Latest / Repossible / re563: Stop Selling Your Time (with Judson Rollins)

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re563: Stop Selling Your Time (with Judson Rollins) · Repossible

0:00
Speaker A: AI is making this a more urgent problem than it's ever been. Because the things that used to take days now take hours. The things that used to take hours now take minutes. And it's not that AI can implement it for you, it's that AI can do a lot of the grunt work. It can write the first draft, it can, in some cases, it can even edit the video into clips. It can do the data analysis. It can do the first pass of things that were the most time intensive. And so as a solo professional, or maybe a professional working in a smaller firm, this is the time that used to be your bread and butter. It was the base of your billable hours. And if the base of your billable hours is now largely being done by Claude or by ChatGPT or by Perplexity, and you're still selling your time, you've got a lot less inventory to sell, which is a really bad business problem to have.
0:55
Speaker B: How about this for an opening right here? We got it. We got it. Beautiful. Right here, Love it. Sells destinations, not journeys. Judson Rollins, I happen to have him right here sitting next to me in our not fake backdrop of Dribergen in the Netherlands. Sell destinations, not journeys. I have Judson Rollins here. We're going to get into value today and welcome Judson.
1:16
Speaker A: Super excited to be here. Bradley.
1:17
Speaker B: Yes, I was going to check here. Should I be billing this by the hour or by the value that we provide? I don't know. We're going to find out those kinds of questions right here. I am not billing Judson for this. This is. We paid earlier in burritos and fake backdrops with. It's not a fake backdrop, by the way. Sorry, I'm just really. I don't know why I'm stuck on the fake backdrop thing. Judson, it's great to have you here. We had a chat. Or was that like a year ago? Yeah, and we were. Because we were. You were just getting started with your book or we were working on your book or the book with an idea or we were.
1:57
Speaker A: No, it's actually the book for the latter stages. I was almost approaching the end of the first draft.
2:02
Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, that's right. And we had a chat and then we. We even recorded a chat and we wanted to talk again because a lot has changed since then.
2:10
Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
2:11
Speaker B: Yeah. And not to mention, the book is here live in my hands, the real thing. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about value and Whether or not how value, how that works. And Judson's going to tell us by the end of this video. There you go, that's a little value bomb teaser right there for you. Right? Well in fact, tell us Judson, what are we going to get by the end of this video?
2:32
Speaker A: In today's chat, I want to talk about why value to a client is completely different from the input. The time that you invest with a client, the value that they take away is not remotely connected to what you, the provider, the consultant or the coach put into it. And so there are smarter ways to package and price your work that are more focused around how the client values your work rather than how you value your time.
2:58
Speaker B: Okay, I've struggled with this for literally decades, with the whole time time for money. I have a 22 year old boy and he's now currently working in the US and makes an hourly wage. And when he does his math and he calculates how much he makes and how much he spends and everything, it's very fixed. And there's no fluctuation, there's no risk as well. But it is a line. I mean, ideally the line goes up a little bit if he makes more money, but that is a, you know, you're trading the dollar for the hour.
3:32
Speaker A: Absolutely.
3:33
Speaker B: And that is not. And you are, is that, what are you saying? Do not do that.
3:37
Speaker A: I'm saying it's bad for both the person who's providing the value and the person who's receiving the value. The buyer and the seller. It's terrible for both because in your son's case, your son could be wildly productive in a given hour or he could be slacking off. He's going to get paid the same. And so there's no connection between price paid wages in this case and value received productivity, labor.
3:59
Speaker B: Okay, I'm going to stick with the kids for a minute here because at one point, so I'm hiring my boys to, to do stuff around the house and we had this Whole Economics 101 discussion where so Liam, my older boy, he's the more economically savvy other one. No offense, Luca, but he's the one. Are you gonna pay me hourly or are you gonna pay me by the project? And I said, are you gonna be playing PlayStation at the same time? And he says yes. I said, then I'm paying you by the project.
4:26
Speaker A: Smart man.
4:27
Speaker B: Because I want the value, I want the job finished. And if I'm paying by the project, I don't care how long it takes him. And let's say quality didn't matter. Let's say it was filling buckets, a simple thing that you can't mess up. And so if he's only half paying attention because he's playing PlayStation at the same time, then the value for me is less per hour.
4:51
Speaker A: That's right.
4:52
Speaker B: Because he's not paying attention, taking twice as long. Okay, so he's taking twice as long. So for me, I want, as the employee employer, I want the value of the finished job.
5:03
Speaker A: That's right.
5:03
Speaker B: And let's say it wasn't. Let's say it was a very simple job. It's either done or it's not. And so just get that job done. And I will pay this much money. And so the advantage for me is that I have a fixed cost, like I know how much, whatever, 20 bucks.
5:20
Speaker A: Which by the way, allows you to define the return on investment in advance, assuming you know what the end result of this work is going to be.
5:29
Speaker B: So it sounds like the hourly is beneficial for the employer.
5:32
Speaker A: It's beneficial if it's priced correctly. It should be beneficial for both because it offers the employer, the buyer of the services, to know in advance exactly what they're going to pay to understand what the return on investment is going to look like. And if it's priced correctly, it should be advantageous to the seller as well, because they are going to get paid based on a function of the value they're creating, not merely the time that's going into it. And they should, with some experience, they'll learn how to price in a way that's separated from the time so that what they end up achieving is greater than what they were getting paid on a per hour or per day rate previously.
