Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 What was one of the most valuable questions that you asked during that discovery workshop? You think if you, if you had to, if you had to kind of go, there's one question here that you just absolutely have to have as part of your discovery workshop, what would it be?
Speaker 1 00:00:13 Um, usually it's, what's broken, um, right. It's, it's getting to the, why are we, why are we having this conversation? Um, you know, you have a website, uh, it's, it's been there for, uh, in this case, we had actually helped them kind of launch it, um, about a year ago. Um, and so they've had a, a staffing change. So the biggest special is what's broken and, and, and even taking that further and trying to get as deep as you possibly can in order to figure out all the different reasons why something is broken.
Speaker 2 00:00:45 If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the agency. Our podcast brought to you by agency Mavericks,
Speaker 0 00:00:54 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the agency hour live here in the digital Mavericks Facebook group. We're listening to, I dunno what we're listening to here. We're listening to tank and the bangers, there you go. Tank and the bangers communion in my cup course, Facebook are gonna ban this live stream and mute us now because we are in breach of all sorts of copyright laws, but I don't care. We're here to have fun and entertain you guys, and hopefully inspire you to take action and, uh, share everything we know about growing an agency. We've got a very special guest coming on this episode, but before we get there, I do want to just make a small mention of the fact that I'm hoping this episode of the podcast sounds a little bit different. We've done a little bit of work here in the studio.
Speaker 0 00:01:38 I actually have some sound panels. I'll take a photo and post it. We have some sound panels that we've brought in closer to the guest, uh, closer to my desk to hopefully stop my voice from just echoing around the room. We're in quite a large space here. We've got six meter high ceilings in front of me. I have a glass petition, which is my office. I'm about to cover that with a curtain of some description in the next couple of days, just to try and minimize some of the roominess. So for those of you who are in the podcast game, or for those of you who are audio files, just know that we continue to iterate and work here to make this a more pleasant experience for you. Uh, what I've learned over the years is that when you produce content, you wanna just try and remove all distractions and having a roomy echoy sound, which I can hear it in my headphones here now still is a little bit roomy for my liking.
Speaker 0 00:02:29 Uh, can sometimes be a little bit distracting, and I know that you hadn't noticed it, but now that I've mentioned it, it will bug you. So that will force me to get better and make it a little, uh, more, uh, dead in here so that we're not echoing around. Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you today. We are talking about how to get paid before you take on a client. What the hell does that mean? Well, I'm not talking about getting paid as a keynote speaker to go out and talk in front of lots of small business owners at conferences. Although that is a very good way to get paid before you take on a client, by the way, I've done that myself and it works rather well. You can get paid to talk, and then afterwards you get a whole bunch of people coming up to you wanting to give you their business card and continue the conversation.
Speaker 0 00:03:09 And you pick up clients on the back end of it. But it's not for everyone. What we're talking about of course today is doing something that we all do as part of our normal workflow, but getting paid for it rather than doing it for free. And of course we are talking about the wonders of what's called paid discovery. That's what it's kind of known as in the biz. And if you've never done, first of all, if you've never done discovery, we're gonna walk you through kind of what that looks like with our guests today. Uh, what kind of questions to ask and what kind of information that you want to get from a client as part of the discovery process, but discovery essentially is finding out enough about the client and their needs and their business and what it is they're trying to achieve so that you can put together a statement of work or a proposal, and then pitch the project and then get hired to do the thing that they want you to do.
Speaker 0 00:04:02 Most of us, when we start out, just do that for free, as part of our, you know, Hey, let's get on a call and see if we're a good fit. You end up doing a bunch of discovery and they end up picking your brain. And there's many, many problems with that, which we'll talk about during this episode, what we've pivoted to over the years. And I will say I, my first paid discovery workshop, I think was back in, I don't know, the early teens, so maybe 2012, 2013. Uh, I pitched, I remember having, I remember having to rehearse this before I pitched it to this legal firm, because I didn't believe it myself. I was gonna charge them $5,000 for a full day discovery workshop. And I had to rehearse saying it so that I could then say it not laugh. Cuz the first time I said it, I, I, this is a true story.
Speaker 0 00:04:50 I was walking around the house. I remember exactly where I was. I was walking around the house, practicing saying that it's $5,000 for the day and just weting myself laughing every time I said it until eventually I kind of this little piece of the puzzle clicked into my brain. I was like, this is worth five grand dude. They're a legal firm. They're gonna spend upwards of 50 K a year on their digital strategy, their website, their SEO, their email marketing. Uh, they're also some of their systems that they needed to digitize in house the way that information flowed within the team. So they're gonna spend 50 K on this. If they get it wrong, it could blow out to a hundred K and it might not serve their purposes. So to spend 5k on a full day workshop, just to make sure everyone's on the same page is not a big deal for them.
Speaker 0 00:05:35 And they're a large legal firm. They have the money. It's only you, you little man, who's getting in the way of your own success here and getting in the way of actually helping your client. So I, I rehearsed this over and over again until I could say it without laughing. And then I remember I shot an email off to this lawyer who was the principal owner of the legal firm. And uh, I went for a walk. I shut an email off with the, with the price and I had to get outta the house. I couldn't wait for the response. So I grabbed the dog, went for a walk around the block back in the day where I wasn't checking my emails on my phone. I came back to the house, walked upstairs, looked at my computer and there was a response, uh, saying, yes, let's go.
Speaker 0 00:06:15 And I was like, holy shit. Someone just agreed to pay me five grand, uh, for a full day discovery workshop. Now I have to figure out what a discovery workshop looks like. Because of course I hadn't built it at that point. Uh, I'm a big fan of selling stuff before you build it, because then you know what to build and there's no point building it if nobody wants to buy it. Right. So that's kind of what we're gonna be talking about today. The art of getting paid before you take on a client, by the way, fun fact, I didn't work with that client after that workshop. Right? I didn't want to, they wanted, they wanted an intranet built. They wanted so much stuff. I was like, look, I'm not the droid you're looking for. You've got a great strategy. Now you've got a great plan.
Speaker 0 00:06:57 I referred them on to some other people who could help them and they ended up very happy. And so did the, the, the company that ended up working with them. I didn't wanna take that stuff on, but I got paid for my knowledge and my experience. And, uh, for me, that was the, the, when the, the, the, the, the clouds parted, if you like, and I saw the light and went, right, I now have to change my sales process because I'm not gonna do that for free anymore. That discovery stuff, that's actually now a product. And then I learned how to actually fix my sales process, which is a whole other conversation. So having said all of that without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to one of our long time listeners, first time callers, uh, who has, uh, a full transparency is in Maverick's club and is very, has been around our ecosystem for a very long time and is having some success with selling paid discovery. And he's agreed to come on and talk to us about his journey. So ladies and gentlemen, all the way from Edmonton, Alberta in Canada, please welcome the one and James Mero.
