Moving from traditional custom projects to productized services can completely change how you run your business: think more revenue, more free time and more joy in your work and your life. No BS Agency founder Pia Silva did it for her own branding agency and now teaches others to do the same.

We had a candid conversation about:

What happens when your business is successful financially, but not sustainable.

Why you want to evaluate both the revenue and profit of each service before deciding to launch—and how to build your confidence in making new offers.

The mindset and behavioral shifts required to shrink 3-6-12 month projects down to just a few days.

Your freedom calculator—Pia’s formula to design and price your work so that you have “enough” revenue, free time and flexibility for the life you want.

What it’s like to shift from serving clients to teaching and coaching other people like you (and why Pia went all in immediately).

LINKS

Pia Silva Crash Course | LinkedIn | Instagram

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

GUEST BIO

Pia Silva is the founder of No BS Agency Mastery where she teaches 1-2 person branding agencies to scale to $30k months without employees. She’s also a TEDx speaker, a Forbes contributor, podcast host and the author of Badass Your Brand.

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RESOURCES FOR SOLOISTS

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The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – 00:29

Pia Silva: That was the light bulb moment. It was, wow, I’m surrounded by people who will pay us $3, 000. And that is more profitable. And we had just let our employees go. And Steve and I said, let’s go all in. I’m not kidding when I say like overnight, we completely changed our website. And I called back, I had a bunch of outstanding proposals and I actually just called them all up and I said, hey, you know that big project that you’re still thinking on, consider that moot. We are no longer doing that, but I can do basically

00:29 – 00:39

Pia Silva: the same project for you for 3, 000 or if it was bigger, I said 2 days of 5000. I closed all of those on the spot and that was the beginning of it.

00:43 – 01:17

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to Soloist Women where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton, and today I’m here with Pia Silva, whose work I’ve been following for a few years, much admired. Pia is the founder of NoBS Agency Mastery, where she teaches 1 to 2 person branding agencies to scale to 30K months without employees. And we love that here. She’s also a TEDx speaker, a Forbes contributor, podcast host, and the author of Badass Your Brand. Pia, welcome.

01:18 – 01:20

Pia Silva: Thank you so much, Rochelle. So happy to be here.

01:21 – 01:47

Rochelle Moulton: Awesome. Well, 1 of the reasons that I’m excited to talk to you is that you’ve made productized services work so well in a niche that’s littered with people working lots of stressful hours and frankly not pulling in nearly as much as they could in revenue. So let’s start with what made you decide to first start your business, which if I understand correctly was initially a brand agency that you founded with your husband, is that right?

01:48 – 02:16

Pia Silva: Yes, I don’t even think I would call it starting a business. He was my fiance then, and he was a freelance graphic designer. And I was in the gig economy before we called it that. And at some point, it just became clear, hey, you’re really talented at this thing, maybe not as talented at finding the clients, managing the clients, invoicing all of that stuff. And while I have absolutely no experience in the design world, you know, I’m a fast learner. I can figure

02:16 – 02:16

Rochelle Moulton: this out. And I think I could

02:16 – 02:18

Pia Silva: do it better than you, no offense, because you’re

02:18 – 02:37

Rochelle Moulton: an artist and you should just do what you do best and let me figure this out and that’s actually how it started. Oh, I love that. I love that. So let’s talk revenue. So if you can think back to like your first couple of years, 1 of the things we love to ask people is how long did it take you to hit your first hundred thousand dollars? Do you remember?

02:37 – 02:59

Pia Silva: Absolutely, because we did it our first year. We did, but you have to remember we are 2 people who were working not just full-time, probably 7 days a week, living in the middle of New York City in 1 of the most expensive neighborhoods. So eking out $100K, I don’t know if we could have survived making less, frankly.

02:59 – 03:09

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. New York is a challenge. So how painful was it then? I mean, does do you remember that as being sort of a painful process to get that thing going?

03:09 – 03:39

Pia Silva: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I hadn’t, like I said before, I had no context or idea what I was doing. So the first month and a half, it was just Craigslist. It was literally just me refreshing Craigslist and applying to every gig I could find. 1 of the gigs I found, the woman that we did this job for invited me to her B&I group. I did not know this idea of networking even existed. She was like, oh, you should come to this thing I do. And I joined. I was like, this is the answer. And then I just

03:39 – 04:10

Pia Silva: networked my face off for about a year and a half. And I, when I tell you, like, I went all in on this. It was every day, all day, meetings, events. I joined other groups too and I built a network very quickly. So, you know, just between that, I mean, we were charging by the hour at that point. When we first started, we were charging $30 an hour. We charged her, I remember, I mean I love numbers so I remember every number, we charged her $40 an hour and she convinced us that we needed to start

04:10 – 04:13

Pia Silva: charging $65 an hour and we probably charged that for a while.

