Josh 0:16
Hey, everybody, welcome into Episode 67. And this one, we're gonna be talking about a really important subject. I think it's very timely, especially for those of you who are just starting out and your web design business and into this wild world of freelancing, because we're going to talk about how to be confident in sales and how to be confident and actually starting and growing your business. It's easier said than done. But I've found with a few little practical methods and strategies, you can really feel confident, even if you're brand new in your journey, and I wanted to bring somebody in for this talk, who specifically helps freelancers in a variety of different industries. This is Jay Klaus, He is the creator of The Freelancing School with and again, he helps freelancers in all industries with building growing and, and really taking their business to the next level. And I was talking with him recently. He's actually a local guy as well with me here in Columbus, Ohio. And we were chatting in we we talked about some potential subjects we could go into in regards to freelancing. And he asked if my audience would be interested in learning more about sales in the early days and I said abso-freakin-lutely, I think I actually put that in the email. Because I get a lot of questions from students who are learning a lot about Divi WordPress in their business. But inevitably, confidence from sales, particularly in the early days is tricky. And I remember that I remember in the early days, having to, you know, feel confident and wondering how I could sell when I was very new, and I didn't have too much experience. So that's exactly what we're going to cover in this interview. Jay is awesome. You're going to love this interview, I think you're going to love his style. And I think you're really going to love these points because they're going to help you feel empowered and confident to start selling your web design services right now, even if you're just starting out with zero experience. Now, one of the best ways I'll just give you a quick tip, one of the best ways to feel more confident from the get go is to know your craft. And one way one very simple way to do that, in the case of you as a web designer is to know WordPress and to know whatever theme you're using, and for those of you who use Divi, as you probably know by listening to this podcast, I've used Divi exclusively since 2014. It's my trusted theme. If you want to learn Divi and you want to feel confident about the tools that you use, I want to invite you to join my Divi WordPress beginners course it is a point A to point B, quick down and dirty course that is going to help empower you to learn Divi learn the most important aspects of it and learn WordPress as well. So you can start building sites right out of the gate with also no code required. So I do have courses on CSS and stuff like that. But we don't have to do that right now, the most important thing you need to do is learn the basics and learn how to build a nice site from start to finish. And we can do that right now in my Divi WordPress beginners course. And that'll help you feel more confident. Now, to get onto some more ways to feel more confident with getting into sales as you're just starting out. Enjoy my interview with Jay Klaus, dude's awesome. And if you want to connect with Jay, go to his website at freelancing dot school, you can see everything that he offers to help you in your business. And if you're interested in diving into any of his courses or trainings, he offered a special discount for all of my listeners. And if you're interested in any of his stuff, use code Josh Hall at checkout and you'll get 20% off. So without further ado, enjoy hearing from Jay and let's talk about how you can get more competent in sales right from the beginning. Let's do it.

Josh 3:52
Jay, welcome to the show. Great to have you on man.

Jay 3:55
I am so happy to be here. Josh. Great to meet you. Great to meet a fellow Columbsonian. Columbus, I haven't decided.

Josh 4:02
I don't know what the proper term is there. Yeah, Columbus, Columbusonium I like that. We'll roll with that. And actually, on that note, I always like to start off with asking where you're located and what you do. So I think we established that you're in Columbus along with myself, although I can't believe we haven't met in person yet. But I think we're going to make that happen here. So I'm not going to ask you where you're from, because everyone knows that now. But yeah, what do you do? Jay exactly.

Jay 4:25
So these days, I think of myself as a creator. I spent a lot of my time podcasting. Now I spend a lot of my time writing and creating articles. But the things to know. My business is called Freelancing School. It's a platform to help people make a living freelancing, and I focus more so on the business aspects, finance, marketing sales, as opposed to any one freelance discipline. I have a podcast called Creative Elements where I interview some inspirational creators that frankly, I just want to have their life. You know, I've talked to Seth Godin and James Clear and Vanessa Van Edwards and try to figure out, you know, outside of their work, how do they actually build a platform for themselves to be able to do this full time? That's that's a lot of fun. And then, you know, I've been freelancing myself for several years outside of that through a variety of different surfaces that always look a little bit custom. So yeah, it's it's these days, I like to think of myself as a creator, a writer a podcaster.

Josh 5:26
Well, I love your approach, man, I checked out your podcast, I the first one I listened to was the one with Seth Godin, because he's a big, I'm a big fan of his with a lot of his books. Actually, when I first really started reading, when I became an entrepreneur and adult, his books were some of the first that really resonated with me. So yeah, I found that chat fascinating. And I do love that approach. Because I think a lot of people, when they get into freelance, or at least people who teach people in freelance, they get into a lot of the know how and the tech stuff. But it's, it's what is behind all that that really sets you up for success. And I think we're going to talk about some really, really cool stuff in this chat, because we're going to talk about freelancing in general. And then also, confidence in sales, particularly when you're just starting out which before we went live, I told you a lot of my web design students are coming to me to get help in this area. And they're coming from different industries. I've got teachers, Uber drivers, I've got people who worked in brick and mortar stores, business owners who can't run their business now, and they're transitioning to web design. A lot of my students now are doing web design on the side. And then they had to go full time with it, to make ends meet through through COVID. So I'm really excited to help them out with this. But more importantly, give them some confidence with sales. So I think, I think a great place to start, Jay, I'd love to hear from you and your perspective, since you work with a lot of different people interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs. Why do you think freelancing is most was probably no the answer this question, but why do you think now's a good time for freelancing?

Jay 6:56
Well, I mean, it's kind of like that old adage of the best talent, the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago, the second best time is today. Same is true with freelancing, I think it's only gonna get more and more true that we're living in a world that is very much decentralized and remote. And you know, our style of work is changing, and COVID has been a catalyst to push that forward even more. So whether you're freelancing directly with small clients and individuals, or whether you're freelancing for larger companies, they are all in a place where they're getting used to remote work arrangements. And when you're drawn to freelancing, usually it's some combination of having a desire for more optionality more control over your time, more control over where you are, when you work, who you work with. And, you know, I think we're living in a time when, despite all its flaws, and all the bad stuff happening in 2020, it's become more and more valid and viable and feasible to work remotely work for yourself in freelance very successfully.

