Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The more clear I get, I can increase my price because I know my value goes up, right. I know that I can help that. So my, it's called a program promise in the coaching world. So my program promise is double your monthly revenue without burning out.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Yo, Mike check. What's up, everybody? You're listening to the street pricing podcast, the only show where proven SaaS leaders share their mindset and mistakes in pricing so we can all stop guessing and start growing. Enjoy. Subscribe, and tell a friend. Now, let's break it down with your host and sought after Slayer of bad pricing, Marcos Rivera.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: What's up? And welcome to the Street Pricing podcast. I'm Marcos Rivera, author, founder and pricing coach. And today I have a guest that's gonna really help us get grassroots with things. All right, today, joining us is John Meyer. He is the founder of Lean Moore. John, welcome to the show, man.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Hey, buddy. Good to see you. I guess I should go grassroots. I'm here in South Dakota, so we're going to the plains and we're going to get grassroots going into plains, going.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Grassroots, and we're going to really unpack things. Like, I think really at the nucleus level of running a business, I think it's going to be a lot of fun to talk together. Let's give a little bit more about you. Why don't you tell us what you do and what you're up to these days?
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So my story starts. I ran a creative design agency for a decade. That's when I met you, actually, through a fellow mutual friend. And it was called lemonly. And we helped tell those stories of the world's best brands. So Marriott, Netflix and Google and major league baseball. But we did it through a thing called infographics. And so the idea, this is in 2011, attention spans are shorter than ever. And, you know, people don't always like to read. We're wired to be visual creatures. And so we took data and information and told it in a visual way, visual story. So grew that to about 20 employees, a few million in revenue, and then in 2021, sold that company. So they still exist today and are doing great work. And I was kind of on this journey of what do I want to do next? I kind of tested out a few ideas. A friend up in North Dakota asked me, have you ever thought about being a coach? And I hadn't, but I had my own coach, which is actually how I met you, Marcos. So I just took on a couple clients, like, creative agency clients, people like who I used to be, didn't really talk about it and then decided after six months, like, yeah, I think, I think I like this site. I'm a very positive, optimistic person. I like to dig into businesses. I like to be a cheerleader, I like to ask questions, and I'm like, that's what a coach does. So today, lead more is I help creative entrepreneurs build great companies and not get stuck building, like, busy jobs. What happens with a lot of people who are really talented in their creative work? So think designer, brander, photographer, copywriter, coach. They leave the hive, they leave their company and they just put their head down and grind. And they think that just, if I just work harder or work more, I'll break this kind of cycle. And what happens is about twelve months later, they look up and they're like, I'm not getting off of this hamster wheel. And so I believe the answer is, to build a company, you got to kind of grow through it. And pricing is a big part of that scale leverage. So those are the things I help coach and get people through that, that ceiling to build a great company and not a busy job.
[00:03:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think that speaks to a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of things you need to do when you're kind of jumping out into the world on your own. You gotta be your own lawyer, your own accountant, your own customer support. You have to wear so many hats. And it gets really easy to get bogged down into all of the things you gotta do. Right. It almost feels like you're treading water in some cases, right. I love how you, you're trying to help folks get past that. And the thing about it is, like many folks listening today, probably in corporate America for a really long time, jumped out and started their own thing. Or maybe they've really excelled in corporate America and now have a major responsibility either over a product or a business unit or something else. And there is a wide range of things that need to come together right in order for you to grow. It gets really difficult to pull back from that and just make sure you're, you're able to prioritize the right stuff. So we're gonna percent, we're gonna unpack a little bit of that here today. So that, that excites me because I'm gonna take a slightly different angle for most folks. I'm still gonna give everybody a roadmap. All right, cool. So for everyone here listening, this show is based on the book street pricing, right? So there's a rewind. We gotta play. We got fast forward. All right, you got a book, too.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: You got red? No.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: Unplanned. Thank you for bringing that, man. So we have three main sections for you, right. The first one's rewind. We're gonna go back, talk about a story, real story, about a pricing change, struggles, the success, what you learned, what we can learn, all that stuff now from there, move to today play. And that's what's going on today in general around pricing. I want to expand that with you, John, and talk a little bit about how that helps get folks unstuck or what they can do as they get unstuck to help them price the right way and then fast forward. So let's look into the future. We can see where things are going. I think the entrepreneurial landscape is evolving. You got AI here these days. A lot of things happening. So wanted to cover those big things. Are you ready to get street with me? Is that good?
