Ep 178: How Payment Plans, Start Dates, And A Paid Discovery Stack Create Steady Income | Expert Guest: Eryn Morgan

We map out a simple system solo consultants can use to stop feast-or-famine cycles: a paid discovery, a cash flow core offer, and a premium anchor that reframes value while protecting margins with clean payment plans and firm start dates. We share pricing rules of thumb, boundary language, and the calendar tactics that turn projects into predictable income.

• three-offer stack that reduces revenue volatility
• paid discovery as fit check and scope clarity
• cash flow core as productized service with payment plans
• premium luxury or speed offer for price anchoring
• reverse-engineering annual goals into start dates
• calendar-based billing and work-stops-on-failed-payment
• when to require pay in full versus plans
• aligning expenses to monthly cash flow not annual renewals
• monthly revenue targets and small pricing lifts
• tracking warm conversations and conversion rates

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Transcript

Welcome And Episode Focus

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome to Market. I'm Serena Off Block. This show is made for solo consultants who want to get booked out without burning out. If you've ever thought, I just want this to feel easier, you're not alone. Around here, we focus on simple, sustainable growth that actually fits into your life. So growth feels doable instead of overwhelming. Yes. Okay. So thank you for joining me today. Today we are talking about profit leaks and predictable cash flow when you are a solo consultant, which can be pretty freaking hard, like being able to build your business in a way that you always know what's coming in, but there are some strategies. I've racked my brain trying to figure out how to not have those highs and lows. So I'm so curious to hear about your strategies with that. Everyone's gonna be curious. Can you introduce yourself to the audience?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Sure. I'm Erin Morgan, and I'm a coach and catalytic business consultant who works with creative solopreneurs and with creative teams to really support them in smoothing out revenue as our first step in order to put the systems and structures in place that we need in order to scale and grow a company. So I I love to work with marketing teams and with creatives because my brain sort of thinks that way, but it also thinks in systems. So it's a cool merger of all of my skill sets. Yes. So very fun. Thanks for inviting me.

The Three-Offer Stack Explained

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I mean, I'm so so I'll give some context to the people who are listening. I saw you on LinkedIn and I was like, predictable cash flow. That is what you focus on. That is what you talk about. Please, please, please come on my show because that is what I hear most on sales calls. Is like, that's what's hurting me. Is I could be like rolling in dough one month and then it's dead the next month. Right. Right. So let's start from the beginning. What are some strategies, like high-level strategies that someone can put into place to be able to stop having to deal with that roller coaster?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Okay, so the first thing I always recommend is to have multiple offers. I like to have multiple ways people can work with you. And a lot of the creatives I work with will start out by creating proposals and sending over a proposal about how they're gonna work with the client. And I I eliminate that. That's like one of the very first things I eliminate with my clients. We actually do paid discovery to proposal as the way that we structure that. So we first have a paid discovery offer, then we have whatever the core offer is. I call this your cash flow core offer. This is the thing you really want people to buy. It's the most common way that you can deliver your services and meet most of your clients' needs. And then ultimately it does have the cash flow piece built in on the back end because of the way we design it. And then I'll often have them do some kind of either a luxury offer or a fast offer, some kind of an offer to put at the top of their offer stack that allows them to charge a really high number and charge a really high price. Right. So whenever I teach offers, so this is our first strategy, is get your offers in order. So we have our top offer, our high price, we have our cash flow core offer, and then we have our paid discovery offer. And using those three as core for each client, as long as we have those three things set up, we're more well positioned to create the cash flow that our businesses need us to create. Doesn't mean you couldn't have offers four and five. But what we're really looking to do is get things as standardized as we can. And so that's the first thing that I would have somebody do is to create those three offers.

Luxury Versus Fast Offers

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Okay. Love that. So I just want to on to what you said about paid discovery. So I also teach something similar, a gateway offer that you need to have a natural entry point to be able to diagnose and identify what exactly needs to happen for them to reach their goals. And then you can prescribe them what offer would make sense. So I love that. And then you have what they would naturally upgrade into, would be the next offer. And then on top of that, you have the luxury or fast offer. So please tell me what is the difference between the luxury offer, which I'm assuming it's more of a high ticket and personalized one, versus the fast offer.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yeah. So with something like that, I always come back to time quality and cost essentially or how we build offers. So with a high price top of your of your offer stack, the first purpose is that I want you to say a number that tells the person who's speaking to you on a sales call what expense it is. Whoever setting that selling container is really key. So let's imagine that it's a$10,000 offer. We'll start there. Great. So we know that the prospect who's talking with you might really want something that is super high quality, right? This is a luxury kind of offer where they may want add-ons. They may want just a different level of your time and attention. So imagining custom hand lettered fonts versus a font you buy on Creative Marketing, right? So there could be elements that really make it more bespoke, more luxury, but you could also use the concept of speed as a speed offer. So imagining your website in a day, website in a week kind of offers where the client is actually going to get the result really, really fast. Um they're gonna pay a lot, but because they want, they want the speed and that bespoke high quality element, the price goes up. So you're balancing your time, quality, and cost with all of your offers. But having that, that top level one that you say first in a sales call really helps to set the selling container and helps to guide the conversation towards your cash flow core, which is ultimately what you want. I like to say price it so that if they say yes, you'll be like, Oh my, oh my gosh, yes, yes, and don't expect to sell it.

