Get your business together,
Kathleen Shannon:get yourself into what you do, and see it through.
Emily Thompson:Because being boss is hard. Living work and life is messy. Making a dream job of your own isn't easy.
Kathleen Shannon:But getting paid for it, becoming known for it. And finding purpose in it is so doable. If you do the work,
Emily Thompson:being a boss, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs, from Emily Thompson and Kathleen, welcome to Episode 11 get paid like a box, brought to you by fresh books, cloud accounting. Alright,
Kathleen Shannon:so today's episode is all about getting paid like a boss. We are constantly being asked by our listeners and clients, just in general, how to get paid doing what you love, like from the specifics of how should I set my finances and how should I invoice my clients to the more emotional side of getting paid, like feeling worthy of making bank doing what you love, and then also getting around the awkwardness of talking about money. Now, we talked a lot about money in episode number two, I think, which is what to do whenever you're freaking out about money. So definitely go back and listen to that one if you can't stop freaking out about money. But today's episode, we're just going to dig in a little bit deeper. So we've got our being boss Facebook group, ripping in Warren with lots of conversation. There's so much stuff going on there. I am constantly blown away by how like engaged everyone is, I'm so excited. So even a few bosses in Oklahoma City got together and posted a selfie of themselves hanging out having a creative jam session. So it's really cool to see that online community going offline. And that's exactly what we wanted. So be sure to join our Facebook group. If you haven't already, you can find the link to that in our show notes. But one of our boss listeners wrote this in our Facebook group. She said Hi, this morning, I officially launched the spring program of my online course. And she is a ru Vedic practitioner and nutritionist. And so it's like a holistic nutrition course. She said, this is the first time I've ever offered payment plans. And some of the students still owe me. I'm really uncomfortable with this, I will not do it this way. Next time. I will not allow fear to keep me from sticking to my principles. And I will make sure auto payments are set up. No invoicing. I'm wondering though, if anyone has tips for now of getting that money from the students. Some are weak weeks late on payments and have not replied to my emails, but they're still showing up to class. And this listener, she got a lot of feedback in the Facebook group, lots of different ideas. And obviously, she's learned from the experience that Emily and I are constantly coaching clients who aren't getting paid, who are working for free, and they're just super uncomfortable talking about money and getting paid. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. So the first thing that you have to do when it comes to getting paid is really getting in the mindset of a business person. So I know that we all started or want to be or have become creative entrepreneurs because we want to live what we love. We love being creative for a living, but I think many of us forget that for a living part. And so it's kind of like whenever you decide to become a creative entrepreneur, it's not just because you love it's not just because you love your craft, it's because you want to be a business person and you want to work on your own terms. But you have to make money to pay the bills. So your business person now and whenever it comes to being boss, you have to
Emily Thompson:get paid. You do you do and and we talked about this in Episode Two a little bit. But I think it this is one of those things every time I talk about to someone about braids letters for creatives, if they've been on the list for a long time they always bring up your your email on, on energy at being money or money. Money is his energy. And how i think i think that's part of that mindset shift you have to make you know, if you are giving away your goods for free or if you're giving away your goods, yeah, if you're giving away your good goods for free, then you're just giving your energy away for free. You're literally working for nothing and no one is doing this to work for nothing. So I think if you can make yourself realize that you're not getting paid the right compensation for the end That you're expanding for someone and helps you sort of wrap your mind around the the idea of getting paid one or raising your prices do.
Kathleen Shannon:I think it's just really confusing. And I've been there too. And I'm probably still there, we all have like our upper limit, we have our ceilings that we have to burst through whenever it comes to making money and leveling up and taking it to the next level as a business person. And I think that it comes down to feeling worthy and to, and to feel like, it's okay to love what you do and make a really good living for it. And so again, just go back to episode number two, and listen to that, because we do a lot of mindset stuff in that episode around money being energy. But today, we want to talk a little bit more about the tactics like so how do you actually have these conversations with your clients? How do you let literally set up ways to accept payments? And how do you invoice your clients and split that out. And so one of the things that we do at braid, and my sister taught me this is to get comfortable talking about money, and to talk about it early and often. Never leave your potential clients guessing how much you cost. And you can only do this if you know what you want to charge. So I know that a lot of creatives will sometimes charge a client based on what they think their client can afford, for better or worse. So they think that their client has a ton of money, they might be surprises a little bit. If they think or assume that their client doesn't have any money, they'll come down quite a bit. I'm a big fan of just charging one price. And so I've even said on air before, like, okay, so as of right now, which is March 2015, we charge $6,000 for a braid method, and you could be a millionaire, and we're going to charge you $6,000. Or you could have $6,000 to your name. And we want all of it if you hire us. So that's what it comes down to. And what it does is it takes the question out of Okay, how much should I charge this person, it takes the assumptions out of the conversation. And we can just say, this is what we charge if you can't afford it. We have lots of free stuff. We have a podcast, we have newsletters, we have blog posts, that will serve you well. So I'm all about giving it all away for free or giving a lot of our gifts and knowledge away for free. But whenever it comes to that one on one time, and really getting the goods that we deliver, it's going to cost you and this is exactly how much it's going to cost. Yeah, I agree.