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Let's do it. Let's go street.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: All right. Fantastic. So let's start with the first piece, which is a pricing story. Take it away, John.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I'll start with confession. I started starting lemonly. You know, we sold our first infographic in 2011 for dollar 500, and I just kind of threw that out. It was local newspaper here in South Dakota, and it actually got in print. So that's kind of funny because usually we're thinking digital jpegs on blogs and websites. And then the next one, I said 700, and then I said the thousand in it. And most of my pricing upbringing to timestamp, I'm like 25 years old at the time, is just kind of throwing out a number until people say yes. And when everybody kept saying yes, I raised the number. And when people started saying no, I kind of leveled the number off for a little while. And I tell that story only because I don't think it's actually that unique. I mean, I hadn't read street pricing yet. I don't think it had even been written yet. But I just think it's a very common mistake. And what I see in entrepreneurs is, especially these solopreneurs, they're so hungry for the deal, and they're so hungry to get the clothes, to get them to accept that proposal. Because a lot of these folks, these creative entrepreneurs, are living kind of feast or famine, really busy month. Then they got to go do the work, and then they're like, crap, September's here. I got to go get more work. And so they're often willing to compromise on price, and they don't even know that at $3,000 for a landing page or at $10,000 for a rebrand. They're not even making money. Right? Like, they're not putting the whole metrics together of what's the time, what's the cost, our hourly rate, but also the other things besides just doing, moving pixels around, right. I'm creating the proposal. I'm following. I'm doing project management. And so that's probably the biggest mistake that I made in the beginning, was just like, so hungry to win the deal and not a lot of thought into what that number should be. I'm sure you see that even in SAS. I know you do a lot of SaaS. I think there's like, well, these guys are 49.99, so we'll be $49.99. Right. But what's the value? Right? Like, once I realized we weren't selling a JPEG, we were selling clarity. We were selling understanding. And often our infographics were driving hundreds of thousands, if not million dollars of revenue. And so we could charge more than what we were charging.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: That's it. And that funny thing you just said, because in that confession, right there was the, I wasn't sure this was the right price, but it was more than that. It was. I wasn't sure it was the right price, and I'm not even sure if I'm making money on this right price. Right. And there's a lot into that because you would think intuitively, while we're in business, to make money. How could you not know that? But the reality is, right. The reality is you got to do stuff. People will pay money for stuff. You need money to pay for your own stuff. So you just, you got to do what you got to do. Right? That's like the human, like, as raw and real as it gets when you're starting a business.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: And I think I was maybe this is a South Dakota kind of midwesterner in me tendency, but, you know, I kind of just threw 20% on top of kind of what I once I figured out what our costs were, because that's sort of what I had learned was most agencies, if they're operating about 20% margin, they're doing okay. Well, it doesn't have to be that way. You know, you've helped me teach. Doesn't have to be bottoms up plus margin. You know, you can really, what's the value you're bringing? And how can you communicate that value? And so the cause we knew, I spent a lot of time focusing on delivery. Like, if we could deliver the infographic where the client approves the first draft, they're like, this is great. We have no edits. All of a sudden I just made 50% margin and not 20. But you gotta fact not guess what, most clients have edits. You don't get that on the first shot. So I think that took me a while to understand, too, that we could, and a big part, another kind of past rewind, that really changed the game for us. Being more of a project based agency, we weren't big. Full service retainers and long term contracts is we added upgrades to our proposal. And what we realized, yeah, we're building an infographic, but guess what? You can take that and turn it into a PowerPoint deck, or we can cut it up into what we call micro content, social media stuff. Sometimes we'll even print it out as like a poster. And all of a sudden our kind of checkout size, to use an Amazon term, would almost double just with these little upgrades. That was a game changer for us.