Understanding how bad things could go—what’s the worst that could happen and how are you protected?Pricing your work based on the amount of risk you decide to shoulder.Saying no to high risk, low return client requests.The role and value of defining work processes to manage your risk exposure.Using peers and sounding boards when you’re doing strategic, high-impact consulting.Quotables“What's the right thing to do when you're engaged in client projects, where there are risks and project failure can cost lots of money?”—JS“How bad can things go and what's your role in that? That's a strategic business operational question that we all have to ask ourselves.”—RM“If you…take these hidden risks and make them visible, you can price based on that.”—JS“Most of us who go into our own businesses, we don't like the word discipline…but there's a certain amount of discipline in running a business.”—RM“E+O insurance, that was my net. Like I could walk the high wire with confidence, knowing that if things went as bad as possible, I wouldn't be in the street.  My family wouldn't be in this.”—JS“If what you're doing is more of a strategic thing, you really want to have a sounding board or two that you can use when you uncover an unusual client situation.”—RM“Knowing that a second pair of eyes will be reviewing your work is a very interesting little kind of safety valve.”—JS“We had peers excited about the work that we were doing, trying to figure out how to make it great for the client.”—RM

Exploring strategic planning for the upcoming year, focusing on themes and bets, integrating daily habits and time management systems, organizing tasks digitally with Remember the Milk, converting ideas into actionable plans for an unpredictable future, collecting and aligning ideas based on themes, and emphasizing personalized business planning for growth and success.

How to structure—and think about—advisory retainers, including the role/importance of a guarantee.Operating as a fractional CXO without committing to hours.Designing extra pair of hands retainers that focus on outcomes—including productized services sold monthly.The landmines to avoid when structuring your retainers.The mindset shifts you’ll need to make as you move along the retainer continuumQuotables“In this context you're selling insurance…that's what an advisory retainer is.  It's not about showing up and coding.”—JS“When you're used to being paid for using your hands, being paid to sit on them instead feels really weird.”—RM“The people who designed my Subaru Outback are different from the people who built my Subaru Outback and are different from the people who change the oil.”—JS“You're not going to be able to deliver a home run to somebody who can't figure out what that looks like.”—RM“If you're earlier in your career…and you do want some kind of stability or predictability in your income you could sell productized services on an ongoing monthly basis.”—JS“There's no shame in doing the work and creating some kind of a retainer where you can get stability, you can get some continuity and you can build your credentials in the course of working for those organizations.”—RM“What are you guaranteeing with an advisory retainer? The thing that I would guarantee is the response time. What they're buying is good answers fast.”—JS“The whole idea behind advisory retainers is they're buying access—to your brain and to good answers fast.”—RM

Writing a proposal that offers up non-price options that make for easy negotiation wins.Positioning yourself and your work to minimize—if not downright eliminate—discount requests.Anchoring your fees in value instead of time so you can focus potential discounting discussions on outcomes vs. inputs.Offering guarantees or warranties—and why these are a lot less risky than you think.Working around the perils of dealing with procurement.Dealing with potential scope changes, both up-front and as your work unfolds.Quotables“The thing about getting into price negotiations with clients is that if you…concede the first time, then it's almost like their moral obligation to negotiate every single time after that.”—JS“When you make that decision that you're not going to negotiate on price, it actually makes everything else easier.”—RM“I put one thing in the proposal that's so preposterous that it's the thing that people always want to negotiate.”—JS“You're positioning yourself and your work in their minds.”—RM“If someone was going to refer me to someone else, the thing I want them to say is he's expensive, but it's worth it.”—JS“You're anchoring your fees in the outcome versus what a lot of people do—anchor their fees in time.”—RM“Offering a written guarantee on your services is like a five year, 50,000 mile guarantee on a car.”—JS“This is all about really creating the relationship you want with your clients…the minute we start to negotiate on price, it changes the dynamic of the relationship.”—RM

Why even as an authority, you don’t need to know everything.The “rules” of improv and how to develop your own framework.Handling Q+A after a talk (hint: positioning your talk strategically almost guarantees you won’t get stumped by a technical question).Running sales calls with a three-step process that allows you to let go of the formalities and focus on your client’s desired outcomes. How to get the most out of exploratory meetings with potential partners and influencers. Quotables“In a sales interview…or a sales meeting, you're on the spot. You don't get a do over. You just have to look at it as practice for the next time.”—JS“It is almost impossible to be stumped if you're positioning the talk with a strategic intent. People probably aren't going to be asking you technical questions—they're going to be asking you the strategic or even visionary questions.”—RM“If you're doing Q + A and somebody hits you with a stumper of a question, you could turn it back to the audience…and say, 'Ah, interesting question. Does anybody else have the same issue?'”—JS“When in a sales meeting, I want to be the instrument to get them where they want to go.”—RM“If you're looking for an improv framework, look no further than The Why Conversation, where I talk about the three different why questions for running a sales interview.”—JS“If the conversation is a little too tactical, asking that next level up question, or even two levels up question is going to help make it strategic. And it's also going to frame how they see you.”—RM“In the sales meeting, there's this back and forth. It's like a volley of  tennis—you've just got to keep hitting the ball back over the net.”—JS“You don’t want to be the guy on the white horse coming in with all of the answers on what their transformation should look like. The answer is in the client and it's our job to ferret it out.”—RM