Emily Thompson:I think I think another thing to think about whenever learning how to get paid, like a boss is learning how to sell like a boss, I think that is a is a really big one, some people just don't have like, the natural ability to sell themselves for what they're worth. So, you know, I talked to I talked to designers especially are really bad about this, about you know, doing a project for like the same logo design project for like 100 bucks, or even less sometimes, which I think is is okay, if that's the level that you're at, but you need to grow past that. And usually the missing piece of that is the ability to sell. And because the idea of telling someone 1500 literally leaves you with like a lump in your throat, you're unable to say those words. And one thing that I've done in my business is I invested in, in learning how to sell because I was selling, I was selling my, my project for you know, I at the time about 5000 I guess. And I knew that for me to make the kind of money that I wanted to make to survive, I needed to sell a lot more, and either a lot more projects, or charge a lot more for the projects that I did do. And so for me learning something like like selling and making that like a routine in my business. So if I get a new contact late kicks in the sales routine that I do over and over again, for me learning how to sell is huge.
Kathleen Shannon:It's gonna be a whole nother podcast, or podcast episode and you um, you have a sales coach, and I even going to try and bring her on as a guest right?
Emily Thompson:I hope so. I hope so her name is Kendrick shope. And she does. She does group coaching and she does some one on one coaching as well. And I've done both I did her sales coaching and it changed how I got paid in my business and changed how confident I was in like asking for the money. And it's
Kathleen Shannon:like one big key takeaway that you learn from her that that resulted in getting paid
Emily Thompson:more for Follow up, like, like the importance of like learning how to follow up with people and whether that be trying people you're trying to sell in the beginning, or people who owe you money in the middle. So like learning how to write emails that don't come across as skeezy, but comes across as like, I am a human trying to get paid by another human you who, you know, owes me something, or is going to be trading energy for money. So for me learning how to learn how to do sales, and really how to how to send really great follow up emails, and I agree we should do several, I think podcasts I mean,
Kathleen Shannon:talking about money and selling and all that stuff. We have many future episodes of being boss. So yeah, jamming on that some more. Okay, so let's talk about a few tactics and to do's and sit like right now is tax season. Have you done your taxes for the year yet? Emily,
Emily Thompson:David, David has everything due to our accountant by the end of the month. So you're hitting close we are we are I know, I he told me that the other day, and I wanted to be like, should we talk about this, but I trust them, we have, one of the things that we've done to make sure that we get paid is to have much more of the financial side of our business more legit, like something about making the money side of your business, as legitimate as like hiring an accountant makes you want to continuously follow up and like make sure that you're getting money from people who owe you, it just sort of puts this whole energy around the money in your business that that it makes you do the actions required to get paid.
Kathleen Shannon:I've learned that like hiring an accountant is not nearly as expensive as you think it might be. And whenever I first started braid, I actually hired a lawyer to draft up the partnership agreement between me and my sister, which was fairly easy because it was just 5050. And she's my sister, and I totally trust her. But and I think that accountants know a whole lot about setting up your business, like whether or not you want to set up an LLC, or an S corp, I think is another one DBA which is doing business as So right now, braid is an LLC, and I don't even really know what that means. But you can hire an accountant to help you set up your business if you haven't done that already. And they'll make you legitimate with the state that you live in. And it might be different. If you're listening to this from another country. It might be different in Canada, or Australia, or wherever you're listening from how that might work for you. But, um, accountants know a lot I've learned whenever it comes to tax law and all of that. And our accountant helped us set up where we pay quarterly taxes. So we're not at the end of the year with the big bill.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, we do the same thing. And that's another really great thing about having an accountant is, is having someone to remind you to pay those things, or to like pay them for you. I know, when I am like hacking away at a web design project. The last thing that I am thinking about is my quarterly taxes.
Kathleen Shannon:Okay, so taxes are an important thing. Like you have to pay them. We're in our tax tax Hill right now. It's not that bad. I I feel so bad every time you get riled up about taxes because you do get robbed.
Emily Thompson:Every year we've been friends, I have to have like a tax conversation with you.