6:12
Speaker B: Okay, I know we'll talk about this, but I know your target audience is not necessarily me and the job to my boy. But can we stick with that for a minute?
6:21
Speaker A: Sure, let's do. It's a great analogy.
6:23
Speaker B: It's extremely simple. And also I can understand the psychologies of both parties because it's very simple. The teenage boy and the father and I need this job done. And okay, this is bad. But he wants to do the minimal amount of work possible for the maximum benefit.
6:42
Speaker A: Human incentives.
6:43
Speaker B: Okay, Human incentives. So he. He doesn't. He doesn't. Okay, this is bad. Well, maybe this is real. He doesn't actually really want to do the work. He just wants to get the job done. Okay, what does he want to do? Does he. I'm thinking of like postal workers.
7:00
Speaker A: There's a famous bumper Sticker. Okay, I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me. And so you have opposite incentives. The buyer wants to get as much value as possible for as little as money as possible. The seller wants to do as little work as possible for as much money as possible. Completely opposite incentives. And so time is really terrible for both because think about it from a professional's perspective. If I really want to, I don't have to cheat on my invoices. I don't have to lie. I just need to schedule one more meeting, one more focus group, write one more white paper that you didn't really need to get the job done, but I'm going to tell you it's necessary. You're getting the same value for more money, which is a worse deal for you as the buyer. For me, it's a better deal because I'm basically stretching out, I'm pulling, extracting more value for the same amount of value delivered.
7:52
Speaker B: Because the extra focus group, you got paid the extra time that it took you to do the extra focus group, but you're not necessarily increasing the value that you're providing relative to the amount you're getting.
8:05
Speaker A: Exactly right.
8:07
Speaker B: Okay, so, and this is interesting, okay, back to the boy who basically just wants to play on his PlayStation. So if he can be on his PlayStation, which is beneficial to him and half ass the job, bingo, then it's gonna take him twice as long. But he doesn't care because he's on the PlayStation, which is what he really wants to do. And he wants to earn money, which is probably secondary to the PlayStation. But he can do both now. And if I don't care that the job is done in two hours instead of one hour.
8:36
Speaker A: Filling buckets, filling ditches. Yeah, speed doesn't matter.
8:40
Speaker B: Okay? Which is why his future of filling ditches is looking bright. Right? But in tel.
8:46
Speaker A: I have no further comment on this.
8:47
Speaker B: No further comment on my son's future job prospects. He's available for hire for filling ditches and playing police station at the same time. So, okay, so for him, I like this because it's so simple for him. If he figures out that they're filling the buckets, he's like, well, actually, I'm pretty fast at filling buckets and dad's gonna pay me. Let's say it's 20 bucks an hour, or I say $20 a project. But he says, wait a minute, can we do the. Hey, dad, could we do the project model? Is that what you call it?
9:20
Speaker A: You could call it the project model, sure.
9:21
Speaker B: Okay. Project model for 20 bucks. And I'm gonna fill all the buckets that I'm supposed to fill. But he knows if I don't play PlayStation, this is same time. I can get this done in, in half the time. I can get this done in half an hour. So then he can go be fully focused on PlayStation, which is what he really wants to do. But he can get the job done in half an hour, get paid the same amount that it took him two hours, half there. And then, okay, if he's really smart, then he'll say, Let me do 40 buckets worth. Let me do $40.
9:53
Speaker A: Let's go with 40 buckets worth. I like this.
9:55
Speaker B: Okay. And I'm fast. And so. Oh, because I'm fast, I can, I can. Okay, when does that cross between the hourly and the project basis where I'm earning better than the hourly wage? That's what he's hoping for, right?
10:13
Speaker A: Exactly.
10:14
Speaker B: Okay.
10:15
Speaker A: And you want the buckets filled for as cheaply as possible.
10:19
Speaker B: Okay, so for me with the 40 buckets, now let's say he does, he does twice the amount of work, no PlayStation. And I pay him on a project basis and he gets everything done I wanted to get done, and I'm still paying. Now I'm up to $40. But he did twice the amount of buckets. I'm still happy. Right?
10:38
Speaker A: Assuming you needed that many buckets. Okay, so the trick is you pay him by the bucket because now your incentives are aligned. He's incentivized to get it done as fast as possible and not play on his PlayStation. He wants to churn out the buckets, get it done, you get the work delivered faster. But, you know, because you've told him, I need 40 buckets, you know, up front, exactly what it's going to cost. You pay him by the bucket. And so that's a big part of what I help my clients do and what I teach is understanding what is the commonality between what the buyer is looking to obtain and what the seller is looking to deliver. And, and what is the unit of value that we should be charging for that's not time related. And it might not even be project related. It can be, but in this particular case, there's a better way.
11:25
Speaker B: And we committed this wasn't even project related anymore because now we're down to per bucket.
11:29
Speaker A: Bingo.
11:30
Speaker B: Because the project is 40 buckets, or the project is all the buckets in the storage room or whatever. But if I can figure out, so I need to figure out the price per bucket, I'm willing to okay.