Building The Cash Flow Core

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Yes, okay, okay, that makes sense. So it's like an intensive where they're getting a lot of your time and attention. It's and it's it's anchoring your other price. So it's like directing to that center offer. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. And you want it to be higher price than you actually need it to be in order to push people over to that middle offer, but also make it like a hell yeah, when you do actually sell that offer. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay, that makes so much sense. I love that. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about your like that middle offer. How do you identify what that should be? And is it super standardized the way like you'd think of it as a productized offer versus bespoke? Because you said, like, yeah, you cancel out proposals immediately when you start working with a client.

Reverse Engineering Money Goals

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Right, exactly. So what I try to do is try to get it to as much of a productized service as I can. And the reason that I love the option of paid discovery is that if you're on a call with somebody and what you're hearing doesn't actually match your cash flow core offer, they're either needing different things or their timelines are different. It gives you sort of an opportunity to get the first step moving with your paid discovery and then knowing that you can craft more of a proposal idea on the back end, but you're really just going to be customizing your cash flow core offer, making a couple key changes. So I like knowing that that's an option on the board because sometimes when you're on a call and they're asking for things or sharing things and you're like, I just doesn't quite fit. That's your ace in the hole. Sell your paid discovery and then you can work it out on the back end. Yeah. So our cash flow core, the first thing I want to always work back. I like to, I like to do money math, honestly. We work backwards. And love money math. Right. Let's say that on average, you charge about$5,000 for your cash flow core offer, and you know that you want to make$100,000 in a year, right? So this is pretty easy math, partly because I can do it in my head. So we know that we need to sell 20 of these over the course of the year in order to get to our 100K mark. So the first thing I'm gonna ask is my ideal client, what's their cash flow and their business most likely to look like? And depending on that target client that you like to work with, let's imagine that a$5,000 offer for payments of$1,250 kind of match for them from a cash flow perspective. They they could take that payment plan of$1,250 four months in a row. They're not gonna default on the payment, it's gonna match and align. So what I would say is, okay, well, let's make our cash flow core offer a$5,000 offer, but we're gonna sell it as four payments of$12.50. And those payments are gonna bill on a calendar day, not based on deliverables, not based on project completion timeline. It's okay, we're starting, it's the 16th of the month. So you're gonna be billed on the 16th of the month, 1250 for the next four months. It's a payment plan, not milestone payments. Exactly. Exactly. And so when we do it this way, what it helps you to see as the service provider is you can then look at your calendar and you can start to see the start dates that make sense based on your availability and your life. Maybe there are certain times where kiddos are off from school in the summer and you have some gap weeks that are just kind of a mess, and you're like, I don't want to start a project that way. Yeah. Or, you know, holidays, et cetera. So now you're looking at your calendar and you're saying, where are the 20 start dates that make sense for me to offer this cash flow core offer to prospects? And when you do that, what you're also doing is you're not stacking the work in a way that it's all of the work at the same time and then that fallout at the back end when all the projects complete at the same time. So then when you're on a call, you're saying, okay, well, I actually have a start date coming up next Tuesday. Terrific. If they want that start date, that's their start date. If that doesn't work, well, what's the next one? And so you're actually filling start dates and also creating essentially a waiting list as you're doing it. I love this. Yeah. So this is how this is like the this is a very broad and general way of describing it. But whenever we look at our money goals, if we can reverse engineer them into how many of my cash flow core do I need to sell in the course of this year in order to hit that number, well, then we're also able to relax a little bit because it's not our only offer. We have paid discovery that then would move people into cash flow core. We have paid discovery that might move them into something that is more bespoke. We also might occasionally sell our top package. And so I like to build what whenever I build an offer stack, I need to ask how many of this offer would I need to sell to hit my money goal? So let's imagine that$10,000 top level offer. Well, if you're trying to make$100,000, then over the course of the year you need to sell 10 of them. Well, if it's a speed offer, suddenly you can start to see how it would fit in around your cash flow core. You can start to build out that all of your all of your offers could potentially get you to your goal. And so it makes you much, it helps be more relaxed when you're selling them because you don't want to take it.