Kathleen Shannon:I mean, okay, so this time last year, I just put out here I had to pay$20,000 to the taxman like in April because it was my yearly income taxes. We just didn't put enough in quarterly and it just adds up. And then we had to turn around and pay our quarterly taxes and I was like, what's the point of owning a business if I have to pay it all to the taxman and my husband is very liberal and he was like Kathleen, you know those taxes go to good places and you have to pay them and he's like, you sound like a little libertarian right now. I shouldn't get into politics because you know, every Everyone has different
Emily Thompson:Oh, we'll get email Yes, I
Kathleen Shannon:know do that. Yeah, maybe edit this out. Anyway. I do get riled up like I think that there should be more tax cuts for us. Little creative entrepreneurs just trying to make our way.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, let's put that into the in a universe so being boss is getting is getting big enough, hopefully, maybe soon. Obama. Yeah. Or whoever is listening to this right now, um, as creative entrepreneurs are having a hard time. But I think that we should also bring that back to the point that we don't let taxes stop us, or the fear of how the financial side of business work. Keep us from like, doing what we do. I think is important like 20,000, I probably would have quit
Kathleen Shannon:like, five, right? Well, the deal is that you know, spread out over quarterlies, it's really not that bad it is, it's a lot, but you just have to adjust for it and save for it just like anything else. So that's another thing, actually, that I want to talk about that is a good habit and routine for creative entrepreneurs is always paying yourself first. And so we always make our taxes or else we'd wind up in jail, right. And so we pay taxes, we don't want to be audited. But then there's also saving money for yourself and your personal finances, and then maybe even investing in a 401k, which is, I knew the last thing a lot of my creative entrepreneur friends are thinking about. And a lot of creatives I know, like they want to work a day job because of the benefits, well, you can create your own benefits. And maybe this is an entire other podcast episode. But I just a lot of my clients I work with, they feel broke. And it's because they're literally not moving money from their business account, to their personal account. And so one of the things that we do at braid creative is, Tara writes us a paycheck every two weeks, you know, she's paying our employees and she's paying us. And we make the same amount every time. And, you know, when we first started braid, I was in charge of the finances and like one week, we would get like a huge paycheck, like $6,000 paycheck. And then the next week, it was like, Okay, I can only afford to pay us $50 this time. So Tara took over the finances and was able to really see how much made sense to pay. So we get paid the same amount. So it feels like I'm getting paid a salary. And we're automatically putting money into savings so that we can pay those quarterly taxes without feeling like it's coming out of our personal bank account. So make sure that you're actually paying yourself and that you're moving money from your business account to your personal account,
Unknown:which getting paid
Emily Thompson:like a boss doesn't matter. If you're not paying yourself like a boss.
Kathleen Shannon:Like along with hiring an accountant, you'll probably want to set up a business checking account, that's a good thing to do. Just that everything's like clean and separate. And you can reconcile a little more easily.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, that's a huge thing. I mean, I have I have ran multiple businesses in my life. And luckily, luckily for me, like that was always one of the things that just happened. Like even that tanning salon. Remember when I write
Unknown:your tanning salon,
Emily Thompson:yeah, that, um, even that had, it's like I was 18. And I had my own banking account for that. Um, so it always really freaks me out whenever whenever I talk to a business owner, and especially if it's like a business owner has been in business for a while, who hasn't separated those expenses yet, like that's one of those like, being a boss 101 separate your business accounts that way, whenever it does come to getting paid, you're not you're not swashing it around and freaking out the IRS.
Kathleen Shannon:This is another thing too, is that I know a lot of business owners like to work in trade or in cash, so they don't have to pay taxes on that money, which like I totally get, like this time last year, I was wanting to, you know, move into the mountains and get off the grid and never pay the tax man ever again. But it's just the cost of business and you have to do it. And I think that whenever you track your finances, like you open yourself up energetically hear me get a little woowoo but I think you open yourself up to making more. And so um, yeah, track your money. Yeah, I
Emily Thompson:agree with that one at a time. That's something okay, I do that in the studio. So I'm for four years and I have the papers to prove it every time money comes in, like we get it via email, or I get a notification email that I've been paid for something because we do everything as much as possible online. Because it's good to like see your money that way as a business owner. So every time I get an email in I get out my little like income tracker and I write it down. And it's this is not an official tracking thing like David does the official side of it, but this is for me and I think that that tracking that money, it helps me see you when like when someone should be paying me it really allows me to stay on top of money coming in and out of the studio. And that's just it's another one of those like being Baltimore one is track the money that comes in and even if it's a cheque or cash or whatever, like write it down, see where it's coming from. If you have payment plans, like map it out, like know when you should be following up with someone. If they're late or at least getting getting close to time you have to invoice them. tracking that money that comes in is so important for making money
Kathleen Shannon:and having it come in Okay, so we do it two ways. upgrade. And so we use fresh books, but then for tracking our income and expenses, and then I think that Tara also keeps, like just a little text file on her computer that shows how much we've been paying ourselves how much we've been paying taxes, how much we've been paying our employees, just to keep like a little quick cheat sheet on it. Right. But fresh books, this is a good time to talk about them. So Emily and I were talking about how to monetize this podcast and we were feeling so this is could be a whole nother episode, monetizing your blog or your podcast. Yeah. How do you feel about sponsors? And she's like, Emily, I'm talking to you right now.
Unknown:What was that? Like?