Speaker 1 00:07:55 Hello? Hello. How are you brother? You're still my opening line long time. This the first time caller. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:08:05 I was on the way on the way here in the car. I was on a call with the team and Emily actually came up that line. She said, yes, James me, Troy's on today. Long time listener, first time call. I was like, that's great. I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 00:08:15 I feel like I've been on every episode. I have this, you have, I have this thing where no matter what it is, I try and contribute whether it's, you know, some piece of intelligence or some piece of funny feel or
Speaker 0 00:08:26 Whatever, somebody or a dad joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I'm
Speaker 1 00:08:30 45. So I'm all got the dad jokes,
Speaker 0 00:08:32 Correct. Be birthday for last week too, by the way, we are very, very, uh, very happy that you are always here contributing in a part of it. And it's an honor to have you on the show for the first time as a guest. So for those of you who don't know who you are, just give us the elevator pitch. Who are you, where are you from? What do you do? And, uh, and why did you join Mavericks club?
Speaker 1 00:08:51 Um, so I'm James Mero. I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Uh, currently it's raining. It's terrible out here. Uh, it's like in Australian, winter, uh, I own a company called holler digital, and we are a digital agency. We focus on web development, um, and are my, probably my biggest challenges. I don't have a niche, but we're focused on technical challenges that can't be solved with off the shelf plugins for our clients. Uh, and we've been in business for about 17 years.
Speaker 0 00:09:18 Cool. And you are a developer, right? Like, I mean, you are one of those rare breeds that you actually know how to write code and solve problems from a technical point of view. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:28 I, I, I recently changed my, uh, LinkedIn profile to your chief, everything officer of hauler digital. Um, I, I consider myself, uh, a developer till about 18 months ago when I joined sales accelerator and I got more into kind of sales. Uh, and I'm, I'm slowly trying to wean myself off the tools I'm enjoying doing like sales and, and strategy, uh, fairly a lot more than I used to. Um, so trying to hire someone through team accelerator.
Speaker 0 00:09:56 Yes. Uh, when you, why did, why did you, what, what got you to the point? This is not a plug from Maverick's club by the way, but I'm just curious. I don't think we've ever had this conversation. What got you to the point where you were like frustrated enough, or you had a big enough problem to solve that you decided to join Maverick's club, which is a significant investment by the way. So why did you make that decision after 17 years of being in business?
Speaker 1 00:10:15 Uh, for me, it was like an hour and everything. I either make a leap now, or like I used to say, I think I may have said this on this program before, but, um, I feel like I've, I've been in business for 17 years, but I feel like I've done the same year over and over and over for 17 years. And I felt like I needed to, I needed to take that step. I needed to take a risk. Um, you know, if I was gonna do, I mean, obviously now the economy is tanked and I'm probably more nervous about looking at my crypto accounts than being on this podcast. But, uh, at the time I thought it was a great idea and I just came off a really good, uh, last year, the last two years for the pandemic had been really good for us. And I felt like I needed to, to do something in order to, um, solely wean off the tools. Like I said, I was kind of getting more into sales and marketing and, and strategy.
Speaker 0 00:11:02 What shifted was it just an age thing? Were you just bored with being on the tools? Were you just did, did, was it just like I have to do something otherwise I'm gonna be doing this when I'm 63.
Speaker 1 00:11:12 Well, I'm gonna steal another one of your expressions. I think towards maybe beginning in November, I started feeling cooked, uh, which I've heard you talk about. Um, and I think ive realized that, uh, I have been sitting in front of this computer for about eight years without a really solid break doing mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, hardcore development stuff, right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> like I've actually once sold a $30,000, uh, mobile app development project, and then spent $150 on unity courses trying to figure out how to deliver that thing. Um, and so, you know, doing that for 15 years kind of started to take its toll on me. Um, and then I really was getting into kind of sales and I wanna do a strategy. Um, and then right before the pandemic and right before, uh, sales accelerator started reading, uh, sprint by Jake NA from Google ventures. And that got me thinking more about, uh, discovery workshops, which is a kind of a nice segue into our mm, conversation, right?
Speaker 0 00:12:07 Let's go back to, um, you you've had some recent success with selling, uh, paid discovery, but before that, what was your, and before you joined sales accelerator, which is one of our programs where we help you figure out a sales process and install a sales pipeline and give you all the scripts and templates, you need to actually close more clients. What were you doing as part of your sales process and how was dis, where was discovery in your process before you started productizing it and selling it as a separate thing?
Speaker 1 00:12:35 Uh, it was a mess. Um, and, um, it was something I realized I needed to fix, but then I found the next shiny object, which was kind of sales. And I thought, well, if I get more sales, maybe I can, you know, figure something else out with the discovery stuff. Um, so it's only been recently as the conversation in Maverick's club and all this podcast has kind of switched to sort of selling, uh, discovery sessions that I realized, uh, that's something I need to focus on
Speaker 0 00:13:04 Previously, you'd get a client and, uh, client will put their hand up and say, Hey, we need a website. How would you do discovery? Like how would you get the information, enough information from them to then know that you could build the project?
Speaker 1 00:13:16 Like before, before we started getting paid? Sorry, you cut out there
Speaker 0 00:13:19 For a second. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So before, before you started doing paid discovery, what was your process for getting the information from the client enough information from the client so that you could accurately scope out the project?
Speaker 1 00:13:29 We would get our general sense during the, the sales process, and then we'd go deeper during the, um, during the actual project process. And we had a, sort of a digital roadmap discovery session. And out of that, we'd create a digital brief, which was fairly good, but it was also fairly inefficient because you were doing it after you sort of given an initial quote. So then you had the embarrassing thing of having to go back and say, uh, well, we didn't quite anticipate this or that. Uh, and we didn't ask enough questions in the sales process, but we didn't feel like it was the right time to be addressing those things cuz you're trying to get them over to the next yes. Rather than focusing on the next walk or why. Right.
Speaker 0 00:14:09 Super interesting. Why, why I'm curious about like, why you felt like it wasn't the right time to be asking those questions before they'd agreed and before you'd put in a price and before they'd kind of committed to that. Was that just a, you didn't, it's a lot easy or you didn't wanna be
Speaker 1 00:14:27 To do it right. You've gotta put in a lot of time in order to get the right information. Right. Um, so the funny, I'm not sure if you're familiar with lunch stock, which is a behavioral science, uh, conference put on by Ogilvy, uh, which also was last. So last week was Mav called a nudge doc. So my head is like totally full of all these crazy ideas. Um, but, uh, Rory, so who's the vice chair of Ogilvy. Um, and part of the leading light and behavioral science was giving a talk. Um, and one of the things that you said was, um, most people have this sort of, uh, legal brain where they only look for one logical solution, uh, to given problem. Um, and where if you use your scientific brain, you're focused on finding different solutions to try and find the right one for that specific problem.
Speaker 1 00:15:15 And so the oldest, uh, the quote that he, that he said in that talk that I really liked was the oldest behavioral science question of the world is why did the chicken cross the road? And everyone tends to think there's only one reason and only one chicken. Um, but if you spend the time asking the right questions, you can find out there's probably more than one reason and there's probably more than one chicken, but in order to get there, you really have to put in the sweat equity to do it. And so, um, doing that for free just doesn't make sense at all.
Speaker 0 00:15:46 Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. It doesn't um, so what, what got you to a, and so, but actually before, before I ask that question, have you, and I'm, I'm kind of teeing you up here cause I know the answer to this question, but in the path, did you find that you would go through this discovery process? You, you know, ask a few questions in the sales process, put in an estimate, get the client over the line and then do some deeper discovery and realize I actually can't do this project. I don't have the chops to do what they want me to do.