Josh 8:04
Yeah, I agree with that. 100%. Man, I know, what was interesting, once March hit this year with the COVID stuff, it really reaffirmed my journey up to this point being that I took freelancing so seriously. And when I felt pressured to get a corporate job, and to go to college to get a nine to five, I just never felt that it was right for me. And I'm so glad I stuck to my guns and went the freelancing route, because now things are really taken off. And it is in this time where a lot of people who were on a traditional path are finding. And you know, there's not a lot of security in most industries right now. So I think the time is, there's no better time than the present for freelancing. And I don't know how much you know about my show audience, but it's, it's mainly all web designers. But we are freelancers and entrepreneurs at heart, particularly those who are really, you know, running their business and scaling their business. So I think we have a good idea of why now is a great time, I'd love to start out with just maybe just diving into sales, because this is tricky, man, when you're when you get started, particularly if you if you're new to the game, you may know how to build a good website, you've been through some of my courses, I've trained you as best as I can. But for my audience, I tell my students all the time, it is up to you to make it happen. So you have to apply what you learn in this podcast and in my courses and but it's it's easier said than done particularly with confidence. So I guess maybe my question around confidence is, where do you think confidence comes from?

Jay 9:25
I think confidence comes from trying something and seeing that it works in big ways and in small ways and just that over and over and over and over again like confidence is learned. It's it's easy to say like you got to be confident and it's really hard to just flip a switch you can't really so to me confidence is setting small bets and you know, any conversation that I go into, I have a desired outcome usually for that conversation, especially if it's related to a client or a potential client. And when you do that when you set like these very small goals for yourself with even interactions or days when you meet those goals, you build confidence. So every week that I'm saying this week, these are the five things I want to get done this week, when I follow through and do that, that builds confidence every week when I say I'm shipping a podcast episode, and I do that, that builds confidence, because now I've shown to myself that not only can I set goals, but I hit the goals that I set for myself, I think a lot of people subconsciously subvert their own confidence, because they set goals that they don't even actually believe when they set them they're going to achieve, and that has the reverse effect. When you set a goal and you don't live up to it. Even if it's subconsciously on a small level, you stop respecting your own ability to get things done in the timeframe that you say you're going to, and it affects your confidence. So I really think it starts with setting these goals for yourself on a small level, achieving them, rinse and repeat all day, every week, you know, just over and over and over.

Josh 10:52
That's great. I, you know, I was just thinking about the approach of even when it comes to getting a client just landing that first step, which may not even be landing them as a client. But just getting the opportunity to put together a proposal like that, I imagine kind of feels like a wind. Yeah. Whereas if you go into it thinking like, okay, I want to land a client for life in this first meeting, like first meeting has a lot of implications. And it's important to make a good first impression. But maybe that's a great approach to have just take the first step with getting a feel for their business, making sure they like you if you really want them as a client. And then that first win would be to do a really good proposal. And maybe more importantly, feel like you did a good job is that something, it sounds like your approaches, you know, if you have to feel confident with yourself and feel like you did a good job and gave your all before somebody else is going to feel like that,

Jay 11:42
totally. And most of what we do is internal work. And most of the work that we do is, you know, especially as a freelancer, we are withholding do ourselves. So you know, on a daily basis that I get done today, what I wanted to get done, that will translate to the conversations you have with clients, that'll translate to the work that you do with them. But I love that you brought up the question of or the idea of, you know, just getting the meeting with a client, because statistically speaking, almost no one in your life is going to be a client for you. However, anyone in your life can be a fantastic advocate and source of referrals for your business. So if you go into conversations, and instead of thinking, I need this to be a client relationship for life, and you go into it thinking, I'm gonna make a good impression, and I want to build a new relationship here, you can be successful in every conversation that you have. And long term, even medium term. You know, if you do that, with every conversation you have for six months, 12 months, two years, now you have this fantastic network of advocates who are out there who know what you do, if they know like and trust you, they can refer that on to somebody else. You can have inbound referrals that you don't have to do anything with, because you just are you don't have to do anything to gain because you've already done the legwork of building a network of, you know, friends, and positive advocates.

So how do you feel about expectations and challenging yourself but also not setting it too high to where you're depressed because you're like, I'm not even close. - Josh

Josh 12:59
Yeah, that's a great point. It reminds me like, a little while back, I talked about how I like practically and literally landed my Top Best 15 clients. And it was all relationship based, it was all even though some of them took months to pan out. Or they would just referral somebody of somebody in their network. I often just started with I just want to make this person like me, as long as it was somebody I really wanted to work with, I felt like they'd be a good connection, I'm, I just want to make a good impression on them. And that is I think that takes the stress and pressure off of sales, if you just focus on more importantly, just helping them and listening to their goals and their problems and seeing how you can help. I really think that the more people I've talked to who are successful, particularly in web design, is its problem solving. And just being empathetic to somebody's situation and explain to them how you can help them. So I think that's really valuable man, I think something you said there that was really interesting, too, was the the goals or maybe not maybe not deadlines, but your goals for the year or having a realistic approach to whether it's how much you can make or how many clients I mean, I imagine you want to set a realistic expectation. I guess that's what I meant to say was an expectation. You want to have it be realistic, but you also I feel like you don't want to limit yourself because some of my web design students are like, I'd love to make 10 grand I'm like, dude, let's we could you know, like with where you're at, you could triple quadruple even, you know, do more than that. So how do you feel about expectations and challenging yourself but also not setting it too high to where you're depressed because you're like, I'm not even close.

Jay 14:34
I think it's important because to me even going beyond freelancing, I think, all conflict the source is a misalignment of expectations and like the result, so you are constantly making social contracts with yourself and others but with yourself for your expectations of what's going to happen in a given situation. And when you don't meet those expectations, there's conflict either in the form of internal cognitive dissonance or, you know, disappointment and maybe even guilt or shame. And it can be hard, it can be hard to to set fairly arbitrary goals around like revenue numbers, if you don't have a deeper reason as to why or what that means for you. So I find if somebody does, you know, say, I want to make six figures. If you dig into why, and you help them tie that to something a little bit more tangible, it's a little bit more exciting than this fleeting thing of just like I did it, I broke the six figure mark, it drives them even more. And I experienced this, like, when you're starting out freelancing. And when I started freelancing, my first goal was, can I just earn enough to survive? And then you cross that, and you get to a point where you have a little bit of comfort? It's like, Oh, this is kind of nice. Well, now what are my goals? And you kind of go to this place of like, 10 grand a month, that's a round number, or six figures. That's a round number, but it feels hollow. And it wasn't until I had more of a, like, why behind the goal that allowed me to push past those limits, because I think that you kind of perform to the level of your comfort. So it's to make yourself almost a little bit uncomfortable. If you don't hit those goals, and if you're covering your financial needs that discomfort, maybe Well, I'm not saving as much as I would like every month for retirement, or I'm not putting anything towards a down payment on a house or you know, some of these bigger goals when you can peg that in there that really helps. But ultimately, to your question about expectations, I do think that for yourself, like you want to constantly be reinforcing to yourself, that you are somebody that lives up to your own goals and metrics for success. And that doesn't mean that you should take it easy on yourself. But it does need to be within the realm of possibility or it becomes meaningless.