04:15 – 04:23

Rochelle Moulton: It’s funny how hard it is psychologically sometimes to just make that shift when you’re in hourly or even a flat price and making it higher. It’s

04:23 – 04:23

Pia Silva: just some

04:24 – 04:26

Rochelle Moulton: kind of resistance around that, right?

04:26 – 04:34

Pia Silva: Rochelle, I remember when I told my dad, who’s an accountant, that we were making $65 an hour and I was so proud. I was like, we’re going

04:34 – 04:36

Rochelle Moulton: to be rich. He was like,

04:36 – 04:44

Pia Silva: that’s not a lot of money, Pia, $200 an hour, maybe. It’s like $200 an hour. Like that will never happen. Pretty amazing.

04:45 – 05:01

Rochelle Moulton: It is. I love the journey. So I remember either seeing or hearing about how the light bulb went off in your agency business that started you down the path of the product I service you’ve created, the no BS agency idea and model. I mean, can

05:01 – 05:37

Pia Silva: you tell us the story? Like, how did you get to that place? Yeah, so it was 2 moments. The first moment was in 2013 with a business coach, and I was pushing to get these $30, 000 clients. I had assessed our process and how much our overhead was and figured out that these projects we were doing needed to be charging about $30, 000 for us to eke out a living, honestly, because we had 2 employees at the time. I had this big network. People seemed to like me and trust me, but I could not get these

05:37 – 06:04

Pia Silva: to close. And so they were few and far between. And I said to this business coach, I’m talking to all these people who wanna work with us, but they just don’t have the budget at all. And he said, well, what budget do they have? I was like, I don’t know, $3, 000. And he said, well, what could you do for $3, 000? And I said, I mean, we could actually do a lot of stuff in a day. If they would just pay us for the day, I think Steve and I could act, Steve’s like we could

06:04 – 06:31

Pia Silva: build a web. This was right at the beginning of Squarespace and we were using it. We could probably build like a home page and maybe an interior page and a logo and a business card. And I could kind of consult on the branding. So we had this as a secret offer. I didn’t want anyone to know about it because I wanted to sell the big thing and we Sold that out of my back pocket for a year sporadically it didn’t sell that well at the time who was we weren’t really all in on it a Year

06:31 – 07:06

Pia Silva: later we find ourselves in $40, 000 of debt, which at the time was us completely maxed out, freaking out, had to let our employees go. And that’s when we kind of looked at this thing, this Brand up, we called it a brand up, this secret brand up, and we said, you know what? $3, 000 for this 1 day is so much more profitable than even the $30, 000 projects that we are closing sporadically. If I tally up all the energy and time that we spend doing that $30, 000 project, it takes way more than 10 full

07:06 – 07:39

Pia Silva: days of our time to execute. And if I just do the math, 1 day at $3, 000 is more profitable than probably 20 plus days for the $30, 000 project. And that was the lightbulb moment. It was, wow, I’m surrounded by people who will pay us $3, 000, and that is more profitable. And we had just let our employees go, and Steve and I said, let’s go all in. I’m not kidding when I say like overnight, we completely changed our website. And I called back, I had a bunch of outstanding proposals and I actually just called

07:39 – 07:57

Pia Silva: them all up. And I said, Hey, you know, that big project that you’re still thinking on, consider that moot. We are no longer doing that. But I can do basically the same project for you for 3, 000 or if it was bigger, I said 2 days of 5, 000. And I closed all of those on the spot. And that was the beginning of it.

07:58 – 08:27

Rochelle Moulton: Mic drop. Mic drop. So I want to pull out a couple of things you said here. I mean, the first thing is sort of the difference between revenue and profit, right? Cause it’s easy to like the 30, 000 feels like the big shiny thing that we should want to have. And I love that the $3, 000 thing was secret until you figured that out. And I hate to say it, but it’s almost like you had to have that pile of debt and the pressure of employees and having to let them go to be able to see

08:28 – 08:29

Rochelle Moulton: what was right there.

08:30 – 08:46

Pia Silva: A hundred percent. Yes. I would have just kept going because I had an unrealistic vision of what this was supposed to look like. And I didn’t connect the fact that those $30, 000 projects were actually unprofitable. I just didn’t get it until I was forced into a corner.

08:46 – 09:23

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Well, why would you? Right? I mean, you did what humans do. We look at, well, 30, 000 is better than 3000. Right. Right? Yeah. But yeah, every dollar is not equal. Nope. Right. So when you think about like the traditional agency model, especially with I think of graphic design where you’re dealing with websites and timelines and strict budgets. I mean, what challenges do you see people like graphic designers and brand strategists facing when they organize that way and more of an agency, traditional, either hourly rate or fee for service

09:23 – 09:59

Pia Silva: way. Well, how much time do we have, Rochelle? It’s every step of the process I see a problem in now, starting from the very beginning. My experience of all of those pitches, it was a very defense place to come from. It was you, the prospect, have all the cards, you have all the power, And I’m here tap dancing and trying to convince you that I’m worthy of you. I’m putting so much time and energy into talking to you and meeting with you and making decks and proposals and following up and all of this. And you just

