Podcasts about profit beyond

For this episode of Sell With Authority we are doubling down on value-based pricing to help you future-proof your agency. Our guest expert is a true authority when it comes to pricing and sales strategy. Blair Enns, the CEO of Win Without Pitching and the author of the widely acclaimed Win Without Pitching Manifesto joins the podcast. His latest book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, is a must-read for anyone looking to get a handle on pricing in their business. I was inspired by one of his articles on quantifying the value of pricing. Specifically, the part about ‘the elephant in the room' when it comes to pricing really hit home — because we've all been there. The uncertainty pricing brings to agency owners is a challenge we just can't ignore. So, I knew we had to bring Blair on the show to dive into this topic and help us all navigate the complexities of pricing with confidence. And to make this conversation even richer, also joining is our very own Mad Scientist and Strategist, Hannah Roth. Hannah works tirelessly in the trenches with our clients, helping them fill their sales pipelines with right-fit clients so they can sell more of what they do best. If you're an agency owner struggling with pricing, this episode will give you the framework and confidence you need to untether from time-based billing. A big dose of gratitude to our presenting sponsor for the podcast, Conduit Digital. By using their expertise in streamlining, upgrading & scaling your clients…they promise to reduce your risk so you can become the best digital agency in your market in 30-days. You can find Conduit and all their helpful insights and smarts here. What you will learn in this episode: How to shift from selling inputs and outputs to focusing on value creation for right-fit clients Why mastering the value conversation can radically transform your agency's profitability Blair's simple – yet powerful – four-step framework for implementing value-based pricing How to view your client portfolio as an investment portfolio to tailor pricing strategies The pitfalls to avoid when transitioning away from traditional pricing models Resources: Website: https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/ LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blairenns/ LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/win-without-pitching/ Win Without Pitching Manifesto Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour Additional Resources: Website: www.predictiveroi.com Visit our newly expanded Resource Library Join us in our free How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline Facebook Group

In this second part of our discussion with Blair Enns, we explore the internal dynamics that influence agency-client relationships. Host Dom Hawes and Blair continue to discuss balancing efficiency and innovation, focusing on how departmental goals can conflict with overarching business objectives. They examine bounded rationality, the inefficiency principle, and the role of leadership in fostering a culture that supports both operational efficiency and creative innovation. Blair introduces his upcoming book, which outlines four key conversations that can help frame the process of selling expertise and ensuring effective client relationships.What you'll get from this episode:Understanding the impact of departmental silos.Strategies for effective agency-client relationships.The importance of aligning business goals across departments.How leadership can drive cultural change for better innovation.Join us for practical insights on creating value-driven partnerships that foster innovation and drive business success.About Blair EnnsBlair is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training program for expert advisors, and the author of three books on selling and pricing. The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise is available from Gegen Press on Amazon in September, 2024.Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour (2018) is available at pricingcreativity.com. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (2010) is available on Amazon.Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk LinkedIn: Blair Enns | Dom Hawes Website: Win Without PitchingSponsor: Selbey Anderson This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacyPodder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this second part of our discussion with Blair Enns, we explore the internal dynamics that influence agency-client relationships. Host Dom Hawes and Blair continue to discuss balancing efficiency and innovation, focusing on how departmental goals can conflict with overarching business objectives. They examine bounded rationality, the inefficiency principle, and the role of leadership in fostering a culture that supports both operational efficiency and creative innovation. Blair introduces his upcoming book, which outlines four key conversations that can help frame the process of selling expertise and ensuring effective client relationships.What you'll get from this episode:Understanding the impact of departmental silos.Strategies for effective agency-client relationships.The importance of aligning business goals across departments.How leadership can drive cultural change for better innovation.Join us for practical insights on creating value-driven partnerships that foster innovation and drive business success.About Blair EnnsBlair is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training program for expert advisors, and the author of three books on selling and pricing. The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise is available from Gegen Press on Amazon in September, 2024.Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour (2018) is available at pricingcreativity.com. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (2010) is available on Amazon.Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk LinkedIn: Blair Enns | Dom Hawes Website: Win Without PitchingSponsor: Selbey Anderson This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacyPodder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Today's episode of Unicorny tackles the complex dynamics between brand marketers and creative agencies, focusing on the dysfunctional commercial relationships that have emerged over recent years. Host Dom Hawes is joined by Blair Enns, founder of “Win Without Pitching”. They explore how procurement practices and outdated commercial models hinder innovation and value creation. Blair offers insights into redefining these relationships to foster mutual success. Challenges in the client-agency commercial model. The impact of procurement on creativity.Shifting focus from outputs to business outcomes.Balancing efficiency and innovation.Tune in to understand how to build stronger, more effective relationships between marketers and agencies, ensuring sustainable success for both parties.About Blair EnnsBlair is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training program for expert advisors, and the author of three books on selling and pricing. The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise is available from Gegen Press on Amazon in September, 2024.Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour (2018) is available at pricingcreativity.com. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (2010) is available on Amazon.Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk LinkedIn: Blair Enns| Dom Hawes Website: Win Without PitchingSponsor: Selbey Anderson This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacyPodder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Today's episode of Unicorny tackles the complex dynamics between brand marketers and creative agencies, focusing on the dysfunctional commercial relationships that have emerged over recent years. Host Dom Hawes is joined by Blair Enns, founder of “Win Without Pitching”. They explore how procurement practices and outdated commercial models hinder innovation and value creation. Blair offers insights into redefining these relationships to foster mutual success. Challenges in the client-agency commercial model. The impact of procurement on creativity.Shifting focus from outputs to business outcomes.Balancing efficiency and innovation.Tune in to understand how to build stronger, more effective relationships between marketers and agencies, ensuring sustainable success for both parties.About Blair EnnsBlair is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training program for expert advisors, and the author of three books on selling and pricing. The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise is available from Gegen Press on Amazon in September, 2024.Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour (2018) is available at pricingcreativity.com. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (2010) is available on Amazon.Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk LinkedIn: Blair Enns| Dom Hawes Website: Win Without PitchingSponsor: Selbey Anderson This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacyPodder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Blair Enns is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training organization for creative professionals. He is the author of two books, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He is the co-host, along with David C. Baker, of the podcast 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship. Best of all, he is the guest on this week's show with Ron and Ed. A good portion of the show will be spend talking about The Innoficiency Principle. Blair laid out the thoughts behind this principle at this link and described it quite succinctly. From Blair: “The Innoficiency Principle states that innovation and efficiency are mutually opposable goals. In any reasonably functioning organization, one cannot be increased without decreasing the other.”

Blair Enns is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training organization for creative professionals. He is the author of two books, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He is the co-host, along with David C. Baker, of the podcast 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship. Best of all, he is the guest on this week's show with Ron and Ed. A good portion of the show will be spend talking about The Innoficiency Principle. Blair laid out the thoughts behind this principle at this link and described it quite succinctly. From Blair: “The Innoficiency Principle states that innovation and efficiency are mutually opposable goals. In any reasonably functioning organization, one cannot be increased without decreasing the other.”

In this podcast episode, Jeff Echols and Co-Host Katie Kengas welcomed Blair Enns to Context & Clarity LIVE. Blair is the founder of Win Without Pitching, the sales training and coaching organization for creative professionals, the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He co-hosts of the popular podcast 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship with David Baker. Blair is on a mission to change the way creative services are bought and sold the world over. To watch the full conversation, visit YouTube. If you enjoy this show, you can find similar content at Gābl Media.

Blair Enns is the Founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training and coaching organization for creative professionals. He has advised hundreds of design firms, advertising agencies, and other creative authorities on how to deprogram themselves from the standard approach to win new business.  Blair is the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He is also the co-host of the 2Bobs podcast and 20% - The Marketing Procurement Podcast. In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran interviews Blair Enns, the Founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, about his manifesto for helping companies pitch and win better business deals. They also discuss Blair's specialization principle, tips for having conversations about money, and the secret behind the success of Blair's 2Bobs podcast.

Making a profit is the ultimate goal of any business, but too often it is solely attributed to sales. That's undoubtedly a big component in achieving success; however, there are many other aspects that come into play when looking to maximize profitability. Lorry Rifkin expresses that there's more to profit than just sales.Sales and profits may go hand in hand, but they don't necessarily indicate the cash that a business will take home. Real cash requires more thought because that doesn't always mean dollars in your pocket like profits do on paper. Lorry highlights the importance of controlling entrepreneur's business growth so they can stay ahead of the sales curve. Listen to learn how to maximize value while maintaining stability!Episode Highlights01:11 - Sales are not profits and profits are not cash in the bank. And at the end of the day, if you don't have cash, you really don't have a business. And so, some of the fastest growing customers I've seen were also the ones most vulnerable to going broke. Here's a Lorryism. You always have to keep your infrastructure of your business ahead of your sales curve. If you do not do that, you're like the Road Runner and a coyote. You're looking over that cliff, and there's no infrastructure to support you. So, that's another thing. Those things go together. You got to control your growth to have enough cash in the bank or have enough cash to allow you to borrow money because the bank thinks you're credit-worthy and you have to develop your infrastructure with people. Procedures and practices has to stay ahead of your sales curve so you have a foundation to grow on.Connect with MeLinkedInMy PassionsEnterprise NOW!Podcast TownFlame StartersConnect with Lorry RifkinWebsiteLinkedIn

What's the secret to creating value, scaling, and growing your business? In this conversation with entrepreneur and author Blair Enns, we learn it's not about doing more or better, and it may be about doing less.Discover why growing your business requires more than good habits. In this episode, I'm talking with Blair Enns from Win Without Pitching. Win Without Pitching is an organization that runs sales and new business development training programs for owners and employees of design firms, ad agencies, PR practices, and other creative businesses. A lot of what he talks about is also relevant for your business. Blair is the author of the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, (a book I designed through my branding agency, Aespire) and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour (the second of Blair's books Aespire designed. I suppose you can say the agency is habit-forming).Listen to hear the life-changing lesson Blair learned when he says, "Some lessons take me so long to learn, like the idea that other people could do what I do."Find Blair Enns atWin Without Pitching http://wwp.tv/blog2Bobs Podcast: http://wwp.tv/podcastThe Win Without Pitching Manifesto

Podcast: 2Bobs—with David C. Baker and Blair Enns (LS 49 · TOP 0.5% what is this?)Episode: Different Pricing ModelsPub date: 2019-06-05Blair is struck by how creative businesses have trouble applying their creativity to their revenue models, so he and David discuss some of the best ways firms can get paid.   LINKS Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry by John Warrillow 2Bobs Episode 31: “Mastering the Value Conversation” 2Bobs Episode 25: “Pricing Creativity” Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns   The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David C. Baker and Blair Enns, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Hosted by multiple iTunes Top 10 podcaster James Burtt, Building The Brand is in-depth conversations with the entrepreneurs, founders, marketing and brand experts, PR specialists, CEO’s and CMO’s who have built some of the countries most successful companies and brands. This week on Building The Brand we are showcasing some of our recent client podcast launches, so every single day we are going to be playing you a full episode of one of the awesome shows we have helped our clients to launch.  James is the MD of Ultimate Podcast Group which is one of Europe’s leading podcast launch agency’s having launched 132+ successful shows with 90% of clients ending up being iTunes Top rated shows, so this week we are bragging about how good our clients are basically! On today’s show we are highlighting Word On The Street which is an amazing marketing industry podcast hosted by legend of the sector Katie Street. The podcast brings together some of the biggest thought-leaders and trendsetters in the world of marketing and the conversations are deep-dives into the strategic ways to scale agency businesses, adopt best practises and insights into the top echelons of the industry.  In this episode we are bringing you an episode where Katie hosted Blair Enns - CEO of Win Without Pitching - is the world renowned author of ‘The Win Without Pitching Manifesto’ and ‘Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour’. As one of the industry’s leading thought-leaders on agency sales Blair has taken his contrarian views on how selling works and turned that into a methodology that can lead to agencies focusing on taking back the power within a pitch and, ultimately, helps teams to secure more profitable client relationships.     If you love the content you hear on today’s Client Showcase week podcast make sure you head over to their show, hit the subscribe button and tune in regularly for more audio gold.  Check out Word On The Street now 

Failures in business become some of our greatest lessons. There are 100 moments of failure in my career that have redirected the course of my business building journey. While they sting in the moment, even collapse relationships or new opportunities, I can't help but learn from them. But failure in business, is not the lesson today. No, it's about how we take our business persona — the stuff we tweet about, throw on the ‘gram, scribe into our linkedin profiles — and sew them directly into the fabric of our self-worth. I mentioned failure because often, for me anyway, failure equals fear. Fear of failing, means I might not be accepted by you. You might not think of me as someone who can but someone who cannot. I am directly attaching my self-worth to my revenue — and that's wrong. Adii Pienaar joins us today to explore these very vices in his new book, Life Profitability The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. Sure, you know him as one of the founding fathers of WooCommerce, but he's so much more than that. ★ Support this podcast ★

Failures in business become some of our greatest lessons. There are 100 moments of failure in my career that have redirected the course of my business building journey.…

How Agencies Can Win Without Pitching, with Blair Enns The agency world is seen as very fast-paced, very creative, very innovative and very forward-thinking but, as you will hear in this deep-dive conversation between Katie Street and Blair Enns, the same can't be said for how marketers sell their services. The infamous world of intricate, costly and time-sapping pitching for business has long been the way that the industry ‘sells' itself, but have you ever stopped to think why? More importantly, when was the last time you stepped back to assess that there could be a better way to create sales for your business. Blair Enns - CEO of Win Without Pitching - is the world renowned author of ‘The Win Without Pitching Manifesto' and ‘Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour'. As one of the industry's leading thought-leaders on agency sales Blair has taken his contrarian views on how selling works and turned that into a methodology that can lead to agencies focusing on taking back the power within a pitch and, ultimately, helps teams to secure more profitable client relationships.     This episode covers:   Why environment is so important to be able to do what you doAsking for concessions in the sale How to leverage agency sales rules in your favour How essential it is to be seen as ‘meaningfully different' Why 10% price increases don't always add to increased profits Why standardising and systeming prices across agencies is a mistake Understanding that productised and customised agency business models need to grow apart  Word on the Street is sponsored by Kulea.ma, the default Business Development and Marketing Automation platform for agencies and their clients. To learn more about Kulea's Business development and marketing services and technology, visit www.kulea.maLinks & referencesKatie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/Blair Ennis https://www.linkedin.com/in/blairenns/Grab a copy of Blair's brilliant book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blair-Enns/e/B003XCI2BG/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1Get in touch: hello@street.agencyI couldn't do what I do, with the point of view that I have if i lived in New York or London - Blair Enns [12:10]Clients need to be ‘educated' in how to engage with agencies to get the best out of them, because I don't think the pitch environment necessarily showcases the truth of an agency - Katie Street [21:10]Business development is just code for selling, let's call it what it is - Blair Enns [23:10]Highly creative people love to pitch - Blair Enns [24:10] You reclaim the power in the agency relationship through the positioning of your firm - Blair Enns [31:15]If you're the hot ‘shop' of the day, you have power in that moment but you have to understand that power is not going to last - Blair Enns [31:50]They're taking too many of their cues for how to run their businesses, including pricing, from productised service businesses - Blair Enns [52:45]