Josh 16:51
I like that you'd said get out of your comfort zone a little bit or get a little uncomfortable, I think that's a great place to be at now. I wouldn't advocate that, you know, you're getting so uncomfortable that you can't focus or it's just outside of your realm of expertise or something you can handle. But the people who didn't do stay in their comfort zone for too long, I think that's where people do get stagnant. And what I found in any business, if you're not marketing, and you're not innovating, your business is gonna get stale, or you're just not gonna be in a good place to really move forward and hit goals or hit your why. So I love that idea. I think a little challenge goes a long way. And I want to make sure I reaffirm everybody in saying that, that's good. Like, if you're uncomfortable going to a networking group, or doing a zoom meeting, or you're uncomfortable with presenting in front of a group that is good, you'll be amazed at how far that will take you and how far you'll level up. And I'm a prime example of that. I used to be terrible on camera, and I've had to do videos and do this podcast and do stuff every day to get better. I even look at videos from a few years ago. And it's like, oh, man, I mean, it's just it's like night and day. But it's just that, that repetitive action, like you talked about earlier, that can really breed confidence. So that was great. I'd love to hear a little bit more about sales in general and confidence. Because you talked about having a why that's really good. I think you also touched on having a plan. Like if you're gonna hit six figures, why? Why do you need six figures for me, I have a family. Now I have a wife and two kids. And I need to make six figure comfortable six figures to provide for us few years ago, that wasn't the case. So there's a lot of why there. There's the plan as far as like what our family goals are, what my business goals are. But in the early days for the average Freelancer who may not have as much of these pressures. Where does some other areas have confidence coming? Do you think it's knowledge as far as like knowing your craft? Is it going through courses like you and I do to help people to kind of bypass the years of hardship? Where would some other areas of confidence be found?

Jay 18:53
Yeah, and I think, you know, again, I think it's these little small moments of celebration, I think it's really important to celebrate small wins and small achievements, because that's what builds your confidence in it's just, I wish I had a better way of putting it, but it's just wanting a result and seeing that result happen. That builds confidence in some way. You know, and for getting new clients, it's saying, this conversation, I know, there's promise here, I'm going to make this person, you know, interested in working with me. If it's even getting the first conversation, you know, I want to work with this brand. I'm going to find a way to talk with somebody there. Once you do that, you're like, great, I did it, I found someone to talk to you. Now I'm going to figure out how to position this as something that they're interested in. Great. Now I'm going to try to get them to sign a contract. Great. Now I'm going to make a result in this project that they're really happy with great, you know, every every iteration of this process, if you're showing to yourself, I am doing what I said I was going to do and this other person's happy, I'm happy. that builds confidence. In something else, I think builds confidence is actually being willing to walk away from things and this is really hard to do in that Getting, because when you're in that place of, I just want to be able to make enough to continue to survive, you get, you get really almost desperate. And actually, I would kind of kind of refer to this as just being like thirsty like clients can feel when you're thirsty for this. And it's not a good signal to be putting out. They can also feel when you know your value and trust your value so much that you're willing to walk away. And, you know, the, the unfortunate reality is, the people who are really good at this, like they get better and better. And they have more and more work because they get continuously more confident and more willing to walk away from things that don't fit what they want to do and what they think is right. In the beginning, when you don't have that confidence, you kind of just might be a pushover, you might take a rate that you don't want, may never say, Oh, yeah, you might take a project that you don't want. And the other reality is, whatever you're doing kind of naturally creates more of that. So if you're working with a client that you don't like, that doesn't fit for XYZ reason, that's probably going to breed more clients like that, when you work with the good clients, and good organizations that you're excited about, that will breed more of that too. Because it kind of, there's a lot of social signaling in selling where people see Oh, you worked with this company, this organization. We trust you because of that, and now we're going to work with you too. But it works against you if you're not careful.

Josh 21:24
That's a great point. Yeah, you tend to attract whatever type of client or project you're working on. I know, a lot of times like later on in my career, I would have leads that went right to my portfolio, and they I would show up and we'd have a meeting. And they'd be like, well, I really liked this site that you did in this site. And then for me, it was like, it was a total win. It was a hot lead, it went from me trying to sell anything to them, like really interested in working with me. But again, when you're just getting started out, it's a little tougher when you have less experience, I know, one thing I really recommend my students do, is there's no shame in doing either free or cheap work just to build a portfolio. But don't do it for long, like build your portfolio, get some experience, clients who are going to pay, you eventually never need to know that those projects were free, but just build your portfolio and have a good a few projects under your belt. So you feel confident with the process and everything. And honestly, that's what my courses are for. And I know you have a lot of material to to help people get started in their in their journey. But I think that is really, really key for folks starting out those small wins, like he talked about kind of one step at a time, realistic expectations, but not too far to where they're just barely, you know, maybe not attainable, but then also you want to limit yourself, I think that one step approach is a really good, a really good way to go. And you're talking about a much more organic approach, which I think is super valuable. And the one really good thing that we have as web designers, is we have the opportunity to make clients for life, which like I talked about, it's you want to have that in the back of their mind, you don't want to be that sweaty salesman, like you're talking about that ceiling desperation and stuff. But the cool thing is, is we can get to a point where once you get a few clients, the referral train starts and it just starts kind of rolling from there. Yeah, as long as you do really good and come through.

Jay 23:07
Totally. And, you know, that's a great position to be in. And, like, yeah, that's a, that's a great reason to be a web designer. Probably when a client signs up the first time, they're not necessarily signing up for that, they, but it becomes that because it's a relationship. You know, it becomes that over time, because when you do the first project are they Well, they say I like that I'm gonna keep working with him on this. And then it gets to a point where they can't imagine working with anybody else and having to reteach you know, their culture or the way they think about things to somebody else. Yeah.

