Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Nick Bennett. Nick is a positioning and offer design strategist for solo consultants and micro agencies. He is the co founder of duo consulting, which is a content and consulting studio that helps small service firms go from like 20k to 65k a month by standardizing scaling their offers. He also co authors many books now, as you'll hear in the episode and CO hosts the how solos scale podcast with Erica Schneider, I wanted to have Nick on as a return guest, because refining offers, messaging and market access is critical for agency owners who want to scale without sacrificing quality or burnout, and quite simply, he's a friend, and I get to choose who I have on the show. So in this episode, we discuss why audience access matters more than niche, how to build credibility without underpricing yourself, the glide path versus guillotine method for repositioning and more. No one was asking for another community, but I've made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested, and right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today, so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join a dynamic agency dot community, and now please welcome back. Nick Bennett, it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency bullet. What's, uh, what's new with you?

Nick Bennett 1:59
Yeah, isn't that? Are we in it? Oh, we're already started. Yeah, we are. This is it. We're live. Welcome to agency forward.

Chris DuBois 2:08
Got the music going in my head.

Unknown Speaker 2:11
Ding, ding, ding, ding. D actually went

Chris DuBois 2:15
back and listened to some of my episodes today, because I'm, like, caught up on most of the other podcasts I've been listening to, and I just wanted to re listen to. Be like, where should I actually improve conversations and stuff? Like, how can I get better at this? And was like, man, some of these are pretty good.

Speaker 1 2:29
Like, like, this, Chris guys on to something. He sounds like he knows he's talking about listening editing your own show will do that to you,

Chris DuBois 2:37
yeah. But here's when I edit. I don't even listen to it all. I just look for, like, I

Unknown Speaker 2:43
look at the transcript and know the like the

Chris DuBois 2:45
audio, like little waves and stuff. And I'm looking for, like breaks in those and like, just reorganizing that way.

Speaker 1 2:51
And then, anyway, agonized when I edited the first like dozen episodes of 1000 rounds. I agonized over the sentences and all the fillers and the ums and ahs and likes and you knows, and cutting like those out, making them feel nice, and making there's, like, a lot of run on sentences, and I'm like, this sentence said nothing for 30 seconds. Let's just cut that out. And I'm agonizing over this, but it really shows you what goes into making a podcast sound good.

Chris DuBois 3:23
Yep, yeah. I don't do any of that. I just unless someone says something they shouldn't, which is usually when they bring up, usually a client that they didn't enjoy working with, and then they're like, Yeah, we should actually pull that. It's like, Yeah, let's do that.

Speaker 1 3:38
Yeah. I always hear Jay acunzos statement rattling around my head when I think about podcasts, he goes, I think you should cook your chicken and I think you should edit your podcast. And I'm like, okay, like, it's like, these are just truths, like you should edit your podcast. Was like, okay, that's what I will do.

Chris DuBois 3:58
Not all. Joe Rogan, right, sit down, just have a conversation and see where it goes.

Speaker 1 4:03
But maybe we will. Maybe we're here. We're doing it right now.

Chris DuBois 4:08
I'm at like half a percent of the potential viewers. He has, probably less than that

Speaker 1 4:14
actually, all 10 viewers, hey, but those 10 people, they care, yeah, so we were talking about today,

Chris DuBois 4:21
yeah, let's uh. So I want to just brainstorming one. I want to hear about what you're doing with uh, with solos right now, and some of the things that you've been seeing. But I also want to talk the recognition engine, and because I feel like that's something valuable for everybody.

Unknown Speaker 4:40
It is. It's new. Wherever you want it today.

Chris DuBois 4:43
Yeah, that's why I saw the newsletter came out. I gave it a read.

Speaker 1 4:49
That's a long one. Yeah, I think we're pushing. We're trying to do 6000 words. Ish, we're really trying to go mini book. Less newsletter, more mini book. Yeah.

Chris DuBois 5:00
It. It's good idea. That's the category pirates approach.

