Be The Expert

Show Notes

Are you acting like an expert or an employee?

Ditching Hourly 029: Be The Expert

There's a Seinfeld episode where Jerry hires a carpenter to build him some kitchen cabinets. The carpenter is insanely, hilariously, indecisive and at every turn asks for Jerry's opinion about how he (the carpenter) should do his own job.

"which hinge should I use?" etc

You almost expect the guy to ask Jerry how to hold the hammer.

My question to you is this:

Are you doing the same thing with your clients?

Yours,

—J

P.S. Here's a link to the clip: Indecisive Carpenter

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Do you have questions about how to improve your business?

Things like:

• Value pricing your work instead of billing for your time?
• Positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space?
• Productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal?

Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes to get ready for work in the morning.

Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call, you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word, and I'll refund your purchase in full.

To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to:

https://jonathanstark.com/call

I hope to see you there!

Creators and Guests

Host

Jonathan Stark

The Ditching Hourly Guy • For freelancers, consultants, and other experts who want to make more and work less w/o hiring

What is Ditching Hourly?

For solo professionals who want to make more and work less without hiring.

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly, I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I'm going to talk about being the expert. There's this Seinfeld episode where Jerry hires a carpenter to build some kitchen cabinets and the carpenter is hilariously indecisive at every turn. He's constantly asking Jerry for his opinion about how he, meaning the carpenter, should do his own job. There's one scene where the carpenter says to Jerry, hey, what do you think about hinges? Which hinge do you want to use? And Jerry's like, well, how about the one that's in your hand? And he goes, well, I've got one in each hand. They're not the same. I could do two hole, I could do four hole or bronze or silver or, you know, I could go with no hinge. And Jerry's like, just pick one. Because Jerry doesn't really care. This is not a consequential decision. He wants the carpenter to be the expert and not burden him with every little decision. It's almost like you expect the carpenter to ask Jerry how he should hold his own hammer. Do you like the way I'm holding my hammer here? Is this okay for you? Is this going to work? I mean, it's totally hilarious. You should check it out. It's a short clip. Check the show notes and you'll find a link to it. But the fact of the matter is I see people doing this all the time. So folks who are freelancers or independent consultants or developers or designers, they're often offloading their decisions that should be theirs onto their client. So things about which you, dear listener, are an expert are not the kind of thing you want to ask your client their opinion about. So if you are a designer and you went to school for art and you have a background in color theory and you understand typography, don't ask your client which font they want. Don't ask them which font they like better or what color palette they think is going to work. That's your job. The thing that you need to ask the client about is what goals they're trying to achieve with the project. Who is going to be the audience for this? What kind of behavior are they trying to get out of that audience? What is their personality and their brand? Find out those things. Those are business questions on which the client is the expert and you are the amateur. So you need to get that sort of counsel from them. This is the collaboration where they're an expert about their business, you're an expert about design or development or whatever you're the expert at. So don't ask them their opinion because if you do, they will give it to you and they will recognize that you are not acting like an expert. You are not taking control of decisions that they should not be burdened with and it really is going to damage your value, which in turn damages the amount of money that you can charge or the prices that you can set. So if you're putting yourself out there as an expert, be the expert. Don't ask your client for opinions on which you're an expert and you might be surprised to learn that they stop micromanaging you. Folks might just be telling you to make the logo bigger and make the blue a little bluer because you asked them what they thought. If you stop asking, I'll bet you they stop telling you. If they don't stop telling you and they're volunteering their opinion about, you know, I don't know, yeah, my wife took a look at the logo and she thinks it's too small or my husband doesn't like this shade of blue, then you pull them back to the goal of the project. What's the goal of the project? The goal of the project is to convince more soccer moms to buy these pair of cleats. Remind your client that they are not their own customer and that they hired you specifically to achieve this outcome, which you are going to do. And if you abdicate responsibility for these decisions to the client, then the amateur is running the show and the expert is just basically a pair of hands adding no value. So you need to be firm in this regard and that might mean that you can't work with certain clients who are just too pushy or opinionated or micromanaging. But again, I think you'll find that if you stop asking for their opinions on decisions that you should be making on their behalf as the expert, you get a lot less of that kind of client from hell behavior. That's it for today. I'm Jonathan Stark and this is Ditching Hourly. Thanks for listening. The next time somebody asks you for your hourly rate, this is what I'd like you to say. I don't have one. To learn what to say next, visit valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free email course. Again, that website is valuepricingbootcamp.com.

Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.