Kathleen Shannon:Here's what you were like, okay, but it's gonna have to be a damn good partnership. Like, I'm just not gonna sell out to anyone. And so I was like, yeah, maybe if it was like Adobe Business Catalyst, which is what you build websites in and what I have, what you've built my website in, or even someone like freshbooks, and I said, that would be perfect, because it's someone that we actually believe in and use. And so funny enough talk about manifesting freshbooks emailed us and they were like, hey, we've been listening your podcast. Have you guys thought about sponsorships? Really? Like? Yeah, let's talk. So we talk. So freshbooks is now a sponsor?
Unknown:Here's the thing.
Kathleen Shannon:I don't know how to do this. Okay, I know, I know. We all right guys that out. Okay, so freshbooks is now a sponsor, and freshbooks is the easy to use invoicing software designed to help creative entrepreneurs get organized, save time invoicing, and get paid faster. Now, that's like the official thing that I have to say, but, but really kind of off the record, which is on the record, I think of freshbooks as my personal accountant. And freshbooks is something that I use and love. And I first started using freshbooks, about four years ago, whenever I was still only freelancing as a solopreneur. And I remember I tried it for there, I sign up for their free trial. And I think I got three clients. Like you can have three clients in the free trial. And so I kept on deleting old clients and creating new ones, because I didn't want to pay like the 20 bucks a month. Yep, I did that. But I knew that I needed to track my income. And I knew that I needed to track my expenses. And that's like, all I knew. And I looked at different accounting software, but freshbooks really felt the most intuitive and the easiest. And we've continued using fresh books at braid. And as our business grows, I realize how actually legit and robust freshbooks as software is, and it continues to accommodate our needs as we grow. So right now we really use fresh books to track our income and track our expenses. We use it to invoice our clients. And we've just started using it to collect and process our payments. And one of the things that my sister loves the most about freshbooks is looking at their little dashboard. So every time and she'll even like catch me up and say, okay, Kathleen, come look at this. Here's where we're at money wise, and I've gone way over the obligated 60 seconds. And that's because like I actually use fresh books to track so this is legit. me telling you how we use this to get paid in our business. Anyway, freshbooks is sponsoring us for at least the next two months. So I'll be sharing with you guys more details on how freshbooks works and how you can use freshbooks to level up your business.
Emily Thompson:I do use it too.
Kathleen Shannon:You use it a little differently though, right do you use it? Yeah, time what well, we
Emily Thompson:do it for a contract people.
Unknown:Oh, like Alright, we'll save that we'll talk about Yeah,
Emily Thompson:we will we're saving we got more stories guys
Kathleen Shannon:to talk about. So okay, you guys can try fresh books for free today. You get a free trial. If you go to freshbooks comm slash being boss, and enter being boss into the How did you hear about us section. And they'll give you a free trial and you can delete your three clients, if you want to keep doing it for free, but I think it's totally worth the monthly expense to really feel legit as a business. Alright, so back to everything else though, we'll still be talking about how to use fresh books to track our finances because that's what this episode is all about. So let's talk about a few more like how we do it. tactics. Right. And so like one of the things that I want to hear about is like how you do fee structures and invoicing like this is something creators are always talking about like do you accept the deposit or email? How do you get paid so Let's talk about that.
Emily Thompson:Sure, I would love to talk about stuff that I, that I, that I preach to my clients constantly but in a good way, and they hear me and it works in it. Correct. So one of the things that I think is most important whenever whenever being a creative entrepreneur and your your livelihood, depending on this thing that you do every day, mostly alone, is to break up your your payments into some sort of sustainable income. So one of the things that we've done is taking big, big web design projects and divide them into like monthly monthly payments, things like that, the more that you can sort of stretch that income out. Um, I think the better
Kathleen Shannon:in a lot of suits you invoice every month, or do you get their credit card on file and just run the payment? How do you do it,
Unknown:both the more
Emily Thompson:in the morning, creative entrepreneur can use auto debiting. I think the better it takes out so much management, if you want to get into like the importance of having a website that does this stuff for you. This is it because an auto debiting system will save you so much time and money. So the way we structure, our nd boom projects, you make a first payment. And then it's set up so that once your project starts where you're billed on the first of every month of your project for you know, the next five, because it's a six month deal. And as a business owner, like it's great for my clients, because they know they're going to have this this payment every time it's smaller chunks. As a business as someone who's running it. That means I know how much money I'm going to make for the next six months. And that is a rare and beautiful thing. When you're agreeing. Okay, can
Kathleen Shannon:I play devil's advocate here?
Unknown:Yes.
