Web Design Business with Josh Hall

368 - Pricing Your Design Services with Chris Do

• Josh Hall

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I teased about this recently on my social media and got a HUGE response which tells me…you’re pumped to see Chris Do on The Web Design Business Podcast and I’m pumped to share our full conversation with you!

Chris is known for helping web designers charge their worth, price value over time, get higher-paying clients, how to negotiate during a sales call and how to price for the life you want to live and somehow, we covered all of that and more in our very fast hour together.

Enjoy the full convo and head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/368

P.S. Did you know? Web Designer Pro members got early access to this conversation, completely unedited – it’s just another reason to join WDP as you get access to the private Pro Podcast feed no matter what tier you’re on! Become a member today at webdesignerpro.com

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/368

Big thanks to the sponsors for our upcoming Web Designer Pro CON 2025 event! We couldn't make such a top-notch event for my community without their support 🙏

17hats (for proposals, invoicing, contracts and automation)

SiteGround (for website hosting)

Termageddon (for auto-updating privacy po

Chris Do:

One way and you'll probably figure out which way I believe in more is to look at your expenses, look at how much you want to save and the kind of lifestyle you want to have, and then charge enough so that you're able to hit those goals.

Chris Do:

And that's really using the numbers and the history to drive the pricing forward. So you look at the last time you did a video project or a website, what it costs you to make, and then that gives you information on how you can charge differently or better the next time. So if it was a bloodbath for you, you're like well, let's not do that again. The next time we run into these features and scope, we need to increase the price so that we can cover our costs and make a profit margin. The second way to do this is just to dream about the kind of future you want to have, based in zero reality, and start to align your prices and services and the clients to that reality and then manage your expenses so that it doesn't eat you up alive. So one talks about looking backwards and one talks about looking forward.

Josh Hall:

Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love. Here we are friends. I teased about this. Last month. I did a little post saying that I had just recorded an interview with today's guest and that post went semi-viral for me, which tells me that you are extra excited to hear my conversation with Chris fricking Doe and I'm so excited to share it with you.

Josh Hall:

If you are a web designer or graphic designer, he probably needs no introduction. For those of you who may not be aware of who Chris is, chris is, first off, an Emmy award-winning designer. He is the CEO and chief strategist of an agency called Blind and he is the founder of what most of us designers know him from the Future, which is a massive YouTube channel. He has a huge social media presence, he has one of the top design podcasts and he is just an absolute bona fide industry expert. So, needless to say, it was an honor to have him on and Chris did not disappoint. I know Chris mostly. My first exposure to him was hearing him talk about pricing for designers and creatives and how to price your worth and your value over your time and how to negotiate and how to get higher paying clients. We get into all that and more in this one, so I'm real excited to share with you our full conversation. You can find more about Chris If you wanted to visit the futurecom.

Josh Hall:

That is the future without an E. That is T H E F U T? U Rcom. We will have that, of course, linked in the show notes at this one, which will be found at joshhallco, slash three, six, eight. I would encourage you to listen to the future podcast. Joshhallco, slash 368.

Josh Hall:

I would encourage you to listen to the future podcast if you're not yet a listener, and Chris mentioned this later on but they're really helping a lot of people in their pro group. Yes, I have Web Designer Pro, but Chris also has a pro group and it's called the Future Pro, so I'd encourage you to check that out. That will also be linked in the show notes. Big thanks to Chris for coming on spending some time with me. And here's our conversation all about pricing, all about value and more, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Leave me a comment. Josh Hallco, slash 368. Here's our chat. Well, chris, it is absolutely an honor to have you on. How does it feel knowing, whenever I poll, the members of my community or my audience or my social media, who would you like to have on the podcast? You are consistently in the top three, like every time.

Chris Do:

That feels great. It's validation that this 10 year journey I've been on and making content it's actually working. But don't tell anybody.

Josh Hall:

It is working and I'm not even joking about that Like literally everyone's like Christo, christo also Seth Godin and Gary V. So good company, good company. Uh, listen, man, it's really cool to chat with you. You are probably the goat as far as web designers and graphic designers learning about pricing and value and charging their worth, so I figured we could riff on that today and, by the way, as I mentioned before, we hit record. My audience are web designers, but a shockingly large amount of web designers are also doing logo design and branding, so for the sake of this convo, I'll just say designers to scoop everybody up.

Josh Hall:

I'm kind of curious, though, just off the bat, like convo, I'll just say designers to scoop everybody up. I'm kind of curious, though, just off the bat, like why do designers struggle with charging their worth? Um, what are some of the top things that you've learned on that with just charging your worth as a?

Chris Do:

designer. Okay, I'll get into some of the mindset, problems or challenges and then I'll get into historically what's going on and then the functional components. Okay, so we're going to open up this onion and it's going to have many layers and maybe some of you will cry after this. Number one is I think, when we're creative people and we could have our dream job like my dream job would be probably a professional skateboarder at one point in my life, but I wasn't good enough the idea that we can do something that we love and get paid for it, it kind of messes up with our, our like compass. Like you can enjoy your life and make money. So there's this guilt that we bring into the conversation that I would be doing this on my own free time, even if no one was paying me. I'm pretty sure a vast majority of your audience has said that literally at some point like, oh, why wouldn't I help them out for free? Because what else am I going to do with my time? I love this so much. So we're kind of volunteering ourselves to be exploited by others. When we have that mindset, in negotiation, whoever wants it more seeds the higher ground. So if you want to do this work like you're. Like, I'm super passionate about logos and I'm drawing logos all the time anyways, and so why wouldn't I want to do this for this other person? And yeah, today I don't have the right budget, but I have all this free time. So there's that part, and I think the next part that we get into this is, historically speaking.

Chris Do:

I think there's this idea of value being tied to time. I think it's the kind of the Marx theory of labor, that what we should charge is what is reasonably fair to produce, and it raises a lot of questions around that, right. So we're tying time to value, we bill hourly, we are paid hourly and everything's kind of measured in the hour. I was reading in Ron Baker's book Implementing Value Pricing and he said that the acre was a unit of land that could be plowed by an ox, and that's wild, like. I never understood that. Like we have arbitrary measurements of things, but they're like in a day. So it's like they can plow that much land in a day, so they would call that an acre, and that's wild, right.