Speaker 1 5:04
It is. We're working with Katrina Kirsch of category pirates to do this. So shout out to Katrina. She's absolutely amazing, and helps untangle the madness that is all the stuff Erica and I think, all day. Yeah.

Chris DuBois 5:20
So the playbook is essentially find a problem that people are having, create the like at the guide on it, and then put that out to promote everything else

Speaker 1 5:31
you're doing. Yeah. The mini book approach has been basically mapped out the book. And we said, well, what's the book? What would the book look like? And then we said, okay, great, let's write it one chapter at a time, basically like a 6000 word chapter, but like, let's write it like one chunk at a time. And we want to set this up. The strategy is simple, write a book that never ends. Give people, give people something to read like would you people can buy a book that never ends, and then at some point, we'll bind them together and print a book like a hard cover or whatever it's like a physical book, and we'll mail it to like the seven people who want it, but I will have a book with my name on it, which will be really cool, and Erica and Katrina's Name will also be on it, but that's the plan. That's the plan right now. So we know what we want to talk about. It's just all of the nitty gritty details we work out in our, like, weekly jam sessions. We're like, okay, like, how do we? Like? We press each other on ideas that say we exhaust easy thinking. And you kind of hit the end of the line with some of the basic assumptions or like frameworks that you have and you're like, but what about this edge case? What happens when it bends? What happens when it starts to crack and you get to work out all those ideas? So it's not that it's bulletproof, but it makes a whole hell of a lot more sense after you go through that process than it does in a LinkedIn

Chris DuBois 6:55
post. Yeah, definitely. Piece of advice I'd gotten from someone years ago was pick the book you want to write outline, like, what chapters need to go essentially, like, build your table of contents, but then go about just living the book. Like, you know what the chapter is coming up. So, like, figure out what's going to go in here, but then go run your tests. Run, like, talk to the people you need to, like, do all the things so that you can then create that chapter, move on to the next. And it sounds like you guys are taking a similar approach, just publishing as you go. Yeah.

Speaker 1 7:28
I mean, we have a general direction. I will say we've already reorganized, like multiple times. So the first book was always going to be the recognition gap, and we wrote that, and then we realized part of that. We thought the part of the recognition gap was the mp three framework, right? Our lens on content marketing, content strategy for solos and micro agencies. We said, All right, this is part of it. And the more we wrote it, we realized we're like, this is not the framework that goes here, the framework that goes here. We made a new one, the CP three framework. And so that was like our whole clarification process. And then we ended up moving mp three market, the problem, market, the process. Market, the proof. We moved that to what has now become the recognition engine. So how do you close the gap? There's a recognition engine. There's the whole we have the content marketing approach. We put it about a bunch of examples in there to help demonstrate what that looks like. And then the next book, we immediately, we said, Okay, the next book is going to be, was supposed to be, elevate the problem, and how to find problems we're solving, or how to turn a problem like a ho hum problem, that cheap problems, inexpensive problems, things like that. And the more we wrote it, we were like, No, this isn't it. This belongs somewhere inside of another chapter, inside of another mini book. But this is not the mini book. Yeah, right. This doesn't deserve its own. A whole 6000 words on this one idea, there might be. We don't know where we're going to place the app. I think that's kind of part of the process, is you get into stuff and you go, not here, but somewhere else. And we had to reorganize. And now we're going into, like, our standardized, automate, Delegate approach, and kind of blow that thing wide open and make that as like, structured

Chris DuBois 9:20
as possible. Yeah, I mean, it's even so with my own business, like we're I'm continuously just tweaking things to be like, well, actually, if I did this first, I bet I'd get a better result. That's like we started doing. Like the SAP offer has always been part of the program, but now I'm opening with that and because by the time we if we can actually, like, attract some leads early, by the time we finish your offer, you have something to now sell them and stuff. So it's like, it just it flows better into each other. And so that's

Speaker 1 9:51
crazy concept. Yeah, weird, weird people do that, though, why? Why don't? I have my theories as to why I don't. I think people don't. Do it. I'm curious. Like, from what you see too, it's like the whole like con, like the tinkering and the dialing and the fine tuning, that process is almost as important as the 30,000 foot view, or, like the structure of the entire engagement model. And I don't get why people think it's like, let's launch perfection. And like, you don't just, you know, improve the the sculpture after you put it in a museum. And it's like, right, wrong mindset, dude.