Start Dates And Capacity Planning

SPEAKER_01 12:36

I can absolutely see that because like let's let's make this an action. You can go through your calendar right now and color code the days that would be start days for that main offer. So you know exactly when they are, you have them in your calendar, you can look them up really quickly, and you can also announce, hey, I have an opening happening then, and that's my next one. So that will spark some interest in it. And then, like if you if and when you fill those out, everything else is a plus. The paid discovery is a plus. The bonus, like the luxury offer is a plus.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yes, exactly. And and that helps you to relax. The other really interesting thing it does when you choose those start dates and really claim them is it changes how you show your confidence level when you show up on a call because it becomes this is how I work and this is the way we do this here at our company, less of like, do you want to work with me? It has this confidence builder that is so elevating for you. So I actually had a client once. What she would do when she was on calls is she would pull up her booking calendar. She had it in a visual format. It was easy for somebody to see it on a video call, but she would literally show them and they could see all the dates that were booked. And she used it to position herself as someone who was really in demand. But there was always that was like one date that was available. Do you want it? And they could see that if they didn't say yes to it, they were gonna wait another six months to get her. And so it made good sense for them to fill in that. Yeah, that's brilliant. What booking link did she use? I'm curious. Oh, she was a super crazy, amazing builder of systems. So I think at the time she was in ClickUp, and so she had built something sophisticated for her there.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah. Yes, I love all of this. I work very similarly, and I love like my best learning moments happen when I'm like super aligned with someone, and I just see what is the one little thing that they do slightly different than me, and setting those start dates that pre-setting those start dates is something that I'm not doing now that I really am like, huh? I do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah. And it also can be a neat. I don't do it, I don't ask for a ton of numbers and data and tracking. I think they're really important. But for creatives, sometimes it's a little bit overwhelming, especially when you're just really trying to get things going and get that consistency. So, what that also will do for you when you put those start dates in is it puts you more into command of your business and it helps you to relax to know, okay, if I have two start dates coming up in the month of March, how many people do I need to talk to in order to fill those two? It's just two, right? It's basic math. And you're not trying to figure out how am I gonna book 20 clients this year. That's not the focus. The focus is how do I book my next two clients and how many people do I need to talk to in order to do that? And so it really simplifies it and makes it more of a, okay, what's my very next step, my next best step to take here, as opposed to how am I gonna solve this whole big revenue problem for the year?

Paid Discovery Pricing And Credit

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah, yeah. And that's it makes it so much easier if you just like break it down into how many warm conversations do I need to have and do like track, track ridiculously so you know what your conversion rate is. And you can eventually, as you do this for a while, you're going to know exactly how many warm conversations you need to have in order to fill those spots. Becomes easier and easier. Exactly. Okay. I want to go back one step before I go forward one step. Okay. So back one step for my gateway offers, I have a rule of thumb that I like that 10 to 25% of the cost of that core offer is a good price tag for the gateway offer because it is low cost enough that it's a why not price, but it's high enough that you're validating that they can afford that main offer. What is your rule of thumb for your paid discovery?

SPEAKER_00 16:50

I usually go with something that reduces the objection. So, for example, if I'm we're gonna stick with our 10, five stack, our core offer being five, I would probably try something in the neighborhood of 897-ish. It's kind of the internet markety price point. Yeah. I I like that number because what I will do with that number is say, and if we work together, if after this session we end up working together, then I'll apply what you paid to your to your working relationship with me, whatever that ends up looking like. I like to push the payment forward because it becomes no risk if their intention is to do that. I do the same thing. And if their intention is to take your great idea and go off and do it themselves, then at least you got paid something that you're like, well, yeah, for 90 minutes, I just made 900 bucks. That's not bad, right? So I kind of quantify it that way. Another way I'll sometimes do it is I'll make it the first payment in the cash flow core offer so it just slides right through and stays very, very even. So oh gosh, this is amazing. And depending, and this is this is very business dependent, but sometimes the thing that you actually need to start your project is an intensive anyway. So in that particular case, really all you've done is stripped that intensive out, put it at the front, had them pay for it, and then pushed it back into the pro into the project. So it's the same difference. Yeah. So those are that's usually what I'll do.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I have worked many, many different ways over the past six years of building my business, trying to figure out what really works. And I have found that doing that gateway offer first before absolutely every project has made the project go infinitely smoother because absolutely now I have well, and at least in mine, I interview all of the stakeholders involved. So I get all the information I need from them. They are heard and applied to that strategy that we're going to move forward with. And I also have just like a great understanding of what I need to say in the project itself in order to make it a well, fuck yeah, that was amazing. I'm gonna work with you again.

