Episode 10 - What We’d Never Do Again

Business bloopers, pricing flops, client clashes, launch fails. Honest lessons from things that did not go to plan

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

You're listening to Awesomely Off Topic, the podcast where we talk books, brand, business, and everything else we're not supposed to say out loud. We're Taz and Asha, ex-journos, now coaches, creators, and chaos navigators. Let's go. So welcome. Here we are again for another one of our amazing episodes. This time we did say that we'd come to you from as many different places as possible to prove that we could just do this on the fly. We are currently sitting in a closed off area of the restaurant in Baytree Garden Centre. Big shout out to Baytree for letting us do this. You might hear the occasional clutter of cutlery in the background just as you might also hear what we're assuming is the pitter patter of peacock feet on the roof.

SPEAKER_02: 0:48

Yeah, it's cool. It's certainly different. It's a great space to yeah to get chatting really isn't it I didn't expect us to be here but we thought do you know what we're here for a meeting anyway so let's use the time so that's what we're doing we're just going to see how it comes out we're getting our sound system in place hopefully you'll get a good level of sound throughout and we were hoping that we were going to use our lapel mics today but Taz

SPEAKER_00: 1:13

I bought everything I charged them up and I forgot the bluetooth connecting piece that goes into the Mac anyway what are some of the lessons we've learned from last time for those who are thinking about doing in their own podcast Ash I think firstly

SPEAKER_02: 1:26

just go for it but also get yourself ready for it in other words don't just check your mics check the sound levels do your practice runs a little bit before you go live so to speak and do it that way rather than just hoping that it all works as we found out to our folly when one of our episodes hadn't recorded fully which was frustrating to say the least there were a few expletives certainly from my part of the thing anyway so that's one of the key things I think you've got to do a bit of homework get it right it doesn't have to be perfect but you need to start somewhere but also practice before you get going because there's nothing worse than you think god that was a really good point I made there and then suddenly you realise that it's just disappeared into the ether so that's my big take home I think and also speaking up more for me I know my sound levels we've found a great piece of software haven't we actually to level it out a bit because I do speak more softly than Taz so we've done that as well and we've invested in that just to bring the levels up so that we get it right

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

and for anyone who subscribes to my emails I've already sent out a link with what that is I'm not on commission or anything I'm just trying to give you everything that we've used and that is being useful for us so that you can try it too. I think it was called I can't remember off the top of my head, and I've got very, very little signal here, but I will give you the full name in another episode. Oh, hold on. The Wi-Fi has just clicked on. It was called... Orphonic. It cost us about 12 quid for five hours worth of sound correction, and it balanced all of the sounds and got it all working beautifully. So thank you, I want to say, to everyone who gave us amazing, amazing feedback. We know the early episodes... the intros and outros were a bit louder and Asher's voice was a bit quieter than me but so many people said they'd listened to it all over the place and they expected it to be rough and ready because that's what we'd promised

SPEAKER_02: 3:17

I think there was quite a lot of laughing out loud as well while people were walking around supermarkets yeah apparently so listening to it so that's all good but hopefully there's some important points in there as well amongst the the chaos and

SPEAKER_00: 3:28

everything else so we're going to continue moving around and all over the place with this to test out see how well it works and give you guys the full experience so that You can go off and try this if you want to and there's nothing to actually put you off doing a podcast. There are no big excuses. Anyway, on to this episode. So this is episode 10 and it's titled What We'd Never Do Again. My goodness, where do we start with that one? Yeah, go on Taz, over to

SPEAKER_02: 3:55

you

SPEAKER_00: 3:55

for that one.

SPEAKER_02: 3:56

She's just about to slurp from a can of... Good advert here, Coca-Cola. And yeah, go on, Taz, you start. Where would you start? Because there's so many. When we were looking at this particular show, we were making very long lists. So over

