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    Masterclass In Talking About Budget w/ WWPM author Blair Enns Clubhouse (🔴Rec)

    Chris Do and Blair Enns provide a masterclass on discussing budget, introducing the Minimum Level of Engagement to qualify clients early.

    Chris Do

    Chris Do

    Founder, The Futur™ · June 1, 2021

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    “If You Don’t Have $50,000, Hang Up”

    Imagine answering your agency’s phone this way: “ABC Agency. If you don’t have fifty thousand, hang up.”

    It’s a deliberately provocative line, offered with a hint of facetiousness by sales authority Blair Enns. But behind the shock value lies a profound truth for every creative professional who has ever dreaded the money conversation.

    For most creatives, discussing budget is the most stressful part of the client acquisition process. The fear of tension, of appearing greedy, or of scaring a prospect away causes them to delay, deflect, and avoid the topic at all costs. They invest hours, sometimes weeks, in conversations, meetings, and proposals, only to discover at the final moment that the client’s budget was never aligned with their value.

    This is a catastrophic and entirely avoidable waste of time.

    In a candid conversation with Chris Do, Blair Enns, author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, unpacks the ninth proclamation from his book: We will address issues of money early.

    This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a foundational rule for building a profitable and sustainable creative business. “Everything that follows follows this sentiment,” Do explains. The goal is to resist overinvesting in the buying cycle, only to find out the client cannot afford to pay what you are worth.

    Forgetting to talk about money isn’t an oversight. It’s a critical business failure. The stress you feel around money conversations doesn’t come from having them. It comes from the conversations you avoid. Enns states a simple rule: “Those who don't talk about it don't make it.” The path to getting better at money talk is simple: have these conversations early and have them often.

    The Myth of Politeness

    The most common pushback Enns hears against this direct approach is rooted in culture and etiquette. Creatives from all over the world insist their region is different.

    “Blair, you don’t understand, in the South it’s considered impolite to talk about money,” they say. The same sentiment is echoed by professionals in the Midwest, in New York, and even, improbably, in Saudi Arabia. Enns is direct in his assessment of these claims: for most, they are wrong.

    This discomfort is not a cultural mandate. It is a personal issue masquerading as a social norm.

    We are taught from a young age that discussing finances in a personal setting is impolite. You do not ask a friend what they paid for their house or volunteer your annual salary at a family dinner. This is the baseline for social grace in our private lives. The mistake is extrapolating this personal etiquette into the professional world.

    In business, a different set of rules applies. An inability to discuss money at the appropriate time is not a sign of politeness. It is a sign of poor business acumen.

    It signals fear. If you are afraid of the subject, you are setting yourself up to lose when it matters most. The best clients, the ones who value expertise and results, are not put off by a direct conversation about the investment required. In fact, they expect it. Your confidence in discussing money directly translates to their confidence in your ability to deliver results.

    This fear often stems from a personal scarcity mindset. As Do explains, he operates from a place of abundance, seeing money as a flowing river. Others operate from scarcity, terrified by the financial risks that feel comfortable to others. To succeed in business, you must understand your own relationship with money and actively separate it from your professional conduct. You must learn to lean into the conversation, not away from it.

    Introducing the Minimum Level of Engagement

    Talking about money early is the principle. The tactic that puts this principle into action is the Minimum Level of Engagement (MLE). Coined by Enns, it is a simple yet powerful tool for qualifying clients from the very first conversation.

    The MLE is a financial hurdle you declare early in the process. It is a clear statement that sets the floor for any new client relationship. This isn't about being arrogant. It is about being strategic. It sends a message: we are not for everybody, and we only engage in work of a certain financial scope.

    So how do you calculate it?

    The starting point for your MLE is 10% of your annual fee target. This number is not arbitrary. It is derived from the idea that a healthy creative business should have between 8 and 15 clients. With an average of 10 clients, each one should represent roughly one-tenth of your total revenue.

    Here’s how it works:

    • If your annual revenue target is $200,000, your starting MLE is $20,000 per year.
    • If your target is $500,000, your starting MLE is $50,000 per year.
    • If you are building a $1 million business, your starting MLE is $100,000 per year.

