Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Welcome back to Boss Responses. This week, I'm joined by guest co-host Jamie Brendel, a freelancer with 16 years of experience working with brands from local businesses to Netflix and Google. Our first question is all about the fear we face when we need to raise our rates. Are all of our clients going to sprint for the door? Jamie and I are both pretty passionate about this topic, so let's get right into the question.

Treasa Edmond: 0:26

If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time, I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question. I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses, jamie. Thank you so much for being here with us this week.

Jamie Brindle: 1:18

Thanks for having me. We're going to have a lot of fun.

Treasa Edmond: 1:21

Hey, I'm excited about it. I've already told you and I'll tell everyone else I'm probably going to fangirl a little bit. I love Jamie's content and if you haven't watched any of it, go do it after you listen to the podcast episode, not right now. Jamie, you're answering our first question of the week and this is from Elliot. He's in Austin, texas. Elliot says I've been freelancing for about a year now and while I have a solid client base, I find that I'm constantly undercharging. Every time I try to raise my rates I get nervous about losing clients. It feels like I'm stuck in a cycle where I can't grow without losing work.

Jamie Brindle: 1:59

How do you approach raising rates without scaring off clients? I mean, what freelancer hasn't found themselves in this situation right? So step one is know that you're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you. This is something that you're going to bump up against a few different times in your career. It's one of those things that even advanced freelancers need to be reminded of not necessarily learn, but just need to remember that they learned this lesson in the past.

Jamie Brindle: 2:23

The first time that I encountered this I was working in Hollywood. It was before Courtney, my wife, had joined. It was just me, and I had a client that had just taken over my calendar. They were responsible for 87% of my time in my business. My revenue, which any freelancer knows, is a pretty risky scenario to find yourself in, and I couldn't spend any time building my business and, in a moment of desperation, I scheduled a call with the CEO of this agency. I spent the week writing on flashcards what I was going to say, trying to figure out what I was going to charge, knowing full well that if I lose this client, I'm starting from square one on my business, but also, if I keep this client, I can't grow my business. So it's a rock and a hard place situation. I talked them through it. I ultimately told her I'm going to have to more than double my monthly here, and there's a pause that felt like 45 minutes on my end, but I'm sure it was really seven seconds and she said okay, that makes sense to us. We want to work with you because we'd rather find a way to work with you than find a new you right, because I spent two years getting to know their team, getting to know their business, their clients and what have you.

Jamie Brindle: 3:36

That was my entry point into this situation is understanding that if you can explain the situation to folks, it's highly likely that they're going to figure out how to work with you rather than, as the question asker mentioned, getting scared off and going to find someone else. I've had several conversations to that end with other clients of ours, who will even jokingly. They'll forward me emails from people trying to poach them from us and offer to undercut us and charge half of what we're charging, and they're so confident that they're not going to leave that they send me the email as a joke. It's not even a thought that would cross their mind because of the value we've brought. So that's all to kind of establish the reality of the situation, which is there is a relationship here and that is valuable, right? So when you're walking into these conversations, understand that this person isn't dispassionately looking at you, as each project is a new item on the sheet and the second you're charging too much, you're off, you're gone, we're going to go find someone else, right, because there's value to the relationship. Essentially, there's value to the shorthand that you've developed.

Jamie Brindle: 4:43

But when it does come time to have that conversation, make sure that you give them enough runway to go a different direction if they absolutely have to Pardon the expression, but don't be a dick about it, right? Don't say, well, you got to figure out how to pay me now or I'm out. Give them enough runway and there's no need to really explain. I think a lot of people fall into that trap where they make a whole presentation about why their prices have changed and it's more. Hey, this is the new number starting three months from now. This is my new minimum level of engagement. I'm really enjoying the work we're doing together and hopefully we can keep going. Hopefully this isn't a deal breaker, but if so, let me know and I'm happy to help you find a replacement for me Because you want to be a team player to the end these people, who knows they might hire you later I'm sure they'll have some things to say about you to their network but also because you want to remind them that they will have to find a new you.

Treasa Edmond: 5:34

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jamie Brindle: 5:35

Maybe that rate isn't that scary after all.

Treasa Edmond: 5:38

Yeah, and now I have a caveat to that, because I agree with all of that Unless you're writing for a content mill, they honestly don't care and usually they don't feel like they've built a relationship with you because they can replace you easily. So, having said that, if you're writing for a content mill, just replace them, replace them.

Jamie Brindle: 6:00

I was going to say, yeah, it's like, just as there are many of you, there are many of them, so that's important, but also optimize for a business that doesn't rely on that type of client either, right?

Treasa Edmond: 6:14

So it's like the less and less of that type of client you can have, the better. I see a lot of new writers coming in and I'm in a Facebook group where we talk about what is the kind of bottom rate a professional writer should charge, and the general consensus in there is if you have writing experience and you're writing high value content for clients and a lot of the people in there are B2B content writers so B2B never, ever, drop below a quarter a word as your internal rate Just don't. Just don't do it. So if someone wants to pay you 10 cents a word, they're quite obviously a content mill. You're going to get in there. You're going to be making a little bit of money, but they are going to monopolize your time and a lot of the lower, the more content mill-oriented agencies they also will do the same thing. They'll pay you bottom dollar, monopolize all of your time so that you can't do it.

