Why You Shouldn't Build a Luxury Brand

Do you have the confidence to charge what you're worth? Do your clients understand your agency's value? Understanding your value is an important part of growing your agency. It requires strategy and attracting the right clients. Most of all it requires a lot of confidence. If you truly believe in yourself and your pricing, the right clients won't think twice about paying it. Today’s guest specializes in taking her clients to the very highest levels in the market. She believes agency owners need to stop charging mainstream prices and start charging luxury prices in order to scale faster.

Kathryn Porritt is the owner of Icons Incorporated, a boutique agency that helps personal brands make the transition from mainstream pricing to luxury offers. Their clients land multi-million dollar deals in one transaction! They usually have big consulting gigs and commercial deals. Icon's job is to create connections for people for the sake of leveraging their personal brands at the very highest level.

In this interview, we’ll discuss:

• Growing your agency by starting at the top.
• Positioning yourself as the best at what you do.
• Why niching down is an important part of finding confidence.

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

 

What Are You Left With if You Don’t Build Your Brand?

When they start their business, agency owners tend not to put enough into growing their own brand. The thinking being it is essentially to not get too involved so the agency is more attractive for potential buyers upon the owner's eventual exit. For her part, Kathryn has gone through a similar process where she created, grew, and sold an agency. After the sale, she thought “what am I left with?” Without another business, advisory gigs, or book deal to fall back on, she had to take the lessons learned and start over.

After that experience, she advises agency owners to work on both their personal brand and the agency’s marketing in parallel. In the end, it takes time to build a personal brand into something profitable -- and now is the right moment to start. Even if you ultimately decide to sell, if you’ve protected your personal brand, you probably have a list of people who will follow you on other projects. That’s freedom. It allows you to explore other things once you sell. This way, you’ can build a profitable brand and have a legacy.

Starting at the Top and Growing Your Agency With a Luxury Pricing Model 

At some point, agency owners wanting to grow their business need to increase prices. Most of the time, they don’t even have a reason to justify their current prices. For Kathryn, part of the problem is most have experience with charging mainstream prices. Mainstream business strategies teach an ascension model, where you start from the bottom, build an audience, increase your offers, and eventually find people who will pay high ticket prices.

The core problem is most agency owners are not aware there’s a different way to get to the top. They don’t teach you the luxury strategy. The main difference between the mainstream and luxury models is that the latter will start at the top and then works its way down to still create an impact.

In essence, with the luxury model, you understand you have a true leadership position in the market. These are trendsetters and are not looking to the market for answers about what they’re building.

When you start at the top, you’re in the #1 position and work with fewer clients. For agencies, this means working really deeply with a handful of clients. Kathryn finds clients who work at this level are easier to work with.

Of course, you have to be really good at what you do. If you can provide a really specific world-class solution to a problem, then you can absolutely start at the top. The key element is having the audacity to go after a core set of clients who will invest heavily to have that world-class proximity.

How to Position Your Agency in a Luxury Model

According to Kathryn, in order to position yourself in a luxury model you must drop humility at the door. It sounds harsh, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be a good or nice person. There’s also no need to post pictures with a private jet and brag about how much money you have. In reality, it’s about showing such a level of confidence and certainty that you are magnetic. Kathryn calls it “iconic embodiment” which is the moment where you step into the most arrogant version of yourself. This is the key to positioning the luxury model.

If, as an entrepreneur, you can walk into a meeting, sales call, or pitch with that level of power and the knowledge that you’re the right person for the job, you’ll be unstoppable.

What if you don’t think you’re the best? There is a space for all experts to claim as their own and where they can with all certainty and integrity claim to be the best. You may not be the best in the world for everyone. But you can certainly be the best for the right people. It shouldn’t be about pretending but rather about really believing you’re exactly what that client needs. This is why niching down and knowing your audience is such an important part of finding your confidence.

In the end, knowing your worth is a very attractive quality. If you don’t know it, then nobody else will.

Is this the Right Time to Charge Luxury Prices?

With the economy being what it is right now, you may want to change your offering a bit and work with a handful of clients who can afford it. If you’re starting to find it quite difficult at the low end of the market, is there a strategy where you could work with clients more deeply? Think about how you could restructure your agency so that you’re providing more attention to each client and be paid at a higher level.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.