Chris Do:

So it's like we have this, this fascination or this coupling of time, labor, effort and energy to value, and so when we do things, especially if you're an experienced professional creating a website or logo design. The better you are, the faster you work, the more complicated problems you can solve. But the compensation model isn't tied towards real value. It's tied to time, and so when we are putting out estimates and we're talking to clients, oftentimes they'll ask us well, how long will that be? How much did you charge an hour? And we fall into that trap. Maybe that's a trap we set for ourselves, and so we don't know that there's a better or different way. And that will lead me to the third point, but I'm going to pause there.

Josh Hall:

I knew we were going to talk about value and time, so I'm super excited to get into that. I actually would love to hear that third point, because I want to dive into all these, but I do have a bit of a pre question before we get into those. So, yeah, what's the third aspect to all this?

Chris Do:

Yeah, so if most of your professional adult life is understanding a value being tied to time and a client asks you how much do you charge an hour, what's the day rate, you feel compelled to answer them and you don't have another way of talking about money. And I'm not a proponent for saying every single person should do value-based pricing, but we don't. What we do understand is this that every customer has a different set of values and needs and that a logo for one customer is worth nothing to different customers, worth a lot and some would say invaluable for others, and it depends on their need. So when we have a one size fits all model, we're not taking into consideration the other person that we're talking to.

Chris Do:

In the creative circle, we talk a lot about two things imagination and empathy, and every creative person will raise their hand if you were to pull the room. Do you think you score high on imagination? Like yes, and they do. And designers are amazing at this. This is a line from Brian Collins. Designers, or creatives, are very good at rehearsing possible futures and picking the most optimal one. I love this because he's a futurist right. So when we imagine in our mind or we actually design different logos, we go back and review and like, like this is the most optimal path towards a desired result, and I love that. That's for web design, identity design, branding, marketing, all those kinds of things. Um, now the the other part to this is I lost my train of thought here.

Josh Hall:

Sorry, no, you're fine, yeah these three parts of value time, uh, and charging our worth as a designer oh, I'm sorry, I know what it was I was talking about.

Chris Do:

Uh, imagination, empathy, yeah, okay, the second part is empathy. And when you pull the room, again they're like how high do you score on empathy? And they're like, yes, I'm very empathetic and I find that creative people here's the insult are actually very low empathy. They're very self-centered and they don't think they are. But oftentimes and again, how often have you said this? I hate working with this client because they're getting in the way of me making great website or great design and so it's just all about us. So when we price a fixed price or hourly price, it's all about what we think our time is worth and has nothing to do with what the other person thinks it's worth.

Chris Do:

And this is really critical and this comes up a lot. Say, there's a mom and pop business, it's a bakery, a cafe, and they have a good like neighborhood, local, community connection. So they show up and you'll notice that the sign on the building is one typeface or one logo type, the sign on the door is a different logo type and they sign inside or on the menu is a third type. Now this drives designers and creators bonkers, like there's no consistency or continuity, and then they said they need to change it. This is what's wrong. And I asked them something Do you think the local neighborhood shows up because they're bothered by the logo, or more people would show up? It's because they have their roots in the neighborhood and they make a really great product and, in fact, changing some of their logos might confuse the local community and audience. They have a line out the door. They sell more donuts or bagels than they know what to do with, so in this case, the logo or identity design is not very valuable to them. Going in there and pitching to them that you're going to do this it was just like this is an expense there and pitching to them that you're going to do this, it was just like this is an expense and I don't want to do this because it not only does it cost money to pay you to design the logo, but it also costs money for you to implement that and we don't want to deal with any of that.

Chris Do:

Conversely, if you're a sports apparel company and you're trying to create some kind of distinction or or variation or differentiation in the marketplace, you need a really good designer fashion designer, product designer and a really good designer, fashion designer, product designer and a logo identity designer, so that your products perform better and look better. And then there's a icon or a symbol that people can quickly recognize and say that's that brand and I like what they stand for, I like the quality of their products To them. If they have a really ugly logo or logo that's confusing or, worse yet, one that's too similar to someone else, they can build up their brand equity and then, a couple of years later, get sued for copyright infringement or trademark infringement. So we have to understand that the buyer is different. They value different things. So the only way we can really address this is to have a conversation with the individuals. So we have to have negotiation skills. We have to step into a business role more than than a peer creative role.

Josh Hall:

Is it fair or not fair to say that certain industries value design more than others?

Chris Do:

It's absolutely fair and it's totally true. And even within industries, certain individuals value design more than others. Here's an example two ginormous trillion dollar companies, microsoft and Apple, value design more than others. Here's an example Two ginormous trillion dollar companies, microsoft and Apple, value design differently. They both pay for design, but their implementation, their execution of it, is vastly different. One would probably seek out the most talented, gifted photographer, designer, developer, ux, ui person to develop what they're doing, cause they're so um, they're so um. What's the word they're? They're? They're so particular about how they express their design, whereas the other one you could say if you didn't know any better there's a committee of people picking what is is chosen and there's not like led by a strong, clear vision. So they're the. How we interact with their design is very different.

Josh Hall:

Great point. I want to dive into this. I want to peel the onion back, like you're talking about. By the way, we were talking about food. I know it's before lunch for you. You can tell, because we're already into bagel shops and onions. I'm curious, though, chris, real quick, before we get into this, you could search on YouTube and see your stuff and immediately think, as a designer, that this guy has all the confidence in the world with value-based pricing, how to sell, how to negotiate. I'm betting that's not where you started, though. What is your money story? I don't know if I've ever heard you talk about this. What's your background? What's your relationship to money? What was Chris version 1.0 before there was this confident selling Chris dough?