Speaker 1 00:16:16 Yeah. And worse is that then you've, you've discovered that you need to do something else and then you have to compromise the rest of the project in order to fit that into the budget that the client's not willing to move on. So that's an even worse scenario, right. So we've kind of, we've been both of those situations and we're like, this just isn't the best way, the most efficient way to work. Um, and at the end, what happens is you lose rather than building trust in doing it the right way you lose that trust with the client. Um, and then it all goes downhill from there.
Speaker 0 00:16:46 Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so why, what, what, what was the moment where do you remember the moment where you thought, obviously we've been talking about a lot in Mavericks club, but do you remember the moment where you thought, okay, I have to actually start selling paid discovery because what I'm currently doing is not working.
Speaker 1 00:17:02 Um, actually though I think the first session that I sold was I had, um, I had a care plan client, uh, and we did a, we do a monthly check in with our higher care plan clients. So it's actually being paid to pitch work. Um, and they're, um, they're, uh, an organization that, uh, supports other businesses on a specific area in Calgary, um, for south to us in Alberta. And they were saying that a particular segment of businesses in their organization wasn't happy with what they were getting in terms of support. Um, and so in that conversation, it started to sound like they were trying to pivot a bunch of different things related to their branding, their website. And I said, hang on a minute, maybe we should take a pause, slow down, uh, and do a discovery session. So that was the first pay discovery session that I've really sold. Um, and that came off a, a phone call that I was actually being paid to be part of.
Speaker 0 00:17:56 But in the past, you would've just, you would've just barreled on and kind of tried to bite off as much as you could chew and hoped for the best, what I'm curious. Like what, why now? Like, what was that moment where you said, I can't do this again, I'm actually gonna get this client to pay for some discovery so that we can do this properly
Speaker 1 00:18:15 For, I would think it was basically sort of the lack of really knowing exactly what they were trying to get at. Like they're an existing client and I know their business, but it's a newer director and a newer team over there. And I really felt like getting in a room, spending some time with one another, trying to understand the frustrations and what they wanted to keep, what they wanted to change. Um, and what, what shift they wanted to make, um, made the most sense.
Speaker 0 00:18:41 Hmm. And did you know at that point when you were pitching them discovery, did you know how you were gonna run that paid discovery? Did you have all the bits and pieces in place?
Speaker 1 00:18:49 I had absolutely nothing. It's kinda like that, uh, that big mobile app that I sold, I just kind of, I pitched it cuz I knew we were talking about it and I knew there was a Mavericks, uh, process and that other people had done it. So I knew I had a, a, I knew I had access to some assets. Um, and so I kind of took those and I tweaked them slightly, um, for that first one. Um, and, and it worked out really, really well. I'm in the middle of actually, um, just redesigning their entire website. So it turned into a full redesign project.
Speaker 0 00:19:17 Awesome. So this is what I wanna, this is, this is kind of the meat on the bones. Now. This is what I wanna talk about what happened during, how did the discovery session go? I mean, obviously you've been doing this a long time, you know how to ask the right questions, but this was the first time a client had paid you for discovery. Did you feel like the stakes were a little bit higher and that it had to be really good because they were paying you for it. And, and did you have like the deliverables that you were gonna, that were gonna end up with, like, did you have any kind of, were you second guessing the value in what it is that you were delivering?
Speaker 1 00:19:47 I, yeah, I was always tend to kind of second guess it, um, I was nervous cuz this is actually, I think probably the first in person meeting I've done in two years as well. So I'm driving down, it's a three hour drive to, to Calgary. So I'm driving down. I got my tunes on, so I'm in a good mood. Um, and, and one of the lucky things that I've heard this later from Adam I'm Silverman was that, um, their monitor was broken. So I wasn't able to present the slides, which is the advantage of, of being able to jump around and ask questions and having it more of a conversation rather than a presentation. And I think that's, um, one of the big lessons that I got out and I was a bit nervous that the, I couldn't share the slides, but then it actually, I think it turned into more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Um, so it went really well and, and we kind of pulled in and there, and I took what I'd done in the past with our digital strategy and I took sort of the SOP and some of the presentation and kind of just weaved that together.
Speaker 0 00:20:42 It's really interesting. You mentioned that on slides. I I've, I always thought, I always thought I could never do any of these workshops or presentations or anything without slides and what I've realized slides give someone somewhere to rest their eyes when they're thinking or, you know, when they're tired or whatever, they just, they kind of look at a slide and go, oh, that's what we're talking about. Just gives them somewhere to rest their eyes, but not having slides. I think slides are a crutch too for the facilitator anyway, or the presenter, I think slides can be a bit of a crutch. And so I, I generally don't do slides now. In fact, I think during makin my keynote presentation, I had nine slides, which is the least amount of slides I've ever had for a keynote, um, any less and
Speaker 1 00:21:18 One of your best, I would say,
Speaker 0 00:21:19 Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate the con words. Um, and I think the slides, I mean I used to have, I mean, one of my first presentations to kicked off this whole business was 101 ways to elevate yourself and demand higher fees. And there were literally 101 slides. Actually there were 103 because there was a bonus, of course <laugh> um, so not having slides, I think frees you up if you've got, if you understand the structure and you've still got that confidence and that rapport with the client. So, uh, well done for navigating that. Um, what came out of the discovery, first of all, this client paid for discovery. Do you mind if I ask, how much did you sell this discovery session for your first ever discovery paid discovery session?
Speaker 1 00:21:57 So, um, I kind of pegged the price that $1,500 for discovery session, but because they were an existing client, I gave them a 50% discount. Cool. So it's seven 50.
Speaker 0 00:22:08 Cool. So you drive down to, to, uh, to Edmonton is, was that Calgary, Calgary, Calgary. So you drive down to Calgary, you run the workshop. What happened during that workshop that during that workshop, did, you know, at some point that there was going to be more, did you feel that, okay, there's gonna be more work as a result of this. This is going really well. And I can see that I can scope out more work and that they're gonna, they're gonna make a commitment to more work. Was that kind of obvious during the workshop?
Speaker 1 00:22:34 Yeah, it, um, I mean they're a care plan client and they've been giving small little projects that go kind of outside of their care plan. So there's, there's always been a little bit of work. Um, but it became apparent that this was gonna be more of a full redesign, um, in terms of how they present, not their business. And they ended up having a, a slight brand refresh from a, from one of the graphic designers that they use as well. So it became much larger than I had anticipated going down.
Speaker 0 00:23:02 Hmm. Nice. And how long after the paid discovery? Uh, so you've run the paid discovery workshop. What happened then? Did you go back and then present your findings or were they at the end of the discovery workshop? Did they just say, Hey, this is great. Let's go. When can you start?
Speaker 1 00:23:17 I kind of, I came back, um, and then I put my notes together in a document. Um, and this is something that I've tweaked, um, a little bit since I did that discovery, um, because we were talking about this, um, another time is that really it's the, the audit and the discoveries are always great, but what they really need to see is the game plan. And I felt like I, I could have been a better in terms of presenting that. Um, so that's something that I, that I'm starting to tweak a little bit and try and brand it a little bit more, but also kind of be bit more direct and, um, and, and give slightly different options depending on, on what the outcomes are determined to be.