How to get feedback on a new offering you’re considering. The art of asking for—and securing—permission to ask almost anything you’d like (this may be the step you’ve been missing if you’ve been striking out).Getting yourself booked as a podcast guest, even if you’re just starting.The role of trust in how you approach the answerer and position your question.The optimal way to solicit feedback in an on-line community—and the sure way to never get the answers you really need.Quotables“The first piece of how to ask a really good question is picking the person you're going to ask.”—JS“If you want an answer to a question (in email), ask the question right up front and ideally give the answerer enough information that they can help you.”—RM“If you do the question up front, I don't consider that to be blunt. I would put the question up front and then have whatever context you think is necessary, the minimum amount of viable context.”—JS“The headline…give that some attention. And then what's the question and how are you asking it? If you hook us, we're going to read the rest.”—RM“I think the wrong way (to pitch yourself as a podcast guest) is to just sort of tout your credentials and say let me know if you'd like to set up a call.”—JS“You wouldn't believe how many people have pitched themselves to my clients who have a no guest podcast—you’ve got to do your homework.”—RM“If this sounds like a lot of work (pitching yourself), it is. And guess what? That's why it's not spam.”—JS“The more specific you can be, the more helpful feedback you're going to get.”—RM 

What we mean by finding your voice and why it’s worth doing.Why you need a point of view to dig into your (authority) voice—and how to build yours.How constantly refining and testing your voice helps you grow your audience and your business.The role of authenticity—and finding the right balance of being the real you with performing at your best.How to know when your voice is clicking with your audience (or not).Quotables“Your voice…is the most authentic connection that you have with your audience, but it's not just about you. It's about your ideas and how you translate those to the audience in a powerful way.”—RM“If you're blending in, no one can see you, right? It's like having camouflage on.”—JS“There are things you're for and there are things you're against, and that's all part of your point of view and how that gets reflected and integrated into your voice.”—RM“Look at Gary V versus Seth Godin. They're both saying very similar things…but could they be more different?.”—JS“A lot of it comes down to your point of view…it's not about you. It's about your audience. It's about how what you do transforms your ideal audience.”—RM“So you'll have this idea, you’ll see this problem…but no one cares yet because you haven't found a way to communicate it with people in a way that lights them up.”—JS“We're talking about voice, but it's more than just the physical voice. It's how are you going to translate that into formats that your audience can hear and emotionally respond to?”—RM“The potential reason for the disconnect (when your audience isn’t responding to you) could be that you're screaming into the wrong microphone.”—JS

Building confidence in yourself and others about something you’ve never done before.Hedging your bets so you don’t spend tons of hours creating a course that launches to crickets.Getting your first customers–and glowing testimonials–for a new productized service.Price points to start with on a 10X Product Ladder.A “3 coupon” approach to accelerating an eBook launch.Validating new positioning statements when you're starting out or planning to pivot.Quotable Quotes“How do you get your first customers, your first clients, or even the feedback that you need to create the thing in the right way?”—JS“I mean, for me, it’s really simple. It’s reaching out to the people on my list that I think this might fit, because generally speaking, I’m not sitting with a blank sheet of paper, dreaming something up.”—RM“When I notice someone struggling with something, and then I notice somebody else struggling with the same thing, I’ll think, ‘Huh, I wonder if there’s something there?’”—JS“When you do a launch, your list will get bigger. That’s how it works.”—RM“When is comes to pricing, people are atrocious at pulling a number out of a hat.”—JS“What’s interesting is they found errors in your book, but they engaged with it. This is why we need to get over this idea of perfectionism because people engage for different reasons.”—RM“If you’re going to get $245 for this course, then you can reverse engineer how many videos you want to make.”—JS“If you think this is a numbers game, you will never launch.”—RM“I’m not looking for data to prove to me that it’s going to work. What I’m doing is looking for an opening.”—JS“What this process does is it gives you that confidence that you're not going to lose your shirt, that you know how to speak to your ideal client, and that if a bad one sneaks in there, you're going to be done really fast and they'll be out.”—RM“I don’t dream stuff up, like, ‘Boy, it sure would be cool if the universe had this in it now!’ It’s always from some struggle I observed.”—JSSharing is caring!If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a few friends who might find it useful. Thanks!Can you help?Has TBOA helped you in your journey to authority? If so, please rate and review the show in iTunes. Doing so helps folks like you find the show, and it helps us book more big name guests like Seth Godin, Jill Konrath, Joe Pine, and more.

A discussion on changing perceptions of risk in business, emphasizing the importance of confronting perceived risks for growth. Topics include strategic risk-taking in business, overcoming fear, navigating niche markets and subscription services risks, and balancing client relationships and uncertainty. The conversation explores how fear impacts decision-making and the need to align personal values with business contexts.

The role of trust—in you, in the process and their ability to carry out your recommendations—in choosing their course of action.How differing perceptions of risk and the fear of change can drive organizational decisions.Getting behind surface reactions and digging more deeply into the “why” behind client decisions.The relationship between time, value and urgency as the client perceives them. How the perhaps invisible—but still deeply entrenched—internal politics of your client’s situation may play out.Quotables“Straight up fear of change—where there's a perceived risk—it feels scary. Or distasteful. People just don't like change.”—JS“Forget what you think is the right decision—just try to get to the bottom of what the client’s fear is about. By asking them some of those deeper questions, you may be able to uncover something that isn't on the surface.”—RM“Sometimes it’s that they do trust you and they're not afraid of change, but they recognize that it (your recommendation) could fail.”—JS“If the person who's making the decision doesn't reap any of the benefits, they're just not interested in putting their head on the chopping block.”—RM“Maybe the person who's making the decision is new and hasn't got the political capital to do it.”—JS“The whole theme of this is don't rely on your logic.  Because your logic doesn't matter. It's how the client looks at it—it’s their perception of the situation that is going to drive the decision.”—RM“Money is only part of the investment. There's also a time investment for any project.”—JS“This is not about being manipulative. It's just really digging in to their situation and trying to understand what their life is like inside this organization.”—RMGot a question for us?Do you have a question that you'd like us to answer on the show? We'd love to hear from you! Email a voice recording to Jonathan at asktboa@jonathanstark.com and we'll add it to the queue.