Chris DuBois 10:31
Yeah, I think so we have a tendency within our population to be like, when people change opinions that it's like, it's seen as a negative blasphemy thing, but it's like, I mean, you see politicians all the time, right? Once you pick a stance, you got to stick with it, otherwise you're not getting votes for the next election. Just like, learn something new, right? Like, you just got new information that you didn't have before. I want you to change your opinion, if it makes sense.

Speaker 1 10:57
Good news. This is marketing, not politics, so stakes are very low, yeah.

Chris DuBois 11:01
But so I'm wondering if, how much the people are still doing that, like they feel like they're going to lose credibility with their system if they have to change the system. But it's like, I would respect someone who says, Hey, I learned all these things by doing running the system with 20 different clients. Here's how I tweaked it in order to make it better.

Speaker 1 11:18
So this is, like, the whole Aha, and that's like, not to, like, continue shamelessly plugging the recognition engine. But I make this case as, like, the opening of that mini book about my own shift. Like I saw something, I learned something, and I shifted from what I called niche design, like just really hard pressing the niche down, or the inability to niche down problem, to the inability to create an offer problem. And no one was like, Oh, how could you shift? Like your credibility is gone. Like Erica living, breathing proof of this. She like this pivot in public. Thing is people are like cheering you on when you learn shit and you change what you're doing because of what you've learned and you acquire new skills like this is a total limiting belief that people have, that you can never change anything about what you're doing, or that you can be successful doing fewer things. That's the other thing is, I saw something the other day that a woman said in this, like, Slack, Slack group women. She was like, you know, build my business being really flexible and, like, build out all these different services based on, like, what clients need. And I feel like that's been really successful. It's like, but I also struggle to generate leads and, like, acquire clients on a like, a regular, more reliable, in a more reliable way. It's like, well, like, this limiting belief that you have that you can't just, like, pick a thing is the thing that's like, holding you back, or that you this fear of, what are other people going to think of me when I change what I'm doing? That's the only thing that prevents you from being successful, not the actual thing you're doing, not the, oh, I don't do websites anymore, and I do this other thing, and I do, you know, I do homepage wireframes, or I do whatever like that. No one cares about any of that stuff. As long as you're good at what you do and you make a difference for other people, that's the only thing that matters. Thing that matters.

Chris DuBois 13:23
Yep, I feel you. There's also so it's a framework that I use for the amount that we need to change as well. And I feel like, ooh, so I'll just go into it first. So we either optimize, iterate or pivot. And because there's a different there are different levels of change required at times. So if we want, like, a 50% or greater lift on whatever we're working on, we need to pivot right. We can just throw things out and start over. It's okay. 25 to 50% is iterating. 25 or less is optimizing. And essentially, the philosophy behind this is, like, if we have a landing page, it's working. And we're like, Yeah, this is pretty good. It's like, we don't want to go change everything on the landing page, because you will inevitably break things that are are working right now. You want to do small tweaks, just like, minute, you know, miniature refinements throughout this, versus iterating. It's like, yeah, we can change them bigger than maybe we swap out the entire, like, mass head of the site. But I found within your business, you can do the same approach. And I started doing this with clients who aren't seeing results right away. So let's actually look at your audience, the problem and solution, and decide which of those do we feel is the biggest bottleneck for what we're working on now with that, do we need to optimize, iterate or pivot? And so we get really specific on what level of changes we need to do in each area of their kind of nitching and positioning, and it just gives us unlock like, oh, that's what we need to fix. And you said something in there that got me on that track.

