Client Onboarding Playbook 🏈

Da da da hump 🫰🏾🫰🏾!

We've reached the week's plateau. It should be smooth sailing from here right? LOL, we know that's not always the case. But we can hope!

It's about this time that our distractions kick in like a goldfish on Red Bull. It hits us all in one way or another, whether we care to admit it or not.

Our approach to productivity—Slow to Flow—helps us to push forward in these times. For instance, as we near the hump, we know we need more time for ourselves. That becomes a priority we schedule, and make happen. There's no compromise.

Then there's the power of no. James Clear does an amazing job of explaining this. Our take on it is simple. The power of no helps us remain focused on what matters. What matters is what's important.

We'll talk a lot more about urgent vs. important later. For now, here's another way to look at it. It's like breakfast: The urgent is the bacon, sizzling on the griddle. It smells irresistible, tempting us to dive in without hesitation. The important—like eggs, they take longer to prepare and are the foundation of the meal.

Woah, that was a pretty long winded way to say Wednesdays suck. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yesterday, we talked about growing hostility and distrust online. As consumers we're becoming more aware and concerned with what goes into the products we use and how they're made.

This product label for deodorant is a great example of a brand that understands their consumer. Because, we all know that keeping our pits together on a Wednesday is job one.

Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas—former researchers at Google—just launched Character.AI. You can now have "open-ended, plausible conversations" with Shakespeare, Socrates, or Sigmund Freud.

Need to dish to someone more contemporary? No problem, strike up a chat with Elon or Billie Eilish.What's cool about Character.AI is how it's built. Both founders were closely involved in key AI projects at Google. Their work was instrumental in what eventually came to become LaMDA. If that sounds familiar, it's because last year, a senior engineer at Google claimed LaMDA was sentient. 😳

Just remember, the tool's intended for entertainment and you're part of the research. So have some fun but expect some glitches in The Matrix.

Pricing and estimation are amongst the topics we get asked about the most. A few weeks ago, we shared our thinking on upcoming rate increases. Today, we're giving you a peek into our upcoming client onboarding playbook.

A consistent takeaway from successful self-employed professionals is the importance of a solid onboarding process. In this context, we're using onboarding as jargon for the sales lifecycle. Our typical client onboarding process goes something like this:

Sound familiar? 100% of our legacy business comes from repeat clients and referrals, so we have a pretty high conversion rate. Nevertheless, we adjust the amount of time we invest in this business development stage, depending on the scope of the engagement.

To elaborate a bit on the second, longer discovery call, we use it as a time to get to know the prospect's business. Our goal for this session is to figure out:

It's easier said than done, but our focus during this call is to better understand their motivations so we can get to the real task at hand.

This can be some heavy stuff so we're not going to dwell on it too much.

Think of a company selling drills. Now think about the consumer who buys their product. Imagine you had a chance to ask the consumer:

We won't bore you with more questions but the gist is: The consumer bought the ¼" drill to help them get organized. That's what they're trying to become.

We don't end our discovery unless we have a solid understanding of what our client is trying to become. By nailing this down, it gives a truer picture of where they want to go. It also helps us better identify the ways we can help them get there.

Our service offerings for our legacy business are repeatable and standardized packages of digital marketing superpowers. Over time, by performing these services we have a clear picture of the resources, effort, and risks/unknowns involved.

We use these inputs to lay out pricing in an old-school way that works for us. We created pricing templates in Google Sheets that we make a copy of, then adapt them for prospective clients.

Here's a real example for our Blueprint service. The prospect is trying to become more impactful. Where they want to go? They want to be the most sought-after life/performance coach on the planet.

Here's a copy of the slides we used in our recommendation session to the prospect. Upon verbal acceptance, we dumped this information into a Harvest Estimate and got it formally approved, followed by our contract.

That's it! Whew...it really seems a lot more complicated than it is. We hope you'll be able to take things to a new level with this peek into our playbook.

In the weeks to come, we'll be diving much deeper into each of these topics. Until then, holler if you have any questions or follow ups.

Mark Manson hit the viral circuit with his rager of a thesis around 2014. Then he published his book of the same title which became a NY Times Bestseller in 2016.

Inevitably, he's produced a documentary. If you're not familiar with his work, here's a summary courtesy of OpenAI.

🤖 The gist by ChatGPT: It's the simple realization that some things in life are not worth the emotional investment. It is the understanding that we cannot control everything and the acceptance of this fact. It is the ability to focus on what is important, and let go of what is not.

Despite it's poor reviews, we're going to stream it. Because frankly, we don't give a f^ck what the critics say. 😳

Frank Martela, a Finnish philosopher and psychology expert explains some of the reasons Finland is consistently ranked as the happiest country in the world.

3 things you'll never catch them doing:

We've been overwhelmed by the outpouring of praise and compliments since we launched. What we really need is your critical feedback.

So, if you were waiting for a chance and thought we'd never ask:

Go ahead #RoastUs.💥