SPEAKER_00: 4:11

to you. Well, the first point I wanted to bring out was unbalanced collaborations, because particularly in the early days, and particularly when we're at things like networking meetings, everybody goes on and on and on about collaboration over competition. Now, if you've followed me for... any length of time you'll know that i just don't believe in competition because even if there are two people doing exactly the same thing on paper you're going to have different energies you're going to be delivering that in a slightly different way and people will buy different types of people so i don't believe in the competition thing i do believe collaborations joint ventures or jvs as the core kids often often like to call them can be brilliant however they can also really trip you up particularly when you're trying to earn a crust because If you don't have everything really written down, even if you've both made an agreement on a post-it about how you're going to split the funds and who's going to do what, you can end up in a situation where one person is doing all the work, and then you've got to take out the costs and then split it 50-50. That can be a challenging time, can't it? Yeah, and I know I fell foul of that. In the early days, I remember I was going to run some events. Ash and I were going to run some together, and then someone came and said,''I want to get back into running events.'' why don't you let me run the event, I'll do all the selling and the marketing, you turn up and deliver it, and then we'll split it 50-50. And of course we went ahead, and then I did all of the sales, all of the marketing, I created all of the materials to take with me, I turned up and delivered the workshop, and then they didn't sell the tickets they needed to, and they still wanted to charge 50 50 which meant that I wouldn't have even covered my costs

SPEAKER_02: 5:55

and that always leaves a nasty taste in your mouth doesn't it and it does it makes it very difficult going forward if that business relationship has been built over time and you get into a sticky situation like that where somebody's maybe thinking I've put in so much effort and the other person it's not a shared effort there's any feeling like that at all you've either got to really talk that through afterwards and be open and honest about it or it can kind of stay with you a bit yeah for you Taz what did you do to Well,

SPEAKER_00: 6:22

it was sticky. I mean, we were mates and I had to have that really awkward conversation where I said I didn't think that was fair. So hold on. I'm going to do all the marketing, do all the promotion, print out all the literature, have all the costs on my side and the time, and you're not going to do anything and yet want 50% of it. It was sticky. It was awkward. And I wouldn't want to go through it ever again, which is why I always say now, Even if, in fact, even more importantly than if it's somebody that's just a business contact, if you're doing business with a friend, always, always, always have an agreement up front that you're both aware of, you've both signed, even if it's on the back of a post-it. Even that. Just make sure that you both know exactly where you're coming from. And the other thing I wanted to talk about is collaborations with people who are a different level to you. Now, it might be brilliant to want to help up those on the way up. I frequently spend a lot of time trying to help other people who are in a similar line of work to me and try and lift them up to the next level. But if you're just blindly agreeing to loads of collaborations with people who don't have your following, don't have your experience, again, it's going to be your audience that's coming along predominantly. It's going to be you being the biggest muscle in that collaboration. and then they're just going to take half of the money and a chunk of your audience so

SPEAKER_02: 7:48

how do you then in that case then what would you say to people are thinking of doing that what are the kind of top tips to avoid those situations because i know we could both talk about that where we've been in situations where that where it's not it's felt it's not been an equal balance a good balance maybe maybe things have been misread etc etc we've not really sat down and planned it well enough what what would you do differently there what would you say to people are thinking about going in to collaboration, what are the top

SPEAKER_00: 8:17

things I should be doing? I think you need to make sure that you're both in it for the right reasons. You need to make sure that you're both going to agree to bring the same levels of audience and get the same amount of bums on seats or thereabouts. You need to have a very clear agreement about what happens if, in the case of an event, if you don't fill the event and yet you've still got to pay the venue, what then? How are you splitting the money? What if it ends up being run at a loss, then what? All of these things, you just need to be really, really careful. And in the case of being asked to do a collab with someone who is quite a way below you in terms of business visibility, we're all equal, but the fact is somebody who's been plugging away for five years is probably going to have a bigger audience than somebody who's been doing it for six months. So you need to be really careful about that. You need to make sure that there's going to be an equal level of visibility marketing benefit for you both needs to be an equal level of PR benefit for you both and you don't want to ever be in a situation where your customer base or your audience are saying well why are they allying themselves with them that's a new business so there's nothing wrong with doing it but you need to be clear about why and the danger zone is if you are one of those people who says yes to everything if you don't like saying no And you've spent loads of time building your audience, building your tribe, building your credibility, your reputation. And then someone who's, you know, brilliant, but just starting out, says, do you want to run an event? And you say, yes, you've got to seriously look at what's in it for you. And I know that can sound really cutthroat, but this is business. You can do it in a kind way. But if somebody's not there yet, I would be saying, I'm happy to give you some tips, some hints. And once you've grown your business, bit more and went to a more on kind of level pegging i'm more than happy to discuss this again but in the meantime what can i help you what can i do to help you get to where you need to be to be going into a collab with with with somebody with with a bit more a few more miles down the track than you so