Fit Checks And Trust Before Commit

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Yeah, in my business, I use it as my intensive as the front end because there are people who, and this is in a in a new trust economy, there's this erosion of trust in coaches. And so what I love to do is put that at the front and say, listen, I'm gonna, it's gonna be like drinking from a fire hose when you do this intensive with me. I'm gonna give you everything I've got. And then if what you ultimately desire is support and accountability and then being able to tweak our plan and work the plan together, then you can come into a coaching relationship with me. And amazing, we've gotten a really firm, firm start and a great foundation. And if not, take all the good ideas we generate and go off and do what you want to do. And if I'm not the coach for them, then I'm not stuck in a six-month relationship where I'm working with somebody I don't like and they're not working with me if they don't trust that I'm the right person to support them. And so that's always worked really well for me as well, even in a consulting kind of relationship.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

And you make a great point that I just want to emphasize like, this is an opportunity for you both to see if you vibe and you want to work together. Uh, there has definitely been points in my business where I started working with someone like, God, this is not the vibe I want to be around all the time. But why did I have to work every single person that I work with? I'm like chatting with. I'd be I'd go have a beer with. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

If I don't have a black wire with my client, they're probably not my yeah, exactly.

Payment Plans, Boundaries, And Timelines

SPEAKER_01 20:37

It's so much better now. And it's the reason people are starting businesses like to enjoy their work and work with who they want to, work when they want to. And this allows you to find the people that you'd want to hang out with. You get to pick your coworkers. Totally. Okay. So now that we talked about that, I want to scoot on forward and talk about the cash flow element. So you talked about two specific things that I want to highlight, and then I want to know if there's anything that we haven't talked about yet. So one was payment plans. So you have like predictable income during those payment plans. And the other one is choosing the start dates. So you know when new clients are going to come in. What else do we need to know about this?

SPEAKER_00 22:33

So I think that one of the cool things about that I didn't actually say about payment plans that I that I really like is because of the way they're structured, I will always say if the payment fails, the work stops. Right. So that's one of the important things that puts a boundary in place. And it also helps to protect timelines as well. Because that I think one of the places where profit really starts to leak is when timelines run over. And so if you are in a position where you've planned out the way that your projects flow, those timelines, those start date timelines are really great for you because you can say, okay, this is a four month project. This is how the timelines go. And you can control how the work stacks, but you also know that if somebody doesn't pay, you just stop until those. Payments pick up again. So that's a kind of a protection for you. But it also then allows you to give a really clear idea from the very start of this is the timeline for our project. And because the way your start dates are structured, you can say with lots of integrity to the client, we need to stay on track. And if for whatever reason you don't think that this timeline is reasonable, let's just choose a start date that's a few more weeks out. And I can give you some pre-work on the areas where you might get stuck. So a lot of times with website projects, this will happen that people need to get their photos done. They need to schedule those photos, or they, you know, are working with a copywriter and the copy isn't ready. Well, that's fine. And what I will have you do is hold the spot with that first payment deposit and then choose your start date. And that's when the remaining payments will begin. So that's just it's it's all about trying to figure out how do I put boundaries and structure and standards around the way that I work so that it's clear up front. And I will often have people go through more detail with a with a prospect on exactly what the boundaries are so that there's fewer surprises at the end. So that's one of the things I love. I love to add.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah, that question popped into my head too, because I do know some people who do the same sort of structure as you have like the payment plans happen before the start day. Like it needs to be paid in full before the start date. Other ones, it happens during the project. And then other ones will do an extended that go beyond the project. So I was curious where you stand on that and what risks we have with each of those.