Speaker 1 14:53
And so I like it. So I have found I like you. You break it down. Audience. Uh, solution and problem, problem? Yeah, I like this, this breakdown, because, in my experience, like it runs the gamut as to why people struggle to gain the traction that they're looking for. But I always find that the it usually comes down to audience access. Yes, like you could have the best problem in the world and the best most like well defined solution, engagement model, the whole nine if you have zero access to the audience you're trying to sell to. I don't care if you have to go out to networking events to find them where you can post on LinkedIn, or you can do whatever doesn't matter. If you don't have access, you got an offer?

Chris DuBois 15:50
Yeah, I think we had that conversation last year. I know if it was on a podcast or just us talking, but just the idea of market access being one of those initial thing like, yeah, we've kind of decided on an audience. We know what problem they have. Now, do we actually have access to these people to put the right message in front of them? And yeah, I started looking at like, I it is an obvious challenge with a majority of the people that come to me, and it's like, yeah, we want to work with these people. It's like, okay, who do you know within that space get a

Speaker 1 16:19
phone call, and within 24 hours, can you get on the phone with someone? Phone with somebody?

Chris DuBois 16:24
It's like, or do you know someone who can further, like, can make those introductions to you? Right? Like a door opener to be able to get access? Like, if you don't know anyone here, you're fighting an uphill battle.

Speaker 1 16:38
Yeah, there's a an approach we take call glide path, not guillotine right glide path you sell into, you know, tech companies today, and you want to start selling into manufacturing companies. We don't guillotine this thing and say we are now the web design firm for manufacturing companies like we slowly fade the business, right? We slowly shift, like, rotate through clients all like new client acquisition. Maybe 80% are still whatever tech companies. The 20% we're trying to bring in manufacturing companies like, as some fall off. Maybe we don't backfill tech companies like, there are a bunch of different things, but you don't just but you don't just guillotine your entire business, right? This is the this has been just that phrasing has helped people see that it is not so finite, or it's not so ultimate, that, like, Okay, the second I do this, I either make it work, or we go get a job, or we go out of business. Yeah?

Chris DuBois 17:45
I mean, it's even with position, like the fear of, well, if I do all this with my positioning means I have to say no to everyone else. And it's like, as soon as I let my clients know, and they're like, No, you can actually accept anybody. Yeah, we're just going to get really targeted in our messaging and so, like, hopefully we're only attracting the people we want to work with. But like, if it's between you keeping the lights on and, like, paying your team, you can take on any client, like, you just make it a deliberate choice, not a like, yeah. We habitually,

Speaker 1 18:15
yeah. You just habitually accept any client like you get to look at someone, go, you're not going to be a good fit. Like, our ability to help you become successful is less than with this other group, right? And then you make the decision. The other part is that people take on clients they hate, and then, like, they're like, being business sucks, I hate business, or they dread Tuesdays at two o'clock because they have to go meet with a client they hate. One of the greatest things I've ever done is just accepted the fact that I can't help everyone. I don't think enough agencies live in that space. Is like they they will overstay their welcome in an engagement that no longer serves them, or the client doesn't want to be there anymore, and for what, because they have a the fucking six month contract with them, like, is made up just, you can just not work with somebody.

Chris DuBois 19:13
Yep, I don't tell me if this is true for you as well. Where it's like, at first you're like, Okay, can I or can't I help this person and or even, like, somewhere in the spectrum between, but you're looking at the situation that they're in, versus, as you like, start to mature within whatever your offering is, being able to say, like, I just can't help this person because of the way they like, they're thinking these like, internal values that they have are what's like, I they have the exact problem I solve For but, like, I don't know that I can get them a result because of who they are. Are you seeing that at all?