SPEAKER_02: 10:27

what happens then because i've been in this situation before when i was starting out earlier in my business where maybe a collab's been discussed but both of the parties are quite early on in their business journey there's that j word again um you know in the in the kind of building of their business it's very easy isn't it to get taken along the wonderful excitement of coming up with a great event idea and then running with it but actually without looking at okay how many people can i get in front of how many people even know about me yeah what would you say to people there because i've seen that i mean that's happened to me where i've not had enough of a following and maybe the other person i'm working with hasn't necessarily had that big build-up of following either um and we expect to get i don't know 10 000 people in an event and you get 100 if you're lucky or 10 people in an event do you know what I mean you've got to be realistic haven't you how do you make that balance to make it work if you're particularly at your earlier stage of your business or is it are you saying that maybe at that point you shouldn't be doing that when is there an optimum time or a level that you need to be at before you can even think

SPEAKER_00: 11:33

about going into collaborations I think where a lot of people go wrong is by thinking if we run an event we will get the following and it doesn't work that way

SPEAKER_02: 11:41

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 11:42

you need to build your tribe your audience first you cannot have a partner without people. And it's a mistake we're seeing time and time again. We saw it when we were in PR as well, people who ploughed loads of money and effort and hours into organising an event. They'll get all the exhibitors in, they get all the sponsorship in, they get all the decoration in, they get all the food vendors in, but then at the last minute they go, bloody hell, we haven't done anything about the footfall. And we've seen that really burn people. We've seen people who create a visually stunning event, but then everybody is upset because they've all paid good money to be there and there is no footfall, there are no visitors. And particularly if it's a big event, if you've got a big event space and you get a couple of hundred people through the door in a big event space, that's going to look like nothing. So you need to make sure that you're not trying to run before you can walk. Anyone who's seen the LinkedIn post I wrote about realism, the article there, go look it up if you haven't already. I'm not a big fan of people saying that they're realists because usually that means they're negative. But this is the one exception to that rule. You need to be, let's not use real, let's use practical. Okay. You need to be practical. Get your practical head on. If you are looking at hiring an auditorium that seats 150 people and you and your co-collaborator have got an audience between you of... 75, they're not all going to buy tickets. So you need to be sure that either you have the budget to spend on marketing, and it's a lot bigger budget you're going to need for marketing if you're an unknown, as opposed to someone who already has some audience. If you're looking to commit to the expense of something like a big auditorium, and you are not absolutely confident that you're going to be able to fill it, and I mean practically confident, not vision boarding it in your head and going, yeah, I can see all the people here. It's amazing. I can hear the music pumping. Can you even afford the PA system? Really? Yeah. You need to just be careful. I would always say with events, and this is where perhaps I'm a bit more cautious than others, I would always say start small. It's better to make sure you've at least covered your costs. Sometimes at the beginning you'll be doing events that are a loss leader. So you either just break even or you lose a little bit because they're marketing. You can use them to get great testimonials. You can use them to get feedback. You can use them to get pics and video if you're in action. That's worth it. But if you start suddenly going from zero to I'm going to hire, I don't know, Excel, then... How are you going to possibly recoup that? I would much rather see you booking something like a smaller office suite in a subsidised office space or even a village hall, depending on the event. Start small. It's better to have an event with 5, 10, 15, 20 people there who are your audience and who are switched on and who will just about cover your costs. then have a great big auditorium. That same level of people are going to look lost in there and you're going to be way out of pocket, potentially even looking at bankruptcy. So you need to be careful. You've got to spend the time. You can't You can't skip the steps on this. You've got to spend the time building an audience. And just because you see someone who does the same thing as you, filling massive venues... I mean, if I look at the size of venues Tony Robbins fills, for instance, I'm not going to go, well, I can do a load of that, so I'm just going to hide the same venue. Bonkers! That guy's a billionaire. He's got marketers working all over the place and... He's got a big reputation, way bigger than mine, regardless of whatever you believe of skill set or whether you like someone. You wouldn't see a band that are first stepping outside of their parents' garage suddenly expecting to go and get on stage at the NEC. So be sensible. I don't mean be negative, but practically sensible. How are you going to fill those seats? What is your plan to make that happen and what happens if you don't?