Pricing expert, Paul Klein of the Pricing is Positioning Podcast joins me this week to discuss how knowledge-based businesses should be pricing their services. If you struggle with being stuck in the antiquated hourly rate modeland feeling like you're never getting ahead, then this is most definitely the episode for you. Paul is a business consultant and entrepreneur. From his days as 1980s hair band guitarist, he has been a lifelong entrepreneur. He has experience starting and scaling a successful SAAS company as well as consulting some of the biggest brands including Target, Neiman Marcus, Starbucks, Holiday Inn, and other global brands, Paul helps consultants, freelancers, and solopreneurs price their services and stop under charging so they can build their 7-plus figure businesses. Paul is the host of the Pricing Is Positioning Podcast and The Rock Your Pricing Online Course and Community. Often, we take our expertise for granted and commoditize ourselves in the marketplace. Paul shares the pricing models he teaches: Hourly Rate (highly discourages this model) Daily Rate Retainer for Access (probably not the retainer method you're thinking) Project Outcome (or Value) Based Model Paul indicates that the first price you see or hear anchors the entire prospecting conversation. Learn what an anchor bomb is and how to use it. Enjoy! Connect with Paul Klein: Website: https://www.paulklein.net/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulkleinTV/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulklein.net/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulKleinTV Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Pricing is Positioning Podcast Free Pricing Quiz Rock Your Pricing Online Course Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour | Blair Enns Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms | Ronald Baker Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money | Rabbi Daniel Lapin The Magic of Thinking Big |David J. Schwartz, Ph.D Connect with Gayla: Website: https://www.gaylascrivener.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaylascrivener/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GaylaScrivenerWorkFromAnywhere/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gscrivener/Content Marketing Resources: Scrivener Solutions: https://scrivenersolutions.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXn6GdZzFN9Ij9Iqe41heew Free Download: 48 Social Media Post Ideas https://scrivenersolutions.com/48ideas Free Download: Podcast Production Checklist: https://scrivenersolutions.com/podcastchecklist

In this episode, Flavilla is joined by the incredible Blair Enns to discuss what tech companies can learn from his wealth of knowledge.Blair is the CEO of Win Without Pitching, a business development training firm. He is the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Blair is hugely successful at what he does, so you should definitely give his episode a listen to see what your can learn from him!To connect with Blair, CLICK HERETo check out their website, CLICK HEREJoin Tech Brains Talk mailing list for more perks, CLICK HERETo find out more about 3 Colours Rule Agency, CLICK HERE

Stemming from a blog he authored for PICPA’s CPA Now, Michael Cade, strategy consultant and executive coach for MFCCoach LLC in Morrisville, joins us to discuss how vital it is for CPAs at nonprofits to understand organizational performance if they are going to help their employers achieve their missions. He provides details on critical driver analytics and communicating with nonprofit leaders. Get more insights from Cade at his blog, Not for Profit – Beyond the Numbers. To read the full transcript click here. 

DOWNLOAD HERE: https://geni.us/1-page-proposal The One-Page Proposal Template Tutorial What's Included: One Page Proposal (.Docx File Format) Three Pricing Options High Anchor Price To Shift The Total Price In Your Favor Carefully Crafted Options For Your Clients Payment Term Options Customizable Branding Based on Pricing Creativity - A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, this one-page proposal is perfect for any creative business looking to close more deals and save time from writing dead-end proposals. You'll be able to give your clients multiple options that they can feel comfortable with. This proposal is framed to price your services where your clients get the most value and earn you the most profit. Strategy for Creative Small Businesses - https://geni.us/tiny-letter-jordan

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is seeking to clarify the reporting of nonfinancial contributions to nonprofits, so it released the first draft of a proposed Accounting Standards Update on the topic. Ahead of the April 10 deadline for comment, we talked with Michael Cade, strategy consultant and executive coach for MFCCoach LLC in Morrisville, Pa., to get his thoughts on the proposed ASU. You can also get more insights from Cade at his blog, Not for Profit – Beyond the Numbers. To read the full transcript click here.

Why you have to check out today’s podcast:  Learn about Paul’s ‘3 Pillars Of Revenue Generation’ to help you avoid underpricing your service  Discover why you should charge clients more than you think you’re worth  Learn how to price your service premium without getting objections  Paul Klein is a Business Scaling + Pricing Strategy Consultant for Existing (and Aspiring!) Business Coaches & Consultants.   In this episode, Paul shares how he helps clients charge what they truly worth, diving into an in-depth discussion on pricing strategies, how to set up long term pricing and positioning and a discussion on why your willingness to lose a deal is key to get your price.    “Your client is saying to you that you ‘never’ negotiate. That means two things to me – you positioned yourself to command that greater value, and you’re not wavering on your value.” – Paul Klein      Get Accelerate Your Subscription Business: Your Blueprint to Packaging & Pricing for Growth Course at https://www.championsofvalue.com       Topics Covered:    01:15 – The government job he had and what it was like 03:14 – How he got started in Pricing  04:47 – An analogy of Pricing through Sports  06:04 – Why he named his podcast as Pricing Is Positioning  08:16 – Why solopreneurs tend to underprice themselves  11:48 – What does it mean when your client tells you you never negotiate  13:26 – Why it is hard to do value-based pricing  16:39 – Why is the willingness to losing a deal a key for a solopreneur to get his price  20:07 – How not to look desperate to close a deal  22:01 – How he got his Fortune 500 client    Key Takeaways:  “You have to provide the value and there are three parts to every brand, a visual identity, verbal identity, and valued identity. And if all three of those things aren’t in direct correlation with each other, it’s not gonna work.” – Paul Klein    “Be all in. If you don’t value your services and your products, neither will the market and you’ve got to believe in it first before anybody else will ever pay you for.” – Paul Klein     “Would you rather have four quarters or a hundred pennies so you could serve a hundred people or you could have four big fish? I’d rather have the four big fish.” – Paul Klein    “I think you have to be, whenever you make a pivot or whether you’ve already made a pivot, you to have three pillars of revenue for every successful solopreneur consulting business.”- Paul Klein    People / Resources Mentioned:   Ron Baker  Blair Enns  Alan Weiss  Neiman Marcus  Walmart  Yum! Brands  Target  KFC  Cracker Barrel  J.C. Penney  Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns    Connect with Paul Klein:  Pricing Is Positioning Podcast  PaulKlein.net   LinkedIn   Twitter  Instagram   YouTube    Connect with Mark Stiving:     Email: mark@impactpricing.com LinkedIn Twitter https://www.championsofvalue.com

Let's squash some limiting beliefs about opening your own salon suite or taking steps to profit BEYOND the chair and create multiple income streams. Doing these few simple things will give you some incredible clarity about what your next right steps are and how to create the live that you truly want to live. Change can feel overwhelming and it doesn't have to actually BE overwhelming if you walk through the steps to make your dreams a reality with intention and understanding of what you actually need to do to make it happen. Opening your own salon suite or studio, as well as learning to create other opportunities and profit beyond the chair are things that so many stylists want but sometimes just that nudge to take the first step is all you need to get the gears for great things in motion! Try kajabi for a month ON ME and download any of my free presets or guides at www.TheCurlGirl.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/independentstylist/message

David and Blair lay out some of the reasons why they think, in most cases, agencies pursuing recurring revenue models are making a mistake.   Links “Why Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) Arrangements May Not Be Ideal” by David C. Baker The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness by Todd Rose Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō “Unbundling the Corporation” by John Hagel III and Marc Singer for Harvard Business Review

Blair Enns is CEO of Win Without Pitching and the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Blair joins […] The post 045 Pitching and Pricing Smart – Agency Advisor Blair Enns appeared first on The Creative Agency Podcast.

Denise B. Povernick, is AAAI-certified in Physical Fitness and Sports Nutritional Fitness and is a USUI 9th Degree Reiki Grand Master and Karuna Ki Reiki Master. She has coached many gifted CEOs and entrepreneurs to help them achieve new levels in their business and in their personal lives. – Profit-ology™ Podcast Episode 020 with Kelly O'Neil: Profit Beyond Strategy: How to Become an Invincible CEO Listen to this inspirational Profit-ology Podcast episode with Denise B. Povernick and discover: ● How a trained interrogator lost 80 pounds in seven months after having 5 kids.● Why you are frustrating yourself, and not allowing yourself to have what you want.● What the double-slit experiment of 1801 is and why you can use it to bend your life to your will. Links Mentionedhttps://www.denisebpovernick.com Connect with Denise Website https://www.denisebpovernick.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DeniseBPovernick.CEOSecretWeapon/ Instagram@denise.b.povernick Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Denise B. Povernick, is AAAI-certified in Physical Fitness and Sports Nutritional Fitness and is a USUI 9th Degree Reiki Grand Master and Karuna Ki Reiki Master. She has coached many gifted CEOs and entrepreneurs to help them achieve new levels in their business and in their personal lives. – Profit-ology™ Podcast Episode 020 with Kelly O’Neil: Profit Beyond Strategy: How to Become an Invincible CEO  Listen to this inspirational Profit-ology Podcast episode with Denise B. Povernick and discover: ●     How a trained interrogator lost 80 pounds in seven months after having 5 kids.●     Why you are frustrating yourself, and not allowing yourself to have what you want.●     What the double-slit experiment of 1801 is and why you can use it to bend your life to your will.   Links Mentionedhttps://www.denisebpovernick.com Connect with Denise Website https://www.denisebpovernick.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DeniseBPovernick.CEOSecretWeapon/ Instagram@denise.b.povernick 

In this episode we're joined by the brilliant Blair Enns from Win Without Pitching to explore his innovative approach to new business for agencies. He shares some of the fundamentals required to sell based on value to command higher prices and close more deals. We also discuss how the sales process can make or break your delivery process by setting precedents in the client relationship and so much more. About Blair Enns Blair Enns is the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He co-hosts, along with David C. Baker, and the podcast 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship. Based in the remote mountain village of Kaslo, British Columbia, Canada, Blair lectures throughout the world on how creative professionals can win more business at higher prices and lower cost of sale.  Resources from Blair: Win Without Pitching Blog: [CLICK HERE] The Win Without Pitching Manifesto Book: [CLICK HERE] Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour: [CLICK HERE] 2 Bobs Podcast: [CLICK HERE] Follow Blair Online: Website: [CLICK HERE] LinkedIn: [CLICK HERE] Twitter: [CLICK HERE]

Why you have to check out Today’s podcast:  Learn the rules and tactics to charge more for new work and run a more profitable business  Know the pricing training his company offers to creative companies and how it benefits them  Discover and learn the four conversations in a sale and how to successfully apply it to boost your sales conversation and presentation    Blair Enns is the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He co-hosts, along with David C. Baker, and the podcast 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship. Based on the remote mountain village of Kaslo, British Columbia, Canada, Blair lectures throughout the world on how creative professionals can win more business at higher prices and lower cost of sale.  In this episode, Blair shares the ups and downs of the business side of creativity. He takes us into the pages of his books sharing the principles behind pricing creativity, sales conversation and winning without pitching. He also deep dives into the rules and tactics to help creative professionals charge more for work and how to train their clients to a value-based pricing rather than hourly billable hours.    “I cannot think of a more valuable skill in all of business than the ability to conduct a value conversation which is to essentially  find out what the client or the customer wants, and what they would  be  willing to pay if you could help create that  value ”  – Blair Enns  Topics Covered:  02:31 – How Blair got into pricing  02:59 – What his company does and the type of professionals they serve   05:33 – Citing examples of creative companies  06:42 – Talking about the training on pricing his company also offers   07:38 – Blair explains putting a stake in the ground which is detailed in his book - The Win Without Pitching Manifesto  10:09 – Two most essential lessons for creative firms  12:52 – How they train their clients to a value-based pricing  15:00 – The four-step framework and four-step pricing guidance discussed in his book Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour  19:05 – The four conversations in the sale  26:37 – Mark asks for feedback on the ways they apply value conversations in product companies  29:35 – Advice for product managers  32:05 – Blair explains why and how he priced his book that much  34:56 – A piece of pricing advice that would impact the business of the listeners    Key Takeaways:    “You need to put a stake in the ground. And the mistake that people make is that stake or that claim of expertise is too broad in terms of both the discipline on the market. It should be narrow enough in a way that allows you to be compelling and meaningfully different.” – Blair Enns    “A customized service means you have a small number of clients at any one time.” – Blair Enns    “If you can help this client create the value that you've uncovered, then your idea of fair compensation for yourself really needs to transcend the idea of your inputs or how long it's taken you to do to help create that value.” – Blair Enns    “The goal of value-based pricing is to create an organization filled with people like that who are laser-focused on the client and how they can help create value for the client.” – Blair Enns    “Options with a high anchor. If you just always put forward options, three options and lead with the most expensive one. Your average settled price will go up, I promise you.” – Blair Enns      Resources Mentioned:  Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour  The Win Without Pitching Manifesto    Connect with Blair Enns:  winwithoutpitching.com  LinkedIn  Twitter    Connect with Mark Stiving  Email: mark@impactpricing.com  LinkedIn  Twitter   

Blair is struck by how creative businesses have trouble applying their creativity to their revenue models, so he and David discuss some of the best ways firms can get paid.   LINKS Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry by John Warrillow 2Bobs Episode 31: “Mastering the Value Conversation” 2Bobs Episode 25: “Pricing Creativity” Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns   

Blair Enns is founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, the sales training organization for creative professionals, and the author of two books: The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (published in 2010) and Pricing Creativity: A guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour

How do you charge your clients more with confidence? I know many creatives like us have trouble asking for more money because they’re afraid that it will somehow pollute their craft or drive away customers. Don’t fall into this trap! I’m really excited to have a guest today, Blair Enns, who knows all about offering great value to your clients and successfully charging more without feeling bad about it. Blair possesses a truly amazing mind and an amazing gift to be able to help people like you and me. If you’ve heard of him, it’s likely because of his book, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. Honestly, this book has changed the way I engage with my clients. In addition to his books, Blair runs a training program where he and his team of coaches help other entrepreneurs win more business. This episode is all about what Blair says is the number one thing you need to do to make more money. We chat about two differentiators which will allow you to charge more from your clients, how price anchoring will help build your confidence and increase revenue, and helpful ways to push back against a client. Blair also shares how to get over the limiting belief that charging more will turn you into a greedy person. We go on to talk about the importance of specializing so that you can stand out from the competition and show your clients the value that you will provide them. Is something stopping you from raising your rates? Have you gone ahead and done it and seen results? Tell me all about it in the comments on the episode page!   In this episode: Why you should double what you’re charging your clients (but probably won’t) The role that self-esteem plays in your ability to close more high payoff sales Pushing back against a client’s objections in a way that is helpful and builds confidence Understanding that there are no moral problems with making more money How creating extraordinary value for your clients will ultimately lead to other kinds of success How to help people to want to work with you instead of trying to simply convince them that you’re good enough Why every client should have a different value-based pricing plan   Quotes: “You can [charge multiples of what you’ve been charging] but you have to think about what it is that you do and what it is that the client is buying differently. And then you have to frame it differently. And when you do it right you won’t be pulling a fast one on the client, you’ll actually be creating more value for the client and you’ll have them willingly pay you more because you’re now thinking about the engagement differently.” [13:33] “If you’re struggling with confidence, you need to work on options. -- wherever possible, increase your options.” [17:07] “‘No’ isn't the end if you don’t want it to be the end; it’s just the beginning of whatever happens next.” [20:17] “We need to get over this idea that money is somehow sullied and that we should only ever want so much. You are allowed to want whatever you want for whatever reasons you want.” [28:48] “It’s not just a matter of raising your rates, you have to change the way you price. You have to change the way you think about pricing.” [43:00]   Links: Find Blair Enns online Follow Blair on Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook   2Bobs Podcast with David C. Baker and Blair Enns The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns A Target Audience of One by Blair Enns Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly by John Kay   Additional Links: Check out the full show notes page Be sure to take the Studio Sherpas survey for a chance to win some incredible prizes (if we do say so ourselves!) Stay up to date with everything we're doing at Studio Sherpas Tune into our weekly Facebook Lives Follow Studio Sherpas on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram   If you haven't already, we'd love it if you would take 1 minute to leave us a review on iTunes!