Speaker 1 19:47
Because I Yeah, 100% like, a number one indicator of our ability to be successful, the client is, do they have a point of view? So even if you. Have the money to afford our fee, and you have the motivation to put in the work. If you don't know what you think I cannot give. I have tried to give too many clients a point of view. I'm like, Hey, here's the angle, right? Here's the whole thing. It doesn't work because they don't internalize it. They don't believe it. It's not theirs. You cannot give somebody a set of a point of view. You can help them uncover their own you can help them more clearly articulate their own point of view, but you cannot give someone a point of view. And the point of view is your bite into the market, right? That's the whole thing. And if you don't know what you think, or you don't have any opinions at all about it, we can't. We find that it is the those are the most difficult engagements for us, and so we screen for that now. And we have sometimes, if it doesn't work out, we have to, like, part ways with somebody. And we've, like, learned over time being like, Okay, we realize that this is a through line. This is a this is an indicator. So let's screen for that on the front end. What do they think about their market or their space or their category or the problem that they're solving? People like, let's just get any rough idea here. Do you care a lot? And that's been a huge that's just been a huge unlock for us to be able to screen in the right people, even if they have all the other boxes checked, because that's the number one indicator of success that we've that we have found in our in our

Chris DuBois 21:34
bottle. Yeah, well, that one's only going to get more important as more people flock to AI to create their beliefs. It's like the person who already has their own beliefs based on their own experiences, and they have reasons for everything. They can talk about it because they've lived it, not because they read about it somewhere. Yeah, it gives you complete edge.

Speaker 1 21:56
And you I find that like when we give people a point of view to your exact point. Like, they'll and they don't internalize it. They'll say something different every time. And it's like, well, they're like, we might be all over the place. We might be, like, communicating a different point of view to everyone that we talk to, or in our content. And yet AI, like, yes, the whole AI is commoditizing the information that lives between your ears, like everything it's like, yeah, what you think and believe about the place, the space that you work in, matters a whole lot more than than most people think. Is a really simple example of this. Um, there's another guy out there that creates offers for solopreneurs and like so and so. In a lot of in a traditional world, people would look that and go, Well, I'll even name I don't care. Jay's a friend Jay Malone. He does offers. There's no reason to not like and in a traditional world, people might say, Well, Nick, doesn't he compete with you? No, not even a little bit, for two main reasons. One, I have love and respect for anyone trying to make a difference. For solopreneurs and like these agency owners that I work with so cool. We're 100% cool there. The other thing is, our points of view are very different. And if you believe what He says and what he thinks in the direction and in you believe in the direction he's facing. Great. You're probably not going to like working with me, because I'm facing a different direction. So even though we both have the same like, the same output, the same a similar promise, like you will walk away with an offer. We have different ways of helping you get there and helping you build your business, yep, and that's the point. That's the entire point.

Chris DuBois 23:48
Yeah, I get behind that entirely with, I mean, I'm just trying to play positive sum games, but like someone that we both know who I will keep name unnamed. Here, it's like, I keep this mentality with most people. It's like, yeah, if they are going to just be creating and trying to help solve this problem, it's like, awesome, go solve that problem. But then I see someone like this individual who's like, well, you're actually giving advice. I could cripple a lot of businesses. And so like, maybe you shouldn't be giving advice on this. You should actually go do something else.

Speaker 1 24:22
But I know I struggle with this same concept, and I have to take the same approach, like they're right for someone, and that like I can't I have released this idea that, like some advice is bad. I might disagree with that advice, but someone else might agree with it, and that's okay, and that is also part of the that's part of the whole deal. That's a different point of view. And is it, like, objectively bad? Like, I might think so. But again, if other people agree with it and believe in it, like, who am I to to say no, like, because you're not facing you're facing that. Direction, like you're not you're not looking you don't want to grow. The way that I think businesses should grow, and the way that I help businesses grow, you don't see the problem. The way that I see it right now is that just a difference in marketing. Like, are these other people just, you know, better marketers? Maybe it's possible. Like, some people are like, yes, you can be a better marketer. All of us have purchased things that suck because the person marketing, it was really good at marketing. There's no like, like, this is going to happen, but it's like, I think the risk is on every is like, on both sides, like, if it sucks enough, the person selling it will probably not get super far eventually, so and can get to keep selling a thing that sucks and yeah, you as a business owner, you assume the risk and of any hire you make in Doing and or any consultant you you bring on, like that's on that's on us, and sometimes like that sucks, like you gotta vet them, and if you agreed with that, like, there might be judgment issues here, I don't know, but I'm just saying I think there's a lot more to it than a then this advice sucks, and I disagree with it.