SPEAKER_02: 15:51

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 15:51

and

SPEAKER_02: 15:52

it reminds me of that time. I know we were brought in very last minute to quite a big event. Do you remember? Not too far away from where we are now. And we were brought in when we were running our PR business. And we took it on. If I'm honest, we took it on because... We

SPEAKER_00: 16:09

wanted to help them, but we were really... This is someone who's left the marketing till last minute. We were really up front, though, weren't we, before we started and said, look, there's only so much we can do in this amount of time. We're not going to guarantee you a footfall of hundreds, but yeah, we can... At that point, they were saying, can you at least tick the boxes for us so that we can show our sponsors that we've actually paid for PR? Yeah. And again,

SPEAKER_02: 16:32

disastrous. But again, the reason why we wouldn't do it again was the headaches that were caused from that because... some of even the really basic stuff wasn't in place and it was a last minute thing we did the best with what we had available but it was really hard wasn't it not just for us it was for the client

SPEAKER_01: 16:46

and

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there were tears there was a lot of angst that didn't need to be there

SPEAKER_00: 16:51

the tears weren't from

SPEAKER_02: 16:52

us no no no but it was really difficult and so disappointing for the client for the people that went that did go along to the event the weather was again you know it's all sorts of things wasn't it you've got to think about that as well it's a really difficult one but that's one that sticks in my mind particularly particularly just because we put so much effort in a very short space of time

SPEAKER_00: 17:11

in. I think the other thing that springs to mind for me over collaborations where there might be a bit unbalanced is being really honest about the intentions of the other person. So, for instance, if you've been in business for a while and you have built up your reputation, your credibility, you've built up the amount you can charge for your time, But then the person coming in doesn't really want to make any money from that event. They just want to have a nice two and give back. They've still got that kind of poor as a church mouse attitude. And they're all about give, give, give and depleting themselves. But you're at the point where you're thinking, actually, I've been doing this for a while. If I'm going to put my time into this, why don't I earn a decent crust? You've got to be really open and honest with each other about your expectations. Because it might be that if you charge, I don't know, If you charge 200 quid an hour, for instance, but the other person wants to charge 35 and even that's pushing it a bit, you're immediately at an imbalanced position. So back to the drawing board.

SPEAKER_02: 18:16

I think that's it. Sometimes you've got to stick to your guns with that. You know, we can all lower our prices. Sometimes we can do that if we want to get something because we can see the longer term benefits. But. At various points, we need to say, actually, no, this is it. This is as low as I'm going. We can compromise a bit here, but actually, that's the bottom line for me. You've got to keep those boundaries nice and clear, haven't you?

SPEAKER_00: 18:35

And when it comes to lowering prices, it's always better, if you can, to not lower your prices at all, but just to add more value, if need be.

SPEAKER_02: 18:42

Which leads nicely into... One of the things we were going to talk about was one of the things we'd never do again, or rather, I'd never do again, and I do do my best to try not to do it. Honest lessons, things that didn't go to plan. Yeah, go on, Taz. I'll leave that to you to explain.

UNKNOWN: 18:54

LAUGHTER

SPEAKER_00: 18:54

So I love selling. I love selling ethically. I love showing people how I can help and then being really open about what the price is for that. And if they don't have that, then how do we build something bespoke that can work? But I remember in the Tiger days, I was far more comfortable with selling than Asher was. And we met up with this guy who'd been following us on social media for a while. He was really keen to buy. We had a meeting. We went and sat down with him. I think we met in the garden centre, didn't we?

SPEAKER_02: 19:26

There's a theme here. There's a bit of a theme, definitely.

SPEAKER_00: 19:29

No

SPEAKER_02: 19:29

peacocks on the

SPEAKER_00: 19:30

roof. No, there weren't. We bought him lunch. We spent ages talking through all the different proposals. We'd pre-planned three different options for him. He chose his option. He was ready to sign. I was just about to hand him the pen. And then Asher said... Do you want to just go home and have a think about those then and just mull it all over and then let us know what you want to do?

SPEAKER_02: 19:52

No, I've got my hand on my head right now. We

SPEAKER_00: 19:54

never heard from that man ever again. Please, please, please remember that a sales conversation is not finished until you have a hard yes or a hard no. I am anti-sleazy sales. I'm anti-unpleasant manipulation to get the sale. I'm anti... saying things like, but can you afford not to, or telling people to just go and get a credit card to buy. But I am really keen to understand that if somebody hasn't said yes or no, your sales conversation has not finished. And that guy was literally ready to sign. And Asha's telling him to go away. You actually kind of undid it a bit. I think there's a bit of

SPEAKER_02: 20:37

a whoops there.