How can you avoid pitching and price your services higher? If you are someone who makes a living from selling creative services (or any professional services) this episode is pure gold. I had the privilege to talk to Blair Enns, founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, a training and coaching company with a focus on helping creative firms learn how to sell and price their services. Blair shares brilliant insights from his two books, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and Pricing Creativity - A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Check out Blair's company and order his books and training programs at www.winwithoutpitching.com Connect with my companies: www.wonderagency.com www.kokoromoi.com or email me at hello@tobiasdahlberg.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobbedahlberg/

In a second conversation with Blair Enns, Ceinwen examines the concept of value pricing, a methodology brought to light in Blair’s superlative book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. His valuable, profit driven advice circulates around ‘the value conversation’, how to handle risk and centralising your pricing with more meaningful measures. Originally developed for the creative services industry, Ceinwen and Blair discuss how this methodology can be successfully adopted into professional service organisations.Visit the show notes at: https://www.firstfollower.com/podcasts/5/Learn more about growth strategies at: https://www.firstfollower.com/Theme music: S Strong - The Rover by S Strong https://soundcloud.com/s_strong

Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching (Kaslo, British Columbia) and author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour   Blair Enns is Founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, a company that trains creative agencies on how to win business without giving away their most valuable product—their intellectual property—in getting that business. Blair authored two business books that have proven to be transformational for many creative firms: The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Key to the power of these books is Blair's recognition that Creative people have an inherent difficulty with “sales.”   Blair defines creativity as “the ability to see, the ability to bring a novel perspective to a problem you haven't previously solved.” Creative people tend to build businesses that allow them to solve problems they haven't previously solved. However, their personal desire for variety does not work from a business standpoint—to build a strong, financially solid firm, they need to differentiate, to focus on doing a specific thing for a specific market.   In this interview, Blair emphasizes the importance of client selection . . . of building your business with clients who are interested in value and a return on investment . . . rather than chasing budget-driven clients who are focused solely on price—those who see marketing as a commodity with charges based on billable hours and the cost of materials. The foundation of a strong business is value-driven clients who recognize that creativity is unique in its ability to produce bottom-line results and worth the investment. Although a creative agency might sell excess capacity to price-buyers, it is critical that the agency “strip out the extras” for the reduced-price client, instead of trying to “fly everyone first class.”   Blair is very clear that a price-focused buyer is unlikely to become a value-focused buyer. The creative's job is to discern a buyer's-type and manage that buyer appropriately.   Blair is available on his company's website: winwithoutpitching.com and as Blair Enns on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you're interested in his book, Pricing Creativity, go to pricingcreativity.com.  