Chris Do:

That's an interesting question. So my money story is I don't have an unhealthy relationship with money, and I'm glad you brought this up because I need to talk about it, because it ties into the mindset we first talked about this, this idea that we're having fun so we shouldn't charge money for it. But also, in in our lives we don't have the role models who have a healthy relationship with money. Money is a source of evil. For some people, money is a source of power, and so we attribute too much value to the money itself. It has some power over us. If you grew up poor which I did we were refugees from Vietnam. My parents had lost everything, and so their relationship with money is very different than mine. Money was a thing to hoard, protect and to use very stingily, you know, in a stingy way, right. So they're really tight on money. They don't want to use money to have like a lavish life. It was all about protecting it and so saving for a future, because security is a real problem for them. And I grow up and I'm thinking I want to make money, because money equals freedom, and have a very different relationship with money, because I'm not worried about making it right now because I'm a kid and I want to see what I can do to buy the things I want. So I look at it like if you desire something new pair of shoes, some cool jeans you had to go figure out a way that you can create value for other people. And I'll tell you this story real quick. I think I'm 17, probably close to 18.

Chris Do:

I'm working at a silk screening shop. I'm a production artist. My boss, super talented guy, studied graphic design. He would do these pencil drawings and they're for, like, different team athletic departments, right. And he would say, chris, your job is to ink, so I would lay acetate over and I would take a repudiograph pen and I'll ink over it. And I'm not very skilled at this, but I'm working at it and he's paying me really well. He's paying me 18 bucks an hour, which is probably six times the the minimum wage, right at that point. So I'm doing this and I start to realize something.

Chris Do:

I asked my boss so how much do you charge to do the design and print this stuff, including the t-shirt? And it was with a Hanes BFT, if you know. You know he said $5.25. But they need to order a minimum of X shirts, let's say he said 100 to keep the math straightforward. So his minimum order is going to be $525. Everything's included.

Chris Do:

As I'm sitting there working at 18 bucks an hour, I'm thinking why am I, the guy working for 18 bucks an hour? I can go and sell the t-shirts, have my boss design it, print it and just make the money between the two parts. So if I can charge $10, $11 for the t-shirt, have him do it for five and a quarter. I'm making as much money as he is. So I'm already wired a little differently. So I asked him if I could pay you to do this, would you? And he's like, absolutely, getting business is hard. And so I quickly flipped my mindset to. I'm going to go to the student what is it called? Student clubs and student government and ask them do you need t-shirts done? Because then I can do the client stuff, the client liaison. I could art direct and I could do some rough sketches and design and then pay someone else to do it and then make profit in between. And this is how I've been wired. So I have a very different relationship with money.

Josh Hall:

So you were entrepreneurial in your teen years. Do you think? Is anyone else in your family, even outside of your parents, is anyone in your family entrepreneurial in any way?

Chris Do:

My older brother no, you know what? Not really. Both my parents had a nine to five. Until they retired, worked at tech companies. My older brother wound up working for companies as a co-founder, so you could say he is entrepreneurial, but he's always sharing the risk with someone. Now he has a ton of money because he's exited out of a couple of companies. He's investing in real estate and businesses, but he has someone else.

Josh Hall:

Gotcha, I just asked because I'm fascinated by hereditary entrepreneurship. I'm not, like no one else in my family is an entrepreneur or business owner, so I'm very much a black sheep. And I want to get your thoughts on this too, chris, because I feel like obviously it's probably no secret.

Josh Hall:

Everything changed with the internet as far as changing your money story, I w we had a conversation recently on the podcast about how you've got to change your money money story as a designer when you start your business, because inevitably, we all bring our money mostly bad mind trash, money, mindset stuff into our business, like you were talking about earlier being in your client's pockets. Basically, yeah, but I think for me, I had to literally go on the internet to find people with a different money story. There were some people locally who are entrepreneurial, but I don't know where to go with an exact question on that. But what are your thoughts about that? With just the opportunity to change your money story, with the opportunities we have now online to be able to, I mean, I feel like you can change your money story overnight with a book or a community or just changing your surroundings.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I heard Erwin McManus talk about this. He's a pastor, he runs a mega church and he says are we capable of change? And his answer was one I thought was profound and I thought it rang true to me it resonated Is that I think all of us are capable of change. It's like do we feel the urgency behind it to change or not? And if you don't feel that urgency, it could take a really long time. So, in my mind, if I'm a coach, what I want to do is to increase the perceived urgency within the person so that they act. And most of coaching is really to get you to take action, because we know the answers work. We just got to get the person motivated enough so that they actually will do it. And you can do it a couple different ways. You can pull or you can push, you can use fear, you can, you can try to like use the carrot technique, a lot of different things. And I think this existed way before the internet existed, because before then there were audio cassette programs you know, I don't know if you're old enough to remember tony robbins running infomercials and you can buy like a 24 cassette program on how to change your mind about something and the format has changed, but the information has always been there the back of the room, book sales, self-help books, seminars and all that kind of stuff. The godfather of all this probably is Jim Rohn, in terms of the self-development space, and he's incredible.

Chris Do:

And so what happens is technology allows things to move faster, but it's built on the same business models, and so I think each and every single person, especially people listening to your podcast right now, they have to ask themselves do I like the trajectory that I'm on? Like if last year, the difference between last year or the two years ago to last year, is moving me in a specific direction? Do I want more of that? Do I want less of that? And if you can answer that in an objective, sober way, I think it gives you a lot of clarity. So if you're flatlining and your profit margin usually will start to decrease because it happens to all of us is things get more expensive, the team that you work with require more money and general living expenses go up, and oftentimes clients the same clients ask for efficiencies over time so that things cost less to produce. So it's literally costing you more to make and they're paying you less because that's how the world works. So at the intersection of those two things where you have rising costs of goods sold versus what you're being paid those two lines intersect. You're out of business. So just think about that. Now, if things are going great, you shouldn't change anything. You should do more of what you're doing. So if you're having 200%, 300% growth year over year, just keep doing that and look out for the icebergs that'll eventually come. But and look out for the icebergs that will eventually come, but you don't need to change anything.