SPEAKER_00: 20:37

There is. That was a long time ago, to be fair. It was a long time ago, but still it makes me, yes. A long, long, long time ago. What else? Honest lessons, things that didn't go to plan. Do you know, there's not been that many things that haven't gone to plan, but maybe that's just good that we're really good at flipping our negatives and saying, what did we learn from that? I suppose we could include, and I think most people do this in the early days, saying yes to clients because they're going to solve your money woes for a while rather than them being a good match for you. So I know in the Tiger days, certainly we took on one client where it became clear relatively early on that morally we just weren't aligned with them and we felt quite uncomfortable with some of the stuff that we were covering and even more uncomfortable when we were in a situation where national media were getting hold of some of the stories about them and we were having to work really really hard to to dispel any of those myths and to make sure they always came up smelling like roses yeah and that was really tough wasn't it

SPEAKER_02: 21:35

because a lot of it we struggled with we did our job and we did it well but it didn't sit right with us and i think sometimes we can just see the pound signs and believe me at the time and where we were that was a good client to have and it was good money for us and so yeah but in the end it was

SPEAKER_00: 21:51

like and in the end i think with that particular client i think they walked away from us before we walked away which was rarer than rocking horse poo

SPEAKER_02: 21:57

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 21:58

probably because they were picking up on this energy that we just did not agree with the stuff they were putting out there it just felt For us, a lot of it felt morally reprehensible. It was a good word. Reprehensible.

SPEAKER_02: 22:10

Yeah, I like

SPEAKER_00: 22:10

that. Yeah, so make sure there's a good fit. I know that's really hard in the early days when you want money, but as soon as you can get to the point where you can keep it clean, do that. I think early on as well, clients that don't respect you. Again, we had one client early on where... I think you know who I'm talking about. Yeah, I do. I'm not going to use any names. Yeah. insisted on always paying by cheque. We used to be lucky to get... In the days of cheques. Yeah, we used to be lucky to get a cheque once a quarter and even then we'd have to go and visit and stand over them while the cheque was written.

SPEAKER_02: 22:40

Yeah, literally. True story, that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:42

We'd ask them to... Remember, this is PR and social... This was a done-for-social-media thing as well. We'd be begging them to send us through some stuff for us to use on their social channels. Nothing ever came. We spent so long trying to get them on track... And in the end, we walked away from them, which apparently they were really shocked about. But I'll tell you what did it for me, and it was a really simple thing that tipped it. We were going somewhere on the train, and they were bringing on a new member of staff and wanted to give them access to their Facebook pages. And of course, the way a Facebook page worked in those days, we're not talking professional profiles now, we're talking a page. The page doesn't specifically have... an email address or a password attached to it, you make people moderators of that page. And so we were trying to say to them, you need to make that new person a moderator, get them to like the page so we can make them a moderator to give them access. And they were demanding that we gave them the password for that Facebook page. And I tried to explain that there wasn't a password for the Facebook page. They had to sign in through their personal profile and then we would set them up as a moderator. And they argued with me and inferred that I was trying to keep information from them. We know how this works. We know that you're sitting on a password and you don't own the rights to that page. It's our page that you manage. And it didn't matter how much I tried to explain that it didn't work in that way. They still called me down. I don't think I would ever put up with anything like that again.

SPEAKER_02: 24:17

No, that was awful. And it wasn't just the immediate effect of that. That stayed with you for quite a while, didn't it? Demoralising. Yeah, totally. It was just really out of order and not nice. And so we can't work with these people if that's going to happen again. It's a trust issue, isn't it? At the end of the day, the best relationships we have with our clients, there's trust on both sides. And that really fell down miserably with that after that. So, yeah. we've learnt from that so I think now that was that drawing a line in the sand moment wasn't it for you and for

SPEAKER_00: 24:49

me too for both of us and I remember another client we ended up walking away from as well family business multi-generational the youngest member was very very rude I remember him making some quite graphic and explicit threats to me via somebody else on the phone one day about what he was going to do to me. And every time, the rest of the family would just say, oh, yeah, they're having a bit of a tricky time at the minute, don't worry. It's just them. It's just them. But it felt horrible. You know, again, we'd struggle to get the money. There was a time where they insisted on meeting us in a car park to pay us. Oh, yes. But ultimately, when that... relationship started to get to the point where it was like we've got to walk away from this we walked away with them still owing us a lot of money because they claimed they'd been contracted for one thing and they hadn't they claimed they hadn't been getting this particular element of a service they wanted which we had the contract there in black and white and we could tell them quite clearly they'd never paid for that and we'd never agreed to that