11:41
Speaker A: Which basically means you need to understand what the value to you is of having those buckets filled, which has nothing to do with the time it's going to take him to get it done. What is. You don't have to answer it for this exercise, but if I, if you were my client, I would ask you, okay, what is the purpose of filling these buckets? What is this going to achieve? Are you pouring concrete mix so that you can lay on a sidewalk? Are you filling a kiddie pool? What are you doing here? What is the water going to go toward? And what is the value of this thing that we're creating with water?
12:10
Speaker B: Okay. And then I guess I could say, what does the competition look like? Why don't I just do it myself?
12:16
Speaker A: Yeah.
12:17
Speaker B: But then I need. Okay, well, then I don't have the time to do other, ideally higher level jobs.
12:25
Speaker A: And maybe that's the value at play, is the value of your freed up time. And if I'm selling services to you, if I'm your bucket filler instead of your son, I'm gonna ask you, well, what does this free you up to do? And how much would you spend on that? And that's going to give me an idea of how much time savings I'm creating for you, how much value I'm creating for you. And that gives me something that I can anchor my pricing on.
12:46
Speaker B: Okay, so it helps you. Well, if you're a savvy employee here, it helps you to know. To know, why am I filling the buckets? Why am I doing the job? Because then you can be smarter about your offer.
13:01
Speaker A: But that kind of savvy is something that you can learn and that I can teach you. It's not something you're born with.
13:05
Speaker B: Okay. Okay. For the record, my son and I never got to this level.
13:12
Speaker A: I would love to have seen the negotiations that they had.
13:14
Speaker B: Yes, yes, that was pretty quick. But. And the PlayStation was usually involved. Yeah, well, because I don't think we thought beyond the complexities of what we're talking about now. We just said, he says, I want to play PlayStation, I want money, dad needs help filling buckets. End of story. And we didn't get any more. We didn't get any fancier than that.
13:38
Speaker A: And it doesn't have to be fancy. Sometimes it's just really around understanding what is the goal of the work to be done. Maybe it's more than just having buckets filled. And once you understand the goal of the work to be done, then you can come up with something that's Maybe not more complicated. In fact, in many cases can actually be simpler, but it aligns the price and the value between the buyer and the seller. One of my favorite sayings is something from Warren Buffet. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. What I teach experts how to do is understand the value of the work not in their terms, but in their clients terms, so that they can link price and value in a way that increases price, both client satisfaction and provider satisfaction.
14:27
Speaker B: Okay, wow. I'm glad we started with this with the father son simple filling bucket thing, because then I hope that it makes it also more clear for the audience that if we can bring it back to simple terms and we can understand both parties and the incentives on both sides to see why you would want to do it in a different way. And just like we did not go further, Liam and I did not go further with the bucket filling example. And I mean, the end result was it was okay, but it could have been better, and it could have been. And then this is interesting because then, like you say, what does the benefit mean? Well, it frees up more time or it frees up more time to think about why am I filling buckets at all? And what is the goal of the. Filling the buckets. Yeah. And can my time be used more effectively or efficiently in doing something else?
15:19
Speaker A: That's right.
15:20
Speaker B: Higher intellect than bucket filling level.
15:22
Speaker A: And how much money does that create for your business?
15:24
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
15:25
Speaker A: And now we've got the basis for a conversation around value, which turns into a conversation about price.
15:32
Speaker B: Okay, okay. Wow.
15:35
Speaker A: Price is what you pay, value is what you get. How do we link those two things together?
15:40
Speaker B: Okay, this is. This is like. These are the seats. Like, remember J. Paul Getty?
15:50
Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
15:51
Speaker B: Right. So he had a castle in California, and when you did a tour.
15:55
Speaker A: Yeah, The Getty Mansion. You can still go there.
15:56
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so when you did the tour of the castle, they told you about this one room where Geddy would have his guests visit. And they said as you stayed longer as a guest, you would eventually be pushed down the table towards the fireplace. And in the fireplace, it was sort of so hot that it wasn't comfortable anymore. And so at some point, you realize it's time to go.
16:22
Speaker A: It's like the restaurant that brings you your check halfway through dessert. Pay up.
16:25
Speaker B: Let's get out. And so here, these are the seats we're sitting in here. For the record, we're sitting out here in the glorious woods of world renowned Dribergen. And it is not. Let's just Say it's not cozy and comfortable.
16:39
Speaker A: Not at all.
16:40
Speaker B: But we are, we're selling the destination, not the journey here. So that's what it is. What are we selling here today? We are selling the value of this conversation and we are paying the price of making it happen. Okay, I'm going to come back into action. We were just talking about, well, we were talking about the value of my son and I want to jump into the modern world of AI if we may and because we were talking about time and pricing and value and this has also changed quite a bit since the year we last spoke.
17:26
Speaker A: Oh yeah, where.
17:27
Speaker B: Because now I'm going to be total devil's advocate here and I'm going to be brutal. And Judson said I could be brutal, by the way. And if. All right, I'm going to be totally brutal. I'm going to say, okay, Judson, thanks for your book. I might read it and give me the main theory. You know what, forget give me the main theory. I'm going to have ChatGPT give me the summary of this book and then I will have the knowledge and. And then I'm smarter. Right, so that's the end of the devil's advocate because yeah, I would then have the knowledge. But does that get me the implementation? And then as well as, as AI, if AI can, maybe AI can help me implement some of this. But how can we actually take what you're talking about in this book and implement it in the real world? And can you? Because you're talking about you've got some programs coming up. That's right, with, with Real World Live eight week programs.
