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Q&A with the Duncan's

Sarah and christina just, uh, their take on it. Number one, I want them to know that I can provide the images that they're looking to get. And mohr I want them to feel excited to work with me and inspired and number three, I want them to book me for the shoot perfect love it. We do have some questions coming in that have been coming in, so I thought we might use this opportunity to absolutely some of those to you, let's, see here thrive, image consulting says melanie, what is your opinion about starting your price point in in order starting a price point? Excuse me, lo, in order to gain clientele, I am more of a luxury brand, but also want to get clients and I feel like I'm stuck. That is a great question and pricing something that always comes up when you talk about selling right? What my price, my products or services? That and this is something that I have personally struggled with his well, because starting out, you think, ok, I've gotto start low so that I can then get enough clie...

nts and customers that I can then charge more, but sometimes a lot of times, whatever you price your product or program at people will decide whether it's for them or not. And sometimes, when you price a product to low, what it does is turns people away that normally buy premium prices, air services, you know, we all kind of in our own mind have a certain framing at the type of customer we are, and it definitely has to be in line with your brand. So something that I tend to dio that curbs gets gets, uh, handles both of those issues is doing pricing tiers, so sometimes I will actually, so for what was the actual service? It was image came into image consulting, so maybe there is a starter image consulting thing on and three tears just for you guys to know three tiers tends to be the most effective way of doing pricing tiers where you have a beginning, a moderate and a higher and but I would do three tears so that this person is an automatically pigeonholed into, oh, well, they're just a nineteen, ninety nine type of consultant verses, oh, her services or two thousand dollars, and I don't think she's had any client, so I'm not going to pay that much for someone that's an experience. So what you want to do is show your breath of services, show the range of your brand and start with something that maybe is very basic, maybe it's some like a video course you have where it's not personally cause the most expensive or the highest premium service you want to allow is your direct one on one consultation? So maybe the first one is you can go through, you know, most people within any industry are going to have common questions or common concerns that probably apply to seventy five percent of what they want help with. So maybe there's a video thing where they go in, they can watch videos about these common topics, these common things to improve with their image on and then in the middle, maybe they get that, and they also get access to a group of other people there's, a community aspect which will be talking about my presentation later with psychological tactics. And then the third one is you get access to all of the former, too. So you get the online training, you get access to the community, but you also get a one on one coaching call or you get a meeting with me bubble blah. So I always to a range of prices that way. I mean, some people just want to do premium and that's a fine model, but if you're starting out, you're not sure where you fit in, put a range out there. So you show that you do all of these things, it also will show you where the interest iss you might be surprised in sequel everyone's going to buy the nineteen, ninety uh, mito video set, but you realize that seventy five percent of your clients are buying your premium package and then you can use that its research and strip away their options and just go with that. I was thinking of on a personal level, you're saying that, um, I've noticed that I see right now I've been looking at photographers, and I see a lot of photographers do that, and even when you're on a budget and you're looking for a better deal, when you compare the three options kind of up, sell yourself, you know, absolutely and it's interesting. Sometimes people will put premium packages even though they never or hardly ever sell them, but it makes people feel like they're getting more of a deal or that the other prices are mohr appropriate when they see that comparison, that juxtaposition of value so you can actually sell more of your lower tier things, even if that's truly what you're focusing well, that was so, uh, ready for another one yet, safa marrakech candle business says, I always want things to be perfect, so it causes me delays, for example, I've been working on my catalogue for a while, and I'm still not confident on sending it out to customers and start selling because I want to be perfect. Can I just go ahead with whatever and start selling or I better make the perfect catalog the same thing actually happening with my blogged way tend to see that based upon personality types? Um, I I do tend to be a little bit of a perfectionist, but it has been essential for me because I do so many things. Teo, get over that and put something out there. Now, you don't want to put crap out there because with internet, everything it's sometimes it's out there forever, and you're not going to be able to get rid of it, so you never want to put something out there that is actually detrimental to your brand. That being said so many of us over analyze what we send out what we put out, and if you're not putting things out there, you're never going to learn from them. You're never going. Teo get started, you have to start somewhere. You have to have to start somewhere and in most cases, it's better to get something out there than to not have anything out there. And some people disagree and say now I don't know like you've got to put this out here the first time it's got to be perfect not when it holds you back not when you're saying I'm not selling any candles because I won't even send this magazine out maybe you find a way to structure differently