Kathleen Shannon:All right. So I like that idea if you have a six month engagement of breaking up the payment over six months, because I think it kind of almost allows you to and for some reason you need to get out of the contract, you still got paid for the work done. Yes. But at the same time, like let's say it's a project and you're waiting until the end to get you know, bulk of your money, right? Essentially, you are bankrolling your client. And so I wonder Emily, if you've ever thought about since over six months, and you can they can pay, let's just say $1,000 a month, I know that you're more expensive than that, but just for the sake of ease, right? But if you're going to like break it out for them, you know, and like bankroll them, like, what if it's 11 $100? If they pay monthly? Or they get a discount if they pay all upfront? Like Have you thought about doing that? What do you or what do you think about that?
Emily Thompson:I think it's a great model. I there's nothing wrong with getting paid up front ever. Like if you can ever, like ever get that all paid up front. I think that's that's really important. But I think the trick is to never have you bankrolling a project. That's where that's where creative sort of stabbing themselves in the foot is, is if you find yourself in a position where where you are bankrolling and something goes wrong. I talked to especially like web designers and graphic designers, they tend to have the worst time with this is, is the it's usually 5050 payment plans, because that's like industry norm, and they get paid half to start. And then something happens like towards the end of a project and they never get that last payment. And they just worked for three weeks for free.
Kathleen Shannon:I so I've heard before, like web designers who have built out the entire site, and then the client changes their mind like about their whole business. They're like, Oh, yeah, I'm not gonna do that business anymore. So I don't need this website. Okay, just because the client does change their mind, it doesn't mean that you didn't do the work. So you still deserve that money for the work that you did.
Emily Thompson:You do. And I think the trick here I think the trick was something like that is setting up expectations like super clearly. Yeah,
Unknown:beginning before
Emily Thompson:anything, which which really, when it comes to getting paid when it comes to like living a happy business. It's all about setting expectations and being so clear about what you expect from the people that you work with. That there can be no question. Amen.
Unknown:Amen. Okay, so
Kathleen Shannon:can I talk about expectations and contracts and stuff for a second absolutely go for I just had a conversation with one of my clients about setting up contracts yesterday, because she's wanting to just feel more boss in her business and make it legit and finds herself working for free under the guise of like, calling it an internship and wanting experience. Anyway, I told her, you need to write a contract like right what a standard contract would be. And again, I think this comes to, I'm making clear expectations. So one of the things that I've done is, whenever I first started braid, I had this super legal contract. In fact, one of our first clients was a lawyer. He looked like it Here's the guy from Annie, like the daddy, daddy warbucks. Daddy warbucks he looked like daddy warbucks. And he made me cry on the phone just in the contract phase where I was like, Okay, let me send over a contract. I think I downloaded it from, like a website made for creatives. Like it was a creative contract, but it was still legal enough, but he was a lawyer. So he just ripped it apart, made me cry, and he's like, I'm gonna do you a favor and fix your contract for you. So he actually really did make it legit, like, really tight contract. So I was using that for the next year. And one day, I looked at it. And I think I had just worked with another web developer who's developing out a site for one of our clients. And I read her contract. And it was just super plain speak. And she even explained at the beginning of our contract, she was like, Listen, I make this plain speak, because I don't plan on going to court with you. This is literally in our contract. So really, I want you to be able to use this contract to understand what you're paying me for, what I'm providing you with, how much it's going to cost and what the timeline is. And I was like, holy, I love that. Awesome. So I decided to do that with non contracts, right? I just kind of deleted everything, and instead, wrote it from scratch by saying, okay, here's what you are hiring us for. You are hiring us for branding and business visioning. What that includes is your logo, your positioning statement, some sales slides, about me copy how to hire me copy your process defined, you know, and then it's designed out and use explaining exactly what they get. And then I say, Okay, here's the timeline, we're going to have our first meeting on this date. At this time, we're going to have our second meeting on this date. At this time, you will pay me this much money. And here's when you can expect to pay me and I put the dates on the contract. And so just super plain speak, I outline the roles, like I'm going to be designing your project and facilitating the conversation. Tara and Liz will be writing your project. And they'll be in on the meetings too. And so just really getting say what you mean, outline of Okay, here's how it's going to go down. And it not only makes it clear for your client, it makes it clear for you so that lines are never blurred. You're never like, wait, now, what am I doing? Or if there's scope creep, which especially happens in web projects, I'm sure that you've experienced that Emily, wherever, Tom. Right. So I know that that's even why you started indie boom, so that you can really outline the scope of the project from start to finish, here's what you get.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, well, it's all about just clear expectations. Like the longer I'm in this business, and like when it comes to dealing with people, and whether that's clients who you should be paying you. Or if it's you know, business partners, or vendors or contractors that you're working with, if you want to get paid or pay others, which is ideal as well. It's all about setting those clear expectations. So one of the things that that we do for indie boom, and like I begin this in those cell slides, that I've talked about a couple of times is they set very clear expectations of you know, in the boom of six months, it includes these things, it is this much a month, and it will be paid on these days. And you really do have to really play and speak to, I think, outline it so that people know exactly what they're getting, you know exactly what you're doing for them to get it.