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Game changing indeed. This, I think a lot of folks out there, even SaaS or not SaaS or service, just like listening here, if you're selling something, but you don't leave room to upgrade and sell more, think about what's happening, right? So you've collided the client. You probably underpriced them. All right, let's just be real where it's at. But over the time, you're realizing what your value truly is. And sometimes they'll even tell you like, oh, my God, what you did for me was amazing, whether it was SaaS or service, then you're starting to realize, hey, wait a second, this is actually more worth more than maybe I even thought, right? So this is all that discovery that needs to happen in the beginning, and then you start adjusting your price. Now you use that 20% rule. There's nothing wrong with that. There's rules of thumb around 5%, 10% sure. 2020, 5% is actually a better jump because it's a bit more meaningful distance. And the reactions, you can measure a little bit if 5%. Doing that, depending on how much lead flow you have, can take a really long time, if you know what I mean.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah, your cycles. Yeah.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Yes. With those cycles. So I would measure it. If your cycles are super short, maybe you can go smaller, but if they're longer, maybe make the jumps a little bit more meaningful. That's kind of a big takeaway for everybody. But listen, man, I think that what you went through and introducing those upgrades is, I think, an unlock for a lot of folks because they may, they land the deal, especially creatives or services or any type of project or service oriented work, at the end of the day, you give them what they want. Now what? Right?
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And the responses to those upgrades gave us a lot of like, good data, a lot of kind of leading indicators to help us think about how to repackage. You changed my mind on how often, or gave me permission to change pricing more often and play with it. And so what we thought might have just been a tiny little add on, but everybody was picking that like working files or micro content bundle. They may just realize maybe that should be baked into the core offering based on how people were selecting those options, too.
[00:10:54] Speaker C: That's it. That's it. And so the behavior of the so if you don't even have upgrades to begin with, you're missing out on that opportunity to serve them more, help them more. But when you start seeing what they're buying, how often they're buying it, who's buying it, that can help you either create a more premium plan for that audience or bundle it into the base, if that's what everyone wants, and then maybe take up the base a little bit, if it includes that. And those are kind of two very natural evolutions of the next step of pricing. If again, you're paying attention and you're starting to make those different upgrades.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: I think we're creatives make, where creatives make mistakes. A lot is we think in terms and things of effort or time, right? So it's like well, to date to make that infographic and resize it to like a poster size because our client might want to put it up than their big corporate headquarters. It only takes me like 30 minutes. Why would we ever charge a $1,000 for that add on? It's like, well, if they see the value in it, that's fine. It doesn't matter if it takes you 30 minutes, you know, and so that's kind of, that was a shift for us, is moving away from effort and thinking in terms of value.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: You do and the effort doesn't disappear. Right. You still have to kind of know it in general is make sure you make money. But in the grand scheme of things, no one really cares about your time. They care about the thing that they want, whether it's the logo, the infographic, or the service or the software, whatever it is. And in the end, the effort it takes is more about you and what it takes to build it and less so about them. So here's what I, when I think about that effort, you go to the old fashioned diamond cutter scene, right, which is, you charged me $1,000 to cut this dime in, but it only took you, like, freaking a minute to do it. He's like, yeah, but it took me, you know, 50 years of knowledge and work to be able to do it in a minute, 100%. So here you go. Right?
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Yeah. You're paying for 30 years. You're not paying for ten minutes.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: That's right. So it's like, it's just that reframing, I think a lot of folks need to remember, and that cuts across all different types of services and et cetera. Man, I think that's a big one for you. So if you had to look back at that time and you're like, okay, these the upgrades and just reframing, what were some of the biggest things that allowed you permission to capture your value?