    You may adjust this number up or down based on your specific situation, but 10% provides a sound mathematical foundation. It forces you to focus on clients who can contribute meaningfully to your business goals, rather than getting distracted by a series of small, unprofitable projects. This is a core tenet of effective business strategy, a concept also explored in how to attract your ideal clients.

    The key is to present the MLE as a condition of engagement, not as a price for a specific project. You are framing the conversation around a long-term relationship, not a one-off transaction. “Our minimum level of engagement is X dollars in fees over the course of twelve months,” you state calmly. Then you pause. You embrace the silence and wait for the client to speak next.

    This single statement changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. It moves you from a passive order taker to an expert professional with standards.

    Navigating the MLE Conversation

    Presenting the Minimum Level of Engagement is not a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum. Think of it as a diagnostic tool. The client’s response tells you everything you need to know about where to go next.

    Let's say your MLE is $20,000. The client might respond in several ways:

    • The Ideal Response: “Yeah, look, I think we’re talking in that neighborhood.” This is a green light. The client is financially qualified, and you can proceed with the qualifying conversation.
    • The Project-Focused Response: “Well, I’ve only got $5,000 budgeted for this project.” This is the most common scenario. The client is thinking about a single project, while you are talking about an annual relationship. This is not a dead end. It is an opportunity to reframe.

    When the client brings up a smaller project budget, your job is to bridge the gap. You are not in the business of small, one-off projects. You are in the business of long-term relationships that are composed of many projects. Similar strategies for framing value are discussed in the masterclass on price and value with Ron Baker.

    Your response should be firm but flexible. “Okay,” you might say, “we’re not in the five-thousand-dollar project business. We do projects of that size all the time, but for clients with whom we have a longer-term relationship.”

    Then you pivot to exploration. “Let me ask you, if this goes well, is there another project after this? Could you see the work adding up to $20,000 or more over the course of the year?”

    The client might say they can’t commit to future work until the first project is complete. This is perfectly reasonable. Your response acknowledges this without relinquishing your position: “Of course you wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t ask you to. I’m happy to proceed on a project-by-project basis. I just want you to know we’re not in the one-off project business. We are agreeing to do this first project with the understanding that if everything goes well, there is more work to follow.”

    This conversation repositions your firm from a disposable vendor to a strategic partner. But what if you actually want that $5,000 project? The beautiful thing about the MLE is that you, the expert, reserve the right to waive it. If you need the work, you can simply say, “From time to time, I make exceptions. Let's talk a bit more about this project.” After a few more qualifying questions, you can make a clear offer, a technique often used in effective sales calls as detailed in this sales training workshop.

    You can even use it as a closing tool: “If we can agree to move forward today, I’ll waive the minimum level of engagement for this first project. Can you say yes to that now?”

    The MLE is a hurdle you place in front of the client. It is a filter. But you always keep the power to remove that hurdle if the situation warrants it.

    The Power of Constraints: Welcome to Blairtopia

    Why is the Minimum Level of Engagement so critical for long-term success? To understand its strategic a power, Enns invites listeners into a thought experiment he calls “Blairtopia.”

    In Blairtopia, a simple law governs all creative firms: you can never have more than ten clients at a time.

    Like any constraint-driven exercise, the first reaction is usually resistance. “I can’t do that.” But after a moment, the mind begins to adapt. You start to see how it might be possible, even if it requires compromise. Then, with a little more thought, the breakthrough happens. The constraint itself becomes the source of creativity and strength.

    If you were forced to operate with a maximum of ten clients, what would change about your business?

    • You would become radically selective. You could not afford to take on a small, distracting, or unprofitable client because they would be taking a valuable slot from a potentially better one.
    • The MLE conversation would be non-negotiable. Every new prospect would have to pass a rigorous financial and strategic evaluation before you even considered bringing them on.
    • You would constantly be improving your client roster. To take on a new, more lucrative client, you would have to let one go. Naturally, you would fire your least profitable or most difficult client.
    • Your firm would reinvent itself with every new client. This forced churn would continuously elevate the quality of your work, your profitability, and your expertise.