where you don't launch the whole magazine but you have a couple different adverts or things that you start protein on social media that you have on your website that you use for cover photos and things like that but in most cases we just have to go get it out there and that's what holds most people back just get something out there it's not going to be perfect you're always gonna be able to improve upon it but in my experience I'm sure devon will also agree with this your success in the marketplace is developed by your own flexibility and the way that you adapt and adjust to the reaction of your customers so you might think that this magazine what you have the way you want to talk about your products the way you want to offer your services is in this very rigid idea form format but once you actually put something out there you realize oh, you know I had this candle line that I was so excited about and I had a few soaps also but when I put him out there all anyone wanted to talk about was these soaps that I had or maybe you have this wide range of candles and you spend six months to in product development and testing and photography and only one of them really cells and you have to go back to the drawing board and go ok people only want this one particular type of packaging or style or price point, so a lot of times you have to get something out there so that you can properly adjust and adapt to what the real need or desire in the marketplaces and if you don't put it out there, you never know so it's really important to just do it let's do it, you can do it this kind of piggybacks alongside of what you're saying but I want to touch on snaps asks or says I psych myself out because I lack the experience and can't and I can't say that I'm new at it I'm going to be pitching in my second language I've prepared massively done all the research I just can't take the next step because I freeze up it's a business it's business it's a business related to serving large businesses so it's not like I can offer it free to someone I know how do I get over it to me if you've done the preparation and you've done the education and the practice it's purely emotional so that means either identifying what is it that I'm afraid of? Is it the rejection? Am I afraid of what other people going to think of me? Some people are very personally afraid of what other people think about them that's where the alter ego kind of comes and remove yourself from the equation, remove yourself personally and do that alter ego type of exercise or figure out, you know, if you've done preparation, you've done education. You believe in what you're selling an offering, but you're still having that blockage seriously, doing some introspective thinking and figuring out what is it? What is it about this that I'm really normally it's something a little bit sub merge psychologically, that there was one particular experience that we kind of closure on? Or there was one thing that happened, and we need to help ourselves understand that that's not likely to happen again, so just figuring out what is the root of this if really all of the broad strokes have been taken, I won london has a question. Is it a good idea to put your prices on your website when you provide a surface a service? Their services are designed services ah, great question I was actually speaking with christina docks, modern design who was one of my guests about this, and she done both where she didn't have prices for a long time, but she got bombarded by so many e mails every day. If people asking what your prices, what are your prices but her, her example is so perfect for this, she said. I don't want prices on my web site, she was logo design and brandy packages, and she said, I don't want prices on my website because the majority of what I serve a small business owner, so my prices within that sort of realm but if nike comes to me, I'm going to charge them a little different price for a logo that I charge for the cupcake shop down the street, which is something, as business owners we can choose to dio, and it also can be different upon this scope of the project. You don't want to have one price out there, and you work with the person you realize this is going to be a lot more intensive than I expected, so pricing on websites is a very interesting question, andi, I think it depends on trying it for a little while. Remove your prices, see how you feel it goes if you feel like you're kind of encounter the same type of customer over and over. And it's, not productive. Go ahead and put them up there, but if it's something where you're seeing a wide range of clientele coming in and it's really suiting you to be able to talk about prices based upon more of a customized experience, that's ok as well and just like that. But I'm a big fan of automation, it's not something that you necessarily have, tio make sure you're responding to every email, maybe you have some sort of an automated survey that once they know, ask that question. You sent him a link to it, and they have to answer some questions about their revenue. They have interesting questions about what they're expecting to get out of that service or out of that session. And then once you have the information, you can then develop a price quote and send it back to them. But if it is a broader service, I would say, don't list prices and find a way to automate collecting information that will help you make an informed decision about the price. Thank you, thank you. Um, w b m fitness wants to know it's it's a little off of sales and branding, but because you're here, um, I had a question of of design for her. Does she know how her site was created? Meaning what wordpress name did she use for melanie duncan dot com we've seen that a lot in the message boards a lot of questions about your sight everybody's loves it are all asking where can we find something similar with how can we do that? Yeah, do you want? Do you want to come up here and kind of talk about that? Devon is the tech and mastermind brain behind all of this. So do you want to talk about how we I know you're going to talk about some cool tools later today about how we design our sights and you guys are