SPEAKER_02: 25:59

but that's the other thing isn't it about get your contracts in

SPEAKER_00: 26:02

order get those agreements in order

SPEAKER_02: 26:04

because we learnt a lot from that didn't we from these ones that we're mentioning absolutely

SPEAKER_00: 26:08

yeah we learnt a lot in those early days but the big thing respect is a massive thing for me I will respect my client's until the end of time but if they start disrespecting me to that extent and I don't mean somebody having an off day we all have

SPEAKER_02: 26:20

those

SPEAKER_00: 26:21

but if there's that level of disrespect and unprofessionalism nobody's ever going to speak to me that way again if they're a client definitely whether they're a client or not they're not going to some of the things we learned early on the amount of time you give for free And I mean on an individual basis. I will always recommend that you give as much as you can on your social channels. Again, Ash and I don't subscribe to the... Oh, no, you can't give everything away because then they'll just do it themselves. No, they won't. If somebody doesn't want to, I don't know, do their accounts. I know how to do my accounts. Do I want to do them? No. I'm going to always outsource that. If you tell people how something works and what they're actually paying for... They're not going to go, well, that's not rocket science anymore. I can do it myself. They're going to say, they're honest. I trust them. I understand what they're doing. I'll go with them. But in the early days, we used to offer... It was supposed to be like a 30-minute sit-down to help people understand where they were missing out on their marketing and their PR. Yes, it

SPEAKER_02: 27:23

would be. Would it be like the... You hate that phrase. Those calls.

SPEAKER_00: 27:27

Oh, chemistry calls. Chemistry calls. Excuse me while I vomit. When we were running our PR and marketing company... We would frequently go over and visit someone. We wouldn't calculate how much time it took us to get there. We'd go over there. We'd spend usually way more than half an hour. We'd sit there and we'd tell them everything and teach them how to do it because we felt bad and they didn't have a lot of money and we'd want to help them out. And of course, frequently, we'd end up walking away without any client but somebody who was happy as Larry because now they didn't need Bill. So, yes, give as much as you like online. But don't give away free coaching and free training and free mentoring every five minutes. If they want to follow out your step by step guide on your social media streams, fine. But don't take out your precious time to go and. Give somebody that level of freebie.

SPEAKER_02: 28:19

I think it is because those five minutes add up. You know, suddenly what would be, could I just grab you for a couple of minutes and suddenly you're looking at your watch and half an hour, an hour's gone. I've done that too. And I've done it, you know, when we're enthusiastic about what we do. If

SPEAKER_00: 28:32

you can hear background noises, by the way, they're just starting to clean up. So there's a vacuum going, there's chairs scraping. If we can do it in this environment, we can do it anyway. Sorry, Ash, carry

SPEAKER_02: 28:41

on. So, you know, if it's those five minutes, ten minutes, can I just have a word for a couple of minutes It's hardly ever a couple of minutes. We don't have to be cutthroat about it. We also need to be realistic about what we can offer and that if we're giving that all away, then people expect that as well. And that kind of crosses a bit of a line too for me. And I've learned the hard way with that because I will sit and if anybody gets me chatting on books, I'll... keep talking to the cows come home as my mum would have said and for

SPEAKER_00: 29:08

me that's never about giving away the formula because I don't think that's a problem I think that just builds trust it's giving away one to one time and this is half my issue with people who offer chemistry calls nine times out of ten the people looking at that don't realise that it's to see if you're a good fit and they just think oh 15 minutes of free coaching or 30 minutes of free coaching or mentoring or training I'll have that and I don't do them. For me, and this is very much a personal thing, there's no right or wrong here, I like to think that I put out enough stuff on social, give enough of myself and what I do for someone to have a clear idea of whether they want to work with me by the time they get in touch. So I don't do chemistry calls. I'll occasionally have a call with someone if they're a referral to make sure they're a good fit, but by and large I don't. What else could we be talking about and things we'd never do again? We wrote down here another thing with clients, and this is something I know I've fallen prey to in the past. There have been things in my toolkit that I've held back on and not talked about publicly because one of my clients is doing something similar and I don't want to tread on their toes. I remember one of my clients once had an issue because I was talking about... imposter syndrome because i wanted that to be their thing i held back for ages on talking about why i absolutely and to this day still abhor anything that is an a to z of something for marketing or a book or anything like that it's so cliched in fact somewhere i've got an article that's an a to z on why i hate a to z it's just tacky basic boring 1990 wants its marketing back it smacks of desperation don't do that but i didn't say that for a long time because i know one of my clients was teaching people how to do A to Z and it was working for him but it's just my pet hate so be aware of that and if you are going to take on a client who covers the same things as you for instance I coach a lot of coaches I don't coach all coaches but a lot of people who want my expertise who are coaches who aren't as far along as me because they want to learn how I've done it so I'll be quite upfront about I will cover this as well and boundaries get your boundaries cleared Upfront, I think. What else?