Josh 23:35
And I know, you coached people from all different industries with web design, what's interesting, too, and one thing that I tell all my students right from the get go, because you have to have this mindset is even if a client doesn't sign up with you on your monthly plan, or do any recurring work, you are still the person who designed their site. So eventually, you're going to hear from them. It's not like a coaching service or consulting or something where you might work with somebody for a little bit, and they never have to talk to you again, at some point, that person or that company is going to be like, Who the heck designed our site. So you're gonna, you're gonna have that relationship. There's a, there's a big bonus in that, but I hope, I hope that students think about that when it comes to the confidence to sell somebody or not, maybe not even sell somebody but to, to work with somebody and land that client, because it is something that's going to go a long way. And honestly, it's one of the best ways to come across earlier in your career is just to be again, helpful, be empathetic, and show how you're excited and share ideas. And then just tell clients, you know, one thing I always told them was, it is good for you to shop around. And it's important for you to like and want to work with somebody for a long time. And honestly, here's a little free tip for everybody just getting started in web design. If you tell your leads, that they should be careful about who they work with, because it's going to last a very long time they're going to be talking to their web designer. It actually makes you look really good because you're thinking about that you're not like that shady SEO company. That is this one A quick $299 a month and then they, you know, disappear after that. So hopefully those are all some things that kind of help with the confidence. You were talking earlier about, you know, landing one client that first time just to build some muscle and build some confidence. What about those who are just still struggling? Maybe they're getting a lot of leads, but they just haven't maybe converted that first one yet? Or maybe they're close, but they just haven't quite crossed that step, what kind of encouragement would you give to them?

Jay 25:26
More and more, I'm realizing how much clients are comforted by your own certainty. Because we have so many options, we have infinite options for just about anything we want to do ever, which is created this like giant fear. And you can call it FOMO. Or you can just call it like just being afraid of making the wrong choice and feeling regret over that. And so when you're talking with a potential client, the more that you can step forward, and really make it clear for them that they're making the right choice all along the way. And it's not explicitly saying you're making the right choice here. It's more about, you know, listening to them, taking some notes and saying, okay, so if I can repeat this back to you, here's what I'm hearing you say, what's important to you is a, b, and c. And your timeline is this, you need this done by this date, you want to have these things involved. Like it shows a professionalism, that you're listening, that you're cutting through the noise and pulling out the things that are important. And then you can step forward and say, Okay, here's what I propose. In order to get this done by that date, you just said, we need to get this started. Two weeks from now, you know, whatever your timeline is, just lay out these steps of here's how the process is going to go. Because if someone's coming and considering hiring you, they want you to be the leader in the process. They want you to solve this for them, they want you to make it easy. The more that you can take over and say, here's exactly what we're going to do. Here the points on process, I'm going to do your feedback. And this is the type of feedback that I need. And I'll have this done for you, I'll have this outcome for you. I'll have these deliverables. And it'll be done on this date. Here's the price, how does that sound? You just you lower the bar to making them just say, Yes, that sounds great. I would love to not think about this, you do your thing. When you need me, let me know otherwise go and do this. That is what you need to approach these conversations with, that's what's going to speak to somebody to say this person knows exactly what I need. They've been here before I trust them, I'm going to let them run with it.

Josh 27:21
That's great, just that small win. And just those little action steps. I think clients I know clients really respond to a few action steps that are reasonable and practical. And it goes back. I'm a big proponent of story brand. And the idea that you as a designer are the hero or you're the guide, and you're blocking your client through the journey. They are the hero, that's all about them, but you are the one who's going to help them get there. And even if you're early on, you can still do that in a variety different ways. Even if you're not a quote unquote, expert, or seasoned veteran in the industry. And I just for me, I've been doing web design for over 10 years now. So I have to kind of think about those first few months that I got started. For me more than anything, it was just about sharing my passion and sharing my ideas. And I knew and I was very open with clients, like you know what, I'm not sure about this, but I'm going to look into it, I'm definitely going to see if I if I can't figure it out, I'll partner with somebody or we can get third party involved. Like I was really intentional to be their guy, their their person to figure it out. And that really paid off in those early days, it was really about establishing know, like and trust from the very from the get go. And that I think that hopefully that's freeing to everybody. Because you don't need to be an expert to land a client, you don't need to be a seasoned veteran. As long as somebody knows you, they like you and they feel like they can trust you then you can work it out and you can start landing clients and that will build that muscle that that freelancing muscle. Any other ideas on that just in those early days. And we've covered some really good strategies. But I think when it comes to building that confident muscle in freelancing Yeah, it just doesn't take that those those kind of action steps anything else like that.

We internalize negative signals so strongly and then we we will like greet positive science as they float past us. - Jay

Jay 29:04
This is a small thing. But I would recommend when you get positive feedback, save that somewhere somehow so that when you're not feeling great, you can revisit this and see the things that people said about you and about your work when you were at your best and when you were feeling great. Because we we internalize negative signals so strongly and then we we will like greet positive science as they float past us. And oh, like we won't we won't take that to heart and that's an opportunity to really strengthen our own confidence when we do that. So I do recommend having like a good feels folder in your inbox or something similar like that. So you can remind yourself when you're feeling down.

Josh 29:42
I just started doing that. I don't know why I haven't done that up to let the last couple months because I do get testimonials for my courses because I which are great because I can just revisit those and I have but one thing I neglected for a long time was when people would email me. I would I got so many Great emails, and then I think back in my crap who sent that awesome Note. And then I can never it's law, it's lost in my email never gonna find it. So more recently, I've started doing that, if it's not a review or a video testimonial or something that I have already captured, I have I set up a little happy folder of just Yeah, like a good good thoughts folder, which will really go a long way. I think that could also go with encouragement, whether it's a cloud, I mean, even like with the podcast here, like if somebody hears something, just make a note of it, you know, Jay cloud said, you know, 2022, he said, something really cool that you can refer back to, it's really worthwhile taking notes like that, and having some sort of backlog when you need it, because inevitably, you are going to need it. Even I think a lot of people see somebody who's more successful in industry, and they feel like it's just been an easy ride, and they just had all the answers. Well, the reality is, and I'm sure you can attest to this day is, I don't know your full story, your journey, but I'm sure there were a lot of mistakes made along the way, a lot of hard lessons learned. So it's never as easy as it sounds. And particularly a web design. I just as a student last last week or the week before, was like you just seem so confident, where did you learn your confidence. And I said, honestly, it was just figuring stuff out the hard way. And I do my courses to help people avoid as many hard lessons learn. But the confidence, I think, for me did come from that standpoint of I realized my value. And I didn't back down from that I was very empathetic and tried to work with clients. But I'm not going to cut my price by 50%. And what was interesting is, I meant to mention this earlier, but when you talked about that, not taking every opportunity not, you know, being a pushover with your pricing your value, it did make clients want to work with me even more, because I did stand up for and I had some cases where I had clients reject the offer. And thing for me is I just didn't burn the bridge, I was like, that's fine. You know, you're always welcome to revisit this moving forward, the proposal might be different, but we can always revisit it. And I had a number of clients come back a month or two later. And they were like, what the cheap route, terrible experience. If you're still open to it, we'll move forward today and we move forward. So totally, there's a lot of things like that, that that will help people just one step at a time.