Speaker 0 00:23:57 Did you feel more confident that you could accurately quote that, that project and that those recommendations, because you'd done the discovery
Speaker 1 00:24:07 A hundred percent? Yeah. Um, cause I knew exactly. I knew all of the wives. I knew how many chickens, I knew how many reasons. Um, and so I was able to say, okay, this is exactly what you need. Right.
Speaker 0 00:24:20 And I'm curious how many people were in the discovery workshop from the client side.
Speaker 1 00:24:25 There were, uh, three. So there, there were a small organization. So it was the entire, uh, entire team. Um, actually the, the CEO of the organization says, I don't think you need me. And I said, well, actually, uh, I need everyone in here. If you're gonna have the ability to come back and poo anything. Um, I, as we call it the soup and poop anywhere that has the power to come in soup and poop, your ideas needs to be in that discovery session. Right.
Speaker 0 00:24:52 I love it. Yeah. I have a saying no voting, no complainy. If you, part of the conversation, don't complain about the outcome. Um, and uh,
Speaker 1 00:25:01 And well, the other thing I'd say about discoveries is, um, I, I think to some extent it's kind of a lost art because it's your biggest chance to be creative, right? I mean, we can be creative with design. We can be creative with code, but we can't be creative with problems cuz we've committed to them. By the time we get to design and code. So if you're trying to solve a specific problem, this is your chance to ask all of the questions and then find the right solution. Uh, and that was probably one of the biggest takeaways I got from, from reading sprint.
Speaker 0 00:25:30 Yeah. I love it. I, I used to work with an agency here in Melbourne called studio Alto. They designed all the websites that I built and I built all the websites they designed and we had this great partnership. I also ended up hiring them as an agency back in the days that we were WP elevation. They helped us with an entire rebrand. And I remember talking to the brothers that owned it at one point and they said, dude, all we wanna do is strategy. We don't actually want to design anything. We don't want to produce anything. We, we, we don't wanna produce anything and send you Photoshop files or illustrator files or InDesign files. Like that's just, there's nothing, that's a commodity. And also for us to do that, we have to grow our team of designers, which is just another mouth to feed. All they wanted to do was the strategy because that's the fun stuff is actually solving the problems, coming up with the strategy document, presenting that back to the client and then going great.
Speaker 0 00:26:19 Now go find someone to execute it. They were not interested in the execution at all. Uh, there's more money in the strategy. It's more fun. It's more valuable for the client. And they had a great process dialed in that I went through as a client. I was like, ah, this is your discovery process. Oh yeah, I'm all like I wanna pick this apart. And it was actually really good. In fact, I think max came and filmed it that day or said, oh, max ORs came and filmed our discovery workshop that day. And we used it a bunch of B roll. Um, that thought
Speaker 1 00:26:48 That has crossed my mind about, you know, not getting, getting off the tools completely and then just doing strategy. My point is that I like to do everything in the business.
Speaker 0 00:26:57 Yeah. Yeah. It's design
Speaker 1 00:26:58 It's curse. I call it the curse of the unicorn.
Speaker 0 00:27:01 Yes. <laugh> uh, design Rangers did this, Chris and Jenny shell. They've been quite public about this. They had some health issues, which just kind of put them in a position where they just didn't want the stress of implementing and executing. So they basically wound down their business and they just do strategy workshops. Now they call them camps. Uh, they were in Maverick's club for a couple of years. Uh, they really went hard on, uh, on just doing camps. Uh, I worked with them to kind of help them get their head around the fact that they don't have to design the pixels or build the wire frames to be valuable that there is valuable, there is value in the strategy and in the discovery. Uh, and that's all they do now. They just do discovery camps. Um, so how long after, sorry, how long? Um, you may have already answered this question, but it's early and I've forgotten. How long after the discovery workshop did they then sign off on the, on the, the bigger project? How many was that like a couple of weeks. Was that a couple of days experience?
Speaker 1 00:27:51 No, it was, it was, um, minutes. Um, oh, wow. Uh, no it wasn't, uh, may have been within, within 24 hours. I think we, uh, and again, they're an existing client, so they're kind of an odd case, but um, they were ready to go. They wanted to make the change. Um, they, they run campaigns to support their organization. So this was something that was a, a priority for them.
Speaker 0 00:28:15 What was one of the most valuable questions that you asked during that discovery workshop? You think if you, if you had to, if you had to kind of go, there's one question here that you just absolutely have to have as part of your discovery workshop, what would it be?
Speaker 1 00:28:28 Um, usually it's, what's broken, um, right. It's, it's getting to the, why are we, why are we having this conversation? Um, you know, you have a website, uh, it's, it's been there for, uh, in this case we had actually helped them kind of launch it, um, about a year ago. Um, and so they've had a, a staffing change. So the biggest special is what's broken and, and even taking that further and trying to get as deep as you possibly can in order to figure out all the different reasons why something is broken.
Speaker 0 00:29:00 Does that ever get awkward when, when people are like, you know, like, do, do you ever feel like, oh, you know, like I'm trying to peel another layer off the onion skin here and, and maybe they don't want me to probe around or like maybe they're a little bit protective of what's broken cuz a lot of people don't like admitting what's broken in their business cuz it's embarrassing. Right?
Speaker 1 00:29:18 No, I mean, I think in, in this particular case, um, and there are other cases that maybe, uh, that might have been the case, but in this case, um, you know, we were there because they had said we need to pivot or we need to make a change. And so we were really there. That was the point of, of having this discovery session. And that was the reason why, you know, I drove all the way down.
Speaker 0 00:29:41 Uh, now talk, let's talk about discovery sessions where at the end of it, and I'll come to Jayden's question in a moment, uh, let's talk about a discovery session where during the discovery you realize that you don't actually want to take the client on because we were talking in the green room and, and you let me know that this has also happened since you've been selling paid discovery for the last half an hour. <laugh>, it's, it's a relatively new thing in your business, but you've sold, paid discovery to a client and gone, you know what, I actually don't wanna take you on as a client. How did that roll out?
Speaker 1 00:30:10 So shout to a squadron four, by the way, before we go any further. Um, so yeah, I mean I think, uh, and I've had conversations with other agencies inside and outside Mavericks and um, you know, selling audits and discover sessions has been very successful for a lot of the people that I've talked to. Uh, and so we were approached actually it was a cold, I think it was a cold, uh, search, Google search, uh, referral. Um, and so, uh, we were contacted by, uh, an eCommerce store owner. Um, that was, uh, in the middle of trying to build, uh, a WooCommerce store. The current store I think is on OS commerce mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so they'd asked us to see if we could help them. Uh, and so I sold them an audit, um, kind of a hybrid, actually it was more of a, like a technical audit and a bit of a discovery session.
Speaker 1 00:31:01 Um, I think we sold it for like a thousand bucks or something like that. Um, so we spent about, uh, an hour and a half trying to understand his business. Uh, he was selling, uh, like high end golf simulators in the us and Canada through eCommerce website. So probably a popular pandemic pastime. Um, but he had a, he had a kind of an interesting business model and the more we dove into it, um, you know, it, his, his whole business was hinging on his commerce site and this plugin that he bought off, uh, theme for us for like 150 bucks that he was working with a developer to try and, and figure out how to match his, his business, um, uh, plan, which was basically had like warehouses in the us and Canada. And you were able to order, in fact, even for some reason, I still don't understand you were able to choose which warehouse individual products were being shipped from.