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think listening to our customer and letting their, whether it be their, everything from their body language to how quickly they said yes to, you know, we did sort of the secret chopper thing. We kind of, I got to know our competitors and ask them, and we had good rapport with them in terms of what do you charge? I think sometimes we made the mistake of being, I think we saw ourselves as high end and custom in the design, creative landscape, but our costs were probably lower being based in South Dakota. And so I think we sort of passed that cost, that savings onto our customer, which is fine, but I don't think we weren't trying to be discount, we weren't trying to be value. And I think in hindsight, we could have charged more. But in terms of lessons, yeah. I think letting, using those leading indicators from the customer, using that data from in our proposal software, when people were choosing those upgrades, we started to rebundle. And then I think just the permission to change your pricing. Right. Like, there was a time where we sold an infographic for $500 and then when I left, it was, you know, 10,000. And that was a journey. And the process of making that infographic not actually that different from 2011 to 2021, but we kept changing.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a major, major price jump, right. Over time. Over time, right?
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah. A decade. Yeah.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Team, I want to take a quick pause here to ask you for a huge favor that'll mean a lot to me. Please review and share the show. Share it with your team, your friends, your peers. Not only will it help them stop the guesswork in pricing, but it'll also help you and increase the chances that you'll take action and change for yourself. All right, much love. Now back to the show and thinking about this a little bit. Like, how did that conversation, when you're standing there trying to justify the price, this is a bit of a trick question because I don't think you should be justifying your price. But when that pricing conversation, when you say, yep, this thing's going to cost you ten grand, how did your ability to not justify, but maybe explain or defend or help them understand it differ from maybe the first time when it was $500?
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we got a lot. I always tell when I coach creatives, if there's something you do in your process, put it in the proposal. Like, tell them, don't over complicate, keep things simple, because I always think a confused buyer doesn't buy. Right. I know you've said that, but what Mister Craves will say, here's the jpEg. It's $10,000. Well, no, no, it's, we do content we really like. We write the word. It's not just pretty pictures. It's also great words. We do wireframe, we do a mood board. So we're matching, we do rounds of design. Like, it's kind of like a, it wasn't a productized service, but we definitely had a, every infographic started at zero with a blank canvas, but we had a very tried and true process. And so I think it's the same way if you go buy a fancy italian leather bag, we talk about the craftsmanship and we talk about the years of knowledge and experience. And it wasn't just a bag that was just created by a machine. And I think in that creative work, unpacking, sort of the thought and care that goes into your work helps you justify the price.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: That's it. That's it. And so there are things in and around the output that matter.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:04] Speaker C: And taking this also to a SaaS model. Right.