18:29
Speaker A: Yep.
18:29
Speaker B: To how to actually make this happen. So we've gone from theory and thanks AI for the summary of Judson's book. I get it. I'm a smarter person now. And there was something about value and pricing or whatever. I'll figure it out later. And now you're actually going to help make it real.
18:45
Speaker A: That's right. That's right.
18:46
Speaker B: Okay, tell me about the. These eight week programs. What's involved in there? Who are they for? What do we get done? Why are you offering them?
18:54
Speaker A: So I help consultants, coaches and fractional executives. Those are people who sell their expertise and until now they've largely been selling it by the hour, which has all kinds of problems both for them and for their clients. AI is making this a more urgent problem than it's ever been because the things that used to take days now take hours. The things that used to take hours now take minutes. And it's not that AI can implement it for you, it's that AI can do a lot of the grunt work. It can write the first draft, it can, in some cases it can even edit the video into clips, it can do the data analysis, it can do the first pass of things that were the most time intensive. And so as a solo professional, or maybe a professional working in a smaller firm, this is the time that used to be your bread and butter. It was the base of your billable hours. And if the base of your billable hours is now largely being done by Claude or by ChatGPT or by Perplexity and you're still selling your time, you've got a lot less inventory to sell, which is a really bad business problem to have. And so what I am doing is I'm helping consultants, coaches and Fractional existence decouple their pricing and their offers from the time it takes to deliver the work. The first step is, was the book. The second step, as you mentioned, is an eight week cohort program that I've got coming up called Value Under Pressure. And the idea is that in eight weeks I am going to help you define your positioning, come up with your first three tiered offer, however you want
20:32
Speaker B: to think about that.
20:32
Speaker A: Good, better, best, Silver, gold, platinum, come up with price points and I'm going to teach you how to have the value conversation. Hey, what is the value of my time that I'm not going to spend filling buckets or whatever your equivalent of filling buckets is and I'm going to teach you how to do that in eight weeks. We'll have one 90 minute call every week where I'm going to be delivering content and we'll be doing group exercises. I'll have one office hours call per week. I'll be available via chat throughout the week to answer your questions and to look at your homework. There will be some homework, there will be some interactive work to be done, but by the end of the eight weeks you will have your first three tiered offer and know exactly how to price it by the client or fixed pricing if that's the route you want to go and be able to deliver that to a client in the real world. And for select participants in the first cohort, I'm going to offer the opportunity for me to ride along, so to speak, on that first offer and help give feedback in real time as you work with the first client you deliver this offer to.
21:35
Speaker B: Wow, is this, this isn't in the Netherlands in person.
21:39
Speaker A: No, no. This is going to be a virtual program that I'm offering to anyone in the world. The typical hours for the live sessions will be in the European evening, which is US east coast midday to early afternoon, US west coast morning hours.
21:58
Speaker B: You mentioned we're talking about AI I heard this really interesting sort of angle on AI and how to best work with it. People are scared of AI oh, it's going to take away my job or whatever. And I. Sorry, I say that very lightly. One thing I really liked was promote yourself and then give AI the job that you used to do. So you've got to figure out what is the highest level work I do and promote yourself to that title.
22:31
Speaker A: Absolutely.
22:32
Speaker B: And then give AI the job that you probably, well, give AI the job that AI can do, that you could also do, but it'd be more beneficial for you doing that work, that lower level work, so to speak, and then you have that higher level job.
22:49
Speaker A: Can we dig a little deeper on this for a second?
22:50
Speaker B: Yes. Because I think, because I think this is something pricing and timing and strategy and I think like, oh, wait a minute, there's something exciting going on right here. Right.
22:58
Speaker A: So if I look at where I was two years ago, I wasn't using AI at all.
23:02
Speaker B: Yeah.
23:02
Speaker A: And so I was. And in some ways I still am what I call the CEO, the chief everything officer.
23:07
Speaker B: Right.
23:08
Speaker A: I was the copywriter, the accountant, the marketer, the strategist, all of it. And I still cover all of those things in a supervisory role. But if I think about Claude, which is my primary platform that I use, Claude two years ago was not a part of my tool stack at all. One year ago it was a junior copywriter, slash junior copy editor. And now it's graduated being a senior strategist. So I can ask Claude because Claude's been trained on my book, Claude's been trained on all of my thinking, the work that I've done with clients. I've got case, I've got anonymized case summaries that I've put into Claude. Claude knows about all the work that I've done with clients without the identifying information. And so I use Claude to generate the first draft of my LinkedIn post, the first draft of client proposals. Now, nothing goes out the door that I personally have not reviewed with my own eyeballs. Nothing is direct from AI to client, ever. And I cannot imagine a future in which it will be. But I've graduated from being the analyst and the manager and the CEO to being just the manager and CEO. And now I'm kind of the senior manager slash Director and CEO. So to your point, I spend more of my time working on strategic things, working on client facing things, and less time doing the grunt work on the back end, which allows me to spend more of my time doing things that actually add value to clients, not just the grunt work.
24:33
Speaker B: And that just to put it quite simply, my simple question should be, well, then my value has increased and I can increase my pricing because what I'm offering is higher level. Am I oversimplifying a little bit?