Chris Do:

Now I'm going to imagine, josh, you were listening to this because the trend lines are not good, is it true?

Josh Hall:

Probably a high percentage. Some of my community members are absolutely killing it. But once they get to a certain threshold, you enter a new set of challenges where, like you just mentioned well, shoot now, they're so busy they got to scale, so they know their expenses are about to creep up, so they probably want to prepare for this next season.

Chris Do:

Yeah, and for the people who are totally crushing and killing it, I would ask them to reframe your definition of success. I have a buddy. He's a little bit older than me. We've been in business for about the same amount of time. I think he's had two years in his life and it's the latter part of his life that he's broken a million dollars in revenue. And he was like Chris I broke the six seven figure mark. I'm like congratulations. I did it when I was 23 years old. I don't know what took you so long. So my definition of success is vastly different than his.

Chris Do:

And here's what happens when you surround yourself with people who are ambitious, who are driven, who are responsible and ethical, some of that magic rubs off on you. So when you associate yourselves with someone who's really pushing forward I think this is why people listen to podcasts like this is they get inspired like wow, none of my friends think like that. They're all from the small town. I think this is the maximum and I have plenty in my life and that's totally okay. I'm not here to make you unhappy with your life. But for those that are really crushing it, ask yourself what is the next five years? Look like what is the big benchmark that you're trying to push for it? Your big, hairy, audacious goal, and then you'll start to realize there's more that I could be doing.

Josh Hall:

Your and I think this will get into everything you laid out so far with this idea of everything regards to money and money mindset. Your tagline on your YouTube is help a billion people make a living, do what they love. Now it's interesting because the tagline for this podcast is to build freedom and a lifestyle you love. For web design, I'm very intentional as a brand myself not to push six or seven figures in my copy. Sometimes I do, but I found that freedom-based lifestyle balance style entrepreneurs are who I attract and I absolutely love that persona because I am one myself.

Josh Hall:

But to achieve freedom and lifestyle balance, you got to make some decent money, especially if you're living, like I'm, in Columbus, Ohio. Where are you at? Chris? Los Angeles, Los Angeles. So, yeah, I probably need some money to live out there. So, depending on where you are in the world, six figures is just a very low base for a decent living nowadays. Do you feel like side note? Do you feel like 250 is the new six figures? I heard that recently and I'm like I kind of agree with that. I'm like I kind of agree with that. I feel like two, two, 50 is the new a hundred.

Chris Do:

K, it depends on where you live. Yeah Right, if you live in a developing country where the the average salary or income of somebody six or $7,000, $100,000 is like you're a millionaire, it just depends on where you live. And I understand this is not a joke. In San Francisco, if you make a hundred thousand dollars as a household income, you are living at the poverty line and that's going to blow people away and I'm like is that a joke? They're like no, that's real. You'll get help, You'll get assistance because you're at the poverty line now because of cost of living being so high. And I don't know if that's excuse me, I don't know if that's outdated data, but that's what exists.

Josh Hall:

That absolutely makes sense. I have a reason. This is very top of mind. I have a student outside of Ottawa in Canada and she is really working on her money mindset and she just messaged me in my community and said she loved our recent chat about money mindset and that to her it just dawned on her that $100,000 feels icky because where she grew up in her small town it just feels like you're the rich person and you're greedy If you make over a certain amount, if you make anything over of what you need, you're immediately into the greedy category. So I love this frame because I know it differs for everybody, but I just I see personally and I know you do coaching and oversee a lot of web designer, web and graphic designers yourself I hate seeing people struggle in their business and it's often not all the time, but often tied to a lack of confidence or knowing what they just need to make and know how to be profitable and not be afraid to charge their worth in order to get that.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I want to address the icky comment about $100,000 and hopefully I can get someone to pause and think about their statement there. I think the pursuit of money is a good thing. Despite me talking about money all the time, I think the pursuit of impact in the world is important and I think money is just a measurement of impact. So if we shifted away from $100,000 and wanting to make more money and maybe that is it because if that's all you're thinking about then it's just the pursuit of more money and I don't know if that's good. But if you say, if what I'm doing is a good thing in the world and that's the presumption, otherwise change your life, change what you do, and if I can impact more lives and businesses, so if you help companies have an amazing identity system or do marketing for coaches, or build amazing websites that have really high conversion, that load really fast, then every company you choose to share your gift with is going to do better. And it's a battle for the best companies in the world to survive, because what we want to do is when we spend money, we're voting for the kind of world we want to live in. So I don't want companies I don't like and think are unethical to win this battle. So I want to ally myself with the companies and brands that I think are doing something good. They pay their employees well, they have good benefits and they're not trying to destroy the world. They're working towards carbon neutral or carbon negative right. Those are things that I think are worth fighting for.

Chris Do:

So if you have a gift, your obligation, I think, is to share it with as many people as possible and the impact that you create then will then generate the money. It's not the other way around. I have friends. When I grew up in high school, their pursuit was money. And here's the ironic thing the people who pursue money for the money's sake oftentimes rarely ever achieve it. But the people who pursue impact, who don't even care about money, are oftentimes the most free, the happiest, and also they have the most resources, meaning AKA money and people to help them.

Josh Hall:

So, to put this practically and I totally agree, I'm like 100% on board with you. I'm that type of entrepreneur as well to where I absolutely think freedom first and family and lifestyle first. And the thing I've realized is I have three kids Now. I have a daughter with special needs. Our medical expenses are absolutely insane. So what I thought was filthy rich a decade ago is pocket change now to what we need to be able to sustain our lifestyle and be able to be giving and be able to have a Roth IRA and everything else that's going on. So I do love this challenge to think about impact first. But once you think about what impact you got to make, you got to know your bottom line right. Where do you start to get practical on helping a lot of the folks in your sphere with money? And this segues right into what to charge and how to feel confident with what to charge Once you figure out a lifestyle impact vision what are the first steps?