    This thought experiment reveals the strategic imperative behind the MLE. You reinvent your firm one new client at a time. Every prospect you engage with is an opportunity to move your business toward your three-year vision or away from it. A wrong client is not just a frustrating engagement; it's a strategic diversion from your path.

    As Enns points out, a healthy firm turns over its entire client base every three to four years on average. If every new client you take on is more profitable, more strategically aligned, and more appreciative of your expertise, in three years, you will have built the exact business you envision. The ten-client rule forces the discipline required to make this happen.

    The Art of Walking Away

    The entire framework of the MLE and the ten-client rule rests on a single, fundamental power: your ability to walk away. “Your only real power is to withhold your expertise,” Do says. If you cannot say “no,” you have relinquished all your leverage.

    This is not about bluffing. It is about genuinely being willing to let an opportunity go if it does not meet your standards. For many, the word “no” feels like an ending, a failure. Enns sees it differently. “I just don’t see no as the end,” he explains. “I see no as the beginning of whatever happens next.”

    He operates from a place of patience, believing that eventually, everyone is a buyer; the only variable is time. This mindset allows him to detach from the immediate outcome of any single conversation. He is not desperate for the deal, and clients can sense it.

    Clients are repulsed by neediness. They can smell it. Conversely, they are attracted to discernment. When they sense that you are evaluating them just as much as they are evaluating you, it changes the power dynamic. They see you as a prize to be won, not a commodity to be hired.

    Sometimes, the most powerful move is a simple statement after a brief qualifying conversation: “You know what, it sounds like a really exciting project. It just doesn’t seem to be for us.” Then, silence.

    Walking away might mean passing on something that isn't a perfect fit strategically. It might mean turning down a large sum of money for work that is a distraction. These are hard decisions, but they are the decisions that separate wildly successful firms from those that merely survive. Every decision to take on a client is a step toward or away from your ultimate vision. True brand strategy is defined as much by the clients you turn down as by the ones you accept.

    From Fear to Financial Confidence

    Even with these frameworks, experienced creatives can still feel a deep-seated resistance. A common objection is that you cannot command high prices without a proven track record of delivering a return on investment.

    Enns dismisses this notion as a limiting belief. “You have no idea what you can charge,” he insists. To illustrate, he tells the story of a friend, an independent consultant, who was facing a client with a $30,000 project budget. Using the principle of anchoring, his friend opened the proposal not at $30,000, but with a top option of $30 million. He ultimately closed the client on a $300,000 solution, ten times their stated budget.

    How is this possible? The consultant saw an opportunity to create value far in excess of the budget and was willing to share the risk. He likely structured the deal with a small base fee and tied the vast majority of his compensation to performance outcomes. This is the world of value-based pricing and performance pay.

    If you want to make a massive leap in what you can charge, especially without a long history of results, you must be willing to take on risk. As the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker said, in business, all profit is derived from risk. By putting skin in the game, you align your success directly with the client’s success, making huge fees not only palatable but exciting for them.

    Another common fear is that leading with money will make prospects think you only care about their budget, not their business. Enns labels this a “rookie mistake.” It is a feeling rooted not in business reality, but in a personal lack of confidence and a distorted sense of worth.

    There are two primary types of buyers: price buyers and value buyers. The price buyer is focused on expense and wants the cheapest option. The value buyer is focused on results and is willing to pay a premium for confidence. Your approach to the money conversation is a filter that separates one from the other.

    When you exude confidence over money, you are exuding confidence over results.

    The best clients are not looking for the cheapest vendor. They are looking for an expert partner who can solve their problem. Your willingness to talk about money early, to set high standards, and to walk away from a poor fit is the clearest possible signal that you are that expert.