When To Require Pay In Full

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Yeah, exactly. So the ones where I like to have all the money up front is like, for example, with a photographer who's going on location to do a shoot. Before you get on the airplane or before you get in your car, you want to know they're gonna pay the bill because all of your front-loaded work is there. So I'll often suggest that they get the pay in full before something like that. The same with your discovery offer. I won't do a discovery offer if it isn't paid in full before we do it. So anywhere where you're gonna deliver that intensity of value. So that could be true also for that like top-level offer with payment plans that run beyond the term of the program or the term of the contract. I don't love it, but there are certainly I would call them to be their special circumstances. It's somebody who says, I really want to work with you, but I can't do 1250. Could we do$1,000 a month and it's five payments? I would in those cases say, Well, yeah, let's make that work. And I would make sure that before the final deliverables are turned over, that that final payment has been made. Yeah. So whatever, you know, whatever business you're in, that makes sense. If it's something where you're doing retainer work and it's sort of that there's the opportunity for you to work and not be paid for the work if the payment declines, those are the ones I love actually having the payment plans for because it just keeps everybody in integrity. The work stops if the payment fails. So I like to, I like to have the standard there. And then I like to be open to noticing what people are bringing to you most frequently as the objection. Because then the objections start to define the tweaks that we want to make. So it's not that you get on one sales call, somebody says that that the payment term doesn't work, and you just abandon it and and go try something different. It's like enough data here that we can really see what the objection is, and then we can make the the strategic shift. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

That's good to know. Is there anything else that we should be thinking about when we're looking at how to steady our cash flow?

Monthly Needs And Pricing Tweaks

SPEAKER_00 27:30

I think that the the this is like unpopular advice because everybody loves to save money. But you know how all the software companies, all these amazing softwares that we need to, you know, run our businesses are like save 35% if you pay annually or you know, you get two months free. Don't do it. Not early on when you don't have a ton of extra money sitting in the bank. I like things that are also cadenced payment plans because otherwise I had a client, this poor sweet client. She started her business, took all the advice, needed all these softwares, bought them all on annual plans. And the following year, she just got completely slammed with all her software costs hitting in April. And she hadn't been budgeting for the next year because she was lean in her in her overall projects for cash flow. She had just gotten started and devastating when she got hit with that, versus having the smoothness of the payment plans from those companies as well, in addition to her own smooth cash flow. So that's kind of I know it's unpopular because everybody's like, I'll save money.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

It's like I like payment plans too. Because you can you have a general idea of how much you're gonna make a month, but you know, those annual plans will sneak up on you during like quarterly taxes or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah, right, exactly. And a lot of people don't when you think about annual and how do I how much money do I want to make this year, it can be so overwhelming. And so I really love with payment plans and that type of thing to be able to come up with what does my monthly need actually? What how do I meet my monthly need? And that will sometimes allow you to say, well, if if four projects at this price allows me to hit my monthly cash flow goal, what would happen if I upped my pricing? So I only needed to do three projects and I would hit my goal. Yeah. It's like those little tweaks where the difference between a couple hundred dollars probably isn't that big of a difference for the prospect, but for you, it can make a huge difference. So I always like to try to get it down to what does it cost every month to run my business in my life, as opposed to looking at those great big revenue numbers, but we got to start somewhere in order to understand. And some people find it better to dream big, start with a big number and then break it down as opposed to the more granular nitty-gritty of the monthly. So we can do it either way.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah, yeah. For myself, I prefer monthly two because then I can think in terms of how many conversations do I have to have this month, right?

Sales Mindset And Simple Math

SPEAKER_00 30:06

But you're thinking of it in terms, you have a sales mindset already. The way you're approaching getting getting clients is very much a sales mindset. And so sometimes when people are getting started and they're uncomfortable with those conversations, that becomes a really good opportunity to play in the big picture world of oh, I'll just get all these clients and where are they gonna come from? So it's very sales mindset. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

That is true, and that was definitely me at the beginning. It's sales, I think it hits you over time. Like you realize sales is everything, like literally everything in life is is selling, and it's absolutely it can be a service too, because you're supporting someone and you're helping them figure out how to solve their problem.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Sales is love, baby.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yeah, it's the truth. It took me a long time to realize that. Yeah. All right. Is there anything that we miss before we wrapped up?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

No, I think this is a great conversation. Definitely some good places for people to dig in a little and do some work in their own business. Awesome. So, how can people work with you and find you online?

unknown 31:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Just go to aaronmorgan.com and there's an opportunity to have an intensive there. So that's the way I always start, right? So that's my my my gateway offer, as you call it. But if it's just somebody you'd like to get to know me first, I hang out over on LinkedIn. And so that's where most of my content is and where I you know DM and have conversations with people. So come and follow me there or send me a request and we can continue. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Where To Find Erin And CTA

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Um if this episode made things feel a little more doable. I'd love to help you take the next step with the booked out blueprint. It's a practical, low pressure session to clarify your offers, your marketing, and what actually moves the needle. You can book yours through the link in the show notes. You don't have to figure it out alone. If this episode made things go a little more doable, I'd love to help you take the next step with the booked out blueprint. It's a practical, low pressure session to clarify your offers, your marketing, and what actually moves the needle. You can book yours through the link in the show notes. You don't have to figure it out alone.