Kathleen Shannon:And then as much as you can get it into bullet points.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yes, make it scannable. I mean, they should be reading it, but you can't scan a contract. I mean, like you, oh, I we have a contract and we do it. But ours is both. So the way we're doing our indie booms. The contracts for that is we have a plain speak first page that's like, here are the things that you're getting. And then and then there's the contract piece. So like if anyone does ever come after you got I hope never happens. Um,
Kathleen Shannon:I would love to take my contract to court and it's like one of my contracts even says, treat this meeting like a date with Ryan Gosling. Like you've got to show up don't cancel and I can just imagine a judge reading that in court and being like, I know you kidding me? I daddy warbucks making me cry again.
Emily Thompson:It's because you put Ryan Gosling in it. Um, so no, I think I think that it's just clear expectations. Like if you want to get paid, it's about telling people exactly how and when to pay you. And then you doing the work that that makes them want to pay you because I think that's key too.
Kathleen Shannon:I also So like what you said about taking the contract, and we do sales sites too. And that's what we create for our clients, even our sales life and like using the structure of how you like what you do to get paid, and then using it as a tool to sell by just simply explaining it. Yeah, that's all it is, and say yes. But I think there's so many creative entrepreneurs are confused about what it is that they do. And that's what creates confusion in their customer. And that's why customers don't buy.
Emily Thompson:Right, it is well, and I think so I think that's just the journey, like it like we can really just get like, a little little crazy on it. I think it's just the journey, I think you start, you start with this idea of what you want to do. And once you sell it a couple of times and do it, you start tweaking it and perfecting it until you you create this offering that really kind of sells itself because you know what you're selling, there's clarity around what you're selling, who you're selling it to why they care, because that's it, that's a big thing, like why do they care that you're selling this thing? And how is it going to benefit them because that's just that right there is like the anatomy of sales, like Kendrick would be so proud of me right now. But But as you grow, you find clarity in those in those pieces of the puzzle. And once you find the clarity, then you can set expectations around those like clear points and bullet points, like good sales comes in bullet points.
Kathleen Shannon:And I think that having something to sell and packaging your offering in a way that people can buy it is what makes you sound self employed versus unemployed. So it's not saying I will do anything, I can do anything, I will do anything to get paid. Because that's not what bosses do know. Exactly. Like bosses say, here's what I can offer. Here's what I'm best at. And here's how much it costs. Yeah, it's really as easy as that. And so if right now you offer a few different things in your business, like let's say you offer an interior design, like create a package around it. So maybe you have the living room package or it can be fun. And also I would be curious to hear what your sales coach has to say about this but having tiered offerings, so having more than one thing that people can buy and having something at like a high price point, a mid price point and a low price point. Yeah, I pretty much have my braid method, which is probably the high price point. And then creative coaching which is actually really the same price point it's just a shortened engagement so it doesn't cost as much and then free or no I got free because I have the E courses and digital products that are super cheap compared to our one on one stuff. Yeah, so and I think that you have tiered stuff to Emily like your indie boom is like just one when it's premium coaching and then you have your digital products to
Emily Thompson:I do well so well that's just called like a sales funnel. It's It's It's funneling people. Have you heard
Unknown:of a seat now? I see. I don't even know this stuff.
Emily Thompson:Okay, so yeah, you're funny, and I didn't even learn this from my sales coach. I already knew this. So um, so it's got a sales funnel and the idea of like, you know, funneling people into your like, premier service or your high price service. So you start with with something low price, which for you, it's your DIY coaching. Which yours is $40 at the moment or six weeks of emails. I have something similar and in how much is yours? 3039 I'm under selling you
Unknown:by $1 like I should make mine $39
Emily Thompson:you want to maybe 3999 you guys are getting like some good.
Kathleen Shannon:Kathleen Emily behind the scenes. This is how she Yeah, this is how she consults me.
Emily Thompson:It is it is so okay, what regard Okay, regardless, regardless, you have the sales funnel. And so you start with a low price item that people can buy into easily so so like really great, like, tier one sales funnel is things like an E book like a quick cheap buy in
Kathleen Shannon:or wouldn't even be like free like the free thing like
Emily Thompson:oh, that could that could really be like we were the bundling the sales like top I guess that'd be the top or the top.