Blair interviews David on what each of the three levels of success in running a creative firm looks like.   Links 2Bobs Episode 39 - "Replacing Presentations With Conversations" The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth, by David C. Baker Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You,by John Warrillow Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns 2Bobs Episode 31 - "Mastering the Value Conversation"   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, it's been a while. DAVID C. BAKER: Has it? I haven't missed you all that much. Have you missed me? BLAIR: Since we've last recorded a podcast, I was listening to one that aired recently and it was talking about my first book is in its fourth printing. It's now going into its fifth printing and I realized that it just aired and we recorded that over a year ago. So if Marcus is digging into a backlog that far, that means we haven't been together for a while. DAVID: Yeah. And it's scary too because imagine how much our thinking has changed in a year? 'Cause you were wrong about so many things. BLAIR: That's an old joke, you need new material. DAVID: Okay, sorry. BLAIR: So since we've last recorded a podcast, I know they keep airing because we've got all this in the can, but you and I did an event in London and then we came home and then you and your wife came up to Kaslo and we celebrated. I was just looking yesterday at a photo of your wife and my wife in a bear den together on her birthday. DAVID: Right, I didn't want to go in it, it's why I took the picture. BLAIR: You're too smart. I took it from inside the bear den, you were outside. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: And then you went to Chile on vacation and then you've probably been in some other places. DAVID: Yes, I have. I'm kind of off the road right now. I head back out of the country on Friday but I've been back trying to get our 61 acre farm livable. So just a few minutes ago, if you'd seen a picture of me, I would have been covered in white from head to toe because I am still trying to figure out how to use a paint sprayer and I realized I have a lot of expertise to develop yet. BLAIR: That's why on a hike I was carrying the bear spray. Okay, so it's been a while since we talked. Today we're going to talk, I want to call it good, better, best but it's really the three levels of success in running a creative firm and I think you've broken it down into the categories of starting, existing and thriving. And you sent me an entire spreadsheet to help navigate this conversation. Things like utilization, positioning, financial, marketing, etc. All of these different things that should be true or should be happening or you should be aiming for at these three different levels of success. Do you want to just take a minute and talk about those three levels of success? Are there lines that delineate between starting and existing and existing and thriving? Well, I think there are. We'll find out I guess, right? But I tend to think in triads. And so as I'm getting a question from a client, I'll sometimes just play this mental game, are they starting out or are they existing or are they thriving? And there seem to be these three different categories. And then you can expand that and say, "Okay, what about financial performance? What about how they think about service offerings or how they think about positioning and how they think about management?" And so I think it's useful to think in these categories because it's not as if a single firm is all in the existing, the middle category. They might spread across different ones and just gives us an eye opening into what our world looks like from the outside. DAVID: I think it'll be kind of interesting to talk about. But you're probably going to let me know how interesting this is or not. If you rush me through these, that'll be a sign that it's not that interesting. BLAIR: Well, let's just see. Let's start with utilization which is the first thing on your list. DAVID: Right. 'Cause such an exciting word, right? Utilization. BLAIR: Yeah. So I'll just have a little nap here while you talk about utilization. DAVID: Like I said to you one day, I'm pre-interested. Okay, so starting would be subsidizing clients and the typical firm in a developed country is charging and getting paid for 42% of their time and they should be getting paid for 60% of their time. So most firms are in this starting category and they never really get out of it. It's more of a typical category. So there's some significant degree of underpricing and/or overservicing. And that's the first one, subsidizing clients. And then hopefully, we get to the point where we get paid for everything we're doing, that's the middle category of existing. And then thriving is package pricing where we're applying what you would call value pricing. Where there's very little corelation between what we're getting paid and the amount of time we're putting in. It's really more about outputs and accomplishments and so on. The thing that interests me about this and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this as well, is that most firms want to skip the middle step. So they're not getting paid for all their time and they want to jump right to value pricing without going through the middle step of getting paid for all the time that they're working. And some of this is influenced by this hatred that everybody has for timekeeping, but it's also driven by this sense that people have of they're being cheated. It's like, "My clients are not paying me what I'm worth and I feel rotten about that, I feel anxious, I feel resentful and I want to jump right past that and go straight to getting paid for more than the time I'm spending." So that's the first one, utilization. BLAIR: Well, I wonder if that leap isn't because they're not really thinking about value-based pricing in terms of getting paid for the value that they create but they see it as kind of a packaged way of actually getting paid for what they do. Does that make sense? DAVID: It does. So they're using a very advanced way of sort of eliminating this subsidization without ... Yeah, it kind of does. I feel like people, they have this resentment level about not getting paid for what they're doing but they don't really know how to solve it and they jump into different plans to solve it without really understanding all of them. This is what you've spent so much of your professional life doing in the last couple of years, is helping them think through. Like we did a podcast recently about the value conversation and all of those things. And in London when you and I were talking, I was listening when you were talking about practicing the value conversation. And it was so interesting for people, the light came on on their eyes. And I don't know exactly why but I feel like they need to at least go through this second phase first because it's like learning to walk before you can run and run before you can whatever the next thing is, leap I guess. BLAIR: Yeah. And I wonder about that. I kind of think if I were giving somebody who's starting out right now some advice, my advice would be to skip over that middle section of getting paid for what you do. But if I may, I want to back up a little bit and just talk about these three categories of starting, existing and thriving and let's just put some description around them. I think we can agree that in the starting phase, essentially you have a hypothesis and your hypothesis is that you have something of value that the market values and that maybe there's a business there. So you open your doors and you're essentially exploring your hypothesis. You don't know whether you validated or not. There's all kinds of fear and there's all kinds of experimentation and there's all kinds of hard work and you're trying different things and you're seeking validation.  And I would say in the existing stage, you have validation, there's a business here. You're not going to go out of business tomorrow but probably you're earning like what you would in a job, maybe a little bit more. So it's okay, I have validation from the marketplace and then the next step is essentially optimization or getting ... Another way to look at it would be the third category which is thriving. Beyond existing, beyond earning what you would in a job. And I know I'm probably jumping ahead and maybe screwing up some of your things that you want to talk about here but we all have a sense of what thriving is and we all have a sense of what starting is. Starting is you were working with a hypothesis. Existing in the middle is I validated it. There's something here, now we need to take it to the next level. And thriving is the next level. Are those good enough descriptions for the three categories we're talking about?  DAVID: Yes. BLAIR: Or would you change them? DAVID: No, I think they are good enough. What's interesting to me though, is that some businesses that have been around for 10 years are still in the starting category and they don't ever get to that other one. And those are the ones where I might go in and say, "Hey, just an idea here, but have you considered that maybe you shouldn't be running a firm? You could be making a lot more money working for somebody else, you'd be working fewer hours and you'd have no financial risk." BLAIR: And you'd be sleeping better at night. DAVID: Right, exactly. All those things. Most folks just sort of look at me and grin and say, "Yeah, I know all that but I'm willing to invest that much just so that I don't have a boss." You don't automatically go from starting to existing after you cross, say a two year threshold or something like that. There is some mentality that has to change on your part. BLAIR: Yeah. Okay, so you talked about the first point of how utilization is different in these three categories of starting, existing and thriving. You go from essentially subsidizing your clients to getting paid for what you do to charging based on the value that you create or package pricing. The next thing that you want to explore under these three categories is positioning. So how does positioning change? DAVID: And this is a little bit different than we would have talked about it probably 10 years ago maybe. You and I both noticed that that's changed in the marketplace. So in the beginning, you're usually an undifferentiated firm. So there are many viable substitutes for what you do. And most firms make this transition for sure, they go into the existing category. And in this phase, and I delineate this scientifically in the book, The Business of Expertise, you need between 10 and 200 competitors and then we can talk about what that means in terms of your prospects set and so on. How many prospects you need. But most firms don't go into that third phase there where there are no competitors essentially because of some process they have or some proprietary IP or some black box. That's where you see firms thriving and they're making so much money. It's not wrong at all, it's just that they really control their marketplace. And so, most people in this category are probably in this existing, the middle phase, and very few are at the undifferentiated and very few are at the proprietary IP side. I'm not sure what that number is, I'd be interested to see what you think. I would guess that maybe 10% of firms are in that high level, less than that maybe. BLAIR: I'm going to recap what you said here. So positioning-wise, when you're starting out, you're saying the firm begins as fully undifferentiated. You're basically saying yes to everything and taking whatever you can. And then when you get to the existing phase where you kind of validated your hypothesis, you typically have 10 to 200 competitors. And then in the thriving phase or stage, you say you essentially have no direct competitors because you have proprietary intellectual property. Is that right? DAVID: Right, a black box. Something that they just simply cannot get somewhere else. And that's built on the second phase for sure. You start at the 10 to 200 competitor phase but then you figure out some magic and you bring it to the marketplace. And that's where just the light comes on and everything just falls in place for you. BLAIR: I want to suggest the slightly different way to think about this. And that is at the very beginning, you starting out, when you have one client, your firm is highly specialized. DAVID: Specialized in what? BLAIR: You're specialized in the discipline for market, you're doing x for why, you have one client. And then I'll suggest to you that your second client is a lot like your first client. And it's often because that first client maybe you took that client with you from another firm or whatever. He was attracted to you for whatever reason. Your second client is a lot like your first client so you're a highly specialized entity. And then you think, "Oh my god, I have to mitigate my risk. I don't want to put all of my eggs in one basket. I don't want to pigeonholed." And then you broaden out.  DAVID: And then you mess up your positioning with all these other clients. BLAIR: Yeah.  DAVID: That's interesting, I never thought about that. That is really interesting. So the secret is to never have more than one or two clients and then your ... That's Blair's advice for the day. BLAIR: Okay. Now let's move on to the category or employees. How does your employee base change as you go from starting to existing to thriving? DAVID: This one is really fun to me because I think everybody will identify with this. In the first phase, you're hiring what you can afford. It's just like, "What? I can't pay more than this and I know the kind of expertise I would like, I just cannot afford it. So the primary thing is this is what I can afford and I'm just going to get the most capable person I can with this amount of money." That's the first phase. BLAIR: Yeah. We can all identify with that. DAVID: Yeah. And none of those people are still working for you but you still remember those days. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: And the second phase is existing. And here there's this flip that occurs in your mind and you begin to hire for what you need even if it stretches you financially and you grow into it. So it's not what you can afford, it's what you need and you've built this new assumption on the fact that you're tired of training people, these blank slates that come to you and infusing them with everything you know. But the firm never grows beyond that because who's smarter than you is getting hired because you can't afford them. So the second phase, what do I need even if it costs more than I really I'm comfortable spending at this point? The third phase is a really fun one. And that's where you are on the lookout for amazing once in a lifetime hires. And even if you don't need that person at this point, you go ahead and snug them because you're running your firm so well that it's not going to put you under to have an extra and actually a highly paid extra person on staff. And this is that third phase where you make the once in a lifetime hire every once in a while even when you don't quite need them yet. BLAIR: I immediately recall a number of conversations I've had with my most successful clients and I'm sure you do too. You've had the same conversations where you asked about a particular team member and they said, "Oh, that person came to me, I didn't have a job for them but I just couldn't believe there skillset. So I hired them and I created a job for them." DAVID: Right, exactly. That's exactly what we're talking about. And it's so fun to be at that point in your businesses' history where you can do that. It's such a luxury. BLAIR: Yeah. Let's talk about financial. You've got some financial numbers and I want to know where the hell they came from. First, why don't you walk us through them. When you're staring out, you should be earning what? DAVID: So this financial thing is about how much money you're making. And in the first phase, it seems like principals are making 160 to 200 in U.S. dollars and there's not much more beyond that. That's pretty much what they get. They may not even get every pay check, they may catch up sometimes or they may not, but they're making 160 or 200. If they stop and thought about it, they would say "You know, I could make more money somewhere else." That's the first phase starting. Existing, they may make the same amount of money. 160 to 200,000 U.S. dollar equivalent, but there's significant profit at the end of the year. And this builds up starting at their fiscal year and they may take out some quarterly or when they're getting ready to buy a boat or another house or whatever, but there is some profit. And then in the thriving, the final one, the third one, they're making 400,000. Now, we have to index this if there's more than one principal but there's 400,000 plus a bunch of profit. And there are not many ... Again, they're probably on a 10 to 20% of firms in this third category with all the things that we're talking about and especially here, 400,000 plus profit. That's where firms are really thriving. BLAIR: So I'm imagining the principal of a firm who's in the starting phase, they've been at this like 15 months, they're into their second year. They're still starting, they're still figuring it out and they're thinking, "Whoa, I should be making 160 to 200? When does that happen?" DAVID: Yeah. Where somebody who's making 400 says, "I can't remember when I only made that amount of money." People's expectations are so different based on what they bring to the table. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: But what principal could not make that and more as a key leader at another firm? It kind of gets crazy when you think about it. BLAIR: But are you saying if you're at the starting phase, let's say you're a year in and you're not at 160, what does that tell you? DAVID: Well, I think we need to make allowance for the fact that we're going to invest in our businesses. But if somebody's starting out and they don't have employees, it's hard for me to foul them. Anybody making less than 160,000 equivalent U.S. dollars, I have to search a long time before I find somebody making less than that. So it tells me that either you're really starting out and haven't figured out some things or your expectations around money are very different than mine are. Or you're really making some huge investments in the business and you'll grow out of that at some point. But it should signal that something's wrong if you're not regularly making that amount of money very quickly out of the gate. BLAIR: Yeah, okay. And we could do some math on that around utilization rates and hourly rates etcetera, to come up with something, but we won't. Let's keep moving.   BLAIR: So the next category you have here is marketing. And when you're first starting out, how do you about getting new leads that ultimately turn into clients? DAVID: Yeah, most people don't do anything because they usually don't start with the blank slate. They usually start because some client has said on the Q.T., "Hey I want to work with you." And so they start with some promise of work. Or they're kind of the new kid in town and for the first, and I find that it's about three and a half years, that's about how long it last, they have enough referrals or just word of mouth kind of stuff happening. And then if things slow down a little bit, they'll do some cold-calling. That's what usually happens at this first phase and it kind of creates these bad habits for folks in the early days because it lasts for three, three and a half years and then it starts to tail off. Then we go into the second phase of existing where most firms rely on email marketing these days. Now you have some outliers who are doing different things but that seems to be the basic recommendation, email marketing. And it's still very effective and some firms are getting very wealthy doing that as their primary lead generation tool. But not many firms are really in the thriving category who are relying primarily on email marketing. They're doing something else, they have some notorious thought leadership and there are many things that fall in this category.  They could have written a great book or they could be a great speaker who gets invited to different keynote conference opportunities or maybe they have a podcast or something like that, but it's moving beyond the email marketing. And so cold-calling, referrals at the beginning, email marketing and then they leave that behind and they have this luxury of moving to more of a notorious thought leadership platform. BLAIR: I love your choice of an adjective there, notorious. What do you mean by that? DAVID: Notorious as in hated? No, that's not what I ... What I mean is well-known I guess is what I mean. So it wouldn't count to have a podcast that nobody listens to or a book that nobody buys. I'm talking about well-known type of thought leadership. And like you talk about often, it's probably something that's singular. Like it might be a conference that you do or it might be a book or it could be a podcast. It's usually not a combination of a lot of things. You've just fallen into a groove, a pattern that fits your personality and your particular focus in the marketplace and everything is working well. And as long as you're disciplined and you still take risks with your thought leadership, then you don't ever have to go back to just doing email marketing like you used to. BLAIR: Yeah. And so you've got referrals along with cold-calling in the starting category, but I think when done properly, referrals follow you at every level. And at the thriving level, I would suggest referrals really do come back. But I think your point is that like in the very beginning, it really is just about referrals. The first client is referred to you or they were a client at the firm that you worked at, you took with you. And you said there's a three to three and a half year cycle for referrals.  I don't know if it's referral-based but I've talked about this before. And one of the first patterns that I saw as a consultant is there's a seven year window. There's a point at which where roughly seven years where organic growth just stops. And you explained to me, your hypothesis was that's when you thought natural referrals quit working. And then there's school of thought around how you actually worked to cultivate referrals, that's an entirely different level. But I think we should probably do a podcast on referrals at some point because that's a topic in of itself. And I agree with you, it's vital early and then most people kind of let it go. But some of those firms that are really thriving, they have formalized how they get their existing advocate, loyal clients to refer other clients to them. DAVID: Yes, exactly. They're intentional about it. And the difference seems to me is that they bring their referral sources along with them. So as their capabilities change, they are providing the correct language to those referrals in an active way, so that the referral sources are given them even better business than they did in the past. That is something we should talk more about. BLAIR: Okay. Let's talk about fee billings per FTE. This is one of my favorite numbers that we often refer to it as AGI per FTE, which is ... Do you want to explain that acronym? DAVID: Sure. So AGI stands for Agency Gross Income. The rest of the world would say adjusted growth income but that's a very different meaning than what we mean by AGI in this industry, and it's basically your fee billing. And then if we define FTE equivalence, if there are nine full-timers and two halftimers, then that's 10 full-time equivalent. So the starting phase is less than $150,000 per full-time equivalent. So we have a 10 person firm, that means that their AGI is less than 1.5 million. There's some sort of a transition here that firms struggle to get beyond and they don't exactly know how to break out of that. It's a combination of all kinds of marketing and positioning and lead generation and confidence and all those things that we talk about quite a bit. But in this first phase, they're somewhere below this. The second phase is a really narrow band. It's really interesting. I can almost say on the phone, I can say to somebody, a prospect that I might be talking with, I can say, "Let me take a guess, you don't have to tell me if I'm right or not, but I'll bet your fee billings per full-time equivalent ..." And then I'll give them a number between 150 and 160. And this very narrow band is the second place they get stuck. And most firms, the vast majority, never get above 160. And the ones who thrive in this third category get above 160, and I've got clients that are even above a million, many of them above 450, 500. Now, you can't get there without value pricing obviously and packaging the work that you're doing with expected service offerings and so on. So those are the three, less than 150, 150 to 160, the big stuck point, and then above 160. BLAIR: So, again, I'm going to give you another way to think about this because when you say starting, that first phase or stage that we're talking about, I'm thinking about a solopreneur. And a solopreneur, if you're making 200, you're clearly billing more than 200. If you think of the solo creative person who goes out on his or her own, they're subsidizing the clients so they're not billing for all of the time that they're actually spending as you pointed out at the beginning. So they run into this maximum of how much they can based on the fact that they're subsidizing their clients. And it's probably around ... What do you think it is? Like what do you think somebody's earning, just say in kind of gross sales, before they have to hire that first person? DAVID: They probably should never hire anybody until they're at the quarter of a million dollar range, so about 250 I would think. When you hire somebody before that, you're really restarting the clock and now all of a sudden you're spreading this income that you've generated across more and more people. I don't see much connection between billings per full-time equivalent and the size of the firm. In other words, some of the most profitable firms are smaller but not always. So when I say starting, I don't necessarily mean the business is young, I mean they're starting on this path of entrepreneurial experience and success. So many firms could be 20 years old and they've never broken that 160 category per employee. So it's just something about like how do I get over this hump? And it may take people two years or it might take them 20 years or they may never get over that hump at all. BLAIR: Yeah. So you have these three categories of you're below 150 in AGI per FTE and then the middle category, where I see a lot of it too, you're stuck at 150 to 160. And I would say it might even be a little bit lower than that, 140 to 160. I don't know where the line is, you're drawing at 150 to 160. And then beyond that 160, once you tend to break free of that 160, then you kind of gain momentum again and it's easier to get out into the 200s and even 300s and that's almost always because you're moving to a value-based pricing. Is that right? DAVID: Right. Or you're very, very confident. But usually, yes. It's about value-based pricing. BLAIR: Yeah. All right, the next category is succession. So in a starting firm, it seems a little bit ironic that a firm that's in the starting category would think of succession. Because if you're just starting out and you're thinking of getting out, then something's not working therefore you don't have anything to sell, do you? DAVID: Well, again, I'm not talking just about chronology, I'm also talking about how successful they've walked this road of entrepreneurial success. And so many firms really are ... You have a 20 year firm and really they don't have 20 years of expertise under their belt, they have 20, one year periods under their belt. They don't operate like a 20 year firm, they just had the same one year 20 times, that's what I mean by starting. BLAIR: It's Groundhog Day 20 days in a row. DAVID: Exactly, right. And these are the firms where they're not just remarkable per financial performance and therefore nobody on the outside is going to be all that intrigued with buying the firm and yet the principal is tired. They're tired in part because of the lack of financial performance. If that wasn't the case, they probably wouldn't be that tired so they have to settle for either just closing the firm or getting almost nothing for it by selling to employees. That's that first starting phase of entrepreneurial success.  DAVID: And then in the second one, in this existing phase, they sell or merge within the industry. And you and I have seen huge changes here. There aren't many firms who are selling to the holding companies because the holding companies don't have all that much extra money and those purchases are so typical and the principal is not that interested in it but that's what happens in this existing phase. And then in the thriving phase, they get rich by selling in a very nontraditional sale. So it might be a consulting firm that buys them or it might be a huge digital firm that buys them. Or they could sell themselves to a client or maybe a roll-up in some rare circumstances. So it's just interesting to think about these three different categories that firms tend to think about from a succession standpoint. I put this on the list 'cause I do so much succession work and I see people strange expectations about what the firm will be worth. And they have this very glorious ideas about what somebody else will be pay for the firm and I have to have an awkward conversation. It's like, "You know, this has been more of a lifestyle business for you. You haven't made a lot of money, you've not made a lot of profit, there's not much to sell after you leave." But that's fortunately not true of every firm. A lot of firms are very, very saleable these days which is great news for them. BLAIR: And it reminds me of John Warrillow's book, Built to Sell. It's a business novel and the owner of a design firm is fed up and he goes to his business advisor or his accountant and says, "Okay, I want to sell the firm." And the guy laughs at him and says, "You've got nothing to sell." DAVID: Yeah, a great day in his life to find himself. BLAIR: So he helps him navigate to building a business that is built to sell. It's actually a great book and well worth reading. DAVID: Yeah. All right, so I am going to do something here. Are you ready? BLAIR: I'm always ready David. What are you going to do? DAVID: Well, I'm going to flip this on you and I want you to come up with three categories around pricing. BLAIR: Oh yeah, that's easy. DAVID: Okay, well you should have some thoughts about this, you just wrote a book. So what are the three categories for pricing that you see out here? BLAIR: Essentially, you have three things that you can sell and I think the three categories really mirror perfectly your categories of starting, existing and thriving. In the beginning, you are selling time, you are selling the inputs of time and materials. And then when you get to the next level which you're calling existing, and I'll just say it's the next level in pricing, is that's when you're selling outputs of deliverables. So instead of charging based on the time, you're charging based on, I'll put in air quotes, the market value of something. And you're still counting your inputs of time and materials but you're essentially pricing based on what the market will bear and you're probably commanding a premium.  The client is getting price certainty. So instead of saying it's going to be $200 an hour and we'll finish when we'll finish, you're making an estimation of the number or hours, probably a range, and then you're pricing it in the higher range and the incentives are for you to come in a bit below that. So your AGI per FTE is going to go up. You're trading a price premium for price certainty because you're selling the deliverables, the campaign, whatever the output is.  And then the third level is when you let go of both of those things and you're selling based on the value that you help create. So you're pricing based not on the inputs of time and materials, not on the market value of what you think the market value is, that service or that output, but based on the revenue gains or cost reductions or other emotional forms of value that your solution will help to deliver. And very often when you do it properly, it's really almost fully untethered from the inputs of time and materials. So those are the three levels of pricing. First you're selling inputs, then you're selling outputs then you're selling outcomes or value. DAVID: So if somebody's in the first category of selling inputs, can they skip the second step and go right to value? BLAIR: Oh yeah, absolutely. DAVID: Okay. Oh, that's interesting. BLAIR: Yeah, and so we talked about the value conversation before and if somebody hasn't listened to that, they might want to go back and listen to that episode. Really, the big shift that happens when you learn to conduct a good value conversation is you completely let go of the solutions and if you're letting go of solutions, you're letting go of cost. So you're actually setting price before you even think ... And this is the trick that you've got to learn to do. Before you even think about what it is that you would do for the client. And when you're able to do that, when you're able to set price before you think about your solutions, let alone your cost, then you have made that transition to the next level. DAVID: I hope people will go back there and listen to that one. It's called "Mastering the Value Conversation," April 4th. That was a really interesting one. Allright, this was fun. BLAIR: Hey, I'm driving here, this was fun David. DAVID: No, I'll tell you if it's fun. If it's ... We should do one like: what's starting, existing and thriving to do a podcast together? What are those three categories? I don't think we want to do that. BLAIR: Oh god, yeah. Yeah, we're still starting. Hey, when we reconvene (we're going to record again in a few days) we're going to talk about the X factor. Now, I'm going to send you some homework on this, I'm going to ask you to think about your most successful clients and what did they have in common. And then we're going to talk about that in the next podcast. DAVID: Okay.    

Blair Enns is the founder of a training company for creative firms called Win Without Pitching and the author of a fantastic book called Priving Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He is also the co-host of a great podcast called 2Bobs alongside our last guest on the show David […] The post The Six Rules of Pricing with Blair Enns appeared first on Boutique Growth.

  Blair leads a discussion on how clients tend to take mental shortcuts in making business decisions, and how we can nudge clients without manipulating them to make a decision that is in their best interest.   Links Rory Sutherland Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein "The Dark Arts of Leveraging Cognitive Biases" by Blair Enns Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely Richard Feynman Dunning-Kruger effect Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns "Pricing Creativity" 2Bobs episode

In Blairtopia, time is a thief. Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching, and author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, is out to create a more utopian state. One where firms win without pitching, get paid for the value they create and let time go. The pricing debate—time versus value—can be polarizing. Yes, there's truth in the notion that experts should be paid more, and creativity is worth more than hours spent. But how do you price value that hasn't been created yet, and what do you do if that value never materializes, or worse, causes things to go south? Tune in for Blair's take on mastering the value conversation, three levels of financial success for creative and marketing firms and how agencies can leave time behind to change the very nature of their firms.