Jay 32:09
Pricing. Pricing is interesting, because pricing is usually a story that the client is telling themselves, depending on the industry, and just depending on who you're who you're speaking with, like pricing is more of a marketing strategy than than anything else. Like, if you, Bill $100 per hour, some clients is going to be like, Whoa, I can't afford that. And some clients are gonna be like, I'm not even sure I'm going to take you seriously billing at that because the other people we work with Bill at $500 per hour. So you got to know, you know what pond you're fishing in, and what what their appetite is for that type of thing. But yeah, pricing, people often use it as a quality heuristic too. So if you're undercutting yourself on pricing, you're sending a signal that you are not, you know, the best, safest, highest quality option to a lot of people.

Josh 32:59
Yeah, that's a great point. I was thinking back, I first ran Craigslist ads once I started getting clients, and I actually did land a couple qualified people. Most of it was spam. But I'll never forget my ad said cheap web design. So looking back, Man, I wish I would have had a mentor Tell me Hey, Josh, don't say cheap web this. Don't say cheap web design. No, that is not a strategy I would recommend. Now, let's talk about that. Let's talk about pricing and a money mindset. Because of all the mindset shifts I've had over the past decade as an entrepreneur, I think money may be the top just with how I view it and how I plan with it. And obviously, like I said, I have a family now I have to be much more intentional. I make a lot more of it now because I'm so much more focused in value my time more than anything, so I'm a better, better delegator now, but in the early days, your mindset of money is tricky, because it's likely that you have low expectations. Or I know for me, I didn't realize how much money a lot of companies made. I mean, not every company has an endless budget, but like 2000 bucks sounded like a lot for me. I remember the first proposal I did for like two grand, I was like, probably like two grand, whereas now that's not even our floor. That's not even my agency starting point. So what would you encourage people with when it comes to like a money mindset, both from pricing, and then how to think about it as an entrepreneur?

Yeah, but would I pay that for this? - Jay

Jay 34:22
What I what I find myself talking about a lot lately that I hear, I need everyone to hear. And I need to remind myself all the time, I'm pumped when you think about the price that you're telling somebody, often there's a voice inside of us that says, Yeah, but would I pay that for this, and you need to realize, of course you wouldn't, because you have the skills to do the thing. You wouldn't pay anything for it because you can do it yourself. It's hard to divorce yourself from that and put yourself in the mind space of the client who doesn't have the skills, their choices, either to spend a lot of time to try and learn the skills and hopefully do as good of a job as you or to throw money. The problem and almost all clients want to throw money at the problem. That's why you're having the conversation. So first and foremost, if don't ever ask yourself what I pay this for that, if you have the skills to do it, remove that question. Second, what blows my mind? Money is a story to ourselves. So, you know, I mentioned that money is kind of a story to clients. But for web designers Think about this, you're going to spend the same amount of work for client A, as client B if you're building a similar scoped project. But if client B is a much bigger company with a much higher market cap, you should be charging more to them. Like that just makes a lot of sense. It's not about the input necessarily. It's about what value it's bringing to the client. And I would love to sit here and talk you through value based pricing. Because yes, it's certainly the best way to go. It's also really difficult, especially for getting started, it's really hard to walk through all the questions to get mathematical answers to show the client, this is why what I'm doing is worth as much, but what you should know is you can do the same work for a different class of client and get paid a lot more. And you should ask yourself, if that's what you want to do, because you can literally move yourself from thinking in the hundreds of dollars to in the thousands of dollars, and it's just a mindset shift. And it's where you're fishing, you know, everything else stays the same.

Josh 36:25
I've seen that play out with clients. I have, I have a business course and one of the lessons in there, I actually show people my quote from my highest project, but at that point was 15,000. And it was definitely something I wanted done for like five but I just this company was well into the seven figures, I'm like, they can freakin afford, you know, this is important to their business. So I want to do it right. And I just went for it and tripled the rate and then went for it. Whereas a lot of companies would have been like, yeah, that 5000 we've been like, oh 5000. So in a value based pricing is fascinating. And I'm maybe we could do a separate episode just on those pricing models. But I think that is an important approach to have, just remember, money doesn't look the same to everybody, it's often different. And hopefully good clients are gonna value it and look at it as an investment, I think that's important to just practically don't put costs on a proposal, I used to always do investment, like total investment or something like that, just to make sure people know, it's not something they're just gonna throw their money away at, it's gonna help build their business. It's interesting to think about pricing, like for my courses and other sorts of products. Now, I've always found pricing to be tough, because I want it to work for everybody. But I also don't want to devalue it. And the business course, I reckon I mentioned is 497. And I've had people say, I, there's no way I could afford that. That's way too much. And then I've had people say how, like, Why are you putting this out there for that cheap, it should like I had somebody recently say this should be at least a $3,000 course. And and it's funny like there's just there's this all this different, my these mindsets around a product, which is which is pretty fascinating. Like it's a great, I think it's a great place to, to think about particular when you're starting out, just remember to hold your value to stand your ground. I mean, you can you can realistically look at what people are charging and and I have a ton of resources on pricing for free that people can check out. But I think it's a really good point. Any other thoughts on pricing and establishing your worth?

Josh 38:25
Yeah, just just think about the type of client you're working with, like what is their price elasticity, like you and I, we may be sensitive to increments of $50 or $100, maybe $200. Some clients aren't thinking about that at all, like their sensitivities are in increments of thousands of dollars, you know, so like, a $6,000 quote versus an $8,000 quote, is actually not important to them. And it's easy for you to make that. Now if you go from six to 12, maybe it is but yeah, it's it's crazy to me just how how much price in sensitivity larger companies have, and maybe it's worth talking about them. Now it's going to be really hard if you want to work with nonprofits and startups like these are fun companies to work with people want to work with these companies, their price sensitivities are much, much different. It's hard. And if you start there, you often get a warped sense of what is possible with your pricing. Because you're laddering you're you're you're tethering that to those experiences that you really need to think about each conversation individually each circumstance individually and not try to bring the baggage from past clients into those conversations unless there's a very strong connection between the two. And you say Actually, these companies are very, very similar. And this is what I learned over here. If they're very different companies like you need to start from square zero in terms of r square one, whatever square you start from, in terms of you know, your pricing.