Chris DuBois 26:20
Yeah, I think, I think with this individual, is because I know the background and how he's jumping around to different offers just to see what sticks. But, but, yes, I agree with with almost all that marketing is about, is about creating certainty, right? With like, Hey, this is going to work for you here. Let me talk about my problem, like your problem. Let's talk about the process that we have to solve it. Let me give you the proof that this will work for you.

Speaker 1 26:46
Yeah, I call it. It's a I dropped this on I remember the holiday, the Halloween, Halloween special you did. And we were chatting with our buddy, Max trailer, and he, he was like, this is you should write this book the confidence in your competence. Like, that's the whole, that's the whole play, confidence in your competence. And if you can demonstrate that through your marketing, like, that's, that's the game. Like, it's decided. I wish, sometimes I wish there was other ways to do it. I think then I think as time goes on, you know, more and more like there we have already. We are more saturated than ever in professional services providers. There might be more I know there's more agencies selling to tech companies, and there are tech companies. And I'm sure as

Unknown Speaker 27:39
high

Speaker 1 27:41
octane operators exit w2 and move into solopreneur ship and consulting like it's only going to get more crowded and more commodified, and you're going to see people giving advice you wouldn't we wouldn't give and like that. Hey, that chain that makes it kind of makes it easier for the rest of us who are confident, that we are confident people, and that our plays work. This is and to double down even deeper, the way that we I see differentiation is like to the two parts of differentiation. One is the level of specificity you have in terms of like, the problem you solve, who you solve for, how you solve it. But the other one is credibility, the volume of people you've helped, and so the more people you help, the more credible you become, and the more credible you come, the easier like, the less risk it is to hire you like there's so credibility is a huge factor here, for sure,

Chris DuBois 28:35
yeah, I did an article last Week on all the different ways you can just give more help accelerate the speed at which you're building trust. And it was like there's so many other ways that you can be doing this, but one of the things, and I'm now curious, based on what I know about your business and stuff and what you coach, I'm noticing that a lot of people who are not successful at first, like they're having a hard time selling their initial offers, are also super hesitant to just lower their rates for the first people who are coming in the door. And for some reason, it doesn't sit right with me like I have. I've had clients who don't have clients that they've gone through their own means yet, and they want to be charging like, 10k out the door, but it's like, Yeah, but what if you, like, cut that in half? Could you get enough clients that now you get the proof with those two or three clients that 10, like, when you go to 10k it's like, it's a no brainer. People are like, Yes, I see the proof in the results. I can execute on this, and then you can keep raising your rates. But it's like, they get so stuck on I mean, I have to do this higher rate, otherwise people aren't going to respect me or something. I don't know what it is, yeah,