SPEAKER_02: 31:26

Pricing flops? Pricing flops. We talked about that a little bit, didn't we? We dipped into that a little bit earlier when we said about... there's got to be a lowest point for you in terms of how far you're willing to bend. Obviously, we need to kind of get the right price. People have got to budget. Clients sometimes have

SPEAKER_00: 31:45

to budget. But if you've created your value ladder properly, if you don't know what that is, drop me an email or drop one of us a line on social media and we'll explain that for you. If you've got your value ladder sorted out and you're showing up enough and giving and serving enough, that shouldn't have been an issue. It's used, isn't it, a

SPEAKER_02: 32:02

lot

SPEAKER_00: 32:03

in those

SPEAKER_02: 32:03

conversations, but actually is that what's really going on? And you talk about that quite

SPEAKER_00: 32:07

a lot. Yeah, most of the time if somebody says it's a pricing thing, it isn't. So, no, the only thing that I've noticed in terms of pricing as we've gone along from the beginning is sometimes we've priced things too cheaply. And, you know, that can turn people off probably more than it being too expensive. And remember that pricing is subjective according to somebody's money mindset. So at the time of me recording this, a single power hour with me is about 450 quid plus that, something like that. And it's really fascinating. According to who I'm talking to, either people say, why are you so cheap? Or people will say, I can't afford that. That's too expensive. How do you justify that? How do you get those two very, very conflicting messages from different people? So that just shows you, you know, I could put my prices up. Have you ever then, because bearing in mind that

SPEAKER_02: 33:08

this episode is what we'd never do again, I know I have and I know my own money mindset stuff still needs some work on it.

UNKNOWN: 33:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:19

But have you ever, as I said, I know I have, walked away from something, agreed something and gone, ouch, that was a little bit too low, that was a bit, maybe I gave in a bit there and actually I should have been a bit braver and just pushed that up a bit. Have you ever had that moment? Because I know I've had that when I've thought, do you know what, I am worth that.

SPEAKER_00: 33:38

I have in the past pitched for things like speaking gigs. Yeah. And they've just said yes without any quibble. And I thought, bloody hell. That could have been double and they still might not have quibbled. But you just learn it and you move on. What I have done in the past is given things away for free because I wanted to help people. And that was far more about me than about them. And that did not end well. There's a saying, it's very, very American that somebody is really only going to commit to something properly if they've got enough skin in the game, i.e. if the price they're paying is just enough to pinch. So they then commit to doing the work because they don't want to waste that money. And I used to cringe when I heard somebody talking about that, but I've actually found it to be true. If you are trying to give away the stuff that you do because you want to help people, and again, I was there once in the very, very early days, it is probably not going to end well. So just bear that in mind. What else did we jot down? We had the unbalanced collaborations, pricing flops, is it too cheap? Launch fails.

SPEAKER_02: 34:47

Ooh, okay. I don't... This is going to sound terribly... I don't think we've ever had any launch fails per se. No. In all the time I've been working self-employed. I don't think... I think I'm... I'm quite cautious. Actually, I would say you're more cautious than me when it comes to launches. Go on. No, I was just going to say, you've brought in a bit of that realism on a positive way. Practicality. Practicality, that's the word. Where you've said, actually, could you actually feel that in the moment? It comes back to what we were talking about earlier, wasn't it? Finding your events and venues and stuff. And you've brought me back because I get all excited and go over there and go, yes, we'll have 2,000 people in this place this big.