Josh 39:53
That's a great point just because one person's you know, shocked that you sent a $2500 proposal in the case of web design. The next company your lead you talk to that may be nothing that may be at like I had that happen left and right. I remember I did an e-commerce quote, I did a, I lead and I was just under two grand for this simple e-commerce store, which was just insanely low for anything ecommerce. And they email back and they said, unbelievable, are you kidding me with this pricing, like no one would ever pay that much for this. And then right after that, I had a similar proposal. And they were like, We were honestly expecting it to be like triple this price. So it really is, it's just, it's a fascinating different world, it's a different case for everybody, which I think is why you should, you should, you know, really it comes to weeding out too, I tell all my students, you don't want to get every lead that comes your way. And web design, you want it to be the qualified people. Any ideas on how to filter that out and really, maybe get into better industries and get it getting to better clients, especially when you're just starting out.

Jay 40:53
Price a lot of it because if you are closing every lead, you get, you're either not putting yourself out there and not working with enough clients, or you're pricing too low. And people are basically saying this is a steal, they're basically taking advantage of you. So you want to get a lot of no's. I've had a circumstance this year where literally I had two big clients this year to my biggest clients, I quoted them on a project. And they ended up offering me more than I quoted because they thought I was quoting too low. And I was like, wow, I was going into this kind of afraid. And it's really hard to kind of break out of, for us Midwestern, you know, money humbleness and realize what these people are working with. But yeah, I think getting outside of this even more. My favorite pricing advice for people starting out is start with what would make you excited to do this. Because if you land the client, it's almost never going to take you less time than you expect. And I'm a big proponent of not doing hourly pricing at least like project based pricing or retainer pricing. So think in terms of what's going to make me excited tomorrow after they signed the contract to actually do this work and show up week after week until it is over. Because if you go into an agreement thinking I'm underselling myself, you're going to resent that client, you're going to resent the process, you're not gonna be excited to do it. So if you at least start with what makes you excited, you may still be leaving money on the table, but at least you're happy.

Josh 42:24
Yeah, no, you know, it's funny, you just reminded me one of my best A clients. I did a lot of work with him. They were a white label client of mine. So I did work for like a lot of these websites they had we set up over the years. And at one point, I remember saying, you know, we're doing so many websites, I'll just give you like a bulk price, a discounted rate. And then he was like, give me some business advice. He said, stick to your pricing, man stick to your guns. And I couldn't believe he said that, like he was offering just to pay me basically double what I offered. And he went for like money to him was completely different from those people who were nickel and diming. me for a big e commerce type of site. So yep. Really, really? Yeah, that's a great point. Man, that gives you a lot of confidence. There's one other point you made a little bit ago, I just want to put a cap on because I really resonated with this too. And that was valuing your service and your time, like you talked about, somebody will pay you five grand to build a website, even though for you. Yeah, you wouldn't pay that because you could do the work, but they don't know how to do that they don't have your experience, I think that's such a valuable point to give people confidence with their pricing, because just remember the clients that you're talking to, they can't do what you can do, even if you're just starting out. And my most of my students use WordPress Devi, and they've gone through my process course design into the basics of SEO, some of the business stuff. Yeah, you may just be starting out, but you are 100 times more valuable than somebody who doesn't know anything about that. So they're gonna pay for and I, I always think about to my networking group, I there's a handyman. And one time that just made me think of this one time, he was like, I can't believe that people are paying me to do these projects that they could do themselves. And I thought about that, but I really quickly realized why that's the case, because I hired him to do something I could totally do myself, which was to paint my fence. I powerwash my fence last year was a very time consuming thing. To get it painted and to get it done right. It would have taken me a long time. So being that I have two kids and have a wife and have two businesses, basically I I said, You know what, I'm just gonna hire him. It was a few hundred bucks. And yeah, you know, I could have saved a few hundred bucks, but how much time what I've had to invest in that. So I have that same mentality now with like house stuff. Like if it's not something I feel comfortable doing or I just don't want to do. I'm very quick to hire it out now. Yeah. And some of my it's funny because like family and friends who don't have an entrepreneurial mindset, if they're a salary person, this is mind blowing, because they're like, why would you pay somebody to paint your fence? You can paint your fence. I was like yes, I totally can. But If I have a day off, I'm going to spend it with my girls. I don't want to be paying, if I wanted to paint my fence, I would have painted my fence like I love doing my lawn. That's what my little tasks I'd love to do. I'm always going to do my lawn. But I don't want to paint the fence, I don't want to spend all day doing that. So I'm going to hire it out.

Jay 45:15
Opportunity Cost is super real. And most business owners, if you're in the business business owners, they recognize that too. Maybe they could do the website stuff. Like I'm pretty adept at WordPress now. But I'm getting the point where maybe I would hire people to do this type of work. Because it's not the highest value way I could spend my time I have my own unique strengths. I have my own unique ways that I can create value in my own business with how I spend my time in business owners get that a lot of people who aren't entrepreneurial, like you said, don't get it. They're the people who will spend two hours price shopping to save $5 on something and it's like, well, don't you value those two hours to me, I am going to buy the first thing I find that solves the problem, because I'm probably not going to be saving, you know, more than 20 bucks. And I would so much rather just have the time not searching for that thing. Because let me buy the thing that gets the problem done.

Josh 46:04
Yeah, and I think I've seen a lot of clients come to me over the years that have tried to do it themselves. And then they realize even with some of these tools like Wix or Squarespace these quote unquote, easy Do It Yourself websites, they still take a lot of time to figure out and the client understands, well, I don't know jack about conversion, or heading or images or optimization, all these other aspects of web design, and it can actually be a really good lead gen for people to come back to you and say, try it myself, I don't have the time for this, do whatever you need to do, I'll pay you whatever, that's actually a great position to be in. So I would say yeah, don't go for those, you know, don't worry, if you're not landing every client, that was a really good point you made to if you're, if your conversion rate is 100%. If it's a service based product, you definitely are doing something wrong, which is weird to say like, if you're selling 10 out of 10 people, something's wrong. Now, if you have like a website hosting and maintenance plan, and your conversion rates are really high, that's great, because you've got it in place, you could scale it, but if it is something that's time related time intensive, you have, you have to get your conversion rate down in a weird way. Because you can't scale it, if your time is where you're, you're getting your money, then you that has to be at a higher price point step by step,

Jay 47:20
it's a good signal, it means that the market wants what you're offering. And at that price, but if your conversion rate is 100%, then there's you're leaving something on the table like people will pay more for it. Or you're not putting yourself out there like a lot of people that close 100% of businesses because they don't do any outbound prospecting, they get a referral a month. And that works out well. Yeah, referrals have a really high hit rate. But you could probably be out there working harder to get more business in some of that's going to fail. And that's part of the process. But there's there's opportunity that you're missing out on.