Chris Do:

to think about revenue, your ideal revenue goal. Okay, there's two ways to look at revenue. One way and you'll probably figure out which way I believe in more is to look at your expenses, look at how much you want to save and the kind of lifestyle you want to have, and then charge enough so that you're able to hit those goals. And that's really using the numbers and the history to drive the pricing forward. So you look at the last time you did a video project or a website, what it costs you to make, and then that gives you information on how you can charge differently or better the next time. So if you it was a bloodbath for you, you're like well, let's not do that again. The next time we run into these features and scope, we need to increase the price so that we can cover our costs and make a profit margin.

Chris Do:

The second way to do this is just to dream about the kind of future you want to have, based in zero reality, and start to align your prices and services and the clients to that reality and then manage your expenses so that it doesn't eat you up alive. So one talks about looking backwards and one talks about looking forward Two different approaches. Most people I know lean towards the first one. Few people I know lean towards the second one, and they might all sound the same and it could literally be the exact same number between these two, but the mindset is very different. I don't know if you've been able to figure it out yet, but which one do you think I'll line?

Josh Hall:

with. I'm very honestly, chris, I'm torn because I feel like you, as somebody who is not money first would. Initially I thought the first one, like you, would just think about what you need to make and just say you have enough for a little little buffer. But I maybe this turned around for you at a different time. If you came up with the impact of reaching a billion people to be able to do what they love, then there's no way that first mindset would get you to your goal. So my thought would be that you're actually in the second one and that once you figured out your goal and your vision, that realigned your mindset with your monetary goals.

Chris Do:

Okay, I'll tell you two stories, then you'll figure it out. Okay, so play along and choose your own adventure. No quick answers. All right, I like it. No quick answers.

Chris Do:

Number one when I ran a production company called Blind this is pre the future, I'm not making content. Oftentimes, what we would do is, when we go to bid a project so it's like 30 second commercial we look at the variables Is this 2D animation? Is there live action, compositing visual effects? And then my producers would find an old bid for a project that was very similar and make adjustments based on the old bid. Okay, and I was sitting there looking at him like what are you doing? You're trying to forecast the unknowable. Like what do you mean? This is knowable? I'm like no, because we haven't finished the pitch, we haven't finished designing the boards, we don't know what they're going to say and do, and so it is a crazy ass guess that you're doing right now. And no two projects are the same, because we don't even hire the same teams to work with us. So how can you even know any of this?

Chris Do:

So what they do is they look at the past. They come up with a budget that they think is reasonable, with a certain percentage margin for error. And then when they get the budget, what they do is then they manage the team so that they can protect the profit margin. That makes a lot of sense, right? So if it's a $200,000 project, let's say we want to have 30% gross profit, which would mean 60K needs to be protected. So of the 200, they would spend 140. Very reasonable way to look at this. Reasonable.

Chris Do:

And I said you know what? That does not take into consideration what the clients want to spend on this. And later on you start to realize you will lose a project if you're ridiculously high and you're ridiculously low. What you want to do is be somewhere in the middle of the pack, in theory. Now for me, I said well, how do we know they don't want to pay three hundred fifty thousand dollars? Why did you bid it at 200? So the game that we played is what is the maximum amount of money that the client would be willing to pay for this project? And we just need to be below their break point. So let's say in their mind they're like 300,000 is what we can spend, but we can spend as much as 350. So we don't want to be at 380. We want to be right at 351 or 349. And we don't know what that number is until we talk to them how do you win and how do you ask that?

Josh Hall:

do you ask? It's really common for most designers to have like a what's your budget on the contact form. Is that the kind of area or do you do on a sales call? What are your thoughts on when and where to ask that?

Chris Do:

many ways to do this. It's literally done on the very first call that we have with the client. I want everyone to keep in mind a couple of factors. Number one the client's been pre-qualified. We don't get on the phone until we're they're pre-qualified. And qualifying the clients is different for each person. For us, it's budget, it's how many people are bidding on the project, it's their project timeline, what they expect to see. Those are important to us. So if any one of those variables are off, we just bow out of it. It's totally okay.

Chris Do:

So we get on the call. They're telling us they're brief, like here's what we need to do. At some point hopefully earlier than conversation, not the very last thing that we do we ask them, based on this, tell us how big the sandbox is, because we can come up with solutions for 10, 000, 100, 500 or 3. How big is the sandbox? And depending on how we conduct ourselves prior to that point, their level of disclosure is going to be very different. Now, we're professionals, they're professionals the way that we know that is. Professionals are not uncomfortable talking about money. So this is where they'll say something like look, we've earmarked about $270,000 to do this project. I say great. So are you saying that if a bid comes in at higher, like if we come up with an idea, that's amazing, that there's no way that you would consider three $400,000.

Chris Do:

They're like, well, that's not what I'm saying. So they say what are you saying? Then they say, okay, look, here's what I really have, but I can't spend more than that. That includes the contingency which I've built into this. Now, sophisticated producers on the other side tell you what the budget is and they hold back sometimes 10, 20, 30% for those things when there's a weird change order that comes from the client that they need to accommodate for that. But they're not trying to withhold resources such that you feel crippled doing the project. It serves nobody. It's in everybody's interest to have an honest, open and transparent conversation about what the real budget is, so that we would be able to use that money to pour into the production of this thing. So ultimately we land at a number, we agree verbally that this is the number it needs to be and then we go and build a bid to that number.

Josh Hall:

So there's no sticker shock in your process.

Chris Do:

There cannot be the first time you talk about the money. It should not be on a piece of paper, it should be on the very first call.

Josh Hall:

That's interesting.

Chris Do:

There's a whole art form to doing that, by the way, yeah.

Josh Hall:

What are your thoughts on preset pricing or packages? I guess this depends. Sometimes it could work out pretty well, but I guess in the case of a value based pricing approach, I guess that absolutely can't happen. It could, no, it can't yeah, it can.

Chris Do:

So I do recommend for a lot of people, especially that are not that sophisticated talking about money, to have set prices, because what happens inevitably is, if you're not very good at having the money conversation, having a preset price that's higher than what you normally would get, or an average, takes away a lot of the attention. Everybody on the call already knows what it's going to cost, minus some weird scope thing that they're asking for. You can still do value-based pricing if you say prices start at this amount. So that's a pre-qualifier, so to say, like we can build a website starting at $36,000, starting at $180,000, fill in your own number and then, depending on what you want, it will go up from there and you can still have that.