SPEAKER_00: 35:26

How many people have you got on

SPEAKER_02: 35:27

your list? How many people have you got on your list? percentage of the people on that list are actually going to buy a ticket

SPEAKER_00: 35:31

yeah

SPEAKER_02: 35:31

keep you know

SPEAKER_00: 35:32

keep it can you afford to to employ a sales and marketing company to mail shot thousands of people to get your um even with launches that don't cost anything though so i'm thinking about online programs for instance no i've never had a failed launch as such because i've never done the guru launch thing i've never gone into that launch phase where i'll you know run the the free video session and it's an upsell for something else and then bombarded people with emails about it. I've sent a few emails about this podcast, but I've never done the cheesy American gung-ho hard sales launch. I don't like the process. I see lots of people doing it. I see lots of people putting loads and loads of effort into it. I know it works for some. I also see it really flop for a lot of people. So I've never done that. What I do is if I'm launching something, I talk about it online. If I've got an idea for something, I'll float it online. And if there's no interest, I'll either go, hmm, it's not the right time for that then, or that was a crap idea and not go with it. So it's not got to launch phase. But isn't that really important?

SPEAKER_02: 36:34

That's also about understanding that you've got... That

SPEAKER_00: 36:40

was them telling me we've got about four minutes before we've got a

SPEAKER_02: 36:44

skedaddle. That's so good of them to just do that. Thank you, Beatrice, you're amazing. Understanding... that sometimes things you've got to know when to walk away from stuff and you can park it just for a while you can always come back to it so rather than hanging on to it and trying to make it work when it's not necessarily going to be the best thing that actually it's okay to learn from that and maybe do something differently next time learn from it move on there's always a thousand other ideas to have a go at and if it doesn't work all the best entrepreneurs say that

SPEAKER_00: 37:10

yeah

SPEAKER_02: 37:11

you know you've got to try these things sometimes it's going to flop sometimes it's not

SPEAKER_00: 37:14

yeah

SPEAKER_02: 37:15

So just keep going. That's the most important thing. I think that's my big message

SPEAKER_00: 37:18

today. Just keep going. If you're going to fail in air quotes, and again, can you ever fail if you learn something from everything that doesn't work out as planned? Because then there's a lesson, so it's not a failure. But if you are going to fail in air quotes, do it quickly. And don't sweat it. Don't sit in it. Move on. grow just like we've got to do

SPEAKER_02: 37:38

because yeah we've probably now got about three minutes left yeah so Taz anything else you want to add very quickly

SPEAKER_00: 37:45

before we wrap this up very very quick pieces of advice this is things we'd never do again but this isn't something I'd never do again because I do it a lot Beware sitting on your ideas. I get ideas dropping in like nobody's business, and all too often I think, that's a great idea. Sometimes make a note of it somewhere, sometimes forget it. Always think I'll come round to it, and then 18 months, two years later, I see somebody else doing it and kick myself for not doing it. There's not enough time in the day to action every idea I have, but beware sitting on your ideas. And also, and this is something Ash tells me off about a lot, when you've got some really cool business plans brewing, Just be aware of how much you're talking about those publicly before you're ready to push the button. Be aware of the difference between teasing about what might be coming next and giving people an absolute clear idea of what you're going to be going and doing so that people who are less scrupulous can just go, well, let's do that and beat them to it. Or different

SPEAKER_02: 38:41

value sets. And maybe that's something for later on for another podcast. I'd like to talk about that because there's something there that I'm sure I can share at some point. But all in all, you've got

SPEAKER_00: 38:51

to go for it. And off the back of what we're doing now... I suppose. One thing we'd never do again. Don't let the fear of tech or how to do something stop you from doing it.

SPEAKER_03: 38:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 39:00

Just get on with it. Here's the proof. We would have had a podcast years ago if we hadn't A sat on it and B put it off because we weren't sure how to do it. get on with it. Okay, so we're better up now before we get cartwheeled out. What do I mean? Carted out? Carted out, maybe. I don't know,

SPEAKER_02: 39:13

Taz,

SPEAKER_00: 39:14

but I think it's time

SPEAKER_02: 39:14

to

SPEAKER_00: 39:15

wrap it up. It is time to go. So until next time, we will see you next Tuesday.

SPEAKER_02: 39:19

You've been listening to Awesomely Off Topic with Asha Clearwater and Taz Thornton. Professional over-sharers and occasional business geniuses. Follow or subscribe if your brain also works in leaps and leaps. We'll be back when the next thought strikes or when Mercury goes direct.