going to love this because devon is going to show you how we actually came up with the idea that design how he communicated it to our programmers are designers, but you want to give the base of basic explanation of that site. S o tio give a short answer it's a custom theme so it's not when you can go out there and just and just by but like I talked about on day one it is on a wordpress platform so it's a platform we use for all of our non e commerce businesses and you don't have to get a custom theme made like I said on day one go to rue themes dot com or theme force dot com and buy a premium theme and there's many things that you will find the same elements and find the same things we just want that extra extra thing extra touch extra little bit and so we we had a custom designed but during my last session on conversion optimization I'll be showing you the tool that we use of how I lay out in a very non techie way almost like drawing on a napkin but digitally like on a computer that simplistic and how I basically do the initial layout designed to communicate clearly teo designer program are the elements I want on a web page on the sales paige and I do it for all the web pages that that we created will be talking about that tool which makes it very easy and you should also talk about that the first melih duncan website didn't look like that do you were the first one we started with were the logo so it's easy to see that you know the milly duck inside I'm very proud of now so I'm like, hey goto my side check it out you know I'm excited to show you I'm proud of what we've got going on there. Our first sight was so ugly remember that we did a lot of it ourselves and we had someone helping with basic programming but it wasn't but we're proud of the color of the design we didn't have any photos so it was really tech based and yeah so if you go to that site and you think oh my god my site doesn't look like that I'm never gonna be able to afford a custom site that's not where we started but that's eventually what we prioritized in where we where we developed into absolutely ninety five plus percent of the elements that the audience is probably really liking about that theme can be found from premium themes absolutely ah a premium theme is just a theme that you pay for forward precedent if you google search premium wordpress themes you will ah whole list will come up in some of the main ones elegant themes dot com uh buh themes dot com and theme forced dot com or some of the most commonly talked about those apollo be the first google results that appear awesome imagine if you know you've been watching this course all of the the remember winds that you have you khun b remember when teo remember when but then that would be cool to like have like remember wins witness remember when and then after I did this court right I'm now here right? I have another question for you guys we got a couple of times for a couple more justine cirillo cerullo asked melanie my husband and I have two businesses while my husband also works full time and we're struggling to figure out how to balance it all how do you and devon balance your business or is there such a thing as balance? Well, first of all, just seen I'm proud of you working with the spouse I think is one of the coolest things the entire world, but it definitely requires a lot of focused intention ah lot of great communication so I'm really proud of you for doing that in the first place because it's something not a lot of people khun dio but in terms of talking about how we divide because we do read multiple businesses, we still travel a good amount we don't kids yet, so I'm sure that's going to add a whole nother ah whole other level of everything but what did you say? What are some of your tips? Because devon's really good at this and he's taught me a lot because when I used when we had one business I could just focus on that business and I was good. We start our second visit over how overwhelmed I used to get we start our second business and he's great at hopping around between different projects, but blah blah I did really well in school where there was like one assignment I would do it, it was done, it was closed and finish and type of the pre little bow and then he went on to the next one but I can see a lot of you smiling in here, lads, business owners hasn't really happened like that does it there's always a million different projects open you're working on this thing over here particularly you have multiple businesses and that's something that you really had to help me with understanding and being mentally okay with having all of these different projects open what you're so good at what are some of your test for that we get asked this question a lot and it comes back to personal productivity and there's you've got to find some resource is that you can tap into to learn these lessons from other successful people and one that I like a lot. I talked about him today michael hyah dot com his podcast uh this is your life fantastic? I mean I'll go for walks each night in new york city their own my headphones walk along the border of central park walked a lincoln center just listening to a podcast and listening to his productivity tips he used to be ceo of ah major publisher, the largest christian book publisher and now talks all about personal productivity and running an online platform and he has a lot to really fantastic tips all about this one of the major ones is knowing you're not going to get everything done and david something garland talked about this a little bit on the panel always start with and with your revenue making activities first got accomplished thus because after what keep that keeps the business moving forward and I always like to start with thing that I don't want to do the most that day, the thing that scares me the most are the thing I'm dreading if you keep saying it back no matter what task you do accomplish in your mind you're still but I still have to do that one yeah, start with that get out of the way and like david said, even if your dig it's interrupted and the kids are screaming or everything you know, helena handbasket, you're just you've got that one