That could even be your, the way you do onboarding and support around that, or the way you consult them or the way you train them, or the way you're responsive or whatever those other things are, or the thought and care that goes into it actually matters. And I think it could be a great way to differentiate when you're in a tough, competitive environment.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Bingo. I agree with that 100%. I always thought, like, people came to Lemonly.com and saw the logos of fancy big companies. That was sort of a credibility mark. And then they took a quick peek at our proposal or at our portfolio, the creative work. They want to see the work. Okay, I like that. That sounds good. But ultimately why they stayed or why they came back was the customer experience, because it was like they needed to settle or satisfy a basic level of, like, quality and credibility. And then after that, it was all about experience. And so I think software can do that too. Like, it's not just about doing the tool, but how easy it is to set up the tool. How. How smoothly can I connect it to my other tools? There's so much more than just doing the widget or the feature.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: That is beautifully said, man. The way I look at it, and I'm going to paraphrase what you said, because I think it makes a ton of sense, is that there's value in value, but there's also value in the experience around how you get that value. The big key here is how you get to value is really important to focus in on. And when you're in a tough comparative state where folks are saying, well, isn't your thing the same thing as that thing? You know, we're not selling toothpaste here, right? At the same time, we're trying to be very differentiated. Try to think more than just, well, I have these six features and they only have those five features, and so I'm better. But maybe tap into some of the other things around that, that lend to their. Their way they onboard, the way they get help when they get stuck, whatever it is. And that could be a nice way to pull yourself away from the pack.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And I think on my podcast you talked about luxury, luxury products and brands of. I think entrepreneurs love to try tools, right? Like, I always laugh when you go to a conference or there's a keynote speaker, and whenever there's a slide that's either like a book or like, here's a tool we use. Everybody, like, heads go down, people take notes. It's not about the tool. Right. It's about how do you use the tool? But people do like to say, like, oh, yeah, we use, you know, I think in creative world, like now ClickUp is the big project management software. When I started it was basecamp, and then for a while, you know, we did Trello and I. There's sort of like this. It's like wearing jordans or like carrying a Louis Vuitton. Right? Like people, I think brand matters even in sass. Like, people want to be on the cool thing, the hip thing. And that's part of what you said, that whole experience.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a. Again, where humans always are part of this equation, right? And as humans buy from other humans, you got to factor all that stuff in, man. So I love it. The experience has a lot of value around it. And you gave yourself permission to play with the pricing very early and start really discovering where that value was. I think big takeaways for a lot of folks, whether your service, SaaS, or whatever, everything in between. But I want to not take it from rewind to today, man. And this is something that is close to me, because when I left the corporate world and I started my own business, I had a lot of these doubts and questions, and it was very easy to get sucked into a daily grind, so to speak. Right? And then that can really not just slow down your growth, but also just zap the energy out of you, which then makes things even tougher because it's hard to do things when you're not into it. And then you sort of. In this bad cycle, right? So I've been looking you up, right? Talking about this, going solo may not be the way that you need to go. I want to unpack that a little bit, because in pricing and packaging, I think the way you pull out of the grind also makes pricing and packaging monetizing your value easier. And the more you get stuck in that world, pricing, packaging, or just getting the value you deserve, it just gets really hard. Right. And so let's talk about this concept of going solo and. And tell me your big viewpoint around it, man.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to your point. The riches are in the niches, right. And the more clear, when I. When I became a coach, I was like, I'm a business coach. Okay, John, that's great. Like, you have a track record, you've sold a business, but, like, who do you coach? And I was kind of like, I don't know, entrepreneurs. So that was now it's been about a year and a half, and I've really dialed into this customer. My coaching program is called no more solo. And the idea is, I believe I kind of wanted to stick my flag in the ground that what we see on the Internet, these solopreneurs that are working at the beach, or I work remotely, I'm in Tahiti and I'm in Mexico. And either one, they're actually not solo. So behind them, they have an EA or a VA. They have contractors, they have leveraged employees, they have AI, they have software, or if they are solo, they're actually working seven days a week from the beach. So, like, they're answering emails on Sunday morning, and they're finishing their creative work