Blair and David come up with descriptive words that help clarify each of the four parts of what David calls the "pantheon" for new business: positioning, lead generation, sales, and pricing. Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour Mastering the Value Conversation podcast episode

Welcome to episode #59! Today we have the founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching, the sales training and coaching organization for creative professionals. He is also the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and the brand new book titled Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. This man has taught me and many thousands of creative people and businesses around the world, on how to build a lucrative client base without having to pitch ideas for free.   Some of the topics we spoke about include: How to best position our value in order to win business How to command the high ground in the client vs creative relationship His approach to proposals His view on retainer clients Rules on pricing creativity and so much more.   If you’re someone who is interested in moving from a vendor position to an expert practitioner position, then this is absolutely for you. I present to you … the sharp and charismatic ... Blair Enns!     More on Blair can be found via the links below: Twitter: @BlairEnns LinkedIn Profile Pricing Creativity Book Win Without Pitching Website Subscribe to The Giant Thinkers Podcast on iTunes.     Read or listen to an entire book in 15 minutes via Blinkist The Blinkist app takes the best non-fiction books and distills them into powerful, made-for-mobile summaries. Essentially, giving you and I the main concepts of an entire book in 15 minutes. Available to read and also to listen to as audio. Head to GiantThinkers.com/Blink to take up the 25% off discount. Start your free trial or get three months off your yearly plan when you join today. The 25% off is automatically applied, when you head to GiantThinkers.com/Blinkist.  

Following the success of the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, Blair Enns’ much anticipated book – Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour was published earlier this year. I’ll admit, I was worried how this transformative approach to pricing would fit into this series, where we explore how we can implement small changes to our […]

We are honored to interview Blair Enns, another crusader for Value Pricing and burying the billable hour. He wrote the fantastic book, The Win Without Picthing Manifesto, and his latest is Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Take your pricing competency to the next level and don't miss this show.

We are honored to interview Blair Enns, another crusader for Value Pricing and burying the billable hour. He wrote the fantastic book, The Win Without Picthing Manifesto, and his latest is Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Take your pricing competency to the next level and don't miss this show.

We are honored to interview Blair Enns, another crusader for Value Pricing and burying the billable hour. He wrote the fantastic book, The Win Without Picthing Manifesto, and his latest is Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Take your pricing competency to the next level and don't miss this show.

ICYMI, Open Tabs are our IRL trend forecasting events that we hold inside our agency partners offices, where we get a few talented people together to talk about their currently/frequently opened browser tabs all to the tune of a few cold Sample Brews. If you want to get a taste of this, head over to opentabs.rodeo for more details. In the meantime, to help hold us over between events, we’re having full episode-length discussions of our own favourite links from our professional development slack channel. Remember! We are now an ENHANCED podcast. That's right - If you listen to our podcast in Overcast or Pocket Casts, you can get super special images, links, and chapter breaks in your player while you listen. Featured links from our discussion - Want to get these in your inbox every Friday? Sign up for our text-only tinyletter at tinyletter.com/jackywinter Intro: Co-Star Astrology App Bianca: Motion Hatch Podcast: What You Need To Know About Intellectual Property And Contracts As A Motion Designer / The AOI Jeremy: Keep in Touch / The Power of No / Slide 1 of BBH's 1982 pitch for Levi's explaining with seductive confidence why they didn't pitch with creative / No Spec / Say No to Spec Video Lara: Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour / Lessons from Pricing Creativity / Brutally Honest: Strategies to evolve your creative business If you like the show or these links or think we sound like nice people, please go and leave us a rating or review on iTunes. It helps other people find the show and boosts our downloads which in turn lets us know that what we're doing is worth doing more of! Jacky Winter Gives You The Business is produced by Areej Nur To subscribe, view show notes or previous episodes head on over to our podcast page at http://jackywinter.givesyouthe.biz/ Special thanks to Jacky Winter (the band, with much better shirts than us) for the music. Listen to them over at Soundcloud. Everything else Jacky Winter (us) can be found at http://www.jackywinter.com/

David gets Blair to expound on his statement that “the value conversation is where value pricing theory goes to die,” and how crucial that conversation is within the sales framework he lays out in his new book, "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour."

Self-described “recovering consultant” Blair Enns is the CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training organization for creative professionals in the design, advertising, and public relations fields. When he wasn’t satisfied with his $400,000 business, he decided to expand it into an organization that now makes exponentially more money that he once thought possible. In this episode, we are talking about ways that you can effectively position yourself as an expert in your field, how to get your expertise recognized, and the danger of productizing your work, as well as what you should be doing instead. Blair has achieved a level of success that many consultants only dream of, and he’s here to share practical ideas on how you, too, can take your consulting business to the next level. Join us to hear solid advice for increasing your revenue from Blair Enns in this episode of The Consulting Success Podcast.   Finding Consulting Success in the Wilderness After finding himself expelled from university, Blair’s lucky break came when he stumbled upon advertising. His boss recognized he had a knack for new business, and just six months into the work, at age 22, Blair was put in charge of business development. He began working with some of the largest ad agencies and some of the smallest design firms in the world. Well-experienced and thick in the work of account management and business development, Blair realized that he wanted something entirely different from the advertising world. In order to realize his dream of raising his family in the backwoods of British Columbia, something had to change. At that point Win Without Pitching was born, and Blair’s success has been realized in a wilderness town of just 900 people. He tells the story of how he decided to relocate to such a remote location, and how he was able to successfully turn his consulting dream into his new reality. Many people believe that success can’t be achieved in a remote location without direct access to clients, but Blair’s success proves them wrong. When he started out, Blair didn’t have access to any clients within hundreds of miles of his remote location. This unique situation forced him to expand his reach. Once he narrowed in on the markets that he was going to serve and strategically positioned himself in their path, the physical distance between them became less of an issue. For Blair, these moves have actually contributed to greater success than he would have experienced otherwise. With the groundwork for his career path laid, we dive into the details of Blair’s success, starting with his collaboration with fellow consultant David Baker.   Should You Share Your Knowledge With Your Competition? It may seem counterintuitive, but sharing your knowledge with other consultants can actually be one of the smartest career moves you can make. Blair and David Baker are both successful creative entrepreneurs who have joined forces to produce the 2Bobs Podcast, in which you can hear conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship. Although Blair and David are competitors, their collaborations have actually brought them both greater success. Blair lays out the benefits and drawbacks of working with your competition. But before you can consider teaming up with another consultant, you need to examine your own work. If there appears to be very little difference from the work that you offer and the work that your competition offers, you have a significant business problem. Teaming up with another consultant is not going to be helpful for you at all. Positioning and strategy can both set you apart and keep you securely positioned within your area of expertise. While it isn’t a good idea to eliminate all competition, it is in your favor to strategically place yourself separate and above most of your competition. The number one key to deciding whether to collaborate with your competition is whether or not your philosophical ideas line up with them. Blair admits that he doesn’t play quite as nicely with all of his competitors as he does with David Baker, but he also recognizes that they both benefit from their working relationship. Sharing knowledge with each other and collaborating on projects has been mutually beneficial for both of them, as well as for their clients. However, there is a fine line to be drawn when it comes to collaborating with your competition. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s a good idea or one that will bring your business down, be sure to listen to Blair’s take on it. What’s worked for him will most likely work for you as well, so you won’t want to miss his ideas and checkpoints for the best approach to sharing your knowledge with your competition.   Finding Your Consulting Focus In the Win Without Pitching business model, clientele can be won without doing a “dog and pony” show to prove your worth. There are steps that you can take to differentiate yourself and position yourself in a place where a greater chance of winning business. First — you have to find your focus. Who do you want to be a consultant for? What area are you going to be a consultant on? What are the issues that you want to focus on? If you promise to do everything for everyone, there is no way that you can become an expert in any one given area. In order to become a subject matter expert, it is essential that you narrow your focus. Once your focus is narrowed, your expertise will grow as you are repeatedly faced with similar problems that can be solved with similar solutions. Patterns will emerge and become the basis for your expertise. As you force yourself to narrow your expertise, you will be able to dig deeper and truly set yourself apart from — and above — your competition. Blair shares the classic example of the client who will approach you with no idea of how they should solve a problem that they have never had before. Because of your focus, you will have seen similar problems many times over again and the solution they are seeking will be an easy one for you to identify. This is the essential key to becoming a focused expert in your field — it’s worked for Blair and he guarantees it will work for you, too.   The Challenges of Productizing Your Business If you’ve been in the consulting business for any amount of time, chances are that you have been faced with the challenges of accurately and competitively pricing your work. Blair spent 13 years of his career as a consultant, and more recently, the last five years as a training company, and there is one common mistake that he has seen over and over again. Every consultant struggles to find the best way to price their services. There are two basic approaches to pricing your work — you can either productize or customize the work that you do for each client, and he details both. By productizing your work, you have a fixed set of solutions that you can offer to clients, regardless of what their individual needs are, similar to ordering off of a menu. Customized consulting work offers greater value to your clients and allows you to remain more deeply involved in both the work and the solutions. Your pricing may have shifted in one direction or the other, and you need to ask yourself — are you productizing your services when you really should be customizing the work that you are doing for each client? Most consultants should be in the customized business service. If you find that you’re creeping toward offering your clients a one-size-fits-all product as the solution to their problems, it’s time to correct your business model. For Blair, the decision to switch over to productizing his work came when he realized he was value-pricing most of his highly customized offerings to his clients. He shares the impact that that switch has made on his business, and the success he now enjoys may make you want to consider altering your business model as well.   Secure New Clients Through Your Writing The last step Blair shares to gain greater success in your consulting field, after finding your focus and deciding whether to share your knowledge in collaboration with other consultants, is to become an expertise writer. The most successful consultants are also writers. In order to get your ideas heard, you need to write from a point of view that is beneficially polarizing in your market. Although it’s a harsh truth, there is simply no use for you in a field in which you can’t find a novel way to tackle the problems within it. By finding a point of view that is less common but more beneficial, you will position yourself as the expert that clients need to get their problems solved. The reactions that readers have to your work will increase their trust in you and your ability to help them find the solutions they are seeking. The content in your blog posts, emails, newsletters, and articles will draw potential clients to you. Even more important though, is the fact that the point of view that you share with them will convince them to hire you. Once your perspective separates you from your competition, you have the foundation of a business that will be successful. When you are just starting out, finding clients and getting your ideas out there can seem like a daunting task. In order to get your ideas and content out to new clients, Blair recommends starting with putting all of your marketing chips into one area. Whether it be podcasts, writing books, or social media, find one area that you can focus on, and soon you will be dominating it as the lead expert. For Blair, the area of greatest focus has been his writing. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto was written nearly eight years ago, but he is still seeing the rewards from producing the book today. He offers ideas on how to effectively promote a book and reflects on ways that a book written eight years ago is still benefitting his work today. Blair shares a glimpse into his forthcoming book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. The book is available in several formats, including as an ebook and in manual format. You can learn more about the book on his website, as well as sign up for his free newsletter, and learn more about his business philosophies and approach. This episode of The Consulting Success Podcast with Blair Enns is filled with practical ideas on how you can improve your status as an industry expert, starting today.   Key Takeaways: [:17] Welcoming Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching. [4:47] Growing a business from a remote location. [6:20] The benefits of sharing your knowledge with the competition. [10:50] How finding your focus will increase the demand for your expertise. [14:03] Customizing or productizing your business — which model is best for you? [24:10] You can get new clients by writing from a new point-of-view. [28:47] Ways to effectively share your content. [33:28] All about Blair’s new book, and how you can connect with him.   Mentioned in This Episode: Win Without Pitching 2Bobs Podcast with Blair Enns and David Baker The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns @BlairEnns on Twitter Blair Enns on LinkedIn Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Consulting Success Community today: consultingsuccess.com