Speaker 1 00:31:52 Um, wow. And so we did a discovery, did a full audit, um, and we, we talked to people like ship station that, you know, they do this for a living and we came to the conclusion that he was trying to get too much out of WooCommerce and he either needed to, um, change his business plan, which I, you know, thats not something you want to really talk to, but we have made the suggestion, uh, kindly that either look at that or maybe, you know, go back to basics and script this thing out and, and build it out as an MVP and just really work with it, um, really work with that plugin vendor to see if they could get that working. Um, and so that was the end of our journey. Um, you know, we've quoted them on hosting cuz they had some other technical issues.
Speaker 1 00:32:35 Uh, but the end, I think we, we realized that the, the challenge was, was too great for us to really take on. And the other red flag was, he'd mentioned in the initial call that he had talked to Shopify who quoted him 60 grand to do the development work and then 30 grand a year to, uh, to do the maintenance on it. So I thought, oh, if I can do the whole thing for 30, uh, and then do a small care plan I might be in. But, uh, as we, as we discovered it wasn't, uh, it wasn't something we were willing to get too, too deep into
Speaker 0 00:33:04 Mm-hmm <affirmative> how did he respond when you basically said, look, you know, this has been great and thanks for getting to know us, but I don't wanna play with you anymore
Speaker 1 00:33:16 If I had a screenshot of his face, uh, I, I could use that as a meme. Um, I, I, I think he was realizing that he'd bit off, more than I think he started to realize he was biting off more than he can chew. Right. Um, and so I'm curious to see if he comes back or if he changes his mind. Um, cuz yeah, if you're doing, you know, if you're trying to push something like WooCommerce, which is probably not the best eCommerce platform out there, um, if you're trying to push that to its limits, um, then you really need to have, um, a good sense of, of how you're gonna execute that. And I don't think he did.
Speaker 0 00:33:52 Uh, it's a nice segue into Jayden's question who asks, uh, I'd love to talk about the different levels of discovery, for example, a complex eCommerce or making a lot of money a month would need a much deeper, more detailed discovery than maybe a home service company just starting their first, you know, few years of business. Uh, how do you feel about the discovery process? And do you feel like you need to tweak it for people who have more complex projects?
Speaker 1 00:34:17 Yeah. Um, I'd like to do more of a workshop style, um, in the future, especially if I was to do more, uh, e-commerce stuff and really, really start to think about the customer journey and even do like a, a wire frame paper exercise. Um, I don't know if you've read sprint, but there's a bunch of different, good exercises in that book. So taking some of that, uh, and, and, and really being able to come out of it and say, here's kind of the flow we experience. Here's how we think certain elements should be laid out in terms of a wire frame. And then if you say, yes, we'll, we'll figure out a fee, we'll paint it, we'll build it and we'll, we'll give it to you and help you run it. Right. So there's, there's, there's always things like that that I could tweak.
Speaker 0 00:35:02 And do you think that that is, do you think it is harder to do discovery for someone who's doing e-commerce or memberships than someone who's just got a brochure site?
Speaker 1 00:35:10 I'd say it's more important, right. Um, it's harder to deliver, but it's also more important to deliver. Um, there's, there's another project we, we sort of inherited, we didn't do any discovery for it. Um, and we made a bunch of assumptions based on the path that they already taken. Um, and then they ended up kind of the project kind of went away and they went to another agency. Um, and it's apparently it's, it's gone to like two more agencies since it passed us. But had I known that, um, had I thought, or even considered thinking about just stopping everything and going back and doing discovery, um, and building that into what we took from what we'd already built and then just tweaking that to match whatever came out of that discovery session. I think that would've been more successful. Um, and that, that site probably would've been launched by now. And that was like a big sort of, it was like a, a LinkedIn for, uh, for IANS and people in the beauty and hair stylist industry.
Speaker 0 00:36:05 Wow. It was a
Speaker 1 00:36:06 Big, it's a directory site with job boards and they wanted to do classes and stuff like that. So it would've been a really cool project to do and they had some grant funding even, but, um, they kind of were trying to market it and build it and, and yeah, and I, I, I missed some signals there.
Speaker 0 00:36:24 Do you, uh, is, is paid discovery now just a part of your process and a part of your business, like, were you, is, is it like a given that you have to do paid discovery before we take you on as a client?
Speaker 1 00:36:36 Not at the moment. Um, I haven't, I haven't split it out. Um, but having these conversations makes me think I should. Um, we haven't done too many new projects in the last three months or so. Um, so there's always a component piece that is discovery, but as I start to think about one of the great sessions we had last week at <inaudible> was about pricing and how to structure pricing. And I really liked how, um, sort of Johnny broke out his pricing more like, um, more like a car builder, right? So you've got your base price. And so I even want to split out, um, you know, before you can even get to the car builder, you have to do kind of this, this discovery session, and then we can build it out for you. So that's, it's, it's something that I need to implement. Um, but I just too many, too many fires going on to kind of address that one.
Speaker 0 00:37:26 It's like the 14 point safety check that the mechanic does before they then actually fix the problems. It's it's, uh, there's a, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:37:34 I've built most of my checklists out like that, too. Right. So the stoplight system of, you know, it's good poor, or it needs fixing, right? So
Speaker 0 00:37:43 I think I've told this story before, but there's a buddy mine who coaches tradies in, uh, how to be more profitable. And one of the things he tells electricians is when you go on site to talk to a couple about, you know, putting some new PowerPoints in the laundry, the first thing you should do is do a once around the perimeter of the house to make sure that it's safe to actually start working on the house. And the way that you present that to the client is to say, look, before I, before I quote this up, I just wanna do a once around the house, if that's alright, just to make sure it's safe for me and the boys to come on and actually do the work, just wanna make sure there's no loose wires or fuses that need attending to or whatever. And nine outta 10 times you do a once around the house and you mark off your checklist and you come back and there's like $450 worth of work that needs to be done before we can put those new PowerPoints in the laundry, because at the moment it's just not safe.
Speaker 0 00:38:32 I notice you've got a couple of kids riding trikes around. I wanna get this stuff fixed. Other places safe. You say that to any parent, they're gonna spend that 450 bucks without thinking, right? Because they don't even know that things are unsafe. I'm a professional, I've just told you things are unsafe. We need to do the work. And so instead of just going out and installing a couple of PowerPoints for, you know, $320 or whatever it is, you've now got an $800 engagement just from spending 10 minutes, walking around the house, doing that quick 14 point safety check. And you're actually doing your customer a favor by doing that because you are, it might, you might just think, well, I'm doing this for a bit of a cash grab, but you're actually, you've got their best interest in, at heart here, right? That there are things that are unsafe here that need fixing your safety switch. Isn't gonna flick. If something goes wrong, that safety switch is not gonna protect you. So we need to get these things fixed and then we can install the new PowerPoint. It's a similar kind of, um, methodology. How do you feel about like, is paid discovery, something that you're gonna lead within the future and actually promote as a product as, as part of a Legion or a client acquisition formula.
Speaker 1 00:39:36 Yeah. Cuz I think they, the advantage is that it helps to bring trust between the you yourself and the client. Um, but it also helps to reduce risk between you and the client. Right? So the client can see that you've put, thought the energy that you've put into doing discovery and what, what comes out of that. Um, but you're also reducing your own risk by knowing exactly what it is that you're going to be designing and building or, or providing to the end client regardless of what your service is. So I think it's a, it's a way of, of mitigating risk that, um, that, uh, you get paid for too, right?
