No BS Mastery Podcast

A designer recently told me they’re very intrigued by these one-to-three day intensive models, but their issue was they "can’t stop designing”. 

“My problem is being a perfectionist. I don’t know when to stop designing. How can I get more disciplined to get to a point where I can call it done and stop exploring ideas?”

It’s a great question. 

People tell us that building an entire brand in one to three days is impossible because they have no idea how long it’s going to take to do their brilliant creative work. 

I get it. Steve used to spend upward of 60 hours on just a logo. But we’ve honed our process and we deliver high value for our clients. And I know you can do it too.

So how do you deliver for your clients and maintain boundaries on your time so your business is actually profitable?

Tune into this episode to hear:

• Why the wrong focus is taking you down the rabbit hole and sucking up time
• How your lead product should put the right kind of constraints on your projects
• Three ways to rein in the amount of time your projects take
• Why you need to develop your ability to curate as well as create

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

Productizing your services is a hell of a great way to run a business, make better money and live a more sustainable life.

For me, it was the answer to years of chasing clients and struggling to keep my branding projects profitable for my small agency.

Productizing my services completely turned my business around within just a couple of months and I went from $40,000 in debt to $500,000 in sales in just 12 months. 

But like any business model, there are constraints. Where are those constraints? And what value or opportunities might be left on the table when you productize?

After listening to Rochelle Moulton and Jonathan Stark talk about productized services on their podcast, I knew I had to invite them over to dig into it some more. We’ll talk about constraints of the model for a small agency and where we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Rochelle Moulton turns independent consultants into authorities. The author of The Authority Code: How To Position, Monetize And Sell Your Expertise, she has been called “an emotional Red Bull” for her balance of inspiration and practical advice. She co-hosts The Business of Authority and is a leading voice in the independent consulting space.

Jonathan Stark is a former software developer who is on a mission to rid the world of hourly billing. He is the author of Hourly Billing Is Nuts, the host of Ditching Hourly, and writes a daily newsletter on pricing for independent professionals.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• Why Rochelle says productized creative services can lead to mediocre work 
• Where Jonathan says you might be leaving money on the table with a flat fee product
• Why value exists in the transformation, not the tools or the labor
• Key differences between productized services and value-based pricing and how they can work together
• How building your authority builds value into into your products and into your business

Learn more about Rochelle Moulton:

• RochelleMoulton.com
• Twitter: @ConsultingChick
• The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise
• The Business of Authority Podcast

Learn more about Jonathan Stark:

• JonathanStark.com
• Hourly Billing Is Nuts
• Ditching Hourly Podcast

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

Retainer model clients. Are they the holy grail of small agencies? Or the source of their eventual downfall.

So many small agency owners are stuck in a feast or famine cycle with client work and marketing. They’re either spending all of their time on client projects or they’re spending all of their time hustling for clients and not making money. 

It’s a stressful way to run a business. 

Eventually, a lot of business owners get to a point of asking themselves, “Wouldn’t it make more sense to put some of these clients on retainer? A monthly fee for ongoing work would stop the feast or famine work/client chasing cycle, give me a steady income, and give me a sense of security.”

It makes logical sense.

And yet, I still get contacted by a lot of one to two person branding agencies, who have clients on retainer, and they’re still working all the time and they’re still not making enough money to actually feel safe.

And they still ask me if the answer is to get more retainer clients. To that, I always say, NO.

I am avidly against retainer clients for small agency owners. And I’m going to tell you exactly why I think they give a false sense of security and are the absolutely wrong strategy to implement if you want more profit and more freedom in your life. 

Tune into this episode to hear:

• Why it’s almost impossible to make a real profit on retainer clients
• How retainer clients can leave you feeling like an employee with no benefits
• How retainer clients can hurt the foundation building of your business by giving you a false sense of security
• How to get off the retainer treadmill and sell profitable, project-based work

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

Everybody wants to make more money without working more hours. That's the dream, right?

That's what I sell: How to make more and more money while working fewer and fewer hours. It’s a great goal and it’s absolutely achievable.

But here’s the problem, and why people struggle to get there.

When you want to make more money without working more hours, what’s the first thing you think to do?

You focus on the money. You raise your prices or you bring on more clients, maybe even both. 

But when you focus on the money, it can actually end up being the reason you get stuck working all the time without making enough.

So what’s the answer to this conundrum? Profitability, not revenue.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• How scope creep and outsourcing eat the revenue from raising your prices or bringing on new clients
• Why you have to have systems in place to be profitable before you add more people to your business

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

Raise your hand if you hate sales.

It's probably the most common thing that people struggle with when they're building a small agency. It's also the most important part of building any business. Because if you don't have sales, you don't have a business. You have a hobby.

People hate sales, they feel icky. They feel like they're not very good at it. They don't want to pressure people. They don't want to even learn sales techniques because sales techniques feel icky.

Believe me, I feel the same way. I hate sales. In fact, I could argue that the entire no BS agency business model and all the authority I built online was all my attempt to avoid selling.

And in many ways it did.