    TRANSCRIPT

    i want you to answer the phone abc agency if you don't have 50 000 hang up minimum level of engagement you want to get better at money conversations have them early and often all right all right welcome back everybody it is day day nine the ninth proclamation is we will address issues of money early let that one sink in we will address issues of money early everything that follows follows this sentiment this proclamation so what we need to do is resist over investing in the buying cycle only to find out the clients can't afford to pay us what we are worth this has happened to every single person on this call it's happened to me every single time it happens you go through this long process only to find out what clients can't afford you if this is the case why the heck aren't we bringing this up early and i think it's because we're afraid of the tension that it's going to create so we just avoid this we'll do anything to get out of this in fact in one of the after hour sessions somebody said oh the onboarding client process was brilliant just one thing i forgot to talk about money you cannot forget to talk about money that has to be one of the primary objectives like players give me air quotes you forgot really come on really so blair introduced this term to me and i love it it's the mle minimum level of engagement what we want to do is declare it early in conversation so that the client can't afford us both of us can walk away before wasting valuable time and resources blair take it away yeah back to this idea of no sunk cost right let's um if there are a reason uncovering objections early and money is the big objection right so if there's a financial reason why it doesn't make sense to do business together we want to find out as early as possible now back when without pitching was a solo consulting practice i was working with a client owner of a small agency and we were debriefing on a call and i was kind of giving him a hard time because he forgot to talk about money right just like it came up last night so i was giving him a hard time and he got a little frustrated with me and he said fine fine blair how soon in the relationship do you want me to talk about money and i said i want you to answer the phone abc agency if you don't have 50 000 hang up that early just like that blair a little facetious perhaps but i was just trying to make a point it's really hard to talk about money too early now we've got a global audience listening to this and there's always people on the subject of money and the subject of talking about money it is probably the issue on which i get the most pushback where people say no no no you don't understand in my part of the world it's different we don't talk about money and i understand and accept that in some cultures um there are things that have to be done before you get down to business and there's rapport that has to be established and maybe even some kind of small c ceremonies that have to be done but the principle still applies you just wouldn't answer the phone the way that i just modeled if you don't have fifty thousand dollars um please hang up so it doesn't this principle doesn't change in different cultures but there can be cultural overlays most of the people particularly in north america and in the western world who think that their their region of the country or their country is an exception they're wrong most of them and it's a purely personal issue so i've had you know in the in in the us people from the south would say blair you don't understand in the south it's considered impolite to talk about money blair you don't understand in the midwest it's considered impolite to talk about money i had somebody say blair you don't understand in new york it's inconsiderate in play to talk about money i had somebody say to me blair you don't understand in saudi arabia it's impolite to talk about money like those last two are ridiculous right but i'm just telling you i have heard it in every part of north in the united states and and most parts of the world and i grant you that there are some exceptions to that but let's not confuse what our mothers taught us about talking about money or our fathers our parents that um that in a personal setting it's considered impolite to talk about money you don't volunteer how much you made last year to kind of a casual friend or even most members of your family your extended family you don't ask people what they paid for that boat or that house david baker and i have talked about this a couple times on a different different podcasts where we david and i have a kind of an open book relationship so we we talk about money we have a mutual fund where we friend where the three of us talk openly about money we're just texting back and forth about all kinds of highly personal financial stuff today and then i have one friend in the little village i live in where we agreed 15 years ago that we were going to have this money relationship because we needed to talk to other people and we just agreed it would be part of our relationship everybody else outside of my wife and kids you know it's like we're really cautious about talking about money so that's considered polite that's the baseline in your personal world but you can't extrapolate that and bring that idea into the business world because in the business world an inability to talk about money at the appropriate time is considered a sign of poor business acumen right it shows that you're afraid of the subject and if you're afraid of the subject you're going to lose on the subject when you get to um kind of a win-lose situation and i'm not saying not all financial situations are win lose but if you're afraid you're setting yourself up for failure so there's this idea of scarcity mindset or abundance mindset i have an abundance mindset i always say well if i need money is like a river flowing by i need some i just go dip dip the ladle