Treasa Edmond: 7:02

My rule of thumb and I don't know what you think about this, jamie now is because I had your same situation. I had one client. They were like 80% of my schedule. They ended up being toxic, super, super toxic, and I needed to get rid of them and I was afraid to get rid of them, but it was a whole situation Since then. I did fire them eventually, and I did it by raising my rates. I love that. I love raising my rates enough that a client just goes away One of my favorite.

Jamie Brindle: 7:52

Yeah. Yeah, it's critical. I know we're probably talking about marketing at some point this week, but it's the same with marketing, right? You want no one marketing channel to be responsible for more than 20% of your lead generation. It's like any across the board. You want to de-risk your business? Yeah, most certainly. Otherwise, you become that company's rented employee, which is not what you got in this game for.

Treasa Edmond: 8:14

The other part of my answer is it's good for you to be nervous because it sharpens your responses. If you're doing this in person on a call, you're more aware and looking for how the client is reacting so that you can react back to that. It just makes you more into the process. So here's my process that I recommend for my coaching clients. If they need to raise the rates, especially if they are at the point where they're constantly undercharging and they need that confidence, they need to raise the rates, especially if they are at the point where they're constantly undercharging and they need that confidence. They need to build the confidence to do it, because it takes some confidence. I tell them.

Treasa Edmond: 8:50

First thing you start doing is marketing for new clients, no matter what you need to be marketing all the time, no matter what your client roster looks like, no matter how far you're booked out. You need your marketing built up so that you have consistent referrals and inbound marketing leads, so that you're not having to prospect, because prospecting takes up way more time than you really need it to. The second thing I say is to raise your rates gradually if you don't have it in you to do a big jump. So if you're charging half of what you should be. You don't necessarily Now Jamie did. He went in and said I need to double my rates. That's a rare situation.

Jamie Brindle: 9:31

That was a crisis guys.

Treasa Edmond: 9:33

And you'd built a solid relationship. They valued you and you were probably hoping that they would see that as value. If it's a client where you've built that relationship and you want to do that, go in and just figure out what makes you slightly uncomfortable instead of really uncomfortable. So if you are fine with I'm going to stick with the per word, even though I don't charge per word, but it's easy for people to understand that internally. If you are comfortable with raising your rates 10 cents a word, do it 20 cents a word.

Jamie Brindle: 10:06

I like that.

Treasa Edmond: 10:08

It doubles your stress factor, but it's also usually well within what the client is willing to pay. The other thing I say is start asking new clients because, remember, you're marketing, so new clients are coming in. Start asking your new clients what their budget is before you give them a rate. I never give rates without knowing what a client wants to pay, and then I never lower my rates. I lower the client's expectations of what they get for their budget. So I change scope, never my rates.

Jamie Brindle: 10:39

And that will get you more money with less effort every single time when it comes to experimenting with your rate and getting an understanding of what's available, what the market will bear for what it is you do. A great time to experiment is when you're really busy. If you find yourself booked solid for a month or two and you're getting some new clients through the door, those guys are test subjects. Don't even think of them as potential clients. Right On this one, I'm going to charge four times what I normally. We'll see what happens. I can't tell you how many times my rate has seen a significant increase simply because someone just said, yeah, okay, we can do that. And guess what? That's the new rate for everyone from now on, right? So a good time to experiment is when you're busy.

Jamie Brindle: 11:27

I think ultimately apply here with your folks. I think it will, though you want to charge in a way that makes sure that you're building a business and not a job, right? Yes, so if you only make money when you work, that's a job that you're making for yourself and you can go get a job anywhere. But ideally, with a business, you can decide to not work for a month and still make the money you need to make that month, whether that be via subcontracting or diversifying your revenue streams with different types of products and what have you. But I would advise, when you're coming up with that minimum level of engagement or coming up with that internal floor rate for your word count, assess how much it would cost you to bring someone on for that gig and then add to that the margin you would need to make to make your revenue goal for that month and that's your new minimum level of engagement. And that doesn't mean you have to go subcontract. That just means that you could if you wanted to. That's the beginnings of a scalable business.

Treasa Edmond: 12:26

I firmly believe that, as freelancers, we should be charging enough that, if something happens and we need to step back for a month, we can bring in a subcontractor to take over our clients without losing money. That's a safety net that needs to happen. So, yeah, what Jimmy just said about raising your rates with new clients, that's the third piece of advice I give to my people. So, once they've gotten out of their crisis zone and they're making enough that they're making their ends meet, they're prospecting, they're marketing. They're making enough that they're making their ends meet, they're prospecting, they're marketing, they're bringing in new clients.

