Live In The Feast - 803 - Day Rates, Attracting the Right Clients, and Building a Business Around Your Life with Sarah Masci

803 - Day Rates, Attracting the Right Clients, and Building a Business Around Your Life with Sarah Masci

04/28/20 • 46 min

Today’s co-host is Sarah Masci. Sarah is a designer, entrepreneur, and the founder of Bracken House Branding Co.

Sarah has been in the online business game for 15 years now, and she’s the epitome of building a business around the life she wants.

In the beginning, she experimented with lots of different channels and products, including Etsy and blogging. Since she was DIYing everything—from her website to her ads—others began asking her for help with branding and design. She dabbled in client work as a side hustle for a few years before deciding to go all in.

Sarah currently uses a day-rate billing model, and building her reputation with clients early was important when she decided to make that change.

Knowing her work was solid, clients were excited by the billing mode. And it’s worked out well. Sarah has been doing day rates for two years now and is still going strong.

Sarah has also expanded into creating courses and products that help other designers figure out how to use day rates themselves.

In today’s episode, we talk about the benefits of a day rate model and how it can reduce stress, how to make the transition yourself, and how Sarah started creating courses on the subject as well.

“Get clear on just a few things that you are really good at—something that you’re consistently asked to do and something that gets you out of bed on a Monday morning ready to conquer your day.” ~ @Sarah_Masci

Main Takeaways

The first thing to do before you start offering day rates is knowing what you're going to offer. Don't offer too many things. Instead, offer the things you're really good at—something you can do consistently, and something that excites you.
Testing day rates can be as easy as messaging your client base and asking if it works for them. If you have the reputation, it won't be hard for them to get on board with what you're doing.
To make sure the work is doable within a day, have clients fill out some sort of questionnaire. Make sure to set expectations for communication throughout the day.

Links and Important Mentions

Stay in Touch

Today’s co-host is Sarah Masci. Sarah is a designer, entrepreneur, and the founder of Bracken House Branding Co.

Sarah has been in the online business game for 15 years now, and she’s the epitome of building a business around the life she wants.

Sarah currently uses a day-rate billing model, and building her reputation with clients early was important when she decided to make that change.

Knowing her work was solid, clients were excited by the billing mode. And it’s worked out well. Sarah has been doing day rates for two years now and is still going strong.

Sarah has also expanded into creating courses and products that help other designers figure out how to use day rates themselves.

In today’s episode, we talk about the benefits of a day rate model and how it can reduce stress, how to make the transition yourself, and how Sarah started creating courses on the subject as well.

Main Takeaways

The first thing to do before you start offering day rates is knowing what you're going to offer. Don't offer too many things. Instead, offer the things you're really good at—something you can do consistently, and something that excites you.
Testing day rates can be as easy as messaging your client base and asking if it works for them. If you have the reputation, it won't be hard for them to get on board with what you're doing.
To make sure the work is doable within a day, have clients fill out some sort of questionnaire. Make sure to set expectations for communication throughout the day.

Links and Important Mentions

Stay in Touch

Previous Episode

802 - Experimenting, Getting Unstuck, and Why You Should Build a Team (Even If You Don’t Want To) with Matt Giovanisci

Today’s co-host is Matt Giovanisci. Matt is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Money Lab, a website where he writes, podcasts, and chronicles epic experiments about making money online.

Matt is a proud generalist. Over the course of his career, he has worked with clients, created online courses and products, and built multiple businesses. He’s also a musician.

As a kid, he started out as a pool boy. He taught himself how to build websites and created Swim University, which is still his main business today.

One of the recurring themes in Matt’s story is his desire to constantly learn and try new things. This has created lots of twists and turns in his career, but he’s figured out how to make it work for him.

One of the things he does particularly well is documentation. He knows how to show his work, as Seth Godin likes to say, and writes in-depth articles about everything he tries.

In today’s episode, we talk about how to run experiments in your business without losing focus, how to get around the roadblocks holding you back, and why you should build a team, even if you like doing everything yourself.

"If someone tells me I can't, I will. If someone tells me it's impossible, I will do whatever it takes to make it possible." ~ @MattGiovanisci

Main takeaways

Transitioning your focus from one aspect of your business to another comes from your desire to learn and grow. Having a generalist perspective can make this process easier.
If you continue to do everything yourself, you're wasting time that could be spent growing your company. Hiring someone is a great way to force yourself to focus on the things only you can do.
Take new projects one step at a time. If you think you need something, investigate it. Create a hypothesis, try it out, and let that inform your decisions.

Links and important mentions

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For full show notes and resources

Live In The Feast - Episode 2 of Season 8

Next Episode

804 - Confidence, Solving Problems, and Playing the Long Game with Mark Asquith

Today’s co-host is Mark Asquith. Mark is the founder of Rebel Based Media and a suite of other companies focused on podcasters. Mark is also a repeat guest from season five.

Self-described as “wandering through life,” Mark found his way to podcasting through many other endeavors. He founded Podcast Websites, which eventually expanded into Rebel Base Media and several sub-brands.

Mark says he’s never felt like an entrepreneur, though he’s run nearly every kind of business you can think of throughout his career. From angel investing and podcasting to coaching and other client services, you name it, he’s done it.

As an expert at leveraging one business to grow others, Mark is fond of saying, “solve one problem, not do one thing”, and it drives everything he does.

In today’s episode, we talk about why playing the long game is so important and how to be patient with the market. We also cover how to figure out the next steps when you have a great idea, and how to have confidence in pursuing it.

“So many people are willing to look just at this surface and say, well, you're doing too much or you're not niching enough, but you've got to trust your vision.” ~ @MrAsquith

Main Takeaways

If you're on the road to becoming an entrepreneur, have the confidence to take on a task and figure out how to do it later. Take a leap of faith and believe that you're smart enough to figure out how to overcome the challenges you’ll face.
There are only three types of tasks: important, interesting, and integral. Important is the stuff you need to get done with your productive time, interesting is what you do to refuel, and integral is maintenance or obligatory tasks. Figuring out which ones fall into which category will help you grow your business.
Have the confidence to say ‘no’ to an idea now so that you can give it a resounding ‘yes’ later. Make sure you deeply understand your industry before putting out what you think will be a winning product.

Links and Important Mentions

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