into the river or shake the money tree um but my wife does not have she is more of a scarcity mindset so we've got to balance each other out what makes me comfortable terrifies what i'm comfortable with terrifies her so you have to sort these things out in a personal life and you have to figure out who you are and what your relationship with money is for you to be successful in business it's like so this is a it's a it's a small proclamation in a small book but in my most recent book pricing creativity a guy to profit beyond the billable hour the last chapter in that book is called i think it's called the final obstacle is you and i talk quite a bit from many pages about how your attitude towards money impacts your ability to make it and it says right in this proclamation of the book the win without pitching rule of money is this those who don't talk about it don't make it so don't confuse what you know the appropriate thing in your personal life about when and with whom to talk about money with talking about money in business lean right into it learn to get good at it so we got to learn how to get comfortable talking about money how do we do that blair well it also says in this proclamation i think that stress is caused by the things you don't do so if if you're fine if things that you don't do or sometimes things out of your control some people are pretty good at letting go of those second ones but those one things that you're putting off if you find money conversations stressful it's because you're avoiding them you want to get better at money conversations have them early and often we talked before i forget what proclamation but i was talking about this idea this kind of requirement to put the objection on the table for the client to address and again an objection is a reason possible reason not to do business together or a gap in the client's mind between what they need and what you can deliver and i was saying instead of like waiting for the client to bring up the objection and hoping they don't you put it on the table and you ask the client to address it and i think we even modeled some examples of financial is is a big one if if early in the conversation you realize oh this um i've got this minimum level of engagement mle or mlo i call it and we can come back to that i've got this hurdle this financial hurdle that i need all my new clients to jump over i'm going to place this hurdle in front of them so you could just point out the gap like i did last time and say hey before we go too far i just um i'm a little consider a smaller organization than we're used to doing business with them just a little concerned about your ability to afford us and then pause embrace silence or you could say hey before we go too far i just need you to know that we have a minimum level of engagement of x in fees over the course of 12 months so x might be 10 grand it might be 100 grand it might be 10 million so that's the m low and the starting point for x is 10 of your fee target for the year and we did some math a few nights ago about why it's 10 so you start with 10 so if you're hoping to do 200 000 in fees over the course of the year your minimum level of engagement would be the starting point would be around twenty thousand and you might decide i've gotta adjust it down you might wanna decide that you need to adjust it up or make sense in this moment to adjust it up now the important thing about the minimum level of engagement is you don't actually need to hold the client to this think of it as a guideline but you're presenting it as a hurdle for the client to clear and if they say there's a few different ways the conversation could go from here the client might say yeah look i think we're talking that in that neighborhood and that's great the client could say uh let's let's say your fee target for the years two hundred thousand you use twenty thousand as the minimum level of engagement and the client says well i've got five thousand budgeted for this project so i don't know that this is gonna work so he's talking about the project you're talking about fees over the course of a year because we're a lot more interested especially as you grow in the early days you're taking everything from everybody right as you get some traction you start to grow you start to substitute out the pure project work with the relationship work now those relationships also consist of a series of projects but you start to shape your language a little bit more around relationships so you would say our minimum level of engagement is twenty thousand dollars in fees over the over the course of twelve months stop embrace silence count to ten under under your breath admire your cuticles whatever you have to do and wait for the client to speak next then uh if the client says well i've got five thousand dollars for this project then you keep phishing you say okay well we're not in the we're not in the five thousand dollar project business we do these 5 000 projects all the time for clients with whom we have a longer-term relationship with so let me ask you is there another project effort if this goes well is there another project after this or is there more work that could you see it adding up to 20 000 or more over the course of the year and the client might say well yeah i mean there's more work i could give you but i'm not going to commit to that until we do this project and your response is yeah that's great that's of course you wouldn't and i wouldn't ask you to i'm happy to proceed on a project-by-project basis here's the key i just want you to know we're not in the one-off project business we're in the business of a series of projects for companies that spend in excess of twenty thousand dollars with us and if we agree to do business on this one project and we we should get into the details here but if we agree to do business on this we do so with the understanding that if everything goes well