Unknown:Oh, right. Yeah, if you imagine a funnel,
Emily Thompson:yes, it goes down. So the top the big one is your free content like that's what's drawing people in and then you have like your your really cheap engagements or your inexpensive excuse me inexpensive engagements, which is something like an automated service. So our E courses, people buy that we don't do anything. It's all automated, or an E book that goes out digitally. Or, I don't know maybe like this one off e courses where it's just like take yourself through things. So sales funnel number one or guest two if you count the free stuff and then you have your higher engagement so that may be group coaching. Or it may be like a one on one consultation like a one off sort of thing. So something that's, I don't know, maybe two 300 bucks, maybe a little bit more somewhere that's a little little more mid priced. And then you just like you bring your funnel in from there. And the idea is that you're going to capture a lot of people. And it's going to funnel down to just the few who will buy into your really expensive engagement, or your more expensive engagement. So for you guys, that's the braid method. And that's exactly how it happens. People come in because of your blog, and they buy into an ecourse. And then maybe they get DIY coach. Okay, this
Kathleen Shannon:is all coming together for me, because you're on my e courses. I remember one day, my sister ran the numbers and our E courses only made up a certain percentage of our budget, like a small percentage or of our income. Right? And, and I was really embarrassed because it's where I spend a lot of my time and energy is in promoting those. And you Emily, you were like, okay, you need to set up your emails. So that it invites people to engage now with the stuff that is your bread and butter and really ask you money. And so I change my emails after someone takes our E course. I then invite them if they want to learn more about working together one on one, and we have captured a few people. Yeah, I like to say, Sure,
Emily Thompson:like you capture them,
Kathleen Shannon:but not even like they they took our E course and they're like, Okay, you guys would be a great fit, I want more, I want to work one on one. And it's really cool whenever they work with us after t or E course because we already speak the same language and they already understand our philosophy. So that's a great way for our listeners, like if you want people to if you want to get some dream customers. Yeah, like let them
Emily Thompson:like let them funnel through
Kathleen Shannon:them. It's really not like, um, and I guess now when I hear the word like sales funnel, it sounds so businessy. But it's really not it's really about. It's really smart. Kind of like last week, we were talking about personal branding and your personal brand, being the outer layer. It's like a sales funnel is like the outer layer of how you sell. Yeah, that's what your gifts of knowledge and bringing them in. I like it. Good.
Emily Thompson:I mean, honey, I've been like button you guys up for years. I know. I'm just,
Kathleen Shannon:I like butter up and throw us in the oven.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah. So so that's what it is. I think I think that if you want to make it really easy for people to sell, you have to start proving yourself like little bits at a time. And so that's you know, doing something free like a blog or newsletter and like gaining that trust. And it's like constantly gaining enough trust to launch something that's a little more expensive. Until someday you have $12,000 one on one engagements, or you have you know, group offerings that reaches 10,000 people or something crazy like that, you just you have to start your sales funnel. And people start filtering, filtering themselves through. And I think that's a really great point to make about the dream customers. Because as people will go through your sales, cut your sales funnel, they'll become more and more aware of who you are, and whether or not you're exactly the kind of person they want to work with. And so the people that you end up with those no more expensive or high price one on one engagements are the people who are really there because they trust you. And those engagements are the absolute dream. Yes. Yeah. So if you do it, right, it's all so happy.
Kathleen Shannon:And you get paid and then you hit pay and they want to pay you. Yeah, so this is another thing. I think I brought it up in episode number two, but the professional thing to do is to let your clients know how much you cost. Yes, and it they want to pay you and so if you're awkward about money is only going to make them feel awkward about paying you so just keep it really neutral. Money is only as weird as you make it. Just get really comfortable talking about it.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, it is it's it is about getting getting comfortable talking about it one of will and I think I may have mentioned this in the last episode, maybe not but so myself coach, one of the things that she always says is that um I lost my thought What does she always say? Getting Oh, she she always says that you should never assume anyone else's stand on money. So the idea that if someone comes to you you're talking earlier about about pricing someone like based on who you think they are. You don't know who they are, you have no idea who they are and you have no idea the money situation or their access to money is simply what you think so I think that's another big thing. A big lesson for for getting paid is don't think you know anyone's money situation.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, and people are far more happy to pay for things that they know, is an investment in their time and money. I mean, I know for me, I love I love spending money on things that I know are going to make me a better business person. Or Yeah,
Emily Thompson:yeah. Buying clarity sell yourself get paid.
Kathleen Shannon:Just like this is maybe maybe this episode is just the permission that you need to feel good about money and to feel good about asking for money. And if you have an awkward conversation or if you're in the middle of it, it doesn't have to be this like Angry defensive, like pay me kind of thing is just the okay. And now this cost this
Emily Thompson:Yeah, it's just a part of it. It's just a part of business is you have to talk money, you have to pay money, and you have to ask for money. Like, just write an email, right? Write a neutral email and ask for what you're owed.
Kathleen Shannon:What do you think it's a good way to practice talking about money? Like, do you think it's good to practice talking about money with your creative entrepreneur friends? Or like, yeah, your spouse, or
Emily Thompson:it is anyone, anyone I make my clients talk to me. So I do like coaching for creatives we both do. But part of part of my like, get your business shit together is you're gonna talk about money I'm gonna make you. And so I'll ask them, you know, how much am I did you make last year? And how much money do you want to make this year? And how much does an engagement cost? And I can always tell like, how hard I'm going to have to work with someone around money, depending on how easily they answer those questions. But it is just about finding someone and maybe it's a coach, like, maybe you need a coach to help you like force you to talk about money. Or maybe it is about finding like a creative colleague who you can sort of discuss, you know, when grand camaraderie about money or whatever that may be finding someone.