Josh Hall:

Okay, this is like uber timely. I told you, I just chatted last night with our mutual friend, james Barnard, and one thing I was kind of helping him with because we were looking at his lead funnel together is he has set pricing or he has like ranges. He has like what's your budget? And he has so many inquiries.

Josh Hall:

Well, until our call last night that were coming in under 5,000, most people selected his one K to five K mark and he was spending so much time weeding those people out and I asked him I was like James, tell me honestly, how many people did you work with last year that were in that category? And he's like actually most of my really good clients came from immediately a 5K to 10K plus range. I was like you just need to knock out the 1K to 5K completely. Unless you have a standardized, productized service, that shouldn't even be in the conversation, like you just need to. I love the range idea and that's what I recommend too for my students is to have ranges that start at what ideally you want. Don't have the lower ticket option, because everyone's going to go for that or at least a high percentage. So yeah, that's great. I totally back you up on that.

Chris Do:

And I'm excited to hear from James how that helps too. Yeah, the other way that you can do this when it comes to money, because there's a lot of sophisticated ways that you can do this. Now I was talking to someone they ran a digital marketing agency and they're like Chris, how do you do value-based pricing? This whole conversation is so stressful for me. I said, okay, if you look at the last 10 jobs that you're doing, what is the average price? So what we do is we do Olympic scoring and Olympic scoring, if I understand this, you take the bottom two and you throw those out. You take the top two and you throw that out, so there's six left. You take those and then you add them up and divide by six and let's just say, for Matt's sake, he says $100,000. So that means, on average, you're doing $100,000. So that means there are projects you do for a lot less than that. He goes, yes, and there's a couple of projects you do for more than that he goes, of course. So I said, if you could make your average price a certain number and it would make you really happy, what number is that? He goes 125. So I said, ok, 125. So he took out the anomalies. That means most of the projects don't even come in at that price.

Chris Do:

So I said to him you don't need to do value-based pricing. All you have to do is say our projects start at $125,000. And you don't even have to change it. It could just literally be a fixed price. So now you're guaranteed that the baseline is $125,000. So you don't have to deal with the $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 gigs anymore. You don't even talk to them. And he goes is it that simple? I said it is if you execute that right. So I'm not saying value-based pricing is for everybody, but you do have to have a sobering conversation with someone who knows what they're talking about in terms of business. Look at your numbers and say, based on all we're talking about, this is what you need to be doing. Execute that You'll automatically filter out a lot of poor fits. Your average, that you'll automatically filter out a lot of poor fits. Your average price will go up and you know you have the resources to produce this properly versus underfunding the project.

Josh Hall:

Hear, hear and look. We're in an industry that is often very custom. I know there's so many options and different solutions for systematizing and productizing and templatizing, but when it comes to logo design, branding, a lot of web design it's so custom and so time intensive. I think designers I don't know if you've personally experienced this it sounds like you probably started your agency much more business minded and entrepreneurial than I did and a lot of web designers and designers do but we realize the value of our time when we look back and realize, oh my God, I could have absolutely made more working at McDonald's than doing this website. And suddenly, like selling a website for five grand. Y'all sounded so cool and it's like, oh, but I spent like 150 hours, so actually it wasn't near as cool as I thought. Oh shit, I got to pay taxes and I got a mortgage too, so suddenly it doesn't sound as cool. So very needed message you got for us today, chris, absolutely. You are number two, by the way, of the two types.

Chris Do:

I am number two.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, you're number two. I should have realized that early on, when you were talking about your you know your work experience as a teenager feeling like why do you have to do the bare minimum? We could charge a lot more. So when did your impact come into play for you, by the way, when this vision of helping a billion people do what they love and make a living at it? When did that happen for?

Chris Do:

you. There were two things that happened in my timeline that, at the point in which they cross over, it becomes very clear. Number one I was starting to make content in 2014 with my former business partner, jose Caballé, and we would do this. This is really rewarding. I love teaching. This is a different way to teach. It's not as interactive, obviously, because I'm just talking to a camera most of the time, but the impact is just multiplied by the number of people who actually see it. We didn't know how to make money on that just yet, but that was really important to me.

Chris Do:

Point number two is I was talking to my financial planner and we're talking about retirement like how much more money do we need to make here? He has clear vision on all the our assets, our resources, our spending, and he told me something that was shocking to me at that time. He's like chris, you could already retire. There's no point if you don't want to work in where you don't need to living the way you do. You have enough money to live until the end of your days, including your college fund and all that kind of stuff. You guys are set Don't buy a jet, you're good. So I'm like okay, so now I don't have to make money. I really enjoy teaching. This is kind of what I need to do with the rest of my life and, to my surprise, I believe the future, as an education company focused on impact will earn more per year, earn more lifetime and be a much more attractive company for someone to buy than the previous 25 years of building the service business.

Josh Hall:

When and how do you recommend people think about that impact? Because we've laid the foundation for how important it is to be confident with your money story, how you charge, charging your worth, all the things that web designers and designers struggle with but I'm just wondering if somebody hasn't thought about the impact they want to make, what are your tips for finding that impact?

Chris Do:

I think this is a very nuanced, individualized, personal thing to be able to answer. I think you have to take care of your first order of needs, which is to pay down your student loan, possibly put away money to purchase a home, to help out an elderly parent or a sibling. Those are very important. So you need to think about the impact that's closest to you first. It's you know that expression think global, act local. I think you need to act local right now. We can have all these visions of the future and not be able to do anything locally nor globally, and so once you are able to kind of shore up your own warehouse of resources, they're your defense, I guess, against unexpected things Like in LA right now? Homes are on fire, people have lost everything. Yeah, how far are defense, I guess, against unexpected things like in la right now? Homes are on fire, people lost everything and if they didn't have.