there's more work after this and we're to continue to work together so some people are listening to saying yeah okay you two have more confidence and you deserve it's easy for you to say that but it's like just just think about it like you're uh you're building this business you're trying to get to this place there's nothing wrong with saying to the people that you do business with or that you're you're proposing to do business with it like hey like we're not for everybody we only work with certain types of clients certain types of work why not certain types of financial engagements why not over a certain minimum level because this this idea of 10 starting point is 10 of your fee target that comes from the idea that you should have 10 clients and on average even though nobody will be exactly the average on average they represent you know one tenth so if it's a 200 000 business your minimum level of engagement would be twenty thousand dollars and so if you wanna build this business to four hundred thousand you raise that minimum level of engagement to forty thousand and uh you imagine the clients going to push back on it and you know some might because in the early days like you're the vendor the client thinks they're they're the prize because they have the money they're pushing around so some of those clients with whom you have some history they might actually push back on that a little bit but you know what you'll survive and then the new clients you reinvent your firm one new client at a time right new client on day 13 after the 12th day of when without pitching manifesto new new opportunity comes in it's a new you it's a new attitude new behavior new pricing new tactics and techniques right so that's when you you figure out what's my minimum level of engagement and you just say the client hey it just doesn't it doesn't make sense for us to do business with companies um smaller than this and then just look at where the idea of the amlo is coming from i'm saying to you you can only have 10 clients yeah 8 to 15. so one of my favorite talks is called the five constraints where i say there's this beautiful place called blairtopia and in blairtopia all creative firms not only are successful they're thriving and the reason they thrive is my laws are the laws of physics and jurisprudence basically i have a law you have to abide by it and one of my laws is you can never have more than 10 clients at a time and just like any constraint driven exercise when you try that on you think oh i can't your first reaction is i can't do that and then after only a little while like a minute or so you start to think okay i can see how i could adapt to the constraint but it wouldn't be good like i would i would have to suffer i would have to pay some sort of compromise or price and then after another minute or so of thinking about it you will actually see the breakthrough the constraint itself will be the source of creativity to overcome the constraint and and build a business that's even stronger than you have today so if you had to live by this constraint of only 10 clients what's going to happen what's going to happen is you're going to have the m low conversation with every new prospect because for you to take a new client on that means you need to let one go who are you going to let go the cheapest the least profitable one right so you're at the very minimum before you agree to take a new client on you're going to make sure that they're more financially lucrative than the one that you're letting go and if i had the power i swear to god i would impose this constraint on the world and you would be a more successful business person for it we've talked about this before that your only real powers to withhold your expertise and if you can't walk away then you're not you basically relinquish all of your power whatever little you had to begin with to be honest tell us more about walking away you know when we talk about withholding your expertise i'm not talking about bluffing i'm talking about like like actually being just try on being the person the professional that you want to be in the moment and just say well if that person would walk away then i guess it makes sense for me to walk away too you know it's it's interesting people have a hard time with the word no and they have a hard time walking away and it might be a peculiarity of my personality or might be something that i've learned over the years but like i just don't see no as the end i see no as the beginning of whatever happened next happens next and i'm a fairly patient person so my point of view is everybody's buying the only variable is time and i like the only variable is like we both have to live long enough and if we both live long enough you will eventually buy from me and so that lets me allows me to let go in the moment it doesn't have to be now that's fine and you know the client can smell that like they can smell neediness and they're repulsed by it they can smell discernment and if they sense that you're looking for a good fit they can read between the lines of a willingness to walk away and then just saying you know you have a quick qualifying conversation you ask a few basic questions you go you know what it sounds like a really exciting project doesn't seem to be for us pause see what he says oh something about yeah i don't think the budget's there or it's not really the type of work that we should be doing we could do it but it's not really the type of work that we should be doing i had that conversation via email last night with somebody it's like yeah a bunch of money to do something that's a bit of a distraction there are times in your life in your business where it's like yeah take the money right and then there are times when it's it's hard as it is to pass on the money it's like nah i need to stay focused and sometimes staying focused means doing more of the work that is going to take you strategically