09:59 – 10:36

Pia Silva: get to say yes or no, or nothing at all. I mean, you get ghosted, right? Even when we did close on those, I mean, I was starting to use some of the strategies I use now to build the authority within the relationship. But I do think the free pitch, it starts the relationship off on the wrong foot. You’ve just done a ton of free work. And so it’s an unequal relationship. Whereas now where we teach to actually pay for that first step, there’s immediate respect and value of your time and your expertise. So that would be

10:36 – 11:12

Pia Silva: the first part. And then I think probably overall there is this thing that I’ve noticed happens with creative projects that are stretched out over many months where there’s a lot of excitement and momentum in the beginning from both sides. And then it kind of dwindles and it kind of gets exhausting and the client has different ideas that pop up or somebody says something and there’s lots of wrenches being thrown in because it’s happening over time, and that makes it take even longer. And by the end, everyone just wants it to finish, and there’s punch lists, and

11:12 – 11:44

Pia Silva: all of these things are what make it exhausting. It loses the fun and excitement of it because your creative work is getting often watered down by that process, right? Either by the client or by the committee or by the client’s friends and family. But whatever it is, the thing that you’re doing this for, it doesn’t usually look exactly like that at the end. And sometimes it looks quite different. And it’s really upsetting when you do a project and you are so excited about it and you put all this energy into it and then it gets watered

11:44 – 11:52

Pia Silva: down by committee. And then the thing that goes out in the end, you’re not even that excited to show on your website. So those are just a couple off the top of my head.

11:55 – 12:13

Rochelle Moulton: Well I’m struck by the length of the project. I mean, I think that’s, I mean, we all know, right, the longer a project goes on, unless you’re doing certain kinds of change work, the longer a creative project goes on, the more voices will get in the mix. What is that? The camel is a horse designed by a committee?

12:14 – 12:15

Pia Silva: I’ve never heard that.

12:15 – 12:20

Rochelle Moulton: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So once you get the committee in there, it does not look like the horse you had intended

12:20 – 12:22

Pia Silva: from the beginning. Oh my God.

12:22 – 12:39

Rochelle Moulton: That’s funny. So obviously you have a solution to all this, Pia, but I’d like you to have you talk about how you advise these folks to get off that hamster wheel of attracting serving clients on projects that stretch out over months versus days?

12:40 – 13:18

Pia Silva: Well, I think there’s a lot of mindset shifts that have to happen in order to shrink a project. The way we position it is we shrink multi-month, 3, 6, 12-month projects down to a couple of day intensives. So right now, our company, most of our clients would be a two-day intensive for $40, 000. And a lot of people think the mindset is, well, I’m paying more for less, right? I actually heard that yesterday. Someone said, but why would they pay more for less? And I said, they’re not getting less, they’re getting more. What they’re getting is

13:18 – 13:49

Pia Silva: 6 months of their life back. What they’re getting is actually the version of the work that they need, not the version of the work that they watered down. What they’re getting is the ability to get that brand out there to sell at a higher price point, to position them as an expert, to show their authority. 6 months earlier, I mean, the longer it takes to do this kind of work, there’s such an opportunity cost in not doing that. And, you know, they’re getting their mental space back. I’ve hired a lot of service providers over the years

13:49 – 14:20

Pia Silva: too and when it goes on forever, it’s this thing that just takes up real estate in your brain, wondering how it’s going, I have to get on more meetings. You know, oh, now I gotta give feedback. It takes away from running your business. So I think 1 of the biggest mindset shifts is shrinking it down does not mean delivering less value. In fact, it can mean, and it should mean delivering more value. And just to be super clear, When I say $40, 000 for a two-day intensive, we are not doing the work in those 2 days.

14:20 – 14:42

Pia Silva: We are doing the work beforehand, completely actually. The 2 days is the time where we present it to the client. We take them through a process of getting feedback and making revisions in real time, such that at the end of the 2 days it’s launched. But we have as much time as we need to do the best job possible. And that is always the goal.

14:42 – 15:05

Rochelle Moulton: Couple things strike me there. 1 is the word that comes to mind is speed, right? Clients do pay for speed. And what you’re doing is, as you said, they get 6 months of their life back. And I would absolutely use that in my marketing if I were doing that. And I think then the other piece is that this $40, 000, this is what you used to do for 3 to $5, 000, correct?

15:06 – 15:38

Pia Silva: Technically, but I would say the project’s definitely got bigger, but the value also got higher because we got more strategic, right? So we’re better at it. I have more authority, so there’s a lot of trust there. And I find that in creative work, it’s not just doing good work. There’s a lot of people out there who do amazing work. There are students out there where if you look at their portfolio, it’s beautiful. It’s really not about the craft anymore. To me, it’s an assumption. I assume that your work is good. What we need to layer on

15:38 – 16:10

Pia Silva: top in order to get this higher price point and this higher value is your own confidence in the work and how it relates to the goals of the...