March 11, 2021
“How do I maximize profit quickly?” and more...
In today’s group coaching session, we had a bunch of good questions that touched on topics like:
- How to justify retainer rates vs one-off calls
- How to maximize short-term profit when you need to
- What to do when a client goes dark during a project
- What to do when you get overwhelmed by to-dos
- How to determine if your retainer prices are too high
- How to know if you’ve spent too long trying to get a channel to work
- How to find time to work ON your business when you are already working full time
And we did a positioning statement teardown. Fun!
Here are some of the questions I answered today:
I charge $3,500/month for advisory retainer having a once a week meeting with some light support between meetings. I recently added a $495 one- time call. These two offers don’t make sense to me - wouldn’t 4 meetings/month cost $2000/month? I want to continue to offer $3500/month retainers, but I find that the $495 calls don’t fit with the pricing model and I fumble when explaining the two options. (timestamp: 1m 10s)
I’d love to get some tips on how to proactively identify and go after short and mid-term high ROI opportunities. I’m feeling frustrated about spending time and energy on activities (small scale projects, content marketing with somewhat limited reach, free workshops) that provide benefits to my business but don’t yield the highest returns. Maximizing my profit is a big priority for me at the moment after a difficult 2020 (Won’t be able to join the live session, but thanks in advance!) (timestamp: 5m 45s)
I’d love a critique of a positioning statement I’m working on: “We help Architects and Builders [in New England] clarify your message, stand out from your competition, and attract qualified leads through award-winning websites.” - (I may leave off the bracketed location part.) (timestamp: 16m 57s)
How do you recommend we tactfully handle project delays, specifically for website redesigns. Often a project will get delayed because we’re waiting on the client for some reason (copy, etc.) which causes a number of issues but the most painful is that we start other projects in the meantime and then are doing double duty when the original client(s) are ready to move forward. (timestamp: 30m 26s)
HELP! My to do list includes launching some software (as products), improve my email list, develop a course offering, develop an e-book, direct marketing campaign, do online outreach, conference presentations, YouTube videos, systematize my consulting work, develop a podcast, write SEO articles for my website. How do I decide what do to do? As you can see, some things are long term and some are short term. Some things keep the business going and some things build the business. (timestamp: 37m 0s)
How do I determine if my prices are too high for my advisory retainer? (timestamp: 51m 9s)
How do you know if you’ve spent too long trying to get a channel to work? For instance, with an email list; is it no growth over days? weeks? Months? At what point do you re-evaluate experiments? (timestamp: 54m 22s)
What products, that currently are not part of your ladder, did you try and decide to ditch? Why did you ditch them? (timestamp: 60m 14s)
On the question of “my to do list is insane” part of your answer was “first get a 20h/w job to secure cash flow”, to which George asked “what if you need to bill full time to secure cash flow.” Your answer was a couple of things, but included what I think amounts to: 40 full time & 20 on business? Ok. 60 hour wk. That’s ok if it’ll work. For someone serious about it, that’s not too bad. Presumably it’s temporary until the 20 starts paying off. You mentioned increase the profits/double the rate, etc. Sometimes, not possible -- eg. “full time” cash flow is “job”. So if that’s the only really viable option, I don’t mind a 60 hour week if it’ll work. Have I understood correctly, or did I miss anything important? (timestamp: 64m 49s)
(If you’re curious, you can review the entire list of past questions here)
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Yours,
—J
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