Speaker 0 00:40:14 I think the other way mitigates risk is that you're not asking to spend 20 grand up front. You're asking him to spend 1500 or $2,000 front and that's a smaller engagement. There's less risk. And if you deliver on that, if you deliver value on that $1,500 and they, then there's more trust, it's way easier to sell someone a $20,000 pro project. If they've already given you $2,000 for discovery, then it is to sell someone cold, a $20,000 project. It's exponentially easier because there's more trust in the relationship because you've had an opportunity to show that you can bring value, right?
Speaker 1 00:40:47 Well, especially if you're involving your client in that discovery session, right. So they can actually see where their 20 grand is going for the rest of the project. Whereas if you just say, give me 20 grand and we'll make it happen. Uh there's no guaranteed.
Speaker 0 00:41:00 I just wanna kind of wanna tap into what this has done for your confidence in talking to a client, knowing that you are, you don't have to bite it off more than you can chew and then go and do a Emmi course to figure out how to deliver it because you now have this process that where you can get paid to figure all this stuff out before you make any big commitments,
Speaker 1 00:41:22 UHT <affirmative>, uh, definitely I have way more confidence. Um, right. And as I, as I move through these things, I'm trying to build different assets in the business of different checklists if we're doing an audit, um, and, and really refining the questions that we ask, um, and incorporating any feedback or any kind of things that didn't work in the last session, trying to push that into the next session. Um, and then just, you know, hearing feedback within, within the different groups and different talks, you know, the other day I was installing a plugin, uh, and I noticed something and I added that to a audit checklist. I'm like, oh, I need to add this in. Right. So there's, there's always those little things, right. And that gives me more confidence. Um, and the other thing that I did, um, I did a audit, uh, presentation yesterday for an agency client.
Speaker 1 00:42:09 And I really felt like I had improved, um, not only audit process, but more importantly, the, um, the suggested outcomes that they take in order to, to rectify some of the issues that we identified. So that led into more work and a, and a, at a deeper conversation. Um, and then potentially even a deeper paid discovered, right? So we sold an audit, we identified a bunch of issues. If they wanna address something specific, then we could say, well, maybe we need to sit down and hammer this out and come up with, you know, a journey or wire frames. So there's, there's a potential for that too. So that really gives me more confidence in order to sell our work, seem to be selling things on calls these days. Um, but it also builds that trust. Right. Um, and then it's a great, great way to build that relationship with the client and then hopefully that'll lead to more referrals and more discovery sessions and yeah, so on and so forth.
Speaker 0 00:43:07 And I think it's interesting this, this, this notion of, instead of selling a project for $15,000 selling parts of it for smaller engagements. So we might do discovery over a two week period. Then we might do wire frames over, you know, a three week period. Then we might do some user interface and mood board design stuff. And then we might do some, you know, we might develop a solution to integrate something into a third party tool. And then we might do some customer journey mapping and we might do some search marketing strategy stuff. And over the period of a year, that could be an 18 to $22,000 engagement rather than trying to sell it all in one hit and trying to get it all done in three months, which is the way that I used to do things. When I first started out was this is what you need.
Speaker 0 00:43:49 We can do this in three months. It's gonna cost 15 grand. And invariably we'd miss our deadlines and, and miss timelines and miss everything because they couldn't get their shit together in time. We could not possibly deliver on what we promised in time because we bit off more than we could chew because we didn't know another way to do it. Right. We didn't the idea of having a 12 month engagement with a client was completely foreign concept to me, I didn't think back then that they would want to make that commitment. But the truth is every time we did launch a website, they would spend the next 12 months coming back asking more questions and we do little bits and pieces for them anyway. So I really like this idea of chunking down rather than, you know, rather than having the, the full buffet and then getting indigestion. I really like the idea of just grazing on it over time and, and continuing to improve and iterate and having that long term engagement with the client. I think it's more valuable for them. And also I think it's, it's better for recurring revenue and cash flow for us as agency owners as well.
Speaker 1 00:44:45 One thing I really want to start looking at doing is more of like a content discovery workshop, right? So you've done your initial discovery workshop. What is the whole picture? And then like really focusing on content. Cause I think that's also being missed a lot with, with brochure sites, right? They're really, really focused on the business voice and not, you know, billing build, bringing in the, uh, user profiles and all those journeys that you've done in discovery. So then having a real good, um, content discovery workshop, right. Especially if they're writing the stuff themselves or even if they're not, you still really need to have their voice part of that.
Speaker 0 00:45:20 Yeah. You know, the good thing you mentioned the assets before. So we have full transparency. We have a brand new training coming out very soon around paid discovery. And, uh, fortunately James is in Maverick's club, so he's already got it. He was one of the first to get it actually. Uh, and some of the assets that we, that we have in that training that we give our clients, um, are workbooks and slide decks for running paid discovery. So the training that we're, that we're bringing out is all about how to run paid discovery so that you've got the confidence to sell it because then when, once someone buys it, you know exactly how to deliver it, it's a full turnkey system. One of the things I like about it, and essentially it's a series of questions that we ask, you know, like the, why, what, who, how now, where when kind of, uh, framework.
Speaker 0 00:46:04 But the, one of the things I like about it is that the, what piece you could, uh, you can use that to, to do an overall kind of digital strategy roadmap, right? Or you could use the, what piece to dive in deep and do like a content roadmap or a search marketing roadmap or a social media roadmap, or an email marketing roadmap or a membership roadmap, or an eCommerce roadmap you could do. You could use the same framework, but just focus on something deeper, uh, uh, and rather than doing a broad kind of dig strategy. So the assets and the dig and the discovery workshop, we call 'em digital roadmap, by the way, the discovery workshop assets and methodology work on a broader scale. But you can also then dive deep and do specific workshops around different areas like content search or, or even user interface or, you know, or even, uh, user stories.
Speaker 1 00:46:59 I, I think the other advantage of, of doing these kind of sessions is really pulling the client into the project. Cause I've seen so many like advertising agencies where they'll sit down with a client, they'll have a two hour meeting, they'll go away, they'll do their thing. They'll do their, their voodoo or whatever as they do, they'll come back and the client will hate it. Uh, cause the client's not involved in the entire process. I've seen that so many times with, with agencies charging insane amounts of money. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 0 00:47:26 Yeah. And if the client's involved in it, they're more likely to buy into it because it's kind of their decision. Like it's their input. They they're the one that's driven it and your job is just to facilitate it. I think a lot of, I think a lot of us feel like we need to have all the answers. And I think if you can, you know, be humble enough to realize that our job is just to facilitate them discovering the answers. It's not sure from a technical point of view, we might have best practices that we recommend. Right. I have recommended clients go to Shopify because I just know that what they're trying to do is we, commerce is just gonna be a pain in the arts and from a te and that's based on my experience, I will recommend they use convert box for their lead generation forms because I know it well, and it's awesome.