Chris Do:

From that, by the way, I wondered how far really close first of all, my old neighborhood in the pacific palisades is decimated. My old house was burnt down to the ground, including my neighbor's home. So I feel so, so sad for them for losing everything, and I don't know how well off they are financially that they can recover from something like this. So there's those unexpected expenses or your car breaks down, or your, your parent, your mom, your dad slips, falls, has a, needs a hip replacement, and no one can cover it. That is tragic. So you need to be able to take care of those basic essential needs first, before you start thinking about impact. Now, once you start to get above that where you have six to nine months of runway that you can run your company without actually new work and still survive, and you've got money saved up beyond what you can spend, I think you start to shift your mindset and add a layer of impact to what it is that you do.

Josh Hall:

I like that too, because I feel like for folks who are early in the journey, if you try to run before you walk, if you set your goals so high but your skills and chops aren't quite there yet, you're almost just setting yourself up for failure. I see this all the time with designers who are like I want to make seven figures and I'm like why? Why seven figures Exactly? Is it sound? Does it sound cool? I'd be watching a lot of you know, like bro hustlers on social media, like what, what? What is about seven figures versus maybe two? 50 would be totally fine to get the foundation and then have enough to then really think about. Is that, is that? Would you agree with that in most cases, that mindset of a little above your needs, and then you're articulated. Then you really think larger, think bigger, think impact.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Well, we can talk about impact in a number of ways. When I heard you say impact, I thought it meant helping other people. If somebody's sitting there thinking I want to make $10 million, that's not impact to me. That's just chasing a number. That's okay in some regards because you can set these lofty goals. But then the reality talk is what are you willing to do to give up, to put on hold such that you can pursue this, because the person who makes a million dollars it's not going to be the same person who makes $10 million. You fundamentally have to change. So we have people who are like they make $100,000. Congratulations, good job.

Chris Do:

And I said what's your goal? A million dollars? Well, I asked him this question Are you willing to be 10 times the person you are today? Because that's what you're asking for. If you're not, this is just wishful thinking. And so when you say are you willing to give up nine out of the 10 hobbies that waste your time, are you willing to give up nine out of the 10 hobbies that waste your time? Are you willing to delegate nine out of the 10 tasks that you're doing right now? Are you willing to focus more on the business aspects than the things that you find purely pleasurable. You have to give up something to get something that you want right.

Josh Hall:

And I've experienced this in my life. Doing this before we get ready to close this out here, chris, I think it's important to when you can lead with the impact you want to make, because you were talking about push and pull earlier. This may be slightly different, but I feel like, as everyone knows as an entrepreneur, it is a complete roller coaster. There are so many high highs and so many low lows. It's hard as shit, like there's a reason most people don't make it, and I just went through two years of down revenue, switching my model from a course first business to a membership Now 24 is freaking awesome and it was our best year to date.

Josh Hall:

But I felt like, honestly, I was pulled through those down times because I am just so freaking passionate about helping web designers Very similar to you, but mine is just dedicated to web design business owners I feel like that's what kept me able to show up. I was able to not stay down for long, I was able to continue to do what I do and I felt like I was pulled through that by the mission that I have. So I just hope that's a real world example of how important having an impact style mission is, because man times get tough sometimes and you need a mission to pull you through it. I feel like if you're just aiming for a certain number, I feel like that's why a lot of people give up or quit when it's just chasing something that's vain or vanity metrics.

Chris Do:

Yeah, it's fairly arbitrary, so you have to anchor it in something, I think, at some point. I want to say this I have friends who are really good people, genuinely very good people, who want to do a lot of social good in the world, and they don't have a functional business and they don't have a lot of runway. Everything's always super tight for them financially speaking, and yet they're sitting there trying to think I want to charge less, I want to do this for my community. So here's a couple of problems. Number one is it's mostly wishful thinking because you don't have the resources, and I think a lot of people get distracted because they don't want to work on the hard stuff.

Chris Do:

As you said, it's really hard to work on your own business, and so the distraction is I'll do this other thing. I'll tell myself, I'll do this other thing, and it actually doesn't play out. So you're giving yourself an out when things don't work. Here's the thing If you're successful yourself, you have the bandwidth to be able to help other people at scales in which you couldn't before. But there's another thing that we haven't talked about, which is your credibility is really high. It's like you're not helping us because you have no other options in your life. You're helping us because you've been super successful and now we want to learn from your success and we want to grow in the way that you've grown Right. So a lot of us use the impact concept like we want to do whatever is good for our community as a distraction, as a diversion from doing what it is. That's really hard, that we don't want to do.

Josh Hall:

This has been a super fast 45 minutes man, holy crap. All right, I know I want to make sure you have some time for lunch and you got to call 10 minutes if you want it, otherwise we can wrap here.

Josh Hall:

Okay, I have one final question for you because I think it'll might take a few minutes, but speaking of one of the best ways to to change your money mindset and to build confidence community, I have a web design community called Web Designer Pro. That was the un. How do I frame this? It was the hidden surprise that I wasn't expecting of a web design community was confidence. The amount of members who say I finally have confidence, confidence, confidence, confidence. Some of that was my coaching, Some was the courses, but a lot of it was they see what other designers are doing and they're like, oh my God, at least I did this for 20K, I could do that for 20K and it's amazing. Like you mentioned earlier and why a lot of people listen to podcasts is to be in a different mindset. You have a community, another pro community. Tell us about your community, Chris, and what you got going on there.