on Tuesday night. That doesn't sound that attractive to me. And so I'm saying no more solo. The way to push through that is to scale and to grow. And that may not be a co founder or a salaried employee if you're just getting started. It could be a VA, could be a contractor, maybe another agency like lead more. Looks like me on paper, but behind that I have an offshore va. I have an offshore video editor so I can make clips and reels. I have a local copywriter who just is. She has like a monthly kind of cert, like pick off of her menu, one deliverable a month. She's great copywriter, much better than me. And so there's like this team, it just doesn't look like the way an agency used to look like where they're all on the website, we all sit around our desk. And so that's kind of my idea of no more solo. And you're exactly right that like when the more clear I get, I can increase my price because I know my value goes up. Right. I know that I can help that. So my, it's called a program promise in the coaching world. So my program promise is double your monthly revenue without burning out. So you go through my ten week program and I'm going to help you double your revenue without burning out. Now I have a solopreneur customer, so I probably do have some price ceiling because they're probably making ten to month right now. You know, I think, I'm sure you've heard of like the pat a lot like the, is it the rule of three in ten? Sort of. Is that what they call it? Like I think you know this, my customer probably hits a ceiling at about 300k if they're truly solo. But I want to help them break through and build like a million dollar company. And so, yeah, that's how I think about pricing is by clarity of who I help and what I offer. Now I can add a lot more value. And unlike a lemonly, my program is also group coaching. So right now it's very small and intimate, only 1010 entrepreneurs. But there is some elasticity there that could become some other product offerings that allow me to really increase the price.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: No, that's beautiful there. There is going to be, I'm going to poke that a little bit because you probably learned a lot from your lemonly days and now applying it here in Leanmore and I want to know what that is here in a second. But listen, what you said is so super important for a lot of folks to understand here that the ambition is a really great engine to start things off. Right. But it can get zapped if it's being used on a lot of non, I want to say non value add, but maybe just nothing that really requires your special skill, if you know what I mean. Right. So does it take my special skill to send an invoice? Does this take my special skill to cut a reel or to do this? Yes. The truth is, it doesn't have. Then you should.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Zone of genius.
[00:23:17] Speaker C: Exactly. If it's not in my zone of genius, then maybe it's better for somebody else to do it and then allow me to focus more in my zone of genius and plow in more time and value there, which, by the way, gives me a lot of energy because I love doing it and I'm good at it. And then you just see that beautiful, virtuous cycle coming in, and it kind of then avoids that, that burnout. Right. Because burnout tends to happen when you're kind of running too hot and doing things that don't add energy. So when it comes to, I'm thinking of, all right, when I'm settling on a price for what I'm selling or different packages, if I'm sending invoices all day or, you know, answering, you know, other calls or whatever it is, I may not ever come up with the idea for that add on or for that upgrade that you were talking about, which. Which allows me to make more money. Right. So I just. I'm trying to put it into, like, real terms for everybody here listening, because as you know, when I was getting started and I started with a very simple pricing service, and then over time, I brought in folks to help augment where I wasn't that good so I could focus on what I was good at. And then from there, I was like, oh, you know what? We could expand here. Oh, we can actually help them there, too. And that's what started expanding. What ends up happening is then you start making more money with those things, and then you can bring in more.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Help, put it back in, and then.
[00:24:33] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And then you're able to start the engine that way. So, yeah.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: One of the first exercises I do in my coaching program is called the energy audit. And it's simple. You can do it today. What's that take? Just draw a line down the center of a paper. On one side, put a plus, and on the other side, put a minus. And then I want you to just think about all the things you do in your job. Each task needs to fall on one side of the energy audit. So if it gives you energy, put it in the plus. It might physically. Like, if I stood here and did five podcasts all day long, I'd be physically tired. But guess what? I'd be pumped up. Like, I like doing that. It's fun. It gives me energy. Presenting, coaching. On my minus side, though, like if I have to do quickbooks, if I have to manage my finances and send the invoice that drains my energy. And so we're first just high level, just trying to separate tasks, what feeds you, what sort of pulls away. And then I work a lot with my founders. Like, how do we get rid of this minus column? And I say, like, you can de na, you can delegate, you can eliminate, which is often the forgotten one. Like maybe this meeting that happened, this weekly meeting that we do every Tuesday. What if we just didn't do it? And then what happens? And then you can automate. And the automate one's getting interesting, of course, in this world of AI and software and where things are headed. But yeah, I think the power of even just like a virtual assistant for 20 hours a week, which we're talking $500 a month, could just tackle a lot of those things in that minus side of the energy audit. And it's really back to our friend Dan Martell. Right. We're buying back our time, which then allows us to focus on pricing upgrades, selling the most valuable work. I think we can't underestimate the power of our energy and how that shows up in our business.