Today, I’m sharing how we turned that long, laborious, awful sales process that most small agencies go through to try to close a client into a simple 15 minute conversation and we close people on the spot.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• How a fit call eliminates chasing leads with free meetings, calls and proposals and gets you to the sale faster
• Why free consultations don’t work and give you the icky sales feel
• How the fit calls leads to a clear, specific next step that the client pays you for
• The three parts of the non-sales sales conversation

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

What does shifting from the old default model of working with clients to using the No BS Agency model actually look like?

Super badass business owner Jennifer Anastasi is here to tell us. In this episode, she reveals how she implemented the model that changed everything for her — from projects that dragged on for six or nine months at a time to projects that were delivered in just a couple of days intensive.

Jennifer is an engineer turned brand strategist who empowers service providers to find a clear brand and online presence using her background in tech mixed with creativity. Her superpower is turning the intimidating into easy to understand ideas.

She is also one of my star students in the No BS Agency Mastery Program, who had a take no prisoners approach, and today she’s sharing her journey from looking for flexibility in being self-employed that corporate jobs just didn’t have to gaining the freedom and flexibility of being a No BS Agency.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• Why Jennifer’s early VIP days didn’t work
• How implementing the LP boosted Jennifer’s confidence and her revenue
• Why Jennifer manages all of the creative elements of her branding projects, from writing the copy to directing the photo shoot
• How intensives have improved the quality of Jennifer’s work

Learn more about Jennifer:

• JenniferAnastasi.com
• Instagram: @JenniferAnastasi
• Fear Less, Brand More Podcast

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

The never-ending revisions process and project scope creep are two of the key reasons that most small branding and creative agencies are not profitable. It’s why creatives seem to be working all the time for not enough money.

It's easy to see how this happens.

Your clients are paying you good money and you want them to be happy. So what’s another revision, right? Maybe you have a stipulation in your contract about the number of revisions before you'll charge additional charges, but how often do you actually enforce that?

The client needs something different and you want to please them. So you do the extra work. What’s another hour? The problem is these extra hours add up very quickly.

When I tell people that we have eliminated the revisions process and that clients accept our deliverables without revisions, they’re both amazed and highly skeptical.

Today, I’m letting you in on how we do this and how it’s not just a better path to creating a more profitable business, but it’s a better path with better results for your clients too.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• Why your clients don’t really want revisions
• How confidently presenting your work eliminates revision requests
• Why building trust with your clients is essential to getting rid of revisions
• Why you have to let clients in on the thought process behind the work

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

“How is it even possible to do it that fast? Aren't you sacrificing quality? You must be selling templates.”

These are just some of the biggest questions I get whenever I tell people that we deliver entire branding projects — projects that typically take 6-8 months to complete — in just one to three days.

People think it’s impossible. They think our work must suck or that we’re duplicating our work and selling the same thing over and over.

Today, I want to tell you that not only is it possible to work that fast, but we actually believe we’re delivering better quality for our clients in these intensives.

Spoiler Alert: We’re not selling templates and our projects are not all the same. But they do have some similarities, which is what I’m going to tell you about today.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• What’s the BS in a No BS Agency model and how we were able to eliminate it
• What our client projects have in common that helps us streamline our process
• Why you should be charging for your expertise, not your hours
• Where it is okay to use templates

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

In the creative agency space, almost everyone follows the same process to close clients. I did too. 

First, you network to find potential clients. Then when you find the client, you have multiple meetings, hold free consultations and free strategy sessions or phone calls to figure out what the client needs and wants. Then, you create a proposal that finally (hopefully) wins you that client.

I don’t know about you, but my proposals were incredibly detailed and specific and it was a TON of work. And whenever you don't win it, all that time that you spent with that one potential client is gone. Lost.

I knew I had to stop spending so much time and energy writing proposals for clients who were never going to close. 

So I quit doing proposals for free. And you can too.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• How to use a lead product to stop doing proposals and start getting paid
• How to create a lead product that is clear, actionable and valuable for your clients
• Why a lead product sets you apart as the expert even in a sea of free proposals
• Why signaling that your time is valuable from the outset means less client sticker shock and more free time to really develop your business

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com

It's the beginning of January, which means a lot of us are thinking about goals and what we really want our next year to look like.

What’s your vision for your business in 2022?

How do you want to evolve personally and professionally? How do you want your relationships to evolve? How do you want your business to evolve?

Most people do this kind of goal setting once a year. They come up with some really loft goals and then struggle to stick to the plan. 

You go to the gym every day for a month! And then you stop…

How do you set yourself up so that you don’t simply come up with some intentions for the year and do them for a couple of weeks and forget about them? How do you actually set yourself up to achieve those things in the next twelve months?

There are a few ways to do that, but today I want to talk about visioning.

Tune into this episode to hear:

• Prompts for brainstorming your big goals for 2022, in your life and your business
• Why your income goal should be one among many goals for the year, not THE goal
• An exercise for envisioning the future

Learn more about Pia: 

• No BS Agency Owners Free Facebook Group
• The Show Your Business Who's Boss Crash Course 
• Start reading the first chapter of my book
• Piasilva.com