forward like i'll just riff on this just for another minute if you don't mind if we have the time yeah so you you have or you should have this strategic vision of where you want to be in the future we talk about the client's desired future state you should have this three-year vision or at least like a strong direction right and so and and the three-year vision is a really good length of time because like i said in a previous night this this mlo math comes from this idea of 10 8 to 15 clients and a healthy churn turning over your client base every like three to four years so you reinvent your firm when you call it a co at a time you're starting at the starting line today you see we'll call it a finish line it's not appropriate but you have a goal it's three years out in three years time you are going to turn over on average your entire client base so if every new client that you take on is of strategic importance and what i mean by that it means it it builds your skill in your declared area of focus and it is a profitable uh a profitable account and the client recognizes and values their expertise if those three things are in place in three years you will be whatever you want to be like you've got this vision and every just so here's the key takeaway if you have a vision for you where you want to be in three years five years etc every new client is a step toward or away from that vision every wrong client that you take on is a slight diversion divergence on your path and you diminish the likelihood that you are going to end up in this place three years from now let's say this is your side job and uh you'd be really happy if you made 50 grand at it this year but your kind of vision is full-time employment and you want it to be 100 grand i would say be aspirational in your mlo because you're not holding you're it's not you're not required to hold the client to it you're simply putting a hurdle in front of them and saying hey listen i you know i can scope out this project we can talk about it but like i just want you to know that i'm not really in the business of one-off projects i'm in the i'm in the business of like working with clients who spend mo more than ten thousand dollars with me over the course of the year even if you would take a a grand like it doesn't matter what the numbers are here um danny is it danny yeah it doesn't matter what the numbers are here even if you would take a grand you figure out what your m low is and then you drop it and then you wait to hear what the client says next and if they say oh no no sorry man i've like i've only got a thousand bucks for this project you can say wait a minute just hold on from time to time i make some exceptions just let's talk about this tell me a little bit more and then continue asking your qualifying questions tell me a little bit more about the project when you need this etc and then you could do a trial close okay we got some capacity right now if i said to you i can do this for a thousand dollars but you got to say yes now is that is there anything else that you need to get done first or is that like something we can agree to now yeah i can agree to that now so here i just me being you danny i said you got to spend 10 grand with us and he said yeah i can't i've only got a grand and i decide i want that grand so i say from time to time i make i make exceptions let me ask you a few questions and then i trial close if then if i um i forget what the if then was a kind of a crappy trial close um the trial close should be if we agree today i'll wave the minimum level engagement we'll just do the project can you say yes today yeah okay waived done thousand bucks so my point about the external conditions like business is bad the economy is in the tank there's a global pandemic i always encounter these reasons why you shouldn't have this steely backbone around money and those reasons will loom large in your mind if you feel like the hurdle that i place in front of the client is going to cause them to run away but you need to understand and i don't know why i understand this so fundamentally at a deep level it probably took me a while you need to understand that every know you deliver every objection you put in front of the client every hurdle you put in front of them to overcome [Music] you reserve the right to remove so we think no is the end we think they're going to smack into that 10 000 hurdle turn around start running away but if we want still want to take that business at a thousand dollars if we want to take this project business we can say hold on from time to time and make some exceptions let me just ask you a few more questions and then set up the okay if i if we can agree today if if i remove that minimum level of engagement can we agree right now or is there something else you need to do no so if you remove it we've got a deal done so these external conditions i want to say ignore them and i don't know what other advice i can give you other than just like come to see that these nos are not the end no no is not the end it's just the beginning of what happens next kasaya tweeted at us you can't charge whatever you want without a proven record of return on investment i added a little spice the way i read that so blair what do you say to that just even you can't charge whatever you want without blank and i think the questioner said uh a proven track record of roi but like fill in the blank anything like there could be other things um without proving that you will deliver roi on this project um without there could be a bunch of other things but um it's just so far from the rea from reality just so i one of the stories i like to tell is a friend of mine he's an independent consultant we talk about the anchoring effect on the site you've already referenced it this idea that the anchoring effect is the idea that the first piece of information on the subject uh skews the final decision on it so if