Chris Do:

Yes, our community has changed and grown over the years. Initially, it was created to support products that we made, so somebody would buy one of our flagship products, and it needed support, because you can go through the course, but you have a lot of individual, personalized questions or nuanced questions that the course cannot accommodate or anticipate. So we created this thing. What we started to realize is the community had its own value in terms of who's there, a peer group, finding kinship and also receiving up-to-date information about a vast variety of topics and ideas, and so it's grown into a private, paid community. We called it Future Pro Group. There are over 250 people in it. Currently it's 250 bucks a month. You're required to be enrolled in the program for 90 days, after which you do whatever you want, and the reason why we do this is because we found that this journey, this so-called entrepreneurial journey, is a super lonely thing. Most of us don't have the resources where we know who to call to get guidance. We don't even know what a business coach is, nor can we afford one, and so we need something that where we know who to call to get guidance. We don't even know what a business coach is, nor can we afford one, and so we need something that where we can go to say, oh, have you gone through this problem? Oh, I have, and it looks just like this, at different levels, in different industries and in different countries even, and so when we have someone who is a model of how you should think or behave in price who you find to be super relatable, the likelihood of how you should think or behave and price who you find to be super relatable the likelihood of them taking action is much, much greater. So we have this thing. It's got a bunch of resources to it, but there's a very simple thing that we're working on for 2025, which is this Get every member in the future pro group to having $20,000 a month consistently. We need you to get there, and there's certain things that I can do that'll help you make it very predictable.

Chris Do:

We define three key categories that are very common to every single business. You need to be able to generate leads consistently of highly qualified people, and when you do that, you don't audition anymore. They audition for you. Difference there. Number two is when you have all these leads and you, you fumble the bag, as they say. You don't know how to have the sales conversation. You either self-sabotage or you're underpricing or something weird is happening, or you're making the clients feel not seen, heard nor understood. So you have to generate leads and when you get those leads, you have to learn how to do the sales. Once you they're converted, you have to have a way to deliver this consistently over time that has predictable results.

Chris Do:

You had said earlier, what we do as creative is highly customizable or highly custom bespoke work, and it's very hard to do this again and again. Well, we don't think that we believe it's actually highly systematized. It's just you haven't done the work to do this. We know that every single client needs certain things done for them, with them, and if you were to systematize it, then you can focus almost all of your energy on the most important part, which is a creative aspect. Within these variables, what is it that we need to hit?

Chris Do:

And even Paula Sher, the world's most famous graphic designer, female graphic designer, has a system. When she talks to new clients, she hands them this big old book of logos logos designed by the world's best designers and she tells them pick three logos you like and from that she can have an informed conversation. I think that's brilliant, because otherwise you. The designer is spending all of your time figuring out. Is it this kind of logo? Is it that kind of logo? You need to ascertain as to what their tastes are, where they're at, not to say this is what you're going to do, but you need to have a baseline, a shared visual language, versus just talking about ideas.

Josh Hall:

Yeah, it's funny how terms like systematize, productize, constraints, boundaries those become very sexy when you're a few years into your business as a designer, because in the beginning you're like I just want to take my time and make art and you're like, oof, art is extremely pricey on my time if I don't put some constraints on that. So, yeah, I totally agree, man, creativity and constraints that's kind of my motto inside of what I teach. So, heck, yeah, chris, where can everyone go to check out Future Pro?

Chris Do:

If you just go to our website, thefuturecom, and it's spelled f-u-t-u-r. There's no e at the end there you can just google the future. It's just like um in in the rules of war. Close enough works right. So if you can get somewhere close to that, you'll find us. You can find me on pretty much all social platforms.

Josh Hall:

I'm at the chris doe and doe spelled d-o we'll have a link in the show notes, of course. Last quick question how far are you in your vision for a billion? How do you measure that?

Chris Do:

is it like a?

Josh Hall:

spreadsheet of a billion people you're keeping track of. How's that?

Chris Do:

I think it's one of those big, hairy, audacious goals that is kind of nearly impossible to track. But I do know at one point if, if it's possible, we would talk, talk to somebody. And if I talk to eight people, if one of those eight people because there are eight billion people on Earth said, yeah, I know something about you guys, then I know that we've done our job. Now we have an official counter I think it's a little over 30,000 where people literally register to claim their number in the one to eight billion, kind of like how McDonald's says X number of burgers served.

Chris Do:

Ours is number of lives impacted. That's an official counter, but that is underrepresenting the number of people who watch our YouTube channel, because we have a zillion hours watched right and followers on different social platforms are engaging with me. And here's how I also look at it, and this was fascinating to me. I was in Dubai. An older, good-looking Egyptian man walks up to me and says hey, chris, don't forget about us. I'm like I'm not forgetting much. What do you think I'm doing here? He goes no, no, no. The teachers. And you know, as one teacher to another, I'm like tell me, more, friend, what are we talking about? He goes do you know how often I am in class and telling people I'm drawing or teaching this way because of this other guy named Chris Doe? I said well, think about the number of lives he's impacting on a regular basis. So if his class is 30 people basically every semester, if it's a new group of people, he's helping to amplify the reach that we have. And so I'm also counting on secondary and possibly even tertiary impact here.

Josh Hall:

Well, even when I said the outset of this, the number one guest request, top three, is you, consistently so obviously, so many metrics that show you are living up to your impact man. So, chris, hell yeah, dude, thank you for your time. This has been great. I feel like we just scratched the surface, but time is time, so appreciate your time and I hope we can do it again very soon, man.

Chris Do:

Thanks, Josh.

Josh Hall:

Hope you enjoyed that one, friends. Again, absolute honor having Chris on the show. I hope this is the first of many to come. I really would love to hear your thoughts on this one. I released this conversation early to members of my community Web Designer Pro an unedited version and I got such good feedback. So I would love to hear from you. I'll be happy to pass this on to Chris and his team as well. So I would love to hear from you I'll be happy to pass this on to Chris and his team as well If you would like to share some feedback at joshhallco slash 368.

Josh Hall:

By feedback, I mean takeaways. What did you learn from this conversation? What has helped you? I'm sure it will help Chris and his team too, to figure out what content is resonating the most and what thoughts of his are helping out the most. So leave us a comment. Joshhallco slash 368. All of the links we mentioned are also going to be over there and you can connect with Chris there. There'll be a link to his future pro group, his website, his podcast and more. So head over joshhallco slash 368. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. Stay subscribed, my friends, because we've had some bangers on recently and there is much more to come Pumped to help you in your design business. So I hope you enjoyed this one. I'll see you on the next episode, friends, cheers.