Speaker 0 00:48:11 Right? I will recommend if they're selling something simple online and a digital product that they use thrive cart because it's awesome. And it works. I will make those recommendations based on my experience, but they know more about their business and their target audience than I ever will. And they know what resonates and they know what they're trying to achieve from a business point of view. My job is just to facilitate that conversation and help them arrive at those decisions themselves. And once they arrive at those decisions, they're way more likely to buy into it, take action and get it done. And they're also more likely to defend that decision to any of the naysayers. Whereas if it's your decision and someone else in the organization says, oh, this is a terrible idea. Then the client can say, well, yeah, we thought it was a bad idea, but we didn't wanna hurt James's feelings.
Speaker 0 00:48:54 Whereas if it's their idea, they can have that debate. I mean, the amount of, I think paid discovery for me came out of this frustration because I would sit in meetings with clients where there'd be two or three people client side. And I would just sit there for hours watching them argue because they were not on the same page and I'd be going, Hey guys, I'm not getting paid for this. Right. And I've gotta try and pitch a project to you, clowns to spend 15 grand on a website. And you can't even agree what your business name should be or whether or not you wanna be in a rock band or a jazz fusion band. Right. So, uh, let's get on the same page. And I think that's where paid discovery originally came from for me, just to kind of outta that pure frustration of making sure everyone's on the same page before we start going and, and picking up the crayons.
Speaker 1 00:49:33 I think I've been in a meeting where someone has said, oh, so you have all the, all the right answers. As I said, no, I have all the right questions. Yes, exactly. And then we went into the right answers. Right? Exactly. Like it's more important to have all the right questions
Speaker 0 00:49:46 And right answers, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, um, agency maverick.com/wait list, by the way, apparently we have a wait list for the, uh, paid discovery blueprint. So there you go. You can go and check it out there and get on the wait list and be the first to know when that opens. I frankly have no idea when it opens, I think it's in the next week or so, but I don't really know. Someone will tell me when that's due to happen. What is next for James merod and ho digital, what are you most excited about over the next 90 days?
Speaker 1 00:50:13 Oh, that's uh, good question. We've got, um, a few agency projects that we're starting. Um, so, uh, I've been a little bit worried about cash flow, uh, this year. So that's, that's nice to have that this, every project seems to be behind for some reason. I'm not sure why. Um, but we're really trying to, I'm really trying to focus on, um, bringing on a team so I can focus on, on building more assets at and more workshops, uh, and more, more reasonable bits in the business, like checklists workshops. Um, I'm trying to, you know, streamline everything so that, uh, it's easy for, um, it'll be easy for someone to come in and, and sort of take some of the stuff off my hands.
Speaker 0 00:50:57 What's the goal. What's the, what's the end game for you? Like how will, when will, you know, you know, okay, I've been doing this for 17 years now. I've been doing it for 18 years at the 20 year mark. You'll be what 47? How would you know, God? How would you know that? You know, yes, this is really going well. I'm happy with where the is. What's that gonna look like?
Speaker 1 00:51:17 I, I keep hearing Johnny flash talk about how they launched a project that he wasn't involved in. Um, I think that's, I mean, that's probably the ultimate goal, right? Um, I don't I'm so my biggest challenge is that I like to do everything. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> I even do my own accounting. Uh, haven't helped me, uh, heaven, some migratory, I guess. Uh, so, um, it would be nice to, uh, be less involved on the, on the tools, but really drive strategy.
Speaker 0 00:51:50 You were at Mav con, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to, and, and I'll ask us not to make this announcement right here before the 1st of July, but you were at Mav con, you were privy to a pretty big announcement that was made at MACOM, which again, we're not gonna announce right now because we are gonna announce it on the 1st of July and it's gonna send ripples through the, uh, through the industry. I, uh, I can promise you, um, except
Speaker 1 00:52:10 For Canadians who have, uh, July 1st office, Canada day.
Speaker 0 00:52:14 Oh, is that right? Um, well happy, happy Canada day in advance. Um, but you were there and you, you heard the announcement. Um, I, I can promise you that. And I'll just say this for everyone listening that the more, you know, I, I, I think you can do the things that you love in the business. I don't think you should do it all because you are then stuck, right? You can't, you can't have a holiday. And you said you've been sitting there looking at the computer for eight years without a break, having, having a team of some description, I think gives you that leverage and that flexibility where you can step away. Right? Johnny flash told a story, uh, of the, uh, two weeks that he took off last year, uh, with the family, he didn't take his laptop. It was the first time he'd been away and didn't actually take his computer with him at all.
Speaker 0 00:53:02 And he said, the first day he had the shakes. Uh, the second day, uh, he said was easier. And he said by day three, he'd kind of forgotten that he was a business owner, right? Cuz he was just completely immersed in the family, which was great. I went to the sunshine coast and had a holiday earlier this year, over Easter. And uh, I took my computer just as a backup. I looked at it twice. I had one 20 minute meeting with our chief marketing officer TSU and I logged in once to transfer some money between bank accounts. So people could pay some bills. I realize now I didn't even need my computer for that. I could have done both of those things on the phone. I think I just took my laptop as a security blanket. Didn't need it at all right now. You don't have to, we've got a team of 24 or 25 or whatever it is here.
Speaker 0 00:53:41 These days, we just, uh, onboarding a new operations assistant Anna in New Zealand, who's joined us on a, a part-time basis. Uh, we had our annual planning session the last two days. I think Anna has realized that, uh, her capacity's gonna increase pretty quickly because there's a lot of work here to do and she's quite capable. So you don't need to grow a team. This big, you can have a team of three or four or, you know, couple of developers or whatever. Carl few in New Zealand has got a care plan developer. When he, when I met him in September last year, he was spending 30 hours a month doing care plan, work working till 11 o'clock every night and his wife was pregnant. They're about to have a baby. They had the baby, he took two weeks off. His team is delivering. Uh, his is completely transformed for him.
Speaker 0 00:54:22 So what I, and I know that you're in our team accelerator program at the moment, James and we are gonna work with you to, to hire a team member. But what I will say, what I'm trying to say to you is that you don't need to give up the things you love doing in the business. Right. But you can't do it all. I think you should delegate some of those things. So you can spend more time doing the things you really love. One of the things I really love is product development, coming up with new ideas, frameworks, and products to help our audience, which is something I'm gonna be doing more of, uh, in the new financial year. And we'll make that announcement in a couple of weeks. Um, so yeah, don't feel like you have to let go of everything that you enjoy doing. Um, you can, you can really focus on doing the stuff that you enjoy doing. Um, but you, I don't think you should do it all because you know, that's a pathway to burnout. What is it, if you had to do one thing in the business, what would it be more than anything if you just had to choose one?
Speaker 1 00:55:13 Well, so the one skill that, that I've noticed, they, they probably, I don't think they teach at school anymore is trying to, is figuring shit out. Uh, and that's probably been my greatest skill, right? I've been able to sell products and then, you know, figure out how to execute them. And I've been doing that since, you know, for 17 years now. Um, so, um, that's probably my greatest skill, but I've, I've really gotten into doing like strategy. And I think that kind of relates to it. So I'd like to get to a point. I know like Jenny kinin has like a part-time dev and a part-time designer. And to me that seems about the right size, uh, to, to get to. So that's kind of where I'm headed hopefully, but within the next six months we can do that and have enough projects to sustain it. So I can do, you know, I can get my hands dirty, uh, if I want to on code and design or, um, I can just focus on strategy and selling more discovery workshops.