Kathleen Shannon:And it's even like the way that we were just talking about our products have minus $40. And yours is 39. And just talking about it, yeah. Okay, wait, she might be 39 or even. Because we do both offer coaching for creatives and launch and being boss together. I think that you your engagement is a little bit different than mine, but they're similar in cost. And size. Like me, I need to raise my prices to match yours, just so that it's like even Steven and people aren't hiring US based on who cost more or less, but they're really hiring US based on who's the who we are for what they need. So it's just funny,
Unknown:talk about it, just talk about money. Talk about it.
Kathleen Shannon:And again, I think that especially women need to talk about money. Can we talk about this for a second? Because I think it might be a little bit of a feminist issue. Because like would you ever hear a couple of guys having a podcast about like, you know, it's not awkward money is only as weird as you make it like I never heard it dude, entrepreneur feel uncomfortable saying okay, this is how much it costs for web development.
Emily Thompson:I think on the business side of things, yes. Well, no book book business brilliant by Louis Schiff is one of my favorite favorite isn't that book it? That is a good book. Now. I think it might have centralism by like George McCown or something, I will let you know which book it is. Both of those are really great books. But one of them talks about how the reason why there is a or one of the reasons do not attack me for saying this. But one of the reasons that women get paid less is because of women. A lot of women don't ask for less, or they don't ask for more. Is is the issue there is that men ask for raises every year and women if they do, they're asking for less than the men that a man would. So like that's just like a whole psyche thing. But on the on the idea of a couple of guys getting together talking about money. I don't think I've ever seen any of them outside of business. Like Think about that. You ever seen just two dudes like sitting around like talking about money like you and I do?
Kathleen Shannon:I mean, I don't have a lot of guy friends. Well, I
Emily Thompson:do and I don't think I've
Unknown:ever they don't they don't know about money. No, I
Emily Thompson:think it's like, I think it's an epidemic thing.
Kathleen Shannon:I think it might also send me if it's not just like a feminist issue, but maybe it is like an industry issue and creative. Yes. in general. guys and gals aren't talking enough about money. So maybe that's what needs to happen to Yeah, creatives
Emily Thompson:talk about money. Like let's all be paid. And like, there's this big thing right now. I was listening to inc podcast this morning. And they were talking about how every day 200,000 women start businesses. Whoa, like pause that guy's Emily here for an edit that supposed to be 200,000 a month?
Kathleen Shannon:Is that just in the States or across the world? Or? Um,
Emily Thompson:I don't know. I guess I should know that stat better if I'm going to say it out loud. But they should have to. But yeah, I mean, just the idea that like there are so many people doing this, we're making a massive impact in our economy. A massive impact like entrepreneurship right now is like one of the biggest growing sectors if not the biggest, I don't know I need to get I'm not gonna do stats anymore, regardless, is huge. But it all comes from being comfortable talking about money because we're not going to make the impact that we want. On our lives or any sort of grander economy, if we don't get comfortable talking about now,
Kathleen Shannon:and I think it's remembering that the more money you make, the more good you can do with your work, the more reach you will have and the more impact you will have. So it's not a bad thing. There are upsides to make a lot of money,
Emily Thompson:or not even making a lot of money just getting paid what you should be getting making
Unknown:enough money. I
Kathleen Shannon:mean, I think that Emily, if you and I weren't making enough money to feel comfortable, we would have a hard time doing this podcast, because we would be too busy hustling, we wouldn't have time to devote to a passion project like
Emily Thompson:this, right? So yeah, it allows you to do, asking what you want to get paid allows you to do greater things. I mean, it's, it's a good thing for everyone, even if it's a hard email you have to write.
Kathleen Shannon:Get Paid, just with getting looking at your numbers. And again, there are tools for getting your numbers on paper. So use those use those things to your advantage, whether it's a text file or notebook like Emily's got or freshbooks or whatever kind of accounting software you want to use, like, crunch those numbers. And again, listen to episode number two, we'll be sure to include a link to that one in the show notes. And we'll include links to all the other stuff in the show notes. I think that we're running out of time. Yeah. All right. We'll see you on Friday for our minisode I hope that you guys have been enjoying those. And thank you for listening to being boss, from Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon. Find our Show Notes for this episode at loving Bossa calm. Listen to past episodes and subscribe to new episodes on our website and iTunes, on SoundCloud, and now we're on Stitcher. If you like our podcast show us love by reviewing being boss on any of those platforms, and share it with a friend. Do the work. Be boss and we'll see you next week. Sorry, I that's what I was like breaking into my house like I was about to get murdered on air. Oh my god be
Emily Thompson:horrible. Are
Unknown:you okay? It was just a mailman. Okay.