Speaker 1 29:48
well, there's, there's the I don't disagree with this mindset, like charge what you're worth, but I don't think anyone's considered that they're not worth. Get what they're charging. Yeah, that's a shitty thing to accept, but sometimes it could be true. So I'll give you a simple a simple example here. I lost a deal very early on when I got like in my own journey, when I first got started doing this work. I lost the deal to a really great fit client who really was, like, really into what I was doing. And he was like, Hey, I'm not gonna do it. And I emailed him back, and I said, cool. Like, why? He was like, Well, I love what you got going on. I believe it could work for me. There's not enough proof for me. Like, it still feels too risky. I was like, oh, okay, so credibility issue, right? Like, social proof issue, I was like, Well, I'm never gonna lose a deal because people don't think it's gonna work for them ever again. And, like, overwhelming proof has been my, like, a part of the process ever since then. But from that moment, I said, Okay, well, one, how do you get overwhelming proof, right? Like, when you don't have enough paying people going through the process that a high enough rate to do that? So a couple things that I did that I encourage people to do, especially if you're really early on, I might apply to, like, every single person out there, but do free calls in exchange for testimonials. Like, the payment is a testimonial. I can't stress that enough. Like, just give away an hour. Like, hey, if you find this hour valuable, can you please tell me what you thought was valuable about it? Boom, new testimonial, like, proof and credibility, like, one step forward then so we, like, that's from New York saying, like, don't charge 10. Maybe charge five. I'm saying, like, if you're really got nothing right now, go free. I was charging like, 500 fucking dollars a month when I first got started, and trying to gain traction and build out my program, because I didn't think it was worth more than that. The more you do it, the more you can charge. We charge 6k a month now, yep, like, so anyway, it's like, it's a glide path, and maybe I was under charging a lot in the beginning, I don't know, but I'm fine with where we landed. I'm fine with the process that we went through. And so all that to say is like, if your charge, if you can't close a deal, in this sense, tends to continue happening. Pricing is certainly one of the levers that you can pull to de risk it. And this doesn't mean you go straight for a less mature buyer. That's a bad fit. It's it. All it does is help manage risk. And so there are, there are plenty of ways to do that, and there's, there's you're going to learn. This is one of the things I found out, too, is like, the reason I did the free work and the cheap work was because I'm going to learn just as much from my client about refining my own process as they're gonna learn from me go taking them through the process. Like, there's other moment that's worth a lot of money, right?

Chris DuBois 33:13
I mean, a model that I think we both used, like the ascension model, bringing people in, like, it's another way to mitigate risk for the client, where totally even separate from just the price, right? And so for anyone listening, you set a set of price, like, 500 bucks a month. But for every 10k of net new revenue, I help you bring in, my pay goes up another 500 right? So someone hits 10k you're now at 1000 bucks a month. And you just keep working that with them. It builds more of a partnership. But there's also this underlying like, wow, they believe that they're going to be successful enough with my business that they're willing to take less pay now to have more upside later. And so, like, you're mitigating risk in another way. And it was, yeah, yeah, the

Speaker 1 33:53
ascension model works in, like, really specific circumstances. Like, I saw a post yesterday, and I think you were on it. You commented on this thing too, where this guy was, like, I was got quoted 60k a year for a social media agency, and I proposed performance based pricing. We hit our goals, they make money. We exceed our goals, they make more money. And no one took our deal, like when, like, why? And I was like, Yeah, well, this works on a really small, closed loop basis, like one consultant to a small agency where there's no question as to, like, where this money came from. You're a technology company, and you can go out and go on a really popular podcast, and you all of a sudden hit, you get a ton of momentum from that, and you hit your sales goal, that quarter in the social media agency is like, great look. You guys hit your sales goal and they're gonna go, well, we gonna go, Well, we went on this podcast and we're not gonna pay. Like, there's a lot of reasons why people are gonna try and fuck around with that model. I don't recommend it unless you're in like, a really closed loop environment where there's very few variables, right? You need

Chris DuBois 34:58
to be able to point to the attribute. Education, and that's kind of what I brought up in that post. Was like, how you're talking to a social media agency and telling them their revenue, their pay, is dependent on your sales targets. Like, how many people are in between this social media posts, one junior sales rep who just sucks at selling and now that entire agency is not making money like it doesn't, doesn't jive, but yeah, it can get close to the attribution you're good,

Speaker 1 35:25
but no, here's like, the AHA, though. It's like, let's de risk the if, even if the intention, like, on you as a consultant, is like, Hey, I will try to create some upside here. But I will de risk the if I'm trying to, like, close more deals, let's de risk the pricing model here to close some deals, to get some more reps in on this thing, right, on whatever this Service is that we're trying to do. Yeah.