24:49
Speaker A: Yes and no. The way that I would say it is I'm able to serve more clients at a higher level of service using AI. But I would also tell you that I'm able to do, because I have more time, I'm able to do more complex work. I'm able to go deeper with each client in a way that adds more value and that does allow me to increase my pricing. So no one is paying me more because AI did the work. If anything, clients, there's so much distrust of AI. The clients would probably pay me less if I said AI has done some of the work.
25:19
Speaker B: Right.
25:20
Speaker A: But at the end of the day, the client does not care whether AI did the work or not. The client cares. Did I, Judson, the provider deliver a solution to their problem and did that solution work? If the solution doesn't work, everything else fails. So it's on me to make sure that the solution works. And I cannot depend on Claude to do it all for me. But what I can do is let Claude handle that time intensive grunt work so that I can focus on the things that really add value to my clients.
25:48
Speaker B: Yeah.
25:49
Speaker A: And that makes me a higher value provider because I can go deeper with each client and I can serve more clients more effectively.
25:55
Speaker B: Wow. So you can serve more clients at a higher level.
25:59
Speaker A: This.
26:00
Speaker B: Okay.
26:01
Speaker A: And that's how my value increases. And that is the power of AI. Look, I fully understand the freak out about AI. I get it. I understand why people think it's. It's coming for their jobs. It makes sense to me.
26:13
Speaker B: Yeah.
26:13
Speaker A: But I would say, respectfully, to the people who are most worried about this, that you're really, I think you're looking at it with maybe a narrow lens. AI is what in the military world is called a force multiplier. It's a way to deliver more impact with the same number of troops, the same number of bullets, the same number of resources that you had previously. And so if you're a professional and you're intimidated by AI, my exhortation to you would be engage with AI. Learn how to learn to harness it. Learn how to make you more productive so that you can deliver more and better work to your clients. Whether that's a single corporate client who is your full time employer, or whether that's to individual clients, you serve as a solid professional. Professional.
27:00
Speaker B: You know, you said, are you worried about AI coming for your job if we continue down the path we were just talking about? I'm a little bit devil's advocate, but I could say, come on, come on after it, AI come on after my job. And then I'm going to promote myself to the more strategic or intellectual position above that.
27:21
Speaker A: This is the mentality, this is the way.
27:23
Speaker B: Okay, that's really interesting.
27:25
Speaker A: It's a force multiplier, it's an enabler. It's the same as every other technological innovation we've had. And not to minimize these, these were all powerful. It's Microsoft Excel taking over the paper spreadsheet. It's the typewriter taking over from writing things out by hand. It's Microsoft Word taking over from the typewriter. You could go as far back and probably even further back than Gutenberg's printing press.
27:48
Speaker B: Yeah.
27:49
Speaker A: Every time we've had a major technological innovation, humanity has had a panic moment where you've said it's going to eat all of our jobs. The Catholic Church thought the printing press would destroy it. And here we are 500, 600 years later and we're all still employed and the world is still turning and things still work. And I think, AI, is it going to be disruptive? Yes, absolutely. Is it going to be destructive? Not necessarily. And I think for those who are more willing to get out and fly of AI and learn how to harness it for their benefit, the better off they're going to be and frankly, the wealthier they're going to be on the backside of this transformation.
28:32
Speaker B: I was in Antwerp this past weekend and there was a thing called Museum Nacht, Museum night. Right.
28:38
Speaker A: Those are fun.
28:38
Speaker B: 31 museums open all night. And what was really fun was we went to ones that were near where we were staying and so. Oh, whatever, let's go to that one. And we went to one which was kind of cool because you go to something that you didn't think you'd go to. And this, it was about the printing press. And apparently in Antwerp, I did not know this, there was something to do with the printing press. And it showed how meticulous and time consuming even the first printing presses, how they had to put the piece, the metal, I don't even know what they're called the little thingies.
29:08
Speaker A: The pins and the drums.
29:09
Speaker B: The pins and the drums. And to make the one page print. And me looking back thinking like, wow, what a lot of manual labor to make that work. Whereas back then that was. Wow. He even called it. He says this was like the Silicon Valley of that era. And how that just leapfrogged the technology because of previous technology was like, okay, Joe, you copy that book, and I'm gonna go sit over here and copy that book by hand with quill pen. And now they had to do some mechanical pins and drums, but that increased the value so much. And they were talking about that too, how that used to scare them. And this is going to be such a big disruptor. And it was. And adapt and use it and make it to your better. And then I can then go, if I'm the book creator, I can go think of the next book rather than me copying out the last book by hand.
30:00
Speaker A: That's right. And if we want to take this pen and drum analogy a little bit further. So the pin. The value of the pins and the drums is that you set the pins and the drums once. Okay. You have to refill the ink periodically, but you can grind out copy after copy after copy. If you think about this from an AI perspective, you're setting up your custom instructions once, you're uploading your intellectual property or your data set once, and then you can do an infinite number of analyses a thousand times faster than you could if you were having to do it all by hand. For those of you who are Microsoft Excel geeks like me, think about the time it takes you to set up a pivot table and to write out macros and to do all these things. Claude will do it for you in seconds if you just tell it one time. Here's what I need, and upload the data set, and you can do analyses over and over and over again. So it really is like a ones and zeros version of the pins and drums.