you're going to put forward a multi-option proposal you should always start with the highest price and when you're talking numbers you should always start with the high end of the range just like i modeled earlier 100 000 down to maybe 10 000 because they just skew the final decision so i like to tell the story i have a client i have a friend who's a solo consultant he had a client who had a thirty thousand dollar consulting budget for a project and he closed them on a three hundred thousand dollar solution so ten times that stated budget but his anchor prices the most expensive one that he started with was 30 million dollars so like just try this on for a second client says my budget is x and you say okay i have a proposal for 1 000 times your budget and in the end gets them to spend ten times their budget so this idea that you can't charge without approving a track record of our are like without any it doesn't matter to me what's in the blank you have no idea what you can charge you really it is a it is an infinite universe now it's not always infinite it depends on the value that you can help to create now if you don't so what i'm reading between the lines is basically i don't have the experience to be able to charge that so if you want to charge a whole lot more when you don't have the experience put some compensation at risk so my friend who put for the 30 million dollar consulting option i don't know all the details of that proposal but i know him well enough to know that number one he saw that he could create far in excess of 30 million dollars in value and number two he probably put most of that compensation at risk maybe even all of it probably not all of it but i'll bet you he put like 29 million at risk maybe more what do i mean by putting it at risk performance pay basically 30 million dollars here's how you pay me you pay me a small base fee to do things and then you pay me incentives based on outcomes so this is us dipping our toe into the subject of value-based pricing not only value-based pricing but performance pricing which is a variation of it where you're getting paid based on your ability to create value and you're putting skin in the game so if you want to make a massive leap in what you're able to charge start taking some risk in your pricing and i said this a few nights ago channeling the words of management guru peter drucker in business all profit is derived from risk so you want to make lots of money you want to charge lots and have the client be ecstatic to pay you put some skin in the game all right all right there's another question a tweet i think we got to talk about it blair and then i realize we're almost out of time let's do this one quick and get you on your way jim zazla questions i'll try to read this way he wrote it when you start with what's your budget or you lead with an m law might the prospect think they don't care about our business they only care about money it might help to build some rapport goodwill and trust so you can take them to the hundred thousand thoughts on that player yeah so i say this with kindness and love in my heart that's that's a rookie mistake that's uh it's a and i i i'm not trying to demean you for um for feeling that way i'm just saying a lot of people feel that way in the beginning uh and at the root of that there's a sense of your own sense of worth and your own kind of ability to create value and your your comfort level with money what chris and i were talking about at the beginning um again it's a highly personal thing it's like you're we all know people right who just like show up it's like i'm worth it and my price is multiples of what you're considering paying somebody else and there are some of us the scarcity mindset price buyers and i see this a lot like um they just they'll never hire that person right i i know somebody who said i i'm like i'm like one of these people i always if there's expensive options i always take the most expensive option i think i love that about somebody i don't love about somebody that they always take the cheapest option um there's nothing kind of endearing about that there's nothing brave about that that's somebody who values like who's more focused on the expense rather than the roi so in rough terms there are two buyer types price buyers and value buyers they're more than two but price buyer just wants the cheapest price they'll give up all kinds of things and so europe it might be part of it might be kind of your own attitude to buying things and money and and just a lack of experience just know that when you exude confidence over money you are exuding confidence over results and the best clients wanna are willing to pay you a lot of money to get the results and the worst clients want to pay you by the hour to do the thing great i'm glad you said or not me thanks for joining us everybody we've been talking to blair ends in case you're curious as to what the heck is going on here we've been doing this epic mini series a series of i guess 12 live podcasts with blair ends he wrote the book to win without pitching manifesto we had just finished the ninth proclamation of 12. hey everyone ricky here i'm one of the content directors here at the future if you enjoyed today's video leave a comment down below with the time stamp letting me know which was the best part there are gonna be some other videos that are gonna pop up right here that you also might enjoy and if you can do what everyone asks you to do which is to like the video and subscribe to the channel it honestly does go a long way in our mission here to teach one billion people how to make a living doing what they love head to thefuture.com to learn more thanks for watching and your continued support and we will see you guys in the next video
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    “Those who don't talk about money don't make it.”

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