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: John, John, are you coaching me right now? This is freaking amazing, you guys. Holy shit. I'm getting coached right now, live in the middle of my own show. That's fantastic. Very, very good. But I audit, I'm going to get a bill for $500 after this. Right? But the idea of actually doing that audit and really being excited, explicit about it, because it's probably in your head somewhere, right? Just the act of putting it on paper, very therapeutic, helps you and starts, leads you down the path of clarity, which is kind of the big point I wanted to sort of drive home here is listening to you, is that having clarity is not as easy as it sounds. It actually takes iterations and work and time and energy and all those things. And my point to connect to that washington without clarity, pricing is going to be damn hard. And you're probably going to be either leaving money on the table or leaving business on the table until you get it done right. That was the big connect I was trying to look for. I see it. I can start to see it now based on what you said.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I love your point about clarity. Right. Like Mark, I think Mark Twain said, I would have written you a shorter letter if I would have had more time. Right. You know, I just think the idea of getting to the kind of, the essence of something is it's not easy. And I think in that solopreneur trap, we're just CEO entrepreneur. We think, how fast can we rev up that engine? How can we do more? How can we tackle? How can we be efficient? Multitask? And what you're saying is, right, likely that pricing upgrade or that new bundle idea happens when you're going on a run or sitting by the lake or really having time to get to the essence and the clarity.
[00:27:40] Speaker C: Damn, that's real talk right there. I said grassroots in the beginning, didn't I? Right. So we're going to get right down to nitty gritty. That was fantastic. Lots of takeaways in there for the audience here. Please think about where you're spending your time. I'm going to do a time audit after this, an energy audit, just to kind of split it up. But, man, that was super helpful for the. For the community here. I do have one more about fast forward, right? Because you mentioned AI and the automate, that kind of triggered a little something about the future. The amount of tools and tinkering we're able to access and the amount of automation at our fingertips. And even just like, you know, the world getting flatter and flatter, being able to access resources. You mentioned some of yours are not in here in the US. Some of them are offshore. Let's talk a little bit about where this is going and where do you think things might get harder or easier to go solo or to stay away from that solo track.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So I mentioned just like how different it is to build a creative company, I think in 2024 than 2011. I think that's a combination of technology. It's also a combination of COVID and just where the world is. Like, we started our first designer in 2011. December 11 was in Serbia, and we paid her like a us salary. And a couple times we tried to bring her over to South Dakota. Just never worked out. Then we had Vancouver, we had some freelancers in the Philippines. The world, the talent has become so global, which I think is hard for a lemonly to stay competitive. But also, if you lean into that could be an opportunity, right? Anybody can be your customer and client. Also anybody could be your employee and colleague. And so leveraging time zones, leveraging cost is an interesting thing. I think AI is interesting because I think we always thought we were waiting for AI to come for the boring things, right? Like bookkeeping and accounting. And interestingly, so far, it's come for a lot of the creative work. Now, I don't know if it's really supplanting or taking over some of that creative work, but it's doing some pretty fascinating things in that realm. So, yeah, I think that. I think that'll be interesting to see where that goes. I think, again, to the niche idea. I think you really have to have clarity in how you are different and how you stand out. You can no longer be. I'll use an old analogy here, like, it's kind of like the long tail of the Internet, right? You can't, if you're starting a magazine, you go to the periodicals in your old library, and you wouldn't just be a hunting magazine. You'd be a hunting magazine in South Dakota for your pheasant. Like, pheasant. People come all over the world to come hunt pheasant in South Dakota. You know, you have to, like, just like a blog, right? Like, if you. The more specific a niche you can be, that's where the value is, and that's how you stand out. I always like the line that specificity equals referability.
[00:30:15] Speaker C: Right?
