until after you take your shower. You need the shower and the clothes, but the order is really important. Shower first then clothes. Do it the other way around and you’ve got a mess.

In the same way, your teaching can be fantastic, but if you do it too soon it will be out of context and people will bounce because they haven’t bought into the relevancy yet.

Curiosity, Relevancy, Action

The order you’re shooting for is to first build curiosity, then provide the framework of relevancy, finally inspire action.

The ad is all about curiosity, the landing page provides the relevancy framework, your call to action inspires your lead to take the action you have offered to them.

Ad Structure Summary

* Save the teaching (or your sales pitch) for later.

* Build curiosity by presenting a clear problem that you’re solving

* The ad is not supposed to convince people to buy, it entices people to click

* The ad copy should qualify the audience so everyone knows who you’re talking to and who you’re NOT talking to.

Present the problem you’re solving. Let people know that you’ve got a great way to fix it. If they don’t click to find out more they are missing out on something cool.

Ad Length

I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running ads, mostly for coaching programs and online learning. The price point for these courses has been between $3,000 and $10,000. So, if you’re creating ads for more impulsive purchase decisions you can probably get away with much shorter ad copy.

With all of that in mind, I’ve found the “sweet spot” to be roughly 10 sentences or about 3 – 5 little paragraphs. This provides enough space to write a tiny little story that makes it clear what problem you’re offering to solve, who you’re talking to, and who you’re disqualifying.

For example, for us at DoubleStack, we run ads to reach self-employed web designers. We’re not trying to reach web developers in general. We’ve got a specific audience in mind because if you’re writing code for a corporation,

Here are some often overlooked but very important points for getting dramatically better results with Facebook ads. We’ll be looking at both the ad as well as the landing page receiving the traffic from the ad.

We're going over stuff like:

* How long should the ad be?

* How do you create a compelling call to action?

* What's the proper sequence for the information you're sharing?

* What's the right structure for Facebook ad copy?

Then we take these concepts and go step-by-step through a live example.

These tips are not for general awareness ads. Everything we’re about to talk about is in the context of ads where the goal is to get a conversion. We’re focusing on how to write engaging ads and create landing pages that convert so you actually get the leads you want.

If you want to improve your conversion rates and get better results from Facebook ads, this one is for you.

The Ad’s Only Goal Is To Get The Click

The only goal for the ad is to get the click.

It may seem obvious to say that, but from experience coaching hundreds of people I can tell it is not as obvious as it seems. One thing that tends to tank an ad’s click-through rate is diving too deep into teaching or selling.

If you’re landing page is a registration page for a webinar or an invitation to book a consulting phone call save all the teaching for the webinar or the phone call. The ad has only one job and that’s to get the viewer to click it.

Sequence Is Very Important

It is very important to expose your audience to the information you want them to receive in the correct order. You can have great information but if you share it in the wrong order it will lose all of its effectiveness.

For example, if you’re getting ready to go out on a date you don’t put your awesome outfit on until after you take your shower. You need the shower and the clothes, but the order is really important. Shower first then clothes. Do it the other way around and you’ve got a mess.

In the same way, your teaching can be fantastic, but if you do it too soon it will be out of context and people will bounce because they haven’t bought into the relevancy yet.

Curiosity, Relevancy, Action

The order you’re shooting for is to first build curiosity, then provide the framework of relevancy, finally inspire action.

The ad is all about curiosity, the landing page provides the relevancy framework, your call to action inspires your lead to take the action you have offered to them.

Ad Structure Summary

* Save the teaching (or your sales pitch) for later.

* Build curiosity by presenting a clear problem that you’re solving

* The ad is not supposed to convince people to buy, it entices people to click

* The ad copy should qualify the audience so everyone knows who you’re talking to and who you’re NOT talking to.

Present the problem you’re solving. Let people know that you’ve got a great way to fix it. If they don’t click to find out more they are missing out on something cool.

Ad Length

I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running ads, mostly for coaching programs and online learning. The price point for these courses has been between $3,000 and $10,000. So, if you’re creating ads for more impulsive purchase decisions you can probably get away with much shorter ad copy.

With all of that in mind, I’ve found the “sweet spot” to be roughly 10 sentences or about 3 – 5 little paragraphs. This provides enough space to write a tiny little story that makes it clear what problem you’re offering to solve, who you’re talking to, and who you’re disqualifying.

For example, for us at DoubleStack, we run ads to reach self-employed web designers. We’re not trying to reach web developers in general. We’ve got a specific audience in mind because if you’re writing code for a corporation,