Self-described “recovering consultant” Blair Enns is the CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training organization for creative professionals in the design, advertising, and public relations fields. When he wasn’t satisfied with his $400,000 business, he decided to expand it into an organization that now makes exponentially more money that he once thought possible. In this episode, we are talking about ways that you can effectively position yourself as an expert in your field, how to get your expertise recognized, and the danger of productizing your work, as well as what you should be doing instead. Blair has achieved a level of success that many consultants only dream of, and he’s here to share practical ideas on how you, too, can take your consulting business to the next level. Join us to hear solid advice for increasing your revenue from Blair Enns in this episode of The Consulting Success Podcast.   Finding Consulting Success in the Wilderness After finding himself expelled from university, Blair’s lucky break came when he stumbled upon advertising. His boss recognized he had a knack for new business, and just six months into the work, at age 22, Blair was put in charge of business development. He began working with some of the largest ad agencies and some of the smallest design firms in the world. Well-experienced and thick in the work of account management and business development, Blair realized that he wanted something entirely different from the advertising world. In order to realize his dream of raising his family in the backwoods of British Columbia, something had to change. At that point Win Without Pitching was born, and Blair’s success has been realized in a wilderness town of just 900 people. He tells the story of how he decided to relocate to such a remote location, and how he was able to successfully turn his consulting dream into his new reality. Many people believe that success can’t be achieved in a remote location without direct access to clients, but Blair’s success proves them wrong. When he started out, Blair didn’t have access to any clients within hundreds of miles of his remote location. This unique situation forced him to expand his reach. Once he narrowed in on the markets that he was going to serve and strategically positioned himself in their path, the physical distance between them became less of an issue. For Blair, these moves have actually contributed to greater success than he would have experienced otherwise. With the groundwork for his career path laid, we dive into the details of Blair’s success, starting with his collaboration with fellow consultant David Baker.   Should You Share Your Knowledge With Your Competition? It may seem counterintuitive, but sharing your knowledge with other consultants can actually be one of the smartest career moves you can make. Blair and David Baker are both successful creative entrepreneurs who have joined forces to produce the 2Bobs Podcast, in which you can hear conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship. Although Blair and David are competitors, their collaborations have actually brought them both greater success. Blair lays out the benefits and drawbacks of working with your competition. But before you can consider teaming up with another consultant, you need to examine your own work. If there appears to be very little difference from the work that you offer and the work that your competition offers, you have a significant business problem. Teaming up with another consultant is not going to be helpful for you at all. Positioning and strategy can both set you apart and keep you securely positioned within your area of expertise. While it isn’t a good idea to eliminate all competition, it is in your favor to strategically place yourself separate and above most of your competition. The number one key to deciding whether to collaborate with your competition is whether or not your philosophical ideas line up with them. Blair admits that he doesn’t play quite as nicely with all of his competitors as he does with David Baker, but he also recognizes that they both benefit from their working relationship. Sharing knowledge with each other and collaborating on projects has been mutually beneficial for both of them, as well as for their clients. However, there is a fine line to be drawn when it comes to collaborating with your competition. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s a good idea or one that will bring your business down, be sure to listen to Blair’s take on it. What’s worked for him will most likely work for you as well, so you won’t want to miss his ideas and checkpoints for the best approach to sharing your knowledge with your competition.   Finding Your Consulting Focus In the Win Without Pitching business model, clientele can be won without doing a “dog and pony” show to prove your worth. There are steps that you can take to differentiate yourself and position yourself in a place where a greater chance of winning business. First — you have to find your focus. Who do you want to be a consultant for? What area are you going to be a consultant on? What are the issues that you want to focus on? If you promise to do everything for everyone, there is no way that you can become an expert in any one given area. In order to become a subject matter expert, it is essential that you narrow your focus. Once your focus is narrowed, your expertise will grow as you are repeatedly faced with similar problems that can be solved with similar solutions. Patterns will emerge and become the basis for your expertise. As you force yourself to narrow your expertise, you will be able to dig deeper and truly set yourself apart from — and above — your competition. Blair shares the classic example of the client who will approach you with no idea of how they should solve a problem that they have never had before. Because of your focus, you will have seen similar problems many times over again and the solution they are seeking will be an easy one for you to identify. This is the essential key to becoming a focused expert in your field — it’s worked for Blair and he guarantees it will work for you, too.   The Challenges of Productizing Your Business If you’ve been in the consulting business for any amount of time, chances are that you have been faced with the challenges of accurately and competitively pricing your work. Blair spent 13 years of his career as a consultant, and more recently, the last five years as a training company, and there is one common mistake that he has seen over and over again. Every consultant struggles to find the best way to price their services. There are two basic approaches to pricing your work — you can either productize or customize the work that you do for each client, and he details both. By productizing your work, you have a fixed set of solutions that you can offer to clients, regardless of what their individual needs are, similar to ordering off of a menu. Customized consulting work offers greater value to your clients and allows you to remain more deeply involved in both the work and the solutions. Your pricing may have shifted in one direction or the other, and you need to ask yourself — are you productizing your services when you really should be customizing the work that you are doing for each client? Most consultants should be in the customized business service. If you find that you’re creeping toward offering your clients a one-size-fits-all product as the solution to their problems, it’s time to correct your business model. For Blair, the decision to switch over to productizing his work came when he realized he was value-pricing most of his highly customized offerings to his clients. He shares the impact that that switch has made on his business, and the success he now enjoys may make you want to consider altering your business model as well.   Secure New Clients Through Your Writing The last step Blair shares to gain greater success in your consulting field, after finding your focus and deciding whether to share your knowledge in collaboration with other consultants, is to become an expertise writer. The most successful consultants are also writers. In order to get your ideas heard, you need to write from a point of view that is beneficially polarizing in your market. Although it’s a harsh truth, there is simply no use for you in a field in which you can’t find a novel way to tackle the problems within it. By finding a point of view that is less common but more beneficial, you will position yourself as the expert that clients need to get their problems solved. The reactions that readers have to your work will increase their trust in you and your ability to help them find the solutions they are seeking. The content in your blog posts, emails, newsletters, and articles will draw potential clients to you. Even more important though, is the fact that the point of view that you share with them will convince them to hire you. Once your perspective separates you from your competition, you have the foundation of a business that will be successful. When you are just starting out, finding clients and getting your ideas out there can seem like a daunting task. In order to get your ideas and content out to new clients, Blair recommends starting with putting all of your marketing chips into one area. Whether it be podcasts, writing books, or social media, find one area that you can focus on, and soon you will be dominating it as the lead expert. For Blair, the area of greatest focus has been his writing. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto was written nearly eight years ago, but he is still seeing the rewards from producing the book today. He offers ideas on how to effectively promote a book and reflects on ways that a book written eight years ago is still benefitting his work today. Blair shares a glimpse into his forthcoming book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. The book is available in several formats, including as an ebook and in manual format. You can learn more about the book on his website, as well as sign up for his free newsletter, and learn more about his business philosophies and approach. This episode of The Consulting Success Podcast with Blair Enns is filled with practical ideas on how you can improve your status as an industry expert, starting today.   Key Takeaways: [:17] Welcoming Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching. [4:47] Growing a business from a remote location. [6:20] The benefits of sharing your knowledge with the competition. [10:50] How finding your focus will increase the demand for your expertise. [14:03] Customizing or productizing your business — which model is best for you? [24:10] You can get new clients by writing from a new point-of-view. [28:47] Ways to effectively share your content. [33:28] All about Blair’s new book, and how you can connect with him.   Mentioned in This Episode: Win Without Pitching 2Bobs Podcast with Blair Enns and David Baker The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns @BlairEnns on Twitter Blair Enns on LinkedIn Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Consulting Success Community today: consultingsuccess.com

Self-described “recovering consultant” Blair Enns is the CEO of Win Without Pitching, a sales training organization for creative professionals in the design, advertising, and public relations fields. When he wasn’t satisfied with his $400,000 business, he decided to expand it into an organization that now makes exponentially more money that he once thought possible. In this episode, we are talking about ways that you can effectively position yourself as an expert in your field, how to get your expertise recognized, and the danger of productizing your work, as well as what you should be doing instead. Blair has achieved a level of success that many consultants only dream of, and he’s here to share practical ideas on how you, too, can take your consulting business to the next level. Join us to hear solid advice for increasing your revenue from Blair Enns in this episode of The Consulting Success Podcast.   Finding Consulting Success in the Wilderness After finding himself expelled from university, Blair’s lucky break came when he stumbled upon advertising. His boss recognized he had a knack for new business, and just six months into the work, at age 22, Blair was put in charge of business development. He began working with some of the largest ad agencies and some of the smallest design firms in the world. Well-experienced and thick in the work of account management and business development, Blair realized that he wanted something entirely different from the advertising world. In order to realize his dream of raising his family in the backwoods of British Columbia, something had to change. At that point Win Without Pitching was born, and Blair’s success has been realized in a wilderness town of just 900 people. He tells the story of how he decided to relocate to such a remote location, and how he was able to successfully turn his consulting dream into his new reality. Many people believe that success can’t be achieved in a remote location without direct access to clients, but Blair’s success proves them wrong. When he started out, Blair didn’t have access to any clients within hundreds of miles of his remote location. This unique situation forced him to expand his reach. Once he narrowed in on the markets that he was going to serve and strategically positioned himself in their path, the physical distance between them became less of an issue. For Blair, these moves have actually contributed to greater success than he would have experienced otherwise. With the groundwork for his career path laid, we dive into the details of Blair’s success, starting with his collaboration with fellow consultant David Baker.   Should You Share Your Knowledge With Your Competition? It may seem counterintuitive, but sharing your knowledge with other consultants can actually be one of the smartest career moves you can make. Blair and David Baker are both successful creative entrepreneurs who have joined forces to produce the 2Bobs Podcast, in which you can hear conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship. Although Blair and David are competitors, their collaborations have actually brought them both greater success. Blair lays out the benefits and drawbacks of working with your competition. But before you can consider teaming up with another consultant, you need to examine your own work. If there appears to be very little difference from the work that you offer and the work that your competition offers, you have a significant business problem. Teaming up with another consultant is not going to be helpful for you at all. Positioning and strategy can both set you apart and keep you securely positioned within your area of expertise. While it isn’t a good idea to eliminate all competition, it is in your favor to strategically place yourself separate and above most of your competition. The number one key to deciding whether to collaborate with your competition is whether or not your philosophical ideas line up with them. Blair admits that he doesn’t play quite as nicely with all of his competitors as he does with David Baker, but he also recognizes that they both benefit from their working relationship. Sharing knowledge with each other and collaborating on projects has been mutually beneficial for both of them, as well as for their clients. However, there is a fine line to be drawn when it comes to collaborating with your competition. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s a good idea or one that will bring your business down, be sure to listen to Blair’s take on it. What’s worked for him will most likely work for you as well, so you won’t want to miss his ideas and checkpoints for the best approach to sharing your knowledge with your competition.   Finding Your Consulting Focus In the Win Without Pitching business model, clientele can be won without doing a “dog and pony” show to prove your worth. There are steps that you can take to differentiate yourself and position yourself in a place where a greater chance of winning business. First — you have to find your focus. Who do you want to be a consultant for? What area are you going to be a consultant on? What are the issues that you want to focus on? If you promise to do everything for everyone, there is no way that you can become an expert in any one given area. In order to become a subject matter expert, it is essential that you narrow your focus. Once your focus is narrowed, your expertise will grow as you are repeatedly faced with similar problems that can be solved with similar solutions. Patterns will emerge and become the basis for your expertise. As you force yourself to narrow your expertise, you will be able to dig deeper and truly set yourself apart from — and above — your competition. Blair shares the classic example of the client who will approach you with no idea of how they should solve a problem that they have never had before. Because of your focus, you will have seen similar problems many times over again and the solution they are seeking will be an easy one for you to identify. This is the essential key to becoming a focused expert in your field — it’s worked for Blair and he guarantees it will work for you, too.   The Challenges of Productizing Your Business If you’ve been in the consulting business for any amount of time, chances are that you have been faced with the challenges of accurately and competitively pricing your work. Blair spent 13 years of his career as a consultant, and more recently, the last five years as a training company, and there is one common mistake that he has seen over and over again. Every consultant struggles to find the best way to price their services. There are two basic approaches to pricing your work — you can either productize or customize the work that you do for each client, and he details both. By productizing your work, you have a fixed set of solutions that you can offer to clients, regardless of what their individual needs are, similar to ordering off of a menu. Customized consulting work offers greater value to your clients and allows you to remain more deeply involved in both the work and the solutions. Your pricing may have shifted in one direction or the other, and you need to ask yourself — are you productizing your services when you really should be customizing the work that you are doing for each client? Most consultants should be in the customized business service. If you find that you’re creeping toward offering your clients a one-size-fits-all product as the solution to their problems, it’s time to correct your business model. For Blair, the decision to switch over to productizing his work came when he realized he was value-pricing most of his highly customized offerings to his clients. He shares the impact that that switch has made on his business, and the success he now enjoys may make you want to consider altering your business model as well.   Secure New Clients Through Your Writing The last step Blair shares to gain greater success in your consulting field, after finding your focus and deciding whether to share your knowledge in collaboration with other consultants, is to become an expertise writer. The most successful consultants are also writers. In order to get your ideas heard, you need to write from a point of view that is beneficially polarizing in your market. Although it’s a harsh truth, there is simply no use for you in a field in which you can’t find a novel way to tackle the problems within it. By finding a point of view that is less common but more beneficial, you will position yourself as the expert that clients need to get their problems solved. The reactions that readers have to your work will increase their trust in you and your ability to help them find the solutions they are seeking. The content in your blog posts, emails, newsletters, and articles will draw potential clients to you. Even more important though, is the fact that the point of view that you share with them will convince them to hire you. Once your perspective separates you from your competition, you have the foundation of a business that will be successful. When you are just starting out, finding clients and getting your ideas out there can seem like a daunting task. In order to get your ideas and content out to new clients, Blair recommends starting with putting all of your marketing chips into one area. Whether it be podcasts, writing books, or social media, find one area that you can focus on, and soon you will be dominating it as the lead expert. For Blair, the area of greatest focus has been his writing. The Win Without Pitching Manifesto was written nearly eight years ago, but he is still seeing the rewards from producing the book today. He offers ideas on how to effectively promote a book and reflects on ways that a book written eight years ago is still benefitting his work today. Blair shares a glimpse into his forthcoming book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. The book is available in several formats, including as an ebook and in manual format. You can learn more about the book on his website, as well as sign up for his free newsletter, and learn more about his business philosophies and approach. This episode of The Consulting Success Podcast with Blair Enns is filled with practical ideas on how you can improve your status as an industry expert, starting today.   Key Takeaways: [:17] Welcoming Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching. [4:47] Growing a business from a remote location. [6:20] The benefits of sharing your knowledge with the competition. [10:50] How finding your focus will increase the demand for your expertise. [14:03] Customizing or productizing your business — which model is best for you? [24:10] You can get new clients by writing from a new point-of-view. [28:47] Ways to effectively share your content. [33:28] All about Blair’s new book, and how you can connect with him.   Mentioned in This Episode: Win Without Pitching 2Bobs Podcast with Blair Enns and David Baker The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns @BlairEnns on Twitter Blair Enns on LinkedIn Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Consulting Success Community today: consultingsuccess.com

Blair talks about his new book, "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour," and the process it took to write it. David gets him to share three of the main rules laid out in the book that firms should apply in order to see significant increases in profit.