Josh 47:54
This may be a tough question, because I imagine it depends on the industry and the situation. But what would you say is a reasonable conversion percentage when you're just starting out, I had a mentor years ago, because when I got started, I just met with a bunch of business owners I knew in my personal professional network. And he told me, good sales is 20%. He was a pretty high up car salesman, I think, or maybe some sort of salesman in some sort of automotive branch or something. But he said 20% I felt like that was really low. However, as I got going on and in the industry, I realized, my my, my service related conversion rate was higher than that. But my website maintenance plan was really high. So when people were asking me like, what's your conversion rate? I would say, well, depends on what service my website maintenance plan was at, like 80%. So we're like, if I talk with 10 people, generally eight would go for the maintenance plan and the other two wouldn't, until they got hacked, and they'd eventually come back. But the like the service stuff, that's where I really feel like I got rid of the tire kickers and I focus on the qualified leads. And I would say it got up to probably 50% to 60% consistently. But it was one of those things where similar to like what you just said, I didn't really put myself out there that much I stayed within the referral network. And luckily, a lot of people came to me through referral. So it was like hot leads. But I think that's a pretty good scenario. I probably could have raised my prices even more what would you say again, it was like a decent conversion rate that people could go off of.

Jay 49:31
This is tough because of a word you just use that's very key here which is qualified, what is qualified mean to you, like if it's a qualified lead, then your your conversion should be pretty high. But a lot of leads aren't that qualified. And to me qualified means that they have a problem that you can solve, and they can meet the budget or within the ballpark of the budget that you would expect for that problem. And if those things are true, then you should be able to solve for a lot of them but honestly If If, if you're just like really knocking out the park, sometimes a lot of freelancers, they want to protect time for their own projects. And it's better off to work with fewer clients who are paying more, so that they have more mental space. And for them, your conversion rate might be lower, because you might be intentionally fishing for bigger fish. It kind of depends on the makeup of your overall business goals, how many clients you want to work with at a given time to cover your needs. And you know what qualified means to you. So to put a figure on it, I don't know, you know, shouldn't be 100%. But depending on you know, like, Don't feel bad, if it's low. Think about how you're qualifying people try to qualify better, get it higher, but just know that you should face rejection at times, almost as just like, good practice to know that you are, you know, pushing yourself and hitting those levels of discomfort we talked about earlier.

Josh 50:53
Yeah, that's great. And I, I just hope that's empowering for people who are getting started out and are getting rejected every once in a while. That is okay, like, early on, I realized, I'm going into this, and I had a sense of projects that I were, I felt pretty confident I was going to get, but then I was also very wreck, I recognize that this company is reaching out to other people as well. I'm going to give it my all, but if I don't get it, I'm not gonna sit and cry about it. First of all, I don't have the time I've got other clients to service. So it's actually a good position, because you can, you know, you can't dwell on it for too long. But yeah, don't be discouraged if you're not landing 100% of your leads, because it's just not the way it works.

Jay 51:31
Try to be real with yourself. And look back at the tape, so to speak. And if something falls through, why did it fall through and try to find out, try to get that cut that feedback from the potential client, because if they have a problem that you can solve, and they have an it's not a price issue, then you must have failed somewhere in messaging. And you need to identify if you're falling flat in messaging in general salesmanship. Because that's a problem. If you are losing leads that you should be closing because they have the budget and they have the problem, you need to hone in on your ability to lead the client through the process and make them confident that you are the right choice.

Josh 52:14
Yeah, that's great. I love that thought. Because I and I will say I've done that before, clients are usually very receptive to that early I should say leads because they're not your client if you didn't get them. But I would do that all the time. If I didn't land, one that I really was wanting to get, I would often follow up with, hey, I appreciate you let me know, you know, the door's always open, if you want to ever talk to me moving forward, I, you know, always be happy to revisit this or help you guys out. And I would always ask if you would if you'd mind, if you wouldn't mind willing to be willing to share, maybe you know why this when you felt wasn't another fit, I would just love to be able to refine it in my systems to help moving forward. And I always got really good responses from that it was very valuable. And it helped me with my proposal process. And one case, I remember somebody said, well, they just they like did a video and guided us through. And I was like, oh, video for proposals. And then one person was like, they actually did a mock up website. This was a high end website. So I was like, oh, maybe on really high end projects, we should do a little more in the mock up stage, you know, all those type of feedback, all that feedback can be so beneficial, and you know, to help with sales.

Jay 53:19
And something to put a point on that because I love that you need to come from a place of curiosity and like non defensiveness, I think a lot of people might go into that and say, like, well, what did I do wrong, and that's not gonna work out. You need to go just like very humble. Like, like, like you said, door's always open. You know, we'd love to talk for future projects, if you want to, by the way, I'm a business owner, it would mean a lot to me. If you could help me understand where I fell short, so that I can improve. That's the type of way to go about it. I have personally seen people who, you know, they're sending me cold pitches over email, and I'm being nice enough to just not go to them and say, No, thanks. And I'll be like, Well, why not? And it's like, Yeah, I don't know you.

