🎯 Work Smart Wednesday - April 9, 2025
Are you being penalised for being good, Q1 review, and a quote on pricing
Work Smart Wednesday
👋 Hey there!
Here is your fortnightly dose of Work Smart Wednesday.
In these emails I will share with you 3 things to help you work smarter.
1. 🥤 Are you being penalised for being good?
If I give a piece of advice to Coca-Cola that takes me 1 minute to share but saves them $20m per year is that advice only worth 50 cents?
If I can create a website or logo in 1 hour that would take you 50 hours to do at the same quality, is my work worth 1 hour of my time or the 50 hours it saves you?
Both of those examples sound ridiculous, but that is exactly how most people price what they do.
It doesn't matter if the work only took 10 seconds. The amount of time it takes you to do something has no bearing on the value you provide. The amount of time it takes you to do something shouldn’t impact your price.
I have written about this before in context of the locksmith paradox (worth reading).
It is natural for people to try and uncover your inputs, how long things take you, as people naturally focus on cost - it is part of loss aversion. Bad clients will fail to see the value in your price. It is our job to help people focus on value, not cost, or to find good clients who already understand the value.
I consciously help my clients focus on the value of what I provide, not solely on the cost. It helps them to make better decisions that help them more long term.
When I am a buyer I like to remind myself to focus on the value I will receive rather than how long it will take someone to give me that value. I have learned that $100,000 for an hour of somebody’s time can be an amazing deal!
How can this help you? Well one key way to focus on value is instead of billing clients by inputs like hours worked you can charge for your services based on tangible results and deliverables. This prevents you from being penalised for finding new sources of leverage that allow you to deliver more value more quickly. If you need help with that, reply “deliverables” to this email and I am happy to take a look over your offer to check it makes sense and see how we can focus your offer more on your tangible results.
Do you currently sell inputs like hours worked, number of sessions, number of deliverables (e.g. x number of social posts), or features (e.g. x pages or x resource)?
Or do you sell outputs like “x paying customers in x time frame”, “confidence to do x”, or “save x time per week”?
When you charge based inputs you’re often incentivised to do more work, not better work. Instead, what if your clients were paying for what actually matters: the results they can see, feel, and measure? I’d bet that they would prefer that, and so would you.
2. 🌸 Q1 review - cool things that happened
I like to think about my business in two “seasons”.
We can’t give 100% all of the time, we are human, and we need to both rest and recharge properly. Energy ebbs and flows.
I find it useful to think about what kind of “season” I am in:
🌱 Spring - I am in a high growth period. I am excited to try new things.
🍁 Autumn - I am in maintenance mode. I am stabilising the business. I don’t need to try new things right now, I just need to keep things working smoothly. I will note down exciting things ready for next spring and enjoy the calm in the meantime.
While I use spring and autumn as my names for my business’s seasons, they don’t need to correspond to real seasons. They also don’t need to take as long as real seasons do, sometimes I will switch between a spring and an autumn within a month.
Using the seasons helps me to ride out frustrations and manage my energy within the business. It helps me to avoid burnout.
I have been in an autumn for the last quarter - January to end of March - but I can feel that I am entering a spring. Within the same time period some of my clients have been in autumns, some have been in springs. Both seasons are important, and all of my clients have achieved things I am proud of them for. Q1 achievements for some of my clients include:
🤗 Chris and I overhauled the marketing strategy and he managed to completely outsell his core offer to a point where we chose to add more capacity.
🌴 Ghayth booked a holiday to Egypt, the first time he has treated himself to something personal like this since starting the business, and thanks to our systems his team handled everything in the business without him. He could relax.
🙌 Jen was able to cancel all of her sessions last minute due to a personal situation without any negative impact at all to her business (her clients went out of their way to give her space!). She even broke her revenue record.
🤝 John signed his first B2B partnership and got his website finished, then got loads of leads from his talks.
🌎 Colin successfully moved country! The systems we put in place meant there was no interruption to his business despite the move taking months.
⛷️ Benoist achieved record revenues by switching focus from lead quantity to lead quality. His team now handles everything (including all emails!), and he has spent his time kitting out his new van for endless travel between going skiing every Wednesday (and most weekends!).
💃 Kaidi partially switched to a group model and successfully launched it (guaranteeing that we make more per hour and work 90% less per person). She has since more than doubled prices and yet sold more seats. She is now making record cash and working less, even making time to compete at a dance competition in San Francisco.
What did I do during this period? I have spent a lot of time with family, visited friends in Sweden, London, and Valencia, gone to shows like Hamilton and Frank Turner, and done some strategic maintenance work like tightening up my email automations, my positioning, and my funnel. I’ve added 9 new clients during my autumn and now I am feeling ready to put the energy in to push on these improvements. For me, spring has arrived.
What season are you in?
Ghayth has been unavailable due to travel, yet the business is growing thanks to a key change we made (2 mins)
Ghayth is making $500k per year working 6-10 hours per week (90 secs)
3. 💡 Quote I'm pondering
"If you never hear no from clients, you’re not charging enough” - Ryan Holliday
It may sound silly but you want some of your leads to reject you for being too expensive. If everybody bites your hand off to sign the deal then it is often a sign that you’re undercharging.
I usually instruct my clients to aim for 15-30% of leads to reject them for pricing concerns (though it does depend on your business, ask what is right for your business).
Less than 15% and you’re likely undercharging, more than 30% and you’re either overcharging or you need work to improve your messaging or positioning.
Only count rejections from qualified leads - people who actually need your offer and can afford it, and people that you actually wanted to work with.
How often are you rejected due to price? Does it suggest you’re undercharging, overcharging, or about right? What are you going to do about it today?
👋 Want to work together?
When you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help you:
🧩 Your Work Smart Scorecard - what is holding you back? - Fill in this quick quiz to easily see what your productivity problem is. Clearly identify what you need to focus on to improve your life and business.
🔍 Clarity Call - We will discuss your situation and create a step-by-step action plan together so you know exactly what you need to do next for maximum impact.
That's it! I can't wait to hear what you think. What did you find most useful? What do you want more or less of? Reply to this email now and let me know
Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I want to know about it😊
Have a great week,
John
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