Guest Blair Enns gives us a look behind the scenes of creating his new book Pricing Creativity. Blair's Bio Blair Enns is a 25-year veteran of the business side of the creative professions. In 2002, he launched Win Without Pitching, which has worked with thousands of creative professionals in numerous countries through direct engagements, seminars, workshops & webcasts. Blair is the author of "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" and the forthcoming "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour" Links Pricing Creativity Win Without Pitching 2Bobs Podcast Blair on Twitter Blair on LinkedIn Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms The Curtis Creek Manifesto Transcript Jonathan: Hello and welcome to The Business of Authority. I'm Jonathan Stark. Rochelle: And I'm Rochelle Moulton. Jonathan: And today, we're very excited to be joined by guest Blair Enns. Blair is the founder and CEO of Win Without Pitching and the author of the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and the forthcoming Pricing Creativity: Guide To Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. Did I get that right Blair? Blair: You got it right Jonathan thank you. Jonathan: Stressful :-) I am very excited and I [00:00:30] know Rochelle's very excited to have you on the show. We have just a lot in common, I've been following your work for years, we've read a lot of the same authors and we're super excited to talk about how you've taken this big idea, which to me started with the Manifesto, perhaps it had its roots before that, and turned it into a consulting business and then later a training business, and now hopefully, fingers crossed, a bestselling author. So, could we start off by just [00:01:00] giving folks a little bit of background about who you are and what you do now and then we can sort of delve into the history? Blair: Yeah, sure. And thank you to both of you for having me on the podcast. I'm really looking forward to this and happy to be here. My name is Blair Ends, the company is Win Without Pitching and I founded it back in 2002, early 2002. At the time, it was a consulting practice, a new business development, sales or new business development consulting to creative [00:01:30] firms, typically independent creative firms, and I had come out of about a dozen years of working in advertising agencies and design firms and thought I'd launch this consulting practice. So that was the first iteration of Win Without Pitching. And then over the years, beginning in late 2012, and I'm sure we'll get into this, I decided to shift the structure of the company from a solo consulting practice to a training company. So that's where we are now in late 2017, [00:02:00] early 2018. Win Without Pitching is about five years into its current incarnation as a training company. And for a few years; 2013, 14, it was both as I kind of played with training and had to make a decision about going one way or the other. So we've been a pure training company for about three years. It really feels like this business is about three years old, but really it's more like 16. Jonathan: Wow. And [00:02:30] before that, you were from the agency world, you were inside the agency world, yes? Blair: Yeah, I worked for some of the world's largest advertising agencies and some of its smallest design firms. I was a suit, I don't own a suit anymore. Although my latest social media profile pic has me in a suit. I had a borrow a tie from my 18 year old son for that photo and I own one jacket. But I was a suit for many years and then I moved to this little mountain [00:03:00] village in the middle of nowhere where we live now when I started the consulting practice. So there's this kind of shift in the personal life that was the impetus for the business change. And I had a Hugo Boss bonfire when I moved out here, got rid of all the suits. But I was a suit doing account services and new business at a very young age in the first ad agency I ever worked. When at I was 22, I was handed responsibility for new business. I wasn't great at it but I did have some natural skills at [00:03:30] it. So yeah, I came out of the account management and new business side of both advertising and design. Jonathan: Okay. So, how do you go from there to writing the Manifesto? Blair: Well, the Manifesto I wrote I think in late 2005, early 2006 so I had been running the consulting business for three or four years at that time. And the name, I think the of the business is kind of a fluke and I've been [00:04:00] told by some of my closest professional friends that, "Yeah, Win Without Pitching is a stupid name, you need to change the name." On some level, I think it is maybe not an appropriate, maybe not the appropriate ... There's something about the name that can sound a little bit schlocky maybe, like some sort of false promise, but on the other hand, that name has driven me to ... It's really a great label for how I've always thought about new business, [00:04:30] and it's forced me to come at the subject matter from that perspective that is really true to me. And I think that's really been the difference, whether it's been a consulting practice or a training company or a book that I've written, i's always coming from that win without pitching perspective. So the name came first, the business came first. And then in, I think it was, yeah, it was late 2005, I think early 2006, where I [00:05:00] was writing a piece. I've published an article, a blog post for years, for 16 years, either somewhere between weekly and monthly. And at the time, I think I was publishing closer to monthly. And I wanted something for the end of the year. So I tried on, I had this idea of like just wrapping up all of my philosophy into a few short pithy statements. And I was also trying on tone of voice. I'm a huge fan of Manifestos, [00:05:30] and I kind of collect them and I've read most of the big ones. I think the biggest, most important book ever written and religious people will be horrified at this, I think the most important book ever written might be the Curtis Creek Manifesto. And I won't say anything more about that, people can go look at it and think, "Huh? What are you talking abut?" Order it, give it to every 12 year old you know and you'll change the world. I was writing a blog post and it was trying on [00:06:00] a new voice, I was trying on a Manifesto voice. And at the time, and even for a few years after, it was the riskiest thing I'd ever written, just because the tone was so different. And I thought it was going to be taken as too over the top. Like it's almost the biblical [inaudible 00:06:14] We shall, etc. It's 12 proclamations, it's not chapters I imagine Martin Luther nailing something like this to the church door. So I was quite nervous when I hit publish. And then the response was really gratifying and inspiring, [00:06:30] because people were telling me that they had ... some designers that actually typeset it and put it on a poster and actually put it on their wall. And I kept getting feedback like that for a long time. So when it came time to write a book, and if you want to be seen as the expert in your space, then you probably should write a book. And I was feeling the pressure to write a book. But it didn't have a format, it didn't have kind of a narrative structure or I didn't [00:07:00] know ... Otherwise, it would just been a book of lists. And then I thought based on the success of that post, maybe I'm going to frame a book based on this. And I'm so glad I did. I'm really happy with this book, seven and a half years later. I'm surprised to say that I'm still really happy with this book. Jonathan: That's great. To have a shelf life it's that long, there's no reason it couldn't continue to grow. Nothing in it is really dated, it's completely ... Rochelle: [00:07:30] It's evergreen. Blair: Yeah. I set out to write a timeless book. And my intention for the book was I would create something that would outlive me. And so, there is nothing in it, as both of you point out, it's kind of evergreen content, there's nothing in there that will be dated. There's nothing about the design, the design looks like it was like dug up from a lock box and it could be from any time. In fact, one of the first things I did with this book, once I decided on the fact that it would be a Manifesto, is I [00:08:00] had to decide what size would it be. So I took a bunch of different books that I owned and ... I just had a sense of how the size of the book, so I took something that was the right thickness, but it was too large a format, and I cut it down. And I said, "I want the book to be this size." And this isn't the way books ... So I wrote to the size because I wanted a designer, somebody who maybe doesn't do a lot of in-depth reading, I wanted them to be able to read it on a typical plane ride; like on a two hour plane ride. I wanted [00:08:30] it to fit into a purse, into a laptop bag, on a toilet tank. And then so once I got the physical, I had the structure, this 12 proclamations Manifesto structure. And then I had the size, and then I hired a designer who when he's not doing his day job, he designs typefaces for Bibles. Jonathan: Nice. Blair: Yeah. I thought, "Well, for a creative audience, it either has to be really well designed or it has [00:09:00] to just be all about the words," and I wanted it to be all about the words. And I wanted it to be somebody who is fanatic fanatical about type. So I hired Brian Soy. His firm is called Aspire and it's not book design isn't their day job, but they do. In fact, they're just finishing up my next book, Pricing Creativity. But he's a nut about type. And I remember he came to a seminar I did in Miami Beach years ago, I remember walking down the main drag, is Ocean Drive, I forget, in Miami [00:09:30] Beach. And him just like pointing out all the art deco fonts and thinking ... in all of the hotels and buildings that we were going past. So the rest of us are in this conversation about something else and he's just going crazy over typefaces. Jonathan: Yeah. It's awesome down there for that. And it was a big success. It's how I heard about you. In fact, I know who told me about you, no, I take it back. So this is weird and this is, I think, perhaps [00:10:00] a source of some like infusion earlier, which is that I came across this as a blog post first. A friend of mine was, "Blair Enns, Blair Enns, Blair Enns." And he sent me a link to one of the, I don't remember which one it was, but it was one of the proclamations. And I was like, "Yes, yes, this is good. This guy knows what he's talking about." I didn't even realize for a long time that it was bound in any form. I was like, "Oh, this is just this free online thing," which I believe is still true. I believe people can still read [00:10:30] it online. Blair: You can read the entire book for free at WinWithoutPitching.com. Jonathan: Well, now I want the physical one. I want to feel it, put it on my toilet tank. Blair: Where it Belongs. Yes. Jonathan: So, you launched the book, and people are printing it out on their walls, I would count that as a big success. And I've seen a number of videos of you sort of giving [00:11:00] presentations, which I know came after that time because you reference the Manifesto in the talks. What was that, period? Do you do that anymore? Sounds like you're in a remote area now, so you probably don't. Blair: Yeah. No I do a lot of speaking. In fact, when my next book comes out on January 10th, I've set aside all of 2018 to just travel the world and speak in support of that book. And I didn't have, now that I'm the CEO of a training company and I don't coach or train in our program [00:11:30] anymore. I create curriculum, I work with my team, I take us into the future, I'm in charge of future value creation. I speak and I write. When I was a consultant, I wrote the book and it got me lots of invitations to speak already did pretty good on the speaking front. But it got me a lot of invitations to speak so I did a lot of lectures on the Manifesto around the world. But I was still running a consulting business. And if I'm not consulting then I'm not [00:12:00] sending invoices, and I'm not earning money. I've been fortunate in that I've always been paid well to speak. And what I get paid has increased over the years. I could probably earn a decent living just speaking if I wanted to. But the real money was in consulting. Now we're a training company and I'm not encumbered with that day to day training or operations of the business, I'm free to basically just go and speak, so that's that's a big part of it. And anybody who writes a book, what follows behind [00:12:30] that are a lot of speeches and nowadays a lot of podcasts interviews like this. Jonathan: I imagine it was tough. Well, was it a tough decision to switch from consulting to training or was it, you said you had sort of a shift in where you were living and the bonfire and whatnot. Were you excited to do that or was it scary, was it obvious? Blair: That was the scariest. I look the scariest things that you ever do, at some point soon after you look back on them and think, "Well, that was ... Why was [00:13:00] I so afraid by that?" But picking up our young family and moving to this little village in the middle of nowhere not, not really knowing how we were going to earn a living, that's how Win Without Pitching came to be, it was a necessity. I knew I wanted to kind of get out of the rat race of the city and the advertising profession at the time. Before I left, I was in a horrible job with a difficult boss, I'll say it politely, [00:13:30] and I was ruined for the advertising profession. And then, I was fired from that job, like I engineered my own dismissal, and that's another long story. I thought I would ... And I saw it all building towards a lawsuit. But as I was being relieved of my duties and handed my severance check, I thought, "I'm not going to sue you. I'm never going to see you again." After that I went to work for a really great boss and I was asked to build a satellite office. It had existed [00:14:00] but all the clients had left, to build the satellite office for another creative firm. And that was a great experience that that allowed me to fall in love with the profession again. But I had already decided we were moving to this village in the middle of nowhere, so I told the guy I was working for that I would do it for a year, a year turned into 20 months then I said I had to go. So we moved to this little village in the middle of nowhere and we had a bunch of little kids, we have four children. We had three at the time and the youngest was 6 months old. We had a fourth [00:14:30] a couple of years after moving here. So we were raising a young family and in the early days, Win Without Pitching, it was a lifestyle business. In the summers, it's a beautiful little village we live in on the shore of a 92 mile long lake, home to the largest strain of rainbow trout in the world. It's idyllic, it's as you imagine it. For years, I shared an office with a grizzly bear biologist and a bat biologist. So we really are in this beautiful little mountain village in the mile [00:15:00] of nowhere and it really was a lifestyle business in the early days. And then around 2012, my kids were at a certain age, they no longer really needed dad to be around a lot more and I was working more and more as a consultant. And in November of 2012, I found myself flat on my back with pneumonia in bed for two weeks and it was the fourth time that year that I had gotten some sort of sickness, just run down somewhere. And on three continents. So four times on three continents in one year, I just kind of run myself down as [00:15:30] I was trying to maximize this consulting model. And I had an epiphany while I was kind of recovering, I realized that my business model was trying to kill me, so I'd better kill it first. And that's what I decided to make the shift to. I decided to launch a training program. I recovered and I put together a 13 week training program, sent it out to my market, immediately sold it out. Then did another one, sold that out, did another one sold [00:16:00] that out. So that took me through to 2013. And then for 2014, I strung three programs together into an annual commitment, sold that out. And then I think by 2015 I decided that I couldn't do both. Now, I didn't come to the conclusion that a training business is better than a consulting business. Part of my journey was, I discovered value-based pricing and I realized that the way I was pricing my consulting engagements [00:16:30] and running my consulting engagements was contributing to kind of the stress on my health. I had productized my consulting services. You could do a two day session with me, which would cost X or could be like one day plus a bunch of remote consulting work. I'd package created three or four different packages and I'd put these prices on those packages. And everything I just described violates some of like my new rules of pricing. And I realized as I learned more [00:17:00] about value based pricing, I thought, "Okay. I either need to become a properly value based pricing consultant." By that I mean, I would look at every consulting engagement as a completely blank slate and dive deep into what it is that the client really wanted and how much value I could create, and then craft a really unique engagement that was specific to the client and the value in their situation and the value they were trying to create. So that every engagement would truly [00:17:30] be different and would be priced differently. If I wanted to earn the most money from those engagements, I felt like I needed to be able to say to my clients, "You know what, I'll get on a plane and I'll see the day after tomorrow." Because of where I live, it takes me a day to get anywhere. It sometimes takes me a day to get to an airport. I just couldn't do that. So I felt like if I couldn't properly value price my consulting engagements, then I really needed to go the other way and fully productize [00:18:00] my business. So that's the decision I made. I made the decision to go to a more scalable, productized service business and productized consulting business is a training company. So that's where we are today and it was really driven by the fact that I had kind of maxed out the consulting model the way I was doing it and I was a little bit limited by where I lived. And I felt strongly that I needed to go one way or the other and the easiest way for me to go [00:18:30] would be to go to scale up training company. I was talking to somebody in Austin, Texas about this the other day, somebody who is a consultant, and he was kind of trying on the idea that, well, maybe the evolution of all consulting practices is training companies. And I said, "Man, if I lived in Austin, Texas, I would be a consultant. I would not own a training company. If I had ready access to lots of different creative firms, where I could go in deep and help them more, I'm pretty sure in the short term, in the first five to six years for sure, [00:19:00] I would make way more money and have a bigger impact on a smaller number of clients." But I don't live in Austin, Texas. I live in Kaslo, British Columbia and it makes sense to build a training company. Jonathan: It sounds like, I don't know if this is just because of the compression of time, that we're compressing the timeline, but it sounds like there was a fairly high degree of certainty there based on a series of decisions that you made, particularly about moving, but it seemed like you were pretty clear on what to do, even though there was some fear. Blair: [00:19:30] Yeah I think so. I was doing a live podcast with my podcast cohost. I do a podcast called 2 Bobs. The number 2 Bobs with my friend and colleague David C. Baker, and we doing it live in London two weeks ago and in the Q&A afterwards, we were talking about how different we are from each other. He's very scientific in his approach and he said to me, he said, "You're not afraid of anything." And I thought, "Well, that's not true." But I get these ideas and I just will not be stopped. And I [00:20:00] think I've learned to lean into the fear. And if you know anything as you do about my selling approach, if there's anything uncomfortable in the sale, we teach well, lean into it, go into the dark places, embrace the awkward silence, say the things that the client won't say, the things that most people in that situation would not bring up. It's your job to bring it up. So I think I've learned that when you get these crazy ideas, lean [00:20:30] into them. As an example, I was a couple of years into both offering a training program and I was still consulting. And I was on a plane I was flying to Dallas and I, for whatever reason I decided, "This is my last. I need to pick one one or the other." I knew it was going to be training and I knew at some point it had to no longer consult. So I decided on the plane, "This is my last client." I walked into my client's office the next morning and one of the first things I said is, "I want [00:21:00] you to know this is my last client." And then I went on the plane on the way home I wrote a lengthy blog post called, I think it's called I'm Out. And I said to the world and nobody reads my blog because they want to know what I'm up to, they read it for the guidance. But every once in a while ... So I just published it for me. I wanted to make a proclamation to the world that that's it, I'm out of the consulting business. I'm not doing this anymore. Because I knew if I didn't say [00:21:30] it publicly, then I would probably start doing consulting again. So that's kind of the way I tend to operate, I come up with this idea and then I make this public declaration about what I'm going to do and then I think, "Oh crap, well, I guess I have to do it." Jonathan: Absolutely. You mentioned a couple of times Pricing Creativity, the new book. I have that thing highlighted to death. And I'm very much