Josh 54:05
I would agree with you particularly for web designers. Don't be that that guy or girl always like will screw you up, your website gets hacked, or hope hope you ever find your cPanel information cuz I'll take that sucker down. You don't want to be that bitter developer type personality, so never works out. Yeah. Well, Jay, this has been great, man. We've covered some really good stuff. We've talked about some of the mindset stuff early on, just building that confidence with I think a lot of it has to do with just those little wins, realistic expectations. But you also don't want to limit yourself, you want to give yourself a good path to follow. I think folks like mean yourself. You know, hopefully we're, hopefully people understand the reason we do what we do is to help people in this type of situation because we've been there we've learned a lot the hard way. So I think no matter what the case is anybody listening I would encourage you to find somebody who you identify with and resonate with to help guide you You know, you're the hero, but find a guide to help you with particularly some of the technical stuff and the processes and stuff that would take a long time to figure out yourself. I think it's very worthwhile. It's what I do, I learned that investing in coaching, even like I've had coaches Tell me, you know, you want to find somebody who's going to fit in your season in your journey, like a lot of people, I try to be as good as a coach, and a course creator as I can for everybody. But if there's somebody else who you feel like is a better fit, that's fine to go with whoever is going to help you in the season. So I would encourage everyone to really take that seriously to devalue your time we talked about that. He was interesting. You talked about the why, but then also, we hit on having a plan. If you're having a goal of six figures, why do you need six figures is 50,000 going to be fine this year for you? Maybe it is, but maybe six figures is what you need, and have a plan for that. I think that's huge. I'd love to just wrap up with the idea of maybe like daily disciplines or habits. Because I think that's really important to breed confidence. Because if you don't have good habit habits, you're just not going to be confident. And even if you are struggling with sales, if you have some other habits, I feel like that really backs you up and gives you a backbone to stand on any ideas, maybe just to wrap up with whether it's exercise or certain habits, whether it's reading anything like that, that sticks out to you.

Jay 56:20
Yeah, and I'm going to resist going off on too big of a tangent here because James's book, Atomic Habits is great on this in my biggest takeaway for forming positive habits is to make the right behavior, the easy choice, you know, that easy behavior. So if you don't watch TV, but the TV, if you, you know, don't want to play video games, unplug it and put it away, you know, make it hard to do the things that you don't want to do and make it easy to do the things that you do want to do. Something I'll add here on on your point of kind of some of these behaviors. I find most the time if I'm having a bad day, or I have negative self talk, honestly, it's because I either have an exercise lately, I haven't drank enough water, or I didn't get enough sleep. So I really try to give myself grace and say, I think there's a chemical reaction happening in my brain right now. And I don't think this has anything to do with me, I think this is a chemical reaction. And I'm going to pause and just say, I need to drink more water, or I need to move my body I'll go for a walk, I'll go for a run, I'll see if that changes, you know, my, my, my chemicals. And if not, I'll you know, let myself take the rest of day off. I'll go to bed, I'll wake up tomorrow, tomorrow will be a better day. But for me, I don't think so much about habits as I think about commitments. And it's good. You know, to me, I commit to publishing a podcast every week, I commit to publishing a newsletter every week, I commit to showing up to my freelancing community every week. All these things are commitments that I've made in Yes, from the outside, it may look habitual, because I'm doing it day after day, week after week. But it's not automated habits, I think feel automated and like something is easy. And most the time being a business owner is mundane and not easy at all. It's just following through on the commitments that you know are what you need to do to get the job done.

Josh 58:08
What a great point, Jay, that's awesome. And yeah, I totally backed that up. I I didn't really think about that. But the idea of a commitment is so much more important. Because because you really, as far as a habit like you don't build a habit of you don't have an end goal or commitment that you made to yourself. It's the classic case with dieting, if somebody says I really need to start dieting, and well, if you have a bunch of Twix and candy out in, you know, in your in your living room, instead of you know, healthier choices, it's very easy, like you said, to get to the situation, which I just had to tell my wife, like stop laying the Twix out so early before Halloween, because they never make it to Halloween. But that is that is what a great point. It's so crucial to think about those early commitments, which those do build confidence. I totally agree like the podcast I committed through August through the rest of 2020. I committed to doing two podcasts a week and interview and a solo episode. Because I knew I could handle it. I have the bandwidth now and I just curious to see like, what's it going to do instead of one a week, just but I gave myself an end goal 20 at the end of 2020. That's when I'll reevaluate. I did the same thing when I started doing tutorial videos. I know you and I talked about meeting probably separately here to talk about some video stuff. But one way I built my catalogue consistently, because a lot of people were like, how do you do so many videos I said, Well, I gave myself some light at the end of the tunnel. And I gave myself a realistic deadline to do one a week for three months just to see how it would go. And there were times where I felt like I didn't quite have it this week, but I was able to bulk record things and and that really just doing something once a week, even if it's just a season really gives you a lot of freelancing muscle. I found the same thing to be true with my networking group. I was in a networking group for eight years and doing something once a week, year after year after year after year. It actually been If it means so many other areas, because it helped me not become a dabbler, I was able to see things through, which I think is probably what you're getting at.

Jay 1:00:07
Totally. And it also helps you better understand and take advantage of your capacity, frankly, because when you know that you have this amount of time and effort that's going every week towards this one thing, you have to carve that out somewhere, you can't let yourself off the hook. When you don't have that level of commitment. Things start to slide and you say, Ah, yeah, I got three hours a day, but I really don't feel like doing this. And it's Friday. This week, I'll just let it go. And I'll do it next week. And things will just slide into perpetuity when you don't give yourself the out. You find ways to make things happen. And when it's uncomfortable, you say I don't want that discomfort. Next week, I'm gonna make a better system and a better process for getting this done in a way that doesn't stress me out, you start to get more out of your time.

Josh 1:00:50
That's great, man. What a What an awesome thought to kind of wrap up on and finish this off with Jay, thanks so much for your time today. And for dishing out some really good gold nuggets of thoughts and experience. I think I've taken a lot out of this, I can't wait to kind of reread through the show notes and kind of put an outline an outline together for this. I know it's gonna be super valuable for everyone listening, particularly for my audience who are new into web design and are struggling and it's understandable. I get it. I was I've been there. I understand. It can be a struggle when you're starting out to gain that confidence. But hopefully everything we talked about is an encouragement. Before we wrap up, I know we had talked about talking about some other stuff, because you actually told you I'm starting a membership here soon. And then was funny because the platform I'm looking at, I just happen to see your face at the bottom featured on their homepage. I was like, Hey, I'm interviewing that guy this week. So I'm really interested to hear more about the membership aspect and to pull some more out of your experience. So I think being that you're local, I think maybe I'll maybe I'll post something when we get together here soon. Because I owe you some coffee for sure, man.

Jay 1:01:57
For sure. For sure. This is just the beginning. Thanks for having me, Josh.

Josh 1:01:59
Awesome. Jay. Real quick. Where can people find out more about you? Where do you want people to go to connect with you.

Jay 1:02:04
You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at Jay Clouse. My website is Jay Clouse.com that will branch off to everything else that I do the podcast, freelancing school, wherever you want to go. Pretty easy to find, even if you just give me a Google Jay Clouse.

Josh 1:02:17
Awesome. Well, Thanks, Jay. I'll link that in the show notes. And I'll definitely have you on again soon. And maybe we'll talk value based pricing next time.

Jay 1:02:25
Fun. That's it.