30:56
Speaker B: Wow. Okay. I want to. I want to circle back because I was working together with a friend on summits and we were talking about how, what is the next iteration of basically information and education? And as Judson and I were talking earlier, we were talking about AI, of course, and how I can get information so quickly. And so what say, well, back to the word value. What's the value? What's the added value? And then again, I was playing devil's advocate, like, thanks for the book, but how are you going to really help me implement what you're talking about in the book. So could you talk a little bit more about the program, a little bit more about the eight week program and how that's, I know you mentioned who's it for, what's going to happen, but what can I, who am I? What is my end goal? What is my at the end of it, how am I benefited?
31:57
Speaker A: So for you, it's going to be having laser sharp focus on who do I serve, how do I serve them and what does my service do for them. What is the impact that you create for clients? And that's the prerequisite to any kind of value based pricing. It's really understanding your positioning and especially the value of your work. So that's step one. The next step is understanding what it is that clients pay you for. It's not PowerPoints, it's not Excel files. What is the business, forget dollar or euro value, what is the business value? What's the conceptual value of the work that you're doing for clients? What does it do for them? What's the outcome? So we want to think through what that outcome is. Once we understand that outcome, then we unpack that into what does an offer structure look like that gives clients multiple paths at different price points to achieve that value? I like to describe it as do it yourself. Done with you, done for you. Do it yourself does what it says on the label. I give you the toolkits, the frameworks, the intellectual property. You figure it out. I might have a call with you at the beginning and at the end to check off on everything. But you're on your own. Top end is done for you. You leave it with me and my team. We'll take care of it. We're going to check in with you a few times to make sure that you're happy with what we're building. But we will ideate it, build it, test it, implement it, guarantee it on the back end, and then there's something in the middle that I call done with you. Yeah, you and your team are going to do some of the work. My team and I are going to do some of the work. We're going to do this hand in hand. We're going to have regular check ins along the way, but the burden is going to be shared. And so the question as a client that you have to ask yourself is what level of hand holding do I want and do I need and what am I able and willing to pay for? And the intersection of those two things is the option that you're going to buy. And so What I want you to walk away from this program with is a clear concept of what is the outcome I'm delivering. What are multiple ways to help the clients get there, and how do we price each of those ways of getting there? Think of it as economy, premium, economy and business class. All three are going to get you to the destination, but one is going to get you there with a full night of sleep and a full belly, and the other one's going to get you there sore and tired and not ready to do anything on arrival. What level of comfort do you want? What are you willing to pay for it?
34:22
Speaker B: Okay, now, at the end of a client consultation or. Or success stories from having implemented your program, what are some things people have said or what. How are they feeling or how has it changed how they work or how they think about value and pricing?
34:41
Speaker A: The number one thing that they see is they stop arguing with clients about the hours they.
34:46
Speaker B: Oh, ouch. It's a good one.
34:50
Speaker A: Think about all the conversations you've had with clients where they've said, really? Why did this take you half an hour? This should have taken you 15 minutes. This took you three hours. My intern could have done it in two. My favorite that I love, the story that I love to tell from a previous client is before I worked with him, one of his clients said, I saw you in the men's room at 10:17 last Wednesday. Did you bill us for that time when he was. When the client was auditing his hourly invoice?
35:15
Speaker B: Yeah.
35:16
Speaker A: Those conversations stop when you have a value based offer, when you have value based pricing in place. So that's the number one benefit. It's no more arguing over invoices. The second benefit is a much shorter, much easier sales cycle. Clients understand what they're paying for. They understand how much they're going to pay for because it's a fixed price now. And if they're in a larger enterprise, they're able to take your proposal down the hall to their CFO or finance director and say, okay, based on our numbers, not based on this consultant's numbers, this is what we think the return on investment looks like. This is what we think is achievable. And by the way, these are fixed prices. So now you're asking the CFO to sign off on not an expense request, but an investment case. That makes the sales cycle shorter, that makes the approvals easier to get. Your business becomes a lot more frictionless.
36:07
Speaker B: Wow.
36:07
Speaker A: Yeah. So those are the two big benefits. And then frankly, it's clarity, it's knowing which clients to serve. It's saying, I'm going to make proposals to these clients and I'm going to leave these clients behind. These clients are, yeah, sure, they'll pay me, but they're outside of my sweet spot. I can't price them the way that I can price this narrowly defined set of clients. And I want to help this set of clients go further, faster, and I'm going to leave them aside, which reduces stress, it increases clarity, and it just makes your business easier to run.
36:36
Speaker B: Wait, wait, wait. So it helps even. It helps even you on the side of which clients are the best fit? For me. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's. I didn't. I hadn't thought about that benefit. That's quite something.
36:48
Speaker A: So living in Amsterdam, one of my things that I love to poke fun at, but it's a real thing, is when you walk around the. The tourist districts, there are these Chinese, Italian, Mexican restaurants. And you see them, or it'll say, pizza, pasta, steak. Three things that, okay, maybe two of the three go together. The third clearly does not. Chinese, Italian, Mexican. None of them go together.
37:10
Speaker B: Or shouldn't.