looking forward to talking to you about the pricing [00:22:00] details or the tools and the techniques that you talked about in there on my pricing podcast; Ditching Hourly. What appears about, in this context is what was your whole thought process about why to do this book, what your plans are for it, is this for you a 150, 200 page business card or is this something you actually want to see on bestseller lists as like an income stream. What are you thinking about there? Blair: Yeah. That's [00:22:30] a great question and I've found myself into some really great conversations about this. The Manifesto is the oversized business card. I refer to it as the Yes You Can book. I want people to read it, put it down. And as an early reader said in a review or somewhere online, he said, "I finished that book and it just makes me want to go wrestle a bear." So I use that line a lot. I want you to go feel like you can go wrestle a bear after that book. There's not a lot of how to end it. It meets a Manifesto, it's not meant to be a how to. [00:23:00] And the pricing book is a 50 ... so the Manifesto is just under 24,000 words, the pricing book is a 57,000 word manual. I wrote it as a manual, it's published as a three ring binder. There are different formats, you can get the ebook, you can get the ebook in the binder, you can get the ebook binder and four hours of video support. But I really wrote it to be like a desk reference, where you would read it once through, I hope it's enjoyable enough, that you can read [00:23:30] most of it through. And then, after that, when it comes time to put together your next proposal, price out your next proposal. I want people to reach out onto the shelf, pull it out, remind themselves of some of the rules and some of the tips, and then flip to the tool section at the back, and use those tools to actually craft their proposal. My vision is, this book will be on the desk or shelf of every creative professional in the world, who is charged with setting or negotiating [00:24:00] price. That is my vision. And I could have published it through a few different mainstream publishers. The Manifesto has generated a lot of interest for me from mainstream publishers, I could have published it that way. But it occurred to me, I'm looking at a bookshelf filled with about 25 books on pricing, and then probably another 25 on economics, most of them behavioral economics. I own all the books on pricing, and some of them have been so [00:24:30] transformative. Ron Baker has been such an positive influence on me on pricing. And the impact he's had on the professional world through his two books on pricing has been phenomenal. But I look at Ron's books and I think, "He should have made millions of dollars with these books." I know he's built a really lucrative career as a speaker, and I don't know if he does consulting or not, but as an author and a speaker, he has built a really good career. So it's not like he's not well rewarded, but I kind of value [00:25:00] conversation with the Global Creative Community without them knowing it, about the impact and value of this book. And I did some quick math and I thought, "I think I can sell between six and 10,000 copies of this book, which is a really big number given the audience and given what I'm charging for it. But I think over seven or eight years I kind of see ... Because I think it'll be bought in bulk and multiple copies from larger firms. I can see it [00:25:30] affecting the bottom line of 2,000 firms, I did the math. Okay, 2,000 firms, let's say, an average size of a million dollars, that's two billion dollars in revenue. I think and I know from anecdotal experience, that this is conservative. I think that the average firm that reads and implements this, can add at least 5% to their bottom line. If you're a million dollar firm, I fully expect that there's no reason why you can't add an extra $50,000 [00:26:00] in profit. And I've talked to Creative Principles to whom I have given pricing advice through our program, and where we just touch on it tangentially in our training program. The profit increase stories just from some of these pricing principles, are just, tenfold increase in profit, I've heard that a lot, doubled profit, tripled profit. I think adding a 5% increase that essentially represents [00:26:30] a 50% increase in most firms. Anyway, that adds up to like 100 million dollars per year, in additional profit for 2,000 smallish creative firms. If I were working as a consultant and these 2,000 firms were just one business, and I said to that business owner, "Listen, I'm pretty confident that I can add $100 million a year to your bottom line." What do you think fair compensation for me as a consultant [00:27:00] would be? The answer would be in the millions of dollars, right? Jonathan: Absolutely. Blair: But there's something about the package that is a book that says, "Well, it doesn't matter if you add hundreds of millions of dollars to the bottom line, if you sell it the traditional way, books should cost between 20 and $40, then you're only going to make so much money." Well, that's ridiculous. So, this book is not sold, it's not available on Amazon, it's only available on our website, Winwithoutpitching.com, go to Pricingcreativity.com, and you'll be redirected. [00:27:30] And it's the first pricing book in the world that is priced based on the principles in the book. When there are three different options, I'm not going to give away too much here, but it starts at $320 a copy. And then there's a $199 version. There's a $100 version. Each of those is fully guaranteed, if you buy at any level. And if it doesn't work for you for whatever reason, sent it back to us, we'll send your money back, no questions asked. So, it's fully guaranteed. [00:28:00] And I want people after they buy the book, I want them to go back to the pricing page on our website. And I want them to see after they read the book. I want them to see, how many of the pricing principles in the book that I've talked about that we actually used in the pricing of this book. I expect, based on the math that I laid out to you, I expect to earn a million dollars in this book. And I think that's fair for me as an author. If I were a consultant, I would view it as an [00:28:30] unfair price. Jonathan: Too low. Rochelle: So the million dollars, you see that coming directly from the book not from doing speeches around the book, not from doing training around the book, totally from the book? Blair: Yeah. Rochelle: That's incredible. Blair: And I had an author say to me when I was in London, he said, "You know, you don't write a book for the money." Well, sometimes you do. Jonathan: I think sometimes you do, I agree. I've written five or six books now depending on how you count it. And I've done through traditional publishers and [00:29:00] self published. And it's different. I think it's important to decide which way you're going to go before you write it. "What's this book for? Is this a business card? Am I staking out a claim to a particular aspect of authority in the world? Or is this a revenue move?" And I think there can be some overlap. There's certainly overlap in the results, but I think knowing which one you're shooting for before you start the project is pretty important. Blair: I [00:29:30] agree and I think probably too many business authors don't actually spend enough time thinking about what the goal of the book is, and therefore what the right way to publish it is or to market it. Like the purpose of this book is value creation, to create value for others, that's the purpose of it. I'm very happy with The Win Without Pitching manifest. I'm happy with the impact it has had on the global creative profession. And I can extrapolate into the future and imagine the impact that it will have with [00:30:00] the long term, and I'm very proud of that. And I have the same expectations, but in different avenue, same expectations for Pricing Creativity book. I really expect this to be the standard in the global creative firm community for many years. I don't think it's going to be timeless, as timeless as the Manifesto, but I expect it to be the standard, to be on people's shelves, and more than the Manifesto, which gets people inspired and gets them believing that there [00:30:30] is another way. This is really the here's how to take those principles and the Manifesto and turn them into real income, real profit for you and your firm. So, yeah, the oversized business card is out there, this is the thing meant to follow up on that, to drive more value creation and obviously, create value for me the author. Jonathan: I totally agree with that. I think the Manifesto was a rallying cry and Pricing Creativity is more of a [00:31:00] playbook, or it's funny that you chose the physical format that you did, because it does remind me of old time software manuals or cookbooks, or it earn and I think it also breaks the way you pointed out earlier as a sort of preconceived notion of how much a book costs. And it's like "Well, this one's a little different." You don't even have to believe the value proposition of the book necessarily, you just look at it and you're like, "Okay, this is different. This is not your regular business book." Blair: If you think of [00:31:30] the training that we sell, so we sell a term of training for anywhere between 2,000 and $15,000, depending on how it's delivered, but the content is essentially the same. And when I started writing this book, for the longest time I thought there was going to be a training program version of it. If you buy the ebook, the manual, which has the added tool section in it, and an advance review copy that you've read Jonathan, doesn't have that tool section in it, but the manual [00:32:00] has it. And then four hours of supporting video around it, you're essentially buying training, so it looks like an expensive book, but it's actually cheap training. And so, we've decided we're not at least for the next year or so, we're not building training around them, around pricing. Our training continues to be around selling, selling The Win Without Pitching Way. We also have some stuff on positioning and regeneration, but we're really a sales training organization. So, this is really deeply discounted training on pricing. [00:32:30] If you look at it that way, it's cheap. If you look at it as a book, and some people will look at it as a book and be outraged at the price, it's expensive. Rochelle: But it's this wonderful integration of the idea of a book in an online course. A lot of people are complaining about online courses now, because you're not getting enough deep content. And I like how you put both of them together here. Blair: Thank you. Even our training program we go out of the way to say it's not an online course. This is [00:33:00] coach led training in classrooms, our coaches have more than 10 years of experience of selling The Win Without Pitching Way, because they were clients of mine more than 10 years ago and have 10 years ... So, and I have nothing against online courses, they are just a lot of them out there, and if you put something into the package of an online course, the price drops. It's like an online courses now, it's now encumbered by the same kind of the limitations of the package as a book is, if you buy [00:33:30] a book on Amazon. So, we're trying to break that paradigm too. Jonathan: It's fascinating, I could talk about pricing all day of course. I think you mentioned the 25 pricing books on your bookshelf, I think I have the same because ... In Pricing Creativity, the first section, I'm not sure, I think you had a different name for it, but the first sort of region of the book is, for people who are maybe considering buying it, it is like a crash course [00:34:00] in the best books on pricing that are out there. And you sort of skim across the service and pull up things that are important to this specific kind of reader, which I think is critical because I can't think of any of the pricing books, even implementing value pricing. None of them really speak down to a tactical level to a particular kind of profession. I find when teaching people some of these, let's be honest, these are pretty abstract concepts, [00:34:30] very, very intangible and tough to believe. There are like an optical illusions almost. And when people are new to these ideas, they need someone, the first couple of times at least, they need someone to be like, "No, no, go like this." And that, go like this, whatever it is, is different from vertical to vertical or it can be. This is why, I think for the right kind of reader, someone running an ad agency for example, or creative or design [00:35:00] agency, it's very, very actionable, which I think is going to earn a place on the desk of ... Like you said, I wouldn't be surprised if this was on the desk of every creative owner across the world. Blair: Certainly, we're not going to hit everyone, but that is my intent. And again, I'm traveling in support of that and I appreciate your point of view on the book, because you've identified what I've really tried to do in that first section, which [00:35:30] is called Principles. I really I'm trying to bubble up like the best of pricing theory from most of the books. And a lot of the best pricing books are heavy in theory and a little bit difficult on the application. Ron Baker's Implementing Value Pricing, I'm much a fan of his. Not only the knowledge, I've never met Ron, but we've corresponded. He just absorbs, his capacity to absorb and synthesize information is awesome, [00:36:00] and he's also an excellent writer. I would read anything that he's written, but when I read Implementing Value Pricing, which is his second book after Pricing On Purpose or Pricing and Purpose is the theory, Implementing Value Pricing basically builds on that. You can just read his second book and skip the first one, because he does kind of a recap of all the principles. And he gets into some great stuff, even some level of detail on implementation that I don't. But it is as I read those, a friend of mine said and I talk about this in the book, he [00:36:30] said, "You should write a book on pricing." and I said, "Oh man, there are some great books on pricing, the world doesn't need another one." He said, "Well, your clients aren't going to read those books." He's right. The owners of the typical creative firms, especially people who see themselves as creative first, and kind of price or sales people, business people second, they're not going to read those books. I needed to deliver the principles in a very interesting way, not go too deep into it, and then get right to [00:37:00] do this. So, the next section is, rules, six different rules, six things you always do when you're pricing. And then the section after that is the lengthier section, it's the tips and that's meant to be specific situation, specific guidance for a specific situation. Crafting your high priced options, crafting your low price options, making the margin in the middle. Dealing with retainers, final negotiations with procurement etc, etc. I imagine people read the first two sections and then when it comes time to craft their proposal, they'll go to the back, [00:37:30] the tools section has a quick review of the rules, and then they'll flip to the section in the tools, to get the specific nugget for the thing that they're building for that one client. So, yeah, that's how I've tried to write the book, and also I come from the world of sales. The reason, I talk about this in the book, the reason value based pricing fails in most creative firms, in fact most professional firms, it breaks down at the value conversation. And that's where the theory [00:38:00] of pricing meets the actual reality of selling. I know from my own experience, you cannot become an effective pricer, if you do not at the same time work on your skills as a salesperson. The third one would be negotiating, so selling, pricing and negotiating, it's really hard to be good at pricing if you do not also tackle selling and negotiating. And that's one of the perspectives [00:38:30] that I tried to bring to the book. Jonathan: Definitely, definitely it comes through. So, we're going to hug it out here. I think it's a great book, I think people who are in this space, it's going to be worth every penny. We're running a little long on time, so what I'd like to do is, ask you what might be kind of a hard question, I know this is really big on your radar right now, but I'm wondering, what do you see beyond this? And the reason I ask is [00:39:00] because you have an amazing post, I think it's called No Exit or No Exit is in the title about, never retiring. And how that changes your focus about the business and all of that. So, I'm wondering have you had that sort of head space to even think beyond this at all, Does this still fit into that public declaration? Blair: Yeah. So the post is called A Mission With No Exit, and that's when I realized from a couple of different sources that, and just seeing in my own clients [00:39:30] what the pattern that I saw is, when you get to a certain age like 55-ish, in some principles, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little bit later, but certainly, by the time somebody is nearing 60, they quit making brave decisions in their business. And it's because they have one eye on the exit, and I realized there are few things that damage a business more than the principle of starting to kind of slowly extricate herself from the business. And I just saw this pattern over and over again, and then this is an [00:40:00] idea I first heard from Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, a coaching organization. I have been in for my own professional development and will be in again, I'm not currently in it right now. But early on in their program, they just disabuse you of this idea, that you're ever going to retire, and the rallying cry is effectively die with your boots on. So, I bought into that early on, and also the idea that you'd never sell. Like you come from the software space, and where in the design world, the design world [00:40:30] is changing so fast these days, because the worlds of design, business consulting and software engineering are all coming together. And look, we don't even have agreed on what the names for this is right, now but it's a really exciting time. But one of the things that's going on, is the design is taking a lot of its cues from tech these days, and in Silicon Valley and the tech world, you see a lot of like spinning up and exiting businesses. I' not going to try to make a moral judgment on that other than to say, [00:41:00] that does not appeal to me. But I think that I see some owners of design businesses think that the proper thing to do is like, build this business, spin it up and exit it. And a lot of sales people like to open a sales conversation with the principle of the business that they're trying to sell to, with the question, what's your exit. I think it's such an insulting question, the implication that you should have an exit. Because I think if I could take away from our listeners, those who own businesses. [00:41:30] If I could take away from you, your right to retire and your right to sell your business, I guarantee you the implications are, that you would start doing today all of the things that you've been putting off. Including things in your personal life, you would arrive at a work life balance now. You would start taking vacations now, you would make the difficult decisions around positioning your firm, about the clients that you work with, about the people that you work with, about having a strong number two in place so that you can free yourself up to do [00:42:00] the more meaningful things, both in the business and in the life. You would structure your day to day so that you're doing things that you love and you're energized by, rather than kind of wading through these undesirable things, with this crazy idea that there's some sort of payoff for all your sacrifice, that all your sacrifice now will lead to a payoff in the future. That's a dangerous idea, and I would just love to disabuse everybody of that notion. So, I talk about that in the post A Mission With No Exit. I do this talk around it's called the [00:42:30] Five Constraints. That's the first constraint, I'd say, if I could impose this on you I would. So in terms of my business, I've got visibility into years of my business, and my plan is, I have no plans to retire, I have no plans to sell, I plan to die with my boots on. I do recognize I'm 51, I do recognize that once you're 70, I don't know where the age is, where the line is, but at some point, people, the way, the advice that they're likely to [00:43:00] take from you is different. Your role needs to change as you age, I know that. But I have lots after this, so much is after this. I'm so excited about what's after launching and pushing Pricing Creativity out into the world. I could live three lives and I would never be finished with the things that I want to do in this business. Rochelle: Hear, hear. Jonathan: Amen. Well, that's a fabulous place to wrap up, I think. Where can people, where's [00:43:30] the best place for people to find out more about you online, Blair? Blair: I'm at Winwithoutpitching.com, if you go to Priceandcreativity.com, that will take you to a page on the Win Without Pitching website. I'm Blair Enns on Twitter and also LinkedIn. I don't use other social media. For years I've been saying, I'm not convinced I'm going to stay on twitter much longer. But I am on Twitter now and I'm on LinkedIn now. And you can find me at Winwithoutpitching.com, where you can learn more [00:44:00] about the books and the training program. And if you want to reach out, you can do that through the website. Rochelle: Awesome. Jonathan: Very good. Well, dear listener, that is our show for this week. We hope you join us again next week for the Business of Authority. Bye. Rochelle: Bye. Bye.