Speaker 0 00:56:07 Yeah, love it. I know we talk about Adam Silverman a lot because he is a bit of a poster boy, because he's just taken so much fricking action over the last couple of years or 20. Yeah, two and two and a half years, February, 2020, he joined Mavericks club out in San Diego. He has, is off the tools. Now he he's out of sales. He's building himself out of sales. He's got Theresa doing sales now. Uh, he's not involved. He watches projects happen. And he's like, I have no idea who this client is or he's he does the he's like the influencer now. Right? He's like the he's he's the anti influencer. He doesn't even try and be an influencer, but people come in and sometimes he might sit on a call just to give the client the confidence that he's there and he's across it. But his team are doing everything. His team are running discovery workshops. He calls them track builder. He's gonna be on the agency over next week. There we go. Super excited. I'll
Speaker 1 00:56:53 Give you, I'll give you a little Easter egg. If you check out my slack profile and agency Mavericks, my description is the next Adam Silverman.
Speaker 3 00:57:01 <laugh> I
Speaker 0 00:57:04 Love it. I love it. And I can see you when Adam joined. I, he won't mind me saying this. When he joined Maverick's club in February, 2020 and San Diego, he was like a rabbit in the headlights dude. He was like, and then a month later, the whole world went into lockdown, right? And he was like, what the hell is going on? He was abs just like a rabbit in the headlights. He had no idea what was happening and was like bright eye and bushy tail. But he's just consistently taken action and elevated his thinking and elevated what he does and what he focuses on and built a great team to help him do everything else. So, well,
Speaker 1 00:57:34 That's an interesting thing too. And I know we're trying to wrap up, but like the pandemic, everyone was moving so fast. Um, and pivoting really, really fast that people were just putting out websites left, right. And center said, now's a good time to go back to those clients and say, Hey, we really need to go back and make sure this is still working in a post pandemic world. Right. Make sure we got it. Make sure we got it right. Cause we did it way so fast.
Speaker 0 00:57:56 Yeah. I will also say this. I know there's a bit of talk around the world going into recession, right? Everyone's kind of panicking about the world. Going into recession. Inflation is high interest rates are going up because governments around the world have been printing money, hand over fist the last couple of years and sending it to us so we can buy shit to make us comfortable and distract us so that we can stay home and be compliant citizens and avoid civil unrest. Right? I mean, that's essentially what's happened because of the pandemic. Now we're coming outta the pandemic. We are spending too much money too quickly. Demand for everything is way too high, which pushes prices up cost of living is outta control. So that jacking the interest rates up to stop us, spending money, to slow things down. Everyone's saying that we're gonna go into a recession.
Speaker 0 00:58:37 I will say this. Even if we do go into a recession, it's no reason to panic. Most people are going to panic in a recession, right? Most business owners are gonna panic in a recession. This happened at the start of the pandemic, everyone panic at the start of the pandemic. If you don't panic, if you just keep your cool head, right, cool. Your jets, focus on what it is. You do best continue to add value to clients. You will flourish while your competitors fall over, uh, 75 points and you say, yeah, it's gone up. Interest rates have gone up, uh, 75, uh, basis points here in the last, uh, two months as well. And they will go up again. The 1st of July, I'm expecting, they'll go up by another 25 or 50 basis points. So, um, if you guys keep putting interest rates up in the us, we have to otherwise our dollar will tank.
Speaker 0 00:59:21 So, uh, we are watching you closely and we are keeping our eyes on China and Russia and India as well. It's very interesting. Development's happening there. I'm not an economist, but uh, we've been through this before. We will go through it again. Keep a cool head, continue to add value to clients, lean into your clients. I can tell you what Adam Silverman did during the pandemic because he got on a call with me and he was panicking. And I gave him a bit of advice that someone gave me, which is call all of your clients business owner to business owner and just ask them how they are. Don't try and sell them anything. Just call 'em and say, Hey, things are a bit weird at the moment. Just wondering how you guys are coping right, and have a conversation. And he picked up a bunch of work from clients that he didn't even know were looking for work.
Speaker 0 01:00:03 Uh, and he identified who his ideal client is out of his network, which is the growth minded business owner. Who's just gonna continue on fighting the good fight and his business is flourished more than doubled during the pandemic. Uh, so a bit of advice there for all of us, I think is just to, you know, keep a cool head, lean into your clients and continue to add value and continue to do good work. And uh, we'll get through it regardless of what happens. Hey, James Mero, this has been super fun. Thanks for hanging out on the agency or with us. I'm so glad that you've taken something that we've put out there into the world and taken action on it and got some results. It's, uh, very rewarding for us to see that happen. And thanks for coming on the show and sharing your story with our listeners.
Speaker 1 01:00:44 Thank you. It's been wonderful to be here.
Speaker 0 01:00:46 Awesome. Let's do it again, James. Thanks James TRO. Uh, there we go. Ladies and gentlemen, that's another episode of the agency, our alive here in the digital Mavericks Facebook group. As I mentioned, we do have a new training that I've been told, opens up next Friday, the 24th of June Australian time. So it'll probably be Thursday afternoon for you guys in the states. Uh, and Thursday night, if you're in the UK, uh, it's called the, the, the, what's it called, it's called the paid discovery blueprint. It's called the paid discovery blueprint, go and check out the wait list, uh, so that you can be amongst the first to get a notification. When the doors open agency, mavericks.com/waitlist, and in that program, uh, we are gonna give you all of the assets. You need to run the paid discovery. We're gonna give you all of the workbooks, all of the slide decks, the entire timeline, uh, the entire to do list of everything that you need to do to successfully run paid discovery and get paid in order to then decide whether or not you wanna take that client on.
Speaker 0 01:01:43 We also, um, are giving you a, uh, there's a bonus lesson that we're giving you in that course, uh, which is how to sell paid discovery, the exact script, the exact framework to use, to sell paid discovery to a client. And then as I said, everything you need to run paid discovery will be in that program. Uh, some training videos to help you understand it and all the worksheets and all the assets you need. And a checklist are to do list. You literally just follow the bouncing ball and tick the to-do list off one thing at a time run, paid discovery. And then those paid discovery sessions you'll have an opportunity to either say no to the client because they're not a good fit. And at least you're being paid for your time. Or you take that client on for a larger project than, as we've spoken about.
Speaker 0 01:02:21 It's much easier to sell a larger project to someone who's already bought paid discovery. I think Adam Silverman's converting at about 85%, 85% of his clients that go through paid discovery, convert into a larger project, right? His speakers problem right now is actually slowing things down because he's just got, there's so much demand for it. They, they, they do. They just can't keep up. So, uh, opens up next Friday, paid discovery blueprint, go and get on the wait list to be the first notified. Thank you so much for hanging out here. And again, if you're listening to this as a podcast, come and join the digital Mavericks Facebook group and be a part of it. Huge shout out to James Muro from ho digital in Canada for being a guest here and a big shout out to max for producing the show and the team for making it happen. Uh, I will see you again next week on the agency hour where Adam Silverman will be our guest. Uh, can't wait for that until then have a great week. I'm Troy Dean bye for now.
Speaker 2 01:03:09 Thanks for listening to the agency hour podcast, subscribe at apple podcasts, Spotify pocket cast, audible, and wherever you like to listen, you can catch all of the agency hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/agency Mavericks. Or you can get involved, check out our free digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free training. We'll see you there.