Chris DuBois 36:00
So yeah, lots we could probably still dive into. But I guess what's uh, what's next for you?

Speaker 1 36:09
What's next? Duo, scaling. So duo is the offer design and content creation, agency, studio, we don't know, firm, whatever you want to call it, um, that I run with Erica Schneider. And so we're on. We're about to hit our initial capacity, like client capacity, which is cool. And so now it is full, like, double down on, like, our existing standardization model, like works, and now it's how do we standardize even further, make results more reliable? We are adding in a new layer of automation to it to take off some burden, the burden of work in between the conversations we're having, or any of like the follow up and stuff that we need to do, because that takes up a ton of our time, and limits and limits capacity, and then the delegation trying to bring in key people, not to take over our front end, like client facing work, but some of the back end stuff, whatever we can't automate, that still needs humans involved. We're figuring out where exactly those people need to be. So it's like the same stuff we run our clients through, trying to, like, drink our own whiskey in that way, and continue to push the push the model and and just refine the plan. So what's next? Hit capacity and then, and then scale. So the goal is like, Hey, can we take a little two person business past the 100k a month? I know we can do it. I know we can do it. The question is, how do we do it? And then not, not sacrifice quality, not sacrifice our relationships, our integrity, all of those things that deeply matter. And again, glide path, not guillotine. You don't close another 50k in business tomorrow. This is a process over time. Like you we create, you hit capacity, we create the space. We close one more client. We hit the capacity, we create the space. We create like and then we close the client, yep, things like that. So that's been a ton of fun. And then just continuing to, I mean, I host two podcasts, we put We publish monthly mini books, uh, kind of a lot going on,

Chris DuBois 38:22
yeah, but, all right, man, but you gotta you got the plan? I have zero debt. You guys are gonna be able to achieve it. So, yeah, I guess with that, let's, uh, let's wrap it up. Where can people find you if they want to learn more, work with you.

Speaker 1 38:38
The best place to find us right now is how soloscale.com that is, we do a weekly show, showing how solos and micro agencies grow from about 20k a month to 65 plus per month. That's what the mini books are. All this is free. And then you can check us out at duo consulting.co where you can see what we do, and if you like it the direction we're facing. You're facing that direction too. Give us a ring. Tell us Chris Dubois sent you.

Chris DuBois 39:11
They'll give you 50% off. We will not give

Speaker 1 39:13
you 50% off. You will mail Chris a mug. We don't have mugs yet, but I will make one and mail it to you if someone comes. I got a harness and hone hat like, right before we made the decision to switch, because originally, here's an insider, like, little insider tip or whatever, like, just something to say no, originally, Erica was going to come on as a co founder of harness and hone and we were like, both very like, meh about that idea. It wasn't like, oh, horns and hosts, my baby and I don't want anyone involved with it. And Erica was like, it was just kind of like, this makes the most obvious, simple sense. And we started to make moves to do that. And then one day, we were like, there's just something wrong. Song about that, like it just was to me, and it wasn't enough Erica, and it didn't feel right to like, try and like re brand, the whole thing. And then we realized, like, it's duo, and so we spun up that brand, built everything out. And so kind of like harness and home is more of like the holding company that owns these media properties and these consulting offers and things like that. So fun fact for you. So, no, we don't have hats yet, but I'm working. I'm working on, I think we're gonna do like the Richardson leather patch. I like those. Like embossed. I don't

Chris DuBois 40:36
know where my partner up hat is, but I'll send you a good one again. I know somebody can make them.

Speaker 1 40:42
Yeah, I got it. I liked the one I got it was, like, the shape was not shapely for my head. I knew, like, I really like low, what do they call them? Low crowns? Sure you got a good crown for a nice, deep hat, like a nice, you could wear a top hat, easy. I couldn't, couldn't pull it off top, yeah, all right. Know. I mean, let's wrap up in there. Thank you, Chad, good to see you, homie.

Chris DuBois 41:09
That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content, resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai