Episode 9:“A Week in the Job”
We often reflect about what A Week In the Job of an online entrepreneur looks like. Today we dig into it, with all its glory.
Summary
Nick and Kai walk through their actual daily routines and explain how they use Calendly to batch meetings and protect focused work time. The conversation shifts into a broader argument that there are no shortcuts in consulting: you show up, do the work, and raise your prices incrementally when clients tell you the value exceeds what they paid.
Highlights
- Kai restricts Calendly availability to Wednesday and Thursday, 1–4 p.m. Pacific. That stacks five calls back-to-back on two afternoons instead of scattering interruptions across the week.
- Nick writes from wake-up until noon, when he says he becomes ‘completely useless’ for writing. Design work, Skype calls, and anything requiring less focus go in the afternoon. He uses separate Calendly links so European clients only see morning slots.
- Kai’s strict calendar rules came from a painful stretch where loosening restrictions led to 30-plus calls a week for three straight weeks, leaving no time to actually do client work.
- The ‘just another Tuesday’ framing, which Kai credits to Amy Hoy: a $40k sales milestone, an Apple Design Award, a successful launch, all of it is just another Tuesday, followed by Wednesday and more work.
- Nick tells a story about a coworker who discovered mid-afternoon that he’d won an Apple Design Award with Phil Schiller announcing it on stage. Nick’s response: ‘Alright, get back to work.’ The guy closed the tab, did, and won again the following year.
- Both Nick and Kai started at roughly $50 an hour and now charge $250–$400 for a one-hour call. The mechanism was simple: every time a client signaled the value far exceeded the price, they raised the rate a little.
- Kai’s example: a friend doubled their service price and got more inbound leads, because the old price read as a quality signal pointing the wrong direction.
Read the transcript
I sent wireframes over to a client a couple days ago and I put lorem if some placeholder text and they start reading it on the call and they’re like, and I’m like, it’s placeholder text. And they’re like,
So, so what does a daily routine look like for you? Do you have a routine? Is it something that’s that’s consistent?
It’s semi-consistent. I’ve gone back and forth between having very absolute routines where I wake up at X time, I start with meditation, start with gratitude journaling, start with exercise or yoga. Move into some reading, move into some work. I’ve moved slightly away from as rigid of a routine, but I do have like Fixed points in my schedule in a day that I move through. So one idea I took away from Merlin Mann. Is the idea that if something exists in my calendar, it’s a sacred commitment to myself. So I’m very religious about If I’m making a commitment to do something for myself, for a client, for a friend, until it exists in the calendar, it’s not something that really happens. So I use the calendar to define my routine. And in a daily, in an average day, my routine might look like waking up at around 6 or 7 a. m. , getting out of bed, cooking breakfast, do a little bit of reading, starting work between eight thirty and nine AM. Some days I go to the gym from and work with my trainer from eight thirty to nine thirty. Those days I start work at around ten. Do some email, do some client work, take lunch around noon, do more client work or personal work in the afternoon, and break around 5 or 6 p. m. Some days I work until 6, some days I work until 5. One thing I’m when we talk about routines that I’m trying to get better at and working on establishing is really sandboxing The time that I allow for interruptions and the time that I work on client work versus personal work. So, in terms of interruptions, I use the scheduling tool Calendly, and I’m a hard ass about it. Like, if you book a time with me on Calendly, you could choose a time between 1 p. m. and 4 p. m. Pacific time on Wednesday or Thursday. Those are the only times that are available. And That’s helped me consolidate all those calls down to just one block. It ends up with like Wednesdays and Thursday afternoons being like, okay, Kai has five calls today. But I found it better to have those five calls back to back to back instead of scattered throughout, interrupting like Monday at 10 a. m. , Tuesday at 4 p. m. It just makes it. More of a routine for me to know, okay, Wednesday afternoon is when I have a bunch of calls. So schedule my time around that.
Yeah, yeah. Calendly is one of the best tools that I have ever encountered for setting up my schedule. I should have probably expected this. This conversation will probably just turn into us talking about how we manage our time. It’s not just saying, okay, it’s a day in the life, but it’s more Like, how do you are given this constraint of time every day? This amount of time should be business time, this amount of time should be lunch time, this amount of time should be business time, and then you go and have personal time. What do you do with that? So Calendly is how I manage to establish boundaries on that. I basically present you with this form. That allows you, as a friend or colleague of Nick D’s or Kai’s, to schedule whatever time you need. So I have one that’s called a meal. And if you want to get lunch or dinner with me, those are the only available times. And it keeps you one of the things that happens, people love eating meals at 8:30, and I will go Feral and murder you by then. So, um, right? I eat dinner at six. I’ve eaten dinner at six for most of my adult life. If you’re going to schedule a dinner with me at 8:30, this has happened so many times. I’ll come and I won’t order anything because I will have already eaten second dinner with somebody else. And So that sucks, obviously, and it’s kind of a jerk move. So what so Calendly keeps me from having to do that. Time boxes dinner, and it’s like, Nick, I can’t select anything after seven. And it’s like, that’s because I eat dinner before seven. Like, so it’s it allows me to establish pretty firm boundaries on what I do. And that’s very similar to what you’re saying where you have meeting time between 1 and 4, right? I actually have meeting time. You can get a whole separate set of meeting times if you live in Europe. So that it only shows you dates, times that are in the morning. So you don’t think, oh, okay, well, I’ll book time with Nick D at 4 o’clock in the morning Central Time. Or the other way, where I live in the United States, I want to book time with Nick D at 9 a. Central Time. Well, I don’t like working in the mornings on meeting stuff because That’s writing time. I love waking up and writing. I feel most clear-headed and freshest. And after I’ve food comb it in the afternoon, it’s kind of all bets are off. I do my design work during the afternoon. So I’ve kind of just revealed my daily routine out of that. But essentially, that’s kind of how I’ve structured it so that it manages to be a day that I like doing, right? Like I know what. A good day looks like for me structurally. Like, what, okay, if there are meetings, when are they? How long are they? What do I do at the beginning of the day? What do I do that’s a signal that I should go to lunch? What do I do after I get back from lunch? What do I do in the mid-afternoon when I get the like siesta lull? I always like fall asleep at 3 p. m. What do I do at the end of the day to feel like a sense of accomplishment before I finished? All of those things are valuable and important. Just something you have to kind of listen to yourself about. Like, maybe you think, oh my God, my writing time is at 10 p. m. Well, Nick D is crazy. That’s fine. If you take out of this episode. My writing time should be first thing in the morning, like, I’m doing a bad job as somebody on this podcast. Like, you just need to figure out what you need to do. And then figure out how to set good boundaries around that.
Entirely. The only high-level takeaway I think people should have from this episode is There’s an importance in looking at your priorities and your available time and slotting The most important priorities into the time that works best for you. The patterns and habits that work for us are just the patterns and habits that we’ve stumbled into By luck or by accident, and we’re continuing to use because Kai only has calls 1 to 4 p. m. , does not mean you should have calls 1 to 4 p. m. I have a good colleague who only has calls like 8 to 10 a. m. , Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and it works great for him because that’s the pattern he likes the most. Most. So the tactics throw them out the window. The strategy is figure out how you want your week or your day to look And then build it that way. There’s always, whenever I talk to freelancers or consultants or business owners about this, I hear pushback of, well, what if my clients expect something different? Well, Fuck those clients. I mean, I say that with love, but if like I’m the business owner and I get to say, like, well, the times I’m scheduling calls are 1 p. m. to 4 p. m. Wednesdays and Thursdays. And if a client is like, well, I really want to talk to you Tuesday, we of course can negotiate that and see if it makes sense. 99% of the time I’m going to say, well, to preserve my schedule and to make sure I could be effective as a business owner, the only times I’m available to meet are, you know, Wednesday, Thursday, 1 p. m. to 4 p. m. Those are the lines. Please pick a time that works there. And sometimes people are like, Well, you don’t have any times available for three weeks. And I’m like, well, that’s because I’m busy right now. Choose the first time that’s available. And if they’re like, well, no, we can’t work together. That’s to flash back to a previous episode, a brown MM assigned that, well, we’re not going to be a good fit. If the project is so important that we’re on such a short time frame that They need to talk to me today to start the project next week. It’s a non-starter, it’s not going to work well together. So, by putting these lines, by putting our business on these rails, it makes it easier for us to Live the life we want, have the week we want, and really control how we interact with people or how people are able to gain access to us.
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re exactly right. I think there’s a lot of important things you can kind of get out of, okay, well, I’m doing it in this way. And I’m flexible. I’m actually a little bit less fuck them about it. I will, you know, if you live in Europe and you should schedule something in the morning, it’s better than if I’m scheduling something in your evening because I’m being a jerk. I don’t want to be a jerk to you. I want to set firm boundaries and be polite and kind about it. I can sound like a jerk on this podcast, but in reality, it’s more. Of, like, a friendly conversational back and forth. It’s like, oh, you don’t have time then? Okay, well, how about we do it this other time? And I’ve worked with clients in Australia where no times line up. There’s no way you can have a timeline up with somebody if you live in Chicago and they live in Tokyo, or they live in Mumbai, or they live in Melbourne, any of those cities, it won’t work. So, okay, well, it doesn’t mean I can’t have clients in Melbourne. I have had clients in that part of the world before. I’ve had clients in Tokyo and Australia in the past. At the beginning of the client process, we say, okay, well, There’s this kind of elephant in the room type scenario. Here’s the routine we’re going to see going forward. If you need to get on a Skype call with me, you can do it this time, this time, this time. Maybe we’ll limit the number of Skype calls so we’re not doing it on a daily basis or something like that. You’re not taking advantage. Advantage of it, but you’re opting out of the usual process by no fault of anybody’s. Because what happens if the client has a routine where it’s like, oh, I only see people in the morning? Are you going to fire the client? I mean, you could. That’s a potentially negative indicator. It’s something that will impose on your routine. It’s not perfect. But nothing in my job is perfect. My job is different every day. And so I don’t know. I’m a rare world reversal where I’m the nice one and Kai is the mean one.
And like my meanness here really comes out of A six-month period where I was very liberal in how I let people book times on my calendar and started in like December. I pushed a lot of meetings forward because I was taking the last two weeks of the year off. And I ended up with three weeks back-to-back where I had 30 plus phone calls. And it just killed me on the I have no energy sense, and it killed me on the, well, when do I do the client work I’ve promised to do? I guess I’m doing that from 5 p. m. to 9 p. m. every night because my days have been phone calls. And I realized I needed to put a rate limiter in place. And one of the best ways to do that was just to say, like, There is a limited supply of KI calls. And if you want a KI call, it might be in three weeks. And sorry about that. But like, if I want to have the time to focus on Like the Kai things I want to do and the business things I want to do, this is something I need to put in place.
Yeah, and I’m looking for work right now. So I think it’s definitely kind of a role reversal there. And You’re talking about something very important, which is getting away from the danger of getting overbooked on stuff that can I don’t want to say distract you from your regular process, but it does get in the way, right? You have a finite amount of time and attention every day. And if you’re not client calls, you’re not delivering work. You know, caught up in the sales process, you’re not doing any work. One thing that you talk about a lot in a terrific blog post about productized consulting is how it keeps you from having to write proposals. Why do you hate proposals?
They suck up so much time.
Exactly. That’s exactly it. And so you’re trying to manage that time. That’s really what it comes down to: is Trying to say, okay, well, I have this amount of time. It needs to be respected. It’s a way of almost engendering a little bit of respect with your clients by saying, you know, I am in demand. Not only am I in demand, but you’re one of nine clients right now. You are not a unique snowflake that thinks that you’re hiring me on a full-time basis. If someone hired me on a full-time basis, I shudder to contemplate. what that kind of contract would look like. But it would getting that sort of access, that’s why access to me comes from Slack. Where I can reply back at my discretion, or it’s email access and it’s within business hours. So if you send me a bunch of Slack posts at two o’clock in the morning Central Time, I’m asleep. My phone is not going off. And if it were going off, it would be in the other room. So you can’t get a hold of me at all. And recognizing like what amount of attention you’re able to provide when, I think that’s enormously important.
Entirely. And, and One thing I’ve discovered one thing I’ve had in my mind as I’ve entered 2016 is I want to make more space for My hobbies, my passions, things I like to do. I got a piano, I like bike riding, I’m actively dating in Eugene. I play Dungeons and Dragons with my friends once a week. I’m part of a gaming group. And Unless, and like all of this costs time. Like, when we get down to it, we spend time as a currency whenever we choose to get on a call or work on a project or do a fun activity with friends. And I realized in 2015 that pendulum had swung way too far in the direction of: I’m only doing client work. I don’t have the social life I want, I don’t have the romantic life I want, I don’t have the friends I want. And 2015 so far has been me catching up on like the obligations I’d promised, and then putting Limitations in place. So I do have the time to play with friends. So, you know, on a Saturday Dungeons and Dragons game, I’m not sitting there thinking, like, oh shit, I have to finish that proposal. It’s, oh, cool. It’s the weekend. I don’t have to worry about stuff now. Or the goal I’m working towards that I’m hoping to have in place April, May is: I don’t work on Fridays, or if I do work on Fridays, it’s entirely KI work and I’m not available for clients. Having that in place, I think, will give me a lot more joy because suddenly it gives me a day of capacity to say, like, I’m going to work on like shipping the launch for the traffic manual or working on my next book, or I’m just going to go outside and play in the sun for four hours. And Having that freedom will, I think, raise the entirety of my business because suddenly I’m going to be happier and less stressed and more productive because of that.
The perpetual goal is to maximize your discretionary time. Period. That is exactly what you’re talking about here. It is. You know, if you can have, it’s the classic what that book four-hour work week, right? Like, that’s, I don’t think that’s a joke. I think that’s a real thing. Like, I work, I do worky work. During a busy week, it’s about 30 hours. And there’s five hours for lunch and then five hours for like answering email and doing Slack stuff and getting on this lovely podcast and whatever have you. During a light week, it can be as low as eight to 10 hours. And that rest of the time, I am not at the beach on Lake Michigan hanging out. I’m. Working on business development stuff. I’m writing for my mailing list. I’m taking meetings with people. I’m You know, I’m still working. It’s not billable client work, but it’s still working. This actually came as a request from a listener. And thank you. If you want to email us, It’s Make Money Online Successful Internet email address at makemoneyonline. exposed. Give us topics for episodes.
I highly recommend going to makemoneyonline. exposed to find that email address.
Yeah, just click it in the footer. It’s there. I might hide it someday just to mess with you, but it’s okay. We’re friends. So they wrote, I’ve ostensibly been making my living doing design consulting for years now, but it’s always felt. Aberrant. Like, I’m getting away with something that shouldn’t be possible. You’re gonna pay me for my ideas, but okay. And I feel that, you know, I’ll tell you about my routine now. I wake up, I drink a very nice single-state pour over coffee that my partner makes me on a Chemex every single morning, and I’m enormously grateful for. And I sit in bed and I check my email and Slack to make sure nothing is on fire, and then I go through my Instapaper queue. Eventually, I roll out of bed, shower, sit down and do writing until about noon. Then I go and eat lunch. Every other Thursday, I cook lunch for anyone who wants to show up at my house. So, you know, around 11, sometimes I’ll start buying groceries and doing that. After lunch, I am completely useless on writing for the entire rest of the day. So I spend my time doing design work or I spend my time doing like Not boring stuff, but like transcribing stuff, going on Skype calls, doing things that are meant to keep me as awake as humanly possible. So, this Skype call that Kai and I are on right now is being recorded in the mid-afternoon central time. Is by design. I’m good at doing this at this time of day. Around 3:34, my day starts to wind down, and every other day I work out, so I go to the gym. Which is like two blocks away from my house. After that’s done, I go out and I eat dinner. In a perfect world, dinner is around 5:30 or 6. So I have a pretty early dinner and just kind of let that digest for the rest of the evening. And then I do whatever I want until about 11 when I go to bed and rest, rinse, and repeat. That’s my week. There are very few times when I do something terribly different than that. Sometimes I’m, you know Winding down the amount of work that I’m doing during a given day. Sometimes there’s periods in the month where I focus more on writing, more on research, more on actual design-y type stuff. There are some times when I’m stuck on a ton of Skype calls. have a routine where I act as a mentor for a friend’s course on running a durable business. And I do that, those are morning calls because they’re in Europe. So there’s that. But other than that, I mean, that’s really my daily routine. It is not fancy. It’s a job. People would be shocked at how quotidian my job looks. It looks crazy on the surface with all the random stuff that I do, but I just sit down and I work. I put in the time and I trade in ideas. You are not alone, dear listener. By trading and ideas, they have value when you can couple them with expertise.
And I think you said something there, I want to pick up on the idea of doing the work. And I think throughout every one of these episodes, like the unifying theme is. To make money online, to grow a business, to grow the business you want to grow, you have to just show up and do the work. There’s no tips and tricks. There’s no hacks. There’s no secret pathway to success. Buy my e-book and learn how. Show up, do the work, repeat, and you’ll grow something nice. Our mutual friend Aaron Banke of Lore Podcast. Had a tweet a couple days ago. I wish I could remember it. We’ll link to it in the show notes. But it basically was like the four steps to success: show up, do the work, repeat. Eventually, you’ll get there. And, like, there’s no tip or trick or hack beyond that. Like, you pick a destination, you start moving towards the destination. And eventually, you get there. Sometimes obstacles come up in the way, and you figure out a way around them, or you decide, I’m going to head in a different direction now. And pivoting like that isn’t a failure, it’s just showing up and doing the work and figuring out. How you get to where you want to be and when where you want to be changes.
I was at a bar with a moderately famous designer a couple of years ago. And it was like shortly after the second edition of Cadence and Slang came out and I handed them the book and they were flipping through and they’re like, Wow How did you make this? And they were like very impressed, and I was very grateful for that. But I replied back with, Well, I worked my ass off for two and a half years. And they gave back this like nervous laughter. And I’m like, no, I did that. That’s that’s were you expecting like uh you know Athena springing forth from Zeus’s forehead tail? Like what what were what did you want out of that? Was it like, oh, I had this bolt of inspiration and I decided I had this grander calling to make cadence and slang? Well, I guess, but like, that was five years ago. And then I spent two and a half years working my ass off to do it. I couldn’t just say, hey, I’m going to make an evergreen guide to interaction design and put it on Kickstarter and it’s going to become successful. There are no shortcuts. You will not be able to make money online. I’m going to, this is sacrilege. I can’t believe I’m saying this. You’ll not be able to make money online by listening to this podcast. You’ll be able to learn that you should sit down and do work. That would be great. And then, you know, you can continue listening to our podcast because it’s wonderful. But there is no substitute for the work. There’s none. I’ve never found one. They’re all get-rich quick schemes peddled by snake oil handlers. That’s it.
We can see this in every industry. I mean, I work out with a personal trainer. I’m really focused on fitness and like. You search around on fitness blogs for like how to lose weight, how to get abs. You will find 45,000 shitty info products that are like seven-minute abs, four-minute abs, one workout a week. And like, it’s It’s people searching for the hacks. Like, here’s a wonderful story that illustrates this. I had a colleague once at a company I worked at who Was a little overweight and always searching for ways to lose weight. And one day she comes into my office and she’s like, I found the thing. And I’m like, what’s up? And she’s like, it’s a spray. It’s a spray. I spray it on bread, and it makes the bread taste terrible, and this will stop me from eating so much bread. And so I asked the obvious question to me: why don’t you stop buying so much bread? And her response was, I can’t. And the conversation just ended there, but she was searching for a hack, a trick to avoid this behavior. When the truth is, the only way to implement the actual change is. Do the hard thing. Like, if every time you go to the grocery store, you’re like, I’m going to buy four loaves of bread because I love you eating bread, because Bread is delicious. Well, you’re going to have to get to the point where you stop buying the bread if you want to change that behavior. Otherwise, what can you do?
Everyone has varying degrees of willpower, so I empathize with this person. And if it takes the spray to do this, then fine. That’s f. Fine. But, you know, I’ve spent a great deal of time. I’ve never said in my life, oh, I wish I had less willpower, you know. I’ve never regretted having the quantity of willpower that I have. I feel like the more that I have, the better of a life that I end up leading. And a lot of that factors into many, many, many things that we talk about on this podcast: setting logistic and boundaries, puffing yourself up on the Internet. I don’t know, just everything. A lot of it comes from having the ability to, well, resist get rich quick schemes and keep your eyes focused on what the work looks like. I’m going to tell one last story. I feel like this is a good way to end. I used to be in a coworking space with one of the creators of a relatively famous iOS game. And we’re sitting there. Just chatting away on our computers, doing whatever. And it’s a beautiful day in the middle of June. And he looks up from his computer. He’s like, oh my God. I’m like, what happened? I’m thinking like some like the president died or something. He’s like, I think I just won an Apple Design Award. I’m like, really? You want an Apple Design Award? Because I knew WWDC was going on at that point. And he turns his laptop around to the rest of his team on stage with Phil Schiller accepting Apple Design Awards. And I’m like, oh my God, you what? Dude, that’s amazing. And like three games that year won Apple Design Awards, and it was one of them was his, and it was this enormous deal. I’m like, That is fantastic. Congratulations. Because you get like one of every product Apple makes, too. So we ended up getting like a new laptop out of it and all this. And it was boggling. Like, we had no idea that this was going to happen. We knew his game was great, but like. And I look at him, I’m like, that’s fantastic, dude. I’m so happy for you. Congratulations. And we just look at each other like awed at how this went. And I’m like, okay, well. Alright, get back to work And he looked at me a little stunned and he was like, Oh, yeah I should get back to work. And he closed the tab and went back to his day. And then he brought out another game a year later that won another Apple Design Award. And it won the app of the year. You could probably guess by process of elimination who this person is by this point, but it doesn’t matter. He did the work.
Yeah, there’s, there’s, I always credit Amy Hoy with this phrase, but I think it’s actually from somebody else. The idea of just another Tuesday. You launched your book? Great. It’s just another Tuesday. You made $10,000 off the launch? Great, it’s just another Tuesday. You won your Apple Design Award? Great, it’s just another Tuesday. Because this Tuesday is going to be followed by a Wednesday, followed by a Thursday. And you’re back in the week you were before. There’s no magic lifestyle changing moment. There’s even, even if like you IPO and now you’re a multimillionaire. It’s still just another Tuesday. You’re still going to be the same bag of flesh, emotion, and fluid, dealing with the same issues you had before. Working through the same problems, and it’s just another Tuesday, divorcing yourself from like these huge moments of success and realizing, like, look, this is wonderful. I better get back to work now because it’s just another Tuesday. Has been instrumental for me to move past, like, ah, the shiny thing happened. I better go celebrate. Well, no, the shiny thing happened. I should be happy. Time to get back to work.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that’s very important. It’s important just to have the right perspective. You know, I’m reminded from what you’re talking about. Have you ever heard of the overview effect? No. At all? No. It’s this like cognitive shift that happens in astronauts that go and see the entire Earth from far away and they recognize just like how unimportant it is, right? Like you end up having. This huge amount of emotional investment in the thing that you’re launching, but like everyone else is just having a boring day. You know, the world goes on, the universe is what it is, and it’s fine. That’s what it is.
Yeah, like we just crossed $40,000 in sales for the independent consulting manual. And I took a screenshot and sent it to one of my buddies, and he was like, nice! And I’m like, yeah, that’s honestly like the best reaction possible. It’s not like fawning, it’s not adoration, it’s not like, oh my God, how did you do it? It’s cool. Good. Good for you. Good. See you see you Saturday for Dungeons and Dragons.
Have you noticed that so we’re in a bootstrapper slack together? Have you noticed that when people get like these giant wins, I just reply back with good, no punctuation, no capitalization, just the word. Good, and I hit enter. Yeah, and I’m like, that’s good. And that there’s nothing more to say about it. Like, you made, oh, I made $100,000 on my launch shake. Good. I, you know, subscribed 40,000 people to my mailing list. Good. I got on the preeminent blog in my field. Good. Good.
Since what more honestly can or should be said?
There’s that’s it. The get back to work. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. I have more stories, but I’m going to save them for other episodes because they’re all really good. I don’t want to blow my load on this.
As a closing thought, I just wanted to touch on the reader question, that last part. Feel like I’m getting away from something that shouldn’t be possible. You’re going to pay me for my ideas, but okay. Yeah, I think there is a moment of cognitive dissonance for freelancers or consultants or entrepreneurs of any sort where you where the value people start prescribing to the solutions you’re providing suddenly ratchets way up above the price. You’ve anchored yourself to. I’ve had this happen to me. And like, I’ll open the kimono here. I’ve started selling one-hour calls, just like one-hour ask-me-anything calls for $250. And like, I’ve sold a number of them and they’ve been incredibly valuable for the people who buy them. And it blows my fucking mind that people Are willing to, like, people see enough value in that call to want to pay for it and have the call, and at the end of it, be like, This was amazingly valuable. Thank you so much. And, like, I’m touched and honored that I’m able to bring that value to it, but to connect exactly to what the Listener said, You’re going to pay me for my ideas. Okay, I got on a call for an hour and like answered questions, and they paid me $250. I have so much cognitive dissonance about that, but what can I do but say, like, Okay, this is wonderful. I have to readjust my internal expectations of my value because obviously they’re out of sync with what the world’s seeing and move on from here.
Yeah, I think you’re right. There’s like almost a whiff of imposter syndrome in that. In that, like, you’re gonna pay me for my You know what? I’m going on a coaching call next week, and this person paid me $400 for a one-hour call, and I’m boggled by this. I started out as a $50 an hour freelancer doing wireframes. And that was six years ago. Like, I can remember that. It’s very clear to me. It was around when my book came out. I was a published author and charging $50 an hour, and now I’m a published author and charging $400 an hour. And not a whole lot is different.
And I’d encourage the listeners: like, don’t hear us sharing these numbers and be like, Kai and Nick are like internet superstars. They’re internet famous. It’s that we showed up, we did the work, and Over time, people are like, Oh, this is really valuable. And we say, Thank you. Good. And then we increase the price a little bit. And you should do the same in your business. If somebody is like, Hey, this project was really successful, it blew my mind. It was really valuable. Raise your price a little bit. And every time somebody gives you that feedback, raise your price a little bit more. And then three or four years down the line, you’ll be like, I’m charging $400 an hour for a phone call. How the fuck did I end up here? And it’s because, well, Something amazing happened. You said good. You got back to work. You increased what you’re charging, always charge more, and you ended up in this position. It’s when you become afraid of raising that price, you get that fear of Oh, if I increase my price 20%, nobody’s going to want to work with me anymore. Bullshit. Like, it’s not a 20% margin between value and price. There’s more on the table for the buyer there than just that spread. And just by increasing that price a little bit consistently every month, raising that price 10%, it’s going to dramatically increase how much you’re able to charge. And I’ve been amazed lately working with coaching students and working with friends. Price is such a signal of quality. I have a friend who doubled the price for the service they’re charging, and they started getting more leads because they were dramatically undercharging before. And people would look at their sales page and be like, this is really cheap. It must be shitty. Now they look at the sales page and go, this is pretty pricey. It must be good. And people show up and are like, I would love to buy this thing. And they’re like, what happened? I’m charging more. I’m getting more demand. And I’m like, yeah, that’s how it works. Something to keep in mind. I’d like to end this podcast episode with really one thing. If you give somebody some advice and they reply back with, wow, I would have paid $1,000 for that advice.
Take that at face value.