37:12
Speaker A: Shouldn't. And what happens is you have a restaurant or a business that's trying to be all things to all people, but the pizza tastes like the chow mein, which tastes like the burritos. Nobody wins. The restaurant doesn't win because they have no pricing power. The customers don't win because they don't like the food. And so you need to figure out what is the. What's going to make you the world leader in quesadillas or the world leader in kung pao chicken? What is your sweet spot? What is your target client? What is your solution set? That puts you in a category of one instead of being a category of many.
37:46
Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
37:47
Speaker A: And that's painful. I'm not going to lie to you. It requires discipline. It requires focus. But once you go through that exercise, which you can also do in my book, you will understand. This is who I want to serve. This is who I choose. Choose to serve because I'm best positioned to help these people. And by the way, I'm better positioned than everyone else on the market for this particular set of clients.
38:11
Speaker B: Wow. You know, it's interesting. I. When coming into this conversation, I was thinking more of the benefits for the buyer. Right. But what you're saying is there's so many benefits for the seller or the creator of the. Of the value. Yeah. And that's because I was just thinking, oh, the buyer has more clarity on, oh, what we're getting. And it's this. And like you said, I can compare it down the hallway and I think like, wow. But that really, really, it really landed when you said this is my ideal client because I can help them the most because the value is the highest. And maybe then I think also from a personal level, like, and that's the work I like doing the best. Yeah. And I'm the best at it.
38:54
Speaker A: Yep. You're creating a category of one.
38:58
Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. That's good stuff.
39:02
Speaker A: So that's the power of what I deliver. And the beauty of the eight week cohort is that you'll have the opportunity to do it alongside like minded professionals. You'll have direct access to me. It's a lower investment than working with me one on one, but I think it represents at least equal value in terms of what you walk away from, what you walk away with at the end of the program.
39:25
Speaker B: Okay, but people or companies can hire you one on one.
39:30
Speaker A: Companies and individuals both. Absolutely.
39:32
Speaker B: Yeah.
39:32
Speaker A: I'm happy to work with both. My ideal clients are individual consultants and coaches and fractional executives or small firms of up to 5 million euros or $5 million in revenue and 20 employees.
39:46
Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Wow. I know. I want to, I want to just have one. Wrap this up, but I want to hear a little bit about, because Judson and I worked on his book a little bit over the past year or so and I want to hear any, any. What are your thoughts having the book now finished and how would that process go?
40:05
Speaker A: It's been utterly amazing. As we speak, the book has sold about 800 copies, which I'm. My mind is still blown because I've done almost nothing to really promote the book. But it has opened a lot of opportunities, especially speaking engagements, which was a key goal for the book. I never really envisioned the book as a revenue center by itself. I never imagined. And I still cannot imagine myself as a full time author. I'm an expert. That's what I do. Writing books is just one pillar of the business. But what it has enabled me to do is deliver proof of expertise and deliver something that people can test drive in a €10 or $10 format if they're buying it in an ebook or a $25 format if they're buying a paper book. And for 10 or $25 they can test drive my experience, my system and say, yeah, I believe this and it's something I want to move forward with or maybe this isn't for me, but I know somebody else it might be for.
41:03
Speaker B: Okay. And Also, I mean, today we're talking about value and pricing and strategy, but this is also. It increases the value of your expertise.
41:12
Speaker A: Absolutely.
41:12
Speaker B: Because Judson, this is his book. He wrote the book. Oh, who's the guy that wrote that book on that topic? Oh, this guy. Where's his book? Oh, this is his book. It exists. And so that increases. Right. The value or the perceived value of your services, your offerings.
41:28
Speaker A: You want to become known as the person who wrote the book on topic X. And that's what I've done with cell destinations, not juries.
41:36
Speaker B: Okay, wow. So we're here in my offices.
41:43
Speaker A: It's a beautiful office, by the way.
41:45
Speaker B: My beautiful office with my not fake backdrop. Cause I know, I saw. I know what it looks like. It's not fake. We like call a bird or I can throw a rock into there and leave.
41:54
Speaker A: I feel like I need to walk into the background just to prove it.
41:58
Speaker B: Then we'll fall off the fake cliff and I'll be guilty as charged or
42:03
Speaker A: we'll touch the back of the matrix. You never know.
42:08
Speaker B: But this has just been wonderful. I've really got some different perspectives on the different angles. I didn't see it from the different parties. I think I was looking at it from more one party. But it really should be ideally beneficial for both. Even sort of both or even three. And we were talking like employer, employee and client even. Right. If we're looking at that triangle.
42:30
Speaker A: Absolutely.
42:30
Speaker B: Like back to Liam in the bucket thing too. That was really interesting. And thanks for staying with the simple stuff there to keep it relevant and understandable because I think what you're doing is really, you know why I like what you're doing? Because I don't. Okay, it's going to be contradictory, but I really like your topic because I don't like your topic and I don't like your topic because it's annoying and it's hard. And so that's why I'm thankful to have Judson here because I can learn more about this. What I consider a very difficult element of business in general is pricing. I don't know anybody. If you like it, leave a comment. You like pricing, but it's so important. And I think it's one of those things that we all avoid because it's no fun. And this is something where I think we can really get, well, to use the word, value again, really get some value out of. And I think for me, the main takeaway is the. The win, win, win. The beneficial. For my example from earlier, the employer, the employee and the client. I think that is really key that it is so beneficial because I was thinking it's like a pie. If I take a piece of the pie, then somebody else doesn't get a piece. But it's win, win, win in that it should be beneficial for all parties involved.