Treasa Edmond: 12:58

Always raise your rates with new clients, even if it's 10, 20 cents a word. Raise your rates with each new incoming client, build a relationship with them and then, as you build those relationships and you're sure they're going to be a long-term viable client you can actually get rid of your lower paying clients that aren't your ideal clients, the people you don't want to continue working with, and that's how you kind of refresh and build your business. Now I want to add a caveat in here, jamie, and I really would like your input on this At some point, you need to move away. Well, you should always move away from hourly like right away, but at some point you need to move away from like per word rates to project rates. And my project rates are not based on hourly or per word. They have a minimum threshold for each, but they're based on value.

Jamie Brindle: 13:47

Yep, anybody consuming this podcast, whether you're listening or watching it, has encountered this concept, probably a dozen times today on social media, depending on who you're following. Right, but it is still somehow elusive to folks, the ever elusive value pricing, because people always say, well, there's no tangible thing to value. How do I know what the value of a specific job is? And I start with kind of an anecdotal example, which is if a local cafe wants you to develop a poster for their window and then the same day, warner Brothers comes knocking and they want you to develop a poster for the next Batman movie, that's the same job, but there's two very different values there what each brand stands to benefit from. A well-executed poster or a well-executed copy or what have you, how do you touch that? How do you figure out what that number is? And the answer is you don't. The client tells you.

Jamie Brindle: 14:45

It's not on you to figure out what the value is. It's in your call with them, in your sales call, your discovery conversations. You ask hey, how are we measuring success for this thing? What are the success metrics we're using to know that we've done a good job here? Because I want to hit it out of the park for you guys. But in order to do that, I need to know what the target is. I need to know what we're doing here, and oftentimes there are major, major brands that don't know the answer to that question before they've engaged you, and so having that conversation immediately establishes you as a strategic partner, because you're forcing them to hey, everybody stop, why are we doing this?

Jamie Brindle: 15:21

The answer can't be well, we'll say we did a good job if we like the words you gave us. I'm like no, no, you got to give me a number here. You got to give me something I can measure. Right. I'm like no, no, you got to give me a number here. You got to give me something I can measure right Now. That doesn't have to be a dollar amount.

Jamie Brindle: 15:34

I can say, you know, just for all different types of freelancers it could be. You know, I optimized your workflow and saved your team in the aggregate 24 hours per week of blah, blah, blah, like it could be anything. Usually it's time, money or reputation. It's one of those where you're some combination thereof, but you ask them for that and then you apply that to what your minimum level of engagement is. Ideally, you get to the point where you can do that in real time, maybe make a couple notes to yourself so you can have them to consult as you're having this conversation. The ever elusive value pricing is as simple as asking them what's the value of this thing to you In a manner that's not weird and salesy. Genuinely, you're trying to be a good strategic partner going to be successful.

Treasa Edmond: 16:26

So I actually saw you post about the poster issue once and I saw a guy come on and say that he would charge the same for both because it was the same job. Yeah, the J word. And my immediate thought when I saw his response is Warner Brothers isn't going to hire you because they're going to think you're small change.

Jamie Brindle: 16:39

So that was what I said to the guy.

Treasa Edmond: 16:42

I think you did say something like that.

Jamie Brindle: 16:44

It's not even that. It's not even like yes, they'll think that you're not good enough for what they're asking for. But but be you know, somebody over there would be very uncomfortable paying that much money for something like it because it's so important to them, Right, yeah, it's like imagine, you know, if you're buying something very important for the infrastructure of your house or something, and some person comes along and says, yeah, I'll do that for 12 bucks, You'd be like, mm-mm, I'm not interested in that. That guy's not thinking about this the right way.

Jamie Brindle: 17:13

No no, so yeah, it's a two-way street.

Treasa Edmond: 17:19

Yeah, the example I give to writers, especially when we're talking about this value-based pricing specifically, and figuring out what that value is it's very similar to what you'd said. When you ask a client on, say, a white paper what success looks like for them and they say we want to convert at least one client from this white paper, you can immediately say, oh, that would be wonderful. What's the value of that client to your business? It's not nosy at that point, it's actually you want to know what that value is. And if they say, well, we're selling this big machine, it's a million dollars, you can go back and you can be like well, charging $2,500 for this white paper is kind of ridiculous when the end result is a million dollars in income for them. So then you can look at, all of a sudden, $25,000 for a white paper makes perfect sense and it's.

Treasa Edmond: 18:13

You know, if they've already given you your budget, I pre-qualify every client and I always ask them what their budget or budget range is for it. And if they say their budget range is, they're probably going to be vague. You know $10,000 to $35,000. And you see that their end value is a million dollars, you're all of a sudden not going to have a problem at all putting $35,000 on a proposal for a white paper. You just aren't, because they're not good clients Caveat. Good clients are not always looking for the lowest price. They're looking for the highest quality and the easiest people to work with.

Jamie Brindle: 18:51

Absolutely, absolutely.

Treasa Edmond: 18:53

Value matters. So, elliot, do this thing Raise your rate. Make sure you're in a good relationship. You can be nervous about losing clients, that's fine. I think nerves to some extent are very, very helpful with this. But make sure that you are building relationships with your client, showing them your value and then pricing yourself in your value. And then raise your rates for all of your new clients as they come in. Great, all right. Come back tomorrow for day two with Jamie Brindle.