thing done and you're happy and it at least I got that and the day isn't a total waste yeah that's huge for me too is actually getting at least one thing done if I work for eight hours and I made progress on lots of different projects, I still don't feel like I got any one thing done and for me and we're not to burn myself out, I have to have that sense of accomplishment even if it wasn't the biggest like most important thing on my to do list, if it was something that was prioritized and was completed and crossed off, I've got to be able to cross things off or else I just feel like I'm constantly treading water another thing I like to do is the night before make a list of the top ten things you want to accomplish revenue making activity is the most important thing is that you need to get done the next day and then prioritize them and then actually the stuff that michael jai talks about taking actually scheduled them in your calendar like meetings with yourself scheduled time with yourself and you don't break those meetings just like you wouldn't break a meeting with your top paying client. You should work for yourself first before anyone else schedule a time with yourself and get those tasks and done oh so much intensity their way agree I love the scheduling yourself that's a great way have a question from time capsule so how do you promote wanting a relationship with the reader of your website and passion about your project on or your product on your website? Are there specific words to use on the website that can convey this words to use that's something I will be talking about is after learning session right after lunch, francis psychological tactics, we will be talking about language and words, so don't I don't want to give it away yet, but we're gonna talk about that a lot of like a she's there, you know, coming awesome, uh, well, you know, let's, see here connect david asked how does melanie feel about applying the fake it till you make it philosophy? How does does that equal to the alter ego? The sasha fears it definitely could and that's the fake until you make it with something we relied on with a lot of our businesses in the beginning online you know when you have a business online depending on how professional your website is ah lot of times you can project a much more established feeling then you really are a mean with custom greek friends we kind of did that where we had this big site at you would never know that devin and I were both manufacturing your garment in the brush way didn't actually talk about that on our website now of course fake has that negative connotation we think ho you should never not be true or authentic to who you are, so I would never push you down that angle but I do think that it doesn't hurt teo position yourself in a way of authority in a space I think like I said earlier in the way you talk about your products or services, people want to feel confident giving you their money giving you their email address so even if you are projecting a more established feeling on your site than maybe you feel your business personally is you know maybe you work at home in your pjs you don't want your website to have that exact same experience for a potential customer so they could till you make it that obviously is a general term I'm not saying that you fake numbers I'm not saying you makeup testimonials before you've actually had clients more of the ways I d'oh I do encourage people I think testimonials are so important as we talked about for own confidence and also for on site I mean we used testimonials everywhere but you can actually do work for free in the beginning and get results for people get help them and then use those testimonials I guess that could technically be faking it until you make it but not in the way that you're lying and making up stuff that isn't true thank you way have a couple more questions that are coming in and they're a little more detail oriented for that particular business do it start of told me um just marco sit my audience martial artists doesn't seem to respond well to sales I know that's overcome a ble but I don't see how yet can you help? Yeah so I think whenever you have an audience that doesn't directly like to be sold to the best way to cells to provide value so whether you're doing free training videos, whether you're writing articles you are in a more passive way asserting yourself your knowledge, your skills and your authority authority in the space meeting that you just have established this skill base so I think that's the best way is just to provide tremendous value to your customers. We always talk about the law of reciprocity a lot how the more you give to someone, the more they want to give back to you and in a business relationship that tends to mean money or sales or working with your hiring you so I think in that case providing value really serving your audience it is the best way to get them tow want to work with your higher you great I think we're gonna take one more question and then head out for break great okay mama's one asked with photography you're selling an emotion, what advice would you give for family and children photographers? Any ideas for silly in emotion? I have a couple you start out so I'm thinking so for selling using emotion, I immediately think of a mother and her child for family photography and like capturing those precious moments capturing those memories you know I was here I'm not a mother myself, but I was here parents talking about how they grow up so fast so I would probably use messaging you know, like here's a way to preserve their childhood forever here's a way to yeah remember to preserve teo I would really want to think of like a cool a cool word they'll probably come to me after but you know here's a way tio collect those moments so that you can cherish them forever something like that where you're talking about this very, very special time in your child's life that is going to turn into teenage years another years maybe you don't want to preserve but when they're in that cute that I mean you know, I'm talking about sharing and it's another big thing with selling well talking to psychological but you know here's