43:44
Speaker A: I want to grow the pie for you as my client. And of course I want a larger share of the pie, but I want a larger share of a bigger pie so that we both win.
43:53
Speaker B: Yeah.
43:54
Speaker A: And that's really my business philosophy overall is I'm not looking for ways to extract value. I'm looking to. For ways that I can create more value for you so that I can take at least the same share of a larger pie.
44:08
Speaker B: Okay.
44:08
Speaker A: Yeah. So that we both feel better about having worked together.
44:11
Speaker B: You know, it's another. Just a quick last takeaway here. I. To see it in super simple terms, terms where I had earlier with the, with the bucket and the Liam thing. So I thought I'm just going to spend 40 bucks no matter what and I'm either going to get two hours of work or one hour of work and it didn't really matter, but I'm going to get the job done. So that's simple. And Judson's going to tell me to either have him build $20 an hour or I do a project for 40. And yet what I found in talking with Judson here is it's, that's an element of what you're talking about is the actual numbers and pricing and stuff, but it's really the what is the value? And what I thought was interesting is not just the value for Liam and the bucket filling or Bradley and the dad who wants the bucket filled, but what is the bigger strategy, the higher level thinking beyond just these numbers and pricings of why are you doing what you're doing and digging deeper into the strategy? I think that's for me, the higher value that I see what you're doing here.
45:11
Speaker A: And if I could just maybe put a different twist to that.
45:14
Speaker B: Yeah.
45:14
Speaker A: That higher level strategy is not some 3D chess. Thinking that higher level strategy simply means getting closer to your client, understanding why they hire you, what they value in you and what your work does for them. And that's not 3D chess. That's. Those are simple questions that I can teach you to ask so that you can think more strategically, think at a higher level about the work that you do and how to price it more intelligently in a way that makes both you and your client better off.
45:46
Speaker B: You know, there's simple and easy. And simple but not easy. And then there's not easy, but simple and easy and simple. There's like 14 different variations. Right. Because I think what you just said in my takeaway is it can be simple. I guess it possibly could be easy, but I just don't see. See this stuff as easy. And that's where I think Judson coming in to make it easier. Because when you explain it, that's very simple. But then I think, yeah, but that's hard and painful. And I think Judson, what I'm taking away today is he can make this process. Give me a show of hands if you think this stuff is difficult. I do. And also unappealing because it's confrontational. I think that's a. Maybe that's a word I'm looking for. Confrontational.
46:32
Speaker A: Talking to people about money is inherently a confrontational thing.
46:36
Speaker B: Yeah.
46:36
Speaker A: But when we approach it from an angle of I want to help you and I want to help you in a way that's proportionate to the benefit I'm creating for you, then the conversation is more about us working cooperatively rather than me taking from you.
46:51
Speaker B: Okay. Okay. All right. Here's my. I think I've said final takeaway eight times, but I keep getting more little nuggets from Judson here. If back to the win, win, win. And that I think this is hard for me to swallow because I think, no, somebody's got to lose. But I don't think. I think that's what you're not saying,
47:11
Speaker A: that it's not necessary.
47:12
Speaker B: Yeah.
47:13
Speaker A: And if you're playing in a way that where the one side wins and the other side loses, that's bad business.
47:19
Speaker B: Yeah.
47:20
Speaker A: And that's business that you should not want to be engaged in.
47:23
Speaker B: But see, that's, I think, the bias that I was coming in with it. Coming in with. Cause I think, no, no, somebody's got to lose here. I'm going to charge more and they're not going to be happy or I'm going to get paid less or I don't know.
47:33
Speaker A: And there are companies that think that way, and those are the companies that people only do business with a second time if they have to.
47:39
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
47:40
Speaker A: Think about the airline that's so cheap that nobody wants to fly it. Oh, they'll fly it, but only when the fare is the cheapest in the market or only when every other airline is completely sold out and then the last one was seats.
47:49
Speaker B: Yeah.
47:49
Speaker A: It's not a way to build a brand. It's not a way to build loyalty when you build win wins for yourself and your clients. You build a brand, you build, you build repeat business. You build something that's sustainable and that will reward you better monetarily in the long term.
48:03
Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. I've been sitting here with Judson Rollins, author of Sell Destinations, Not Journeys. I have learned a ton and I think I've gotten through some biases that apparently I didn't know I had. And they came up here and this idea of win, win, win is really, it's quite powerful and the idea of that, that all sides should win in what you're proposing. So, and any, any last, any last words for our audience? Judson?
48:32
Speaker A: Absolutely.
48:33
Speaker B: Yes. Let's have it.
48:34
Speaker A: If you want to learn more about me and how to work with me, go to judsonrollins.com, you'll find it in the video description. And if you want to learn more about my 8 week cohort, go to judsonrollins.com value and apart from that, Bradley, it's been a pleasure being on the podcast with you today.
48:49
Speaker B: Yes, me too. And I want to mention that we have been sitting here on this hard ass log and we are done bringing cushions next time.
48:58
Speaker A: Absolutely.
49:00
Speaker B: I've had him through the torture, the torture, pain thing of being in a Bradley interview. Like, are we going to have to sit on the log again? All right, we can edit this out, but it's just been, it's been fun, but.