[00:30:16] Speaker A: So if I would have told, hey, Marcos, I'm a. I'm a business coach, you'd be like, hey, great, that's good for you, John. You probably wouldn't have thought of somebody to send to me. But now, if. If, you know, a creative entrepreneur who's gone out on their own, and they're just. Maybe they're doing well, but they're kind of. They're running the rat race. You know exactly who to send to me, right? And so specificity is referability. Gotta be clear there.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: That is gold as well, right? Because business coach versus business coach for creatives.
Those two dots can get a little closer, and I can make that connection a lot faster. Right. I think it makes perfect sense. And I think, again, it applies to a lot of different. A lot of different disciplines, man. So big one. Big one to think about there as well. And, dude, you're on fire today. I want to thank you for coming on here and just lending your knowledge to the world, to everybody here. There is, however, one more question that I have for you. Okay, my favorite question. Let's learn a little bit about John today. I need you to tell me what your favorite jam or song was growing up. The song you can hear over and over again. What was it?
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Perfect. Yeah. So you said bonus points for hip hop, so bonus points for hip hop. I'm a smack dab in the millennials. I'm a 1985 guy. So the one that came to mind to me was outcast. Oh, hey, sorry, miss Jackson. Like, I think I could think of, like, high school dances, just getting real sweaty and jumping around and dancing to those songs. Had that on a lot, I want to say. That might have been, like, 2000. I'm not sure when that album came out, but outcast was a lot of fun.
[00:31:44] Speaker C: Outkast. Yes. Funny thing is, I actually just got offered tickets to Andre 3000 because he upgraded. Right. But.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Oh, is he 3000 now?
[00:31:54] Speaker C: There's still. They're still singing. Great, great band. Just good music all around, man. I love outkast, so we definitely know. And you, I liked you for a reason, man. That's awesome. South Dakota listening to Outkast, I love it. But listen, man, I love the fact that you were able to come here, give us a real boots on the ground things to think about. The energy audit's a big takeaway as well. Any last. Last words of wisdom before we wrap up?
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we talked a little bit about breaking through that, what I call the solopreneur trap. And so one thing I think about is most of those folks don't like numbers. Creatives try to stay away from numbers. And so when you think about pricing and thinking about metrics, I created a scorecard. I call it the Solopreneur scorecard, and it's five metrics. I think of a business as, like, a flywheel. So marketing, sales, of course, revenue, then deliverability, how delivery, how can we deliver it? And then profit, because a lot of creatives are just. They say if I made more money than I spent, good, and we keep going, well, that's not really how you grow a business, right? That's not how you create wealth and value. And so if anybody wants, I'll give it to your team. You can put in this, in the show notes, but I have the solopreneur scorecard template that I created on Google sheets. It's a nice, fancy template. There's a little book that walks through how to use it, and I'll give that to anybody who wants your listeners.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: Thank you for the gift, man. I love it. We'll put it in the show notes. Get everybody on that. It's probably a small investment for a big return, so it's free. Encourage everybody.
That's the point. That's the point. So my idea here, man, is I would love to have you come back in the future. Just give us an update, okay?
[00:33:25] Speaker A: I'd love to. Yeah. I mean, I think you hit on a lot of great points. I've learned so much from failed lessons, right? There's no failure, just only lessons. And so when it comes to pricing, I'm excited in this coaching business to really think about how to use pricing mechanics and build. You know, I built million dollar agencies with lots of people. How can I build a million dollar coaching business with, like, me and a virtual assistant? Right? That's kind of the new goal.
[00:33:49] Speaker C: I love it, man. You are on it. You're on it, everyone. That was John Meyer. He's the founder of lead more. Follow him on LinkedIn. Take a look at that scorecard and take these lessons and really apply them. Next Monday. Try to get 1% better and make progress, all right? And remember, stop guessing and start growing. Until next time, thank you and much.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Love for listening to the street pricing podcast with Marcos Rivera. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and don't forget to like and subscribe. If you want to learn more about capturing value, pick up a copy of street pricing on Amazon. Until next time.