a way to share this experience with your family as well like people to share these moments on that's what I would really focus on that special time and how you can preserve it and also share it great well, one more question actually just came in and I find it to be an interesting question I want to present it to the both of you, edie see, art says what do you both think about telling your customers when you have failed? If I'm building report and being riel and something has failed miserably? Is it okay to air that out and say, hey, I'm starting fresh or should I keep it to myself? I have a good e so there's a really good way to do this and it's tricky for us because we've talked about this where when your business coach you don't really want to go out there and say hi bad in all of this stuff but you should still hire me for my advice but it is really important we talk about this on the panel like it's really important teo help people identify with you and your struggles I've seen people do this in our industry and other industries where in real time they talk about something that didn't work they're kind of emotional about it it comes off is really real and raw but it also comes off is maybe a little uncomfortable for the person the prospective client customer I think the best way to do it is always tio not talk about it in real time when you haven't fully processed it but tow later on when it's appropriate to something you're teaching or appropriate to something you're talking about or something your audience might be going through right then when you have more clarity and more grace about it too, then use that as an example versus when you're in it and you're not really sure how it's going to fit into something positive and in most cases you always know how to reframe into pot something positive later on down the line I would always those stories were very powerful because people like to see the journey of where you came from and we talked about multiple times over this workshop how horrible we were already started but what makes that so impactful is where we are now yeah so we're not we didn't share it the beginning we're trying to start a coaching business and nothing was working yeah it's just like why should we listen to you that makes no sense but it's really powerful and people can relate and multiple people in the audience have come to me and said that was so empowering to see where you are because I can relate to that or help bad that website used to be or you could talk about your failures openly and but they're stepping stone but important because we've passed those stepping stones that are now that success you need to be relatable not just on your ivory tower I'm so amazing I never screw up your jerk I don't want to spend any time with you and the more professional or the mohr hi ends a feel of your brand the more that contrast khun b have a huge impact I know some of you in the audience were here when I showed the then and now picture of like me working our warehouse sources me doing a professional photo shoot so I think the more professional the more high end the more disconnect you might potentially have from a client base that is still it those beginning stages the more important is new things like put bloopers like when we have are really professional really polished videos we also do bloopers at the end so you can kind of see the realize and kind of what that looks like beyond just the final polished edited version it's it's not a bad thing to fail and we will you want to embrace it when you have it in the past couple months what way have failed product launch? It didn't go the way we wanted and we wait uh, you know took a lot of screen shots and major we remembered the story of what happened because we knew we come with away to solve it and overcome it because that's what our customers go through there are the starting point and we need to help them through this journey and whenever we can find examples of us starting at failure and knowing we will overcome this and find a solution and solve this, that helps us relate to the customer we're going through right now what six months from now? Once you finally find the success and overcome it, we don't know what it is yet but that we catalogue that and documented so that we can share it can't have cool photographs have cool screenshots document our feelings because what we feel in that moment is where six months from now our customers will be feeling so that really helps you with your marketing message when you're not there, yet when you do overcome it, you're now relating to the people you're not really relating to people like your past self amazing that's great great everybody the chat rooms have really been enjoying this session and it gets useful for everyone to put it to use great so when we come back we're going to be having a guest presenter of james wade moore talking about selling on virtual events I'm excited for him to be talking about this because he is the one that first told us and initially taught us how to do a virtual events and it has been our main revenue generator are serviced and coaching based businesses so it's going to be fantastic? I also want to make sure anyway that thinks oh that's not going to apply to me because I don't I sell jewelry or e commerce I really don't see how a virtual event will work pay attention because you will be old find examples and coming from past experience of being any commerce owner and just tuning out when I thought something wasn't applicable to me I'm glad I always paid attention because you don't know what your business is going to take you were going to go and you don't might not know oh that I actually have an idea now that I'm glad I paid attention and got that education for something I wasn't a put that wasn't applicable in my current business you want to expand rachel I know that you uh from where your current businesses working with people most one on one some ideas sparked for something that wasn't applicable in your current business. And you now have a new business direction and expanded business directions. So pay attention. There's gonna be some amazing things for everyone to come back.