Selling creative work without dodging the price

I bought a $200 course on making viral videos. I'd been following the content and liked what I saw, so I figured there might be something worth learning. Becoming the next guy dancing next to captions about passive income wasn't exactly the plan. I was still figuring out what I wanted to make, and two hundred bucks seemed like a reasonable way to see what somebody else was doing.

That purchase led to a free webinar about monetizing content, hosted by someone connected to the course creator. I knew where this was going: they'd walk us through the process, bring out the testimonials, and eventually offer us something to buy. I wanted to see how they put the whole thing together—what they showed people, how they built the pitch, and how they moved from giving free advice to asking for money.

I was also open to buying it, depending on what it was and, a fairly important detail, what it cost.

I sat through an hour of testimonials, explanations of the funnel, and enough talk about value to make you wonder why nobody would put a number on it. People kept asking in the chat, but apparently we were asking the wrong question. This wasn't a cost; it was an investment in our future, our success. Somehow, wanting to know the price meant we were the ones who needed work.

Come on. You can call it an investment, a transformation, or the first day of the rest of my beautiful new life. Money is still leaving my bank account. How much?

That's the part that pissed me off. I wasn't offended that somebody wanted to sell me something. I'd shown up to watch them do it. But now a perfectly normal question had become a test of how seriously I took my future. Smart move. If you're busy defending your ambition, you've stopped asking about the price. I could appreciate the technique and hate the damn thing at the same time.

To get the number, I needed to book another call. When I told Peter Coughlin about it on the first episode of The Full Mooney Podcast, I also told him I was going to take it. I wanted to see the rest of the process. There might be something useful in there, too. Being irritated hadn't answered that question either.

My way was still giving me trouble

It would have been easier to dismiss their approach if I were completely happy with how mine was working. I'd closed the agency and built a business around me, the way I think, and the kind of work I want to do. After years of figuring out how to operate inside an agency, I could finally do it my way. That was the whole point.

I was still running into the same questions when it came time to sell the work. Clients wanted to know what we were going to do, what they'd get out of it, and what kind of return they could expect. I'd changed how I worked, but they still needed a reason to put their money into it. Fair enough. I'd just spent an hour watching someone dance around a question about mine.

I don't want to sell strategy as a pile of workshops and documents. The value is in what those things help us figure out and what we do with the answers. But if all I hand somebody is a list of things we'll do, I can't expect them to supply the meaning. They aren't buying an opportunity to become deeply familiar with my process.

The same goes for how I describe the business. Senior-led, lean, free of committees and red tape. I like all of that, but a client who needs more leads or wants to sell more through their website still needs to understand how working with me helps. Being lean might mean they deal directly with the person making the decisions instead of passing feedback through three people. That's something they can picture. Now the way I work has a benefit they can actually use.

That's where I have to watch myself. I know how much work goes into this stuff. I've built the businesses, dealt with the inventory, made the websites, made the mistakes. I want that experience to count. It does count. But the person considering hiring me didn't live through it with me. They need to understand what I'm seeing in their situation and why it matters before my history becomes useful to them.

Imagine you've hired a designer because your website isn't bringing in inquiries. The designer says the work starts with discovery. Great. You don't know what that involves, but it sounds like something you're about to pay for. Then comes a list of workshops, exercises and deliverables. You can see that everyone will be busy. You're still trying to work out how any of it helps the website.

Now imagine the designer explains what they're looking for. Who needs to use the site? What are those people trying to find? Does the business give them a reason to choose it? That work helps decide which pages belong on the site, what needs explaining and where a visitor should go next. You can follow the connection. The questions have a job, and it has something to do with the reason you called.

I can explain that without pretending I know every answer before we start. I can also explain what I can't promise. A website doesn't control whether somebody wants the product, whether the price makes sense or whether anyone ever finds the business. Those things matter. I don't get to wave them away because the design is good.

Yes, I sell an investment too

In my own open letter about hiring an agency, I call the work an investment. I tell people to look beyond the lowest bid and think about what the work can do for their business. I believe that. A useful website or a clear brand strategy can matter to a business long after the work is finished. The point is to explain what it can help the business do and why that deserves their money.

So the word wasn't the problem. What bothered me in the webinar was how it was being used. Calling something an investment should give me more to consider: what I'm putting money into, why it could be useful, what would make it worth doing. In that moment, it was being used to get past the question. Stop thinking about what you're spending. Think about the successful person you're going to become.

The future version of me sounds fantastic. Present-day me would still like to see the price.

I don't want my own explanation of value to do the same thing. If someone asks what they're getting, I should be able to connect the work to a decision or a problem they recognize. If they're asking about money, we should be able to talk about money. They might still decide against it. But, understanding an offer doesn't obligate anybody to buy it.

That's harder than deciding that everyone with a slick sales process is full of shit. In the conversation with Peter, I described two ends of a spectrum: doing the careful, difficult work the way I believed it should be done, and selling a bunch of promises that made it all look easy. I wanted to find something in the middle. I was also describing a picture where my side happened to be the one doing things properly. Funny how that works.

Peter complicated that picture. We'd worked together. I knew his approach to business was different from mine, and I liked that about him. He could see opportunities I approached differently without becoming the kind of salesperson I couldn't stand. There was somebody right in front of me worth learning from. I didn't have to agree with every way he did things to pay attention.

That's why I was watching the webinar, too. I wanted to understand another way of doing it. I still do. Changing the business gave me room to work differently, but it didn't mean I'd figured out how to explain the value, sell the work or get out of my own way. Those parts still needed attention.

I'll watch the pitch. I'll consider the offer. I might even buy the thing. Just tell me what it costs without making me defend whether I want a better life.

‍