Matt Essam

So, it's like you're saying to me that logically you know that the trailer is super valuable, but you don't feel like you can raise your prices. Is that right?

It appears so or yes. Something's blocking me from just saying this price. You know, I don't want to be judged. You know, maybe that's an imposttor syndrome of a little boy living inside of me. Don't want to be rejected again.

One of my beliefs is that anything that shows up in like a personal development therapy way is usually the tip of the iceberg for the thing that's blocking you in your business.

I bet a lot of people say this to you, but it's not such an easy fix. I can't just raise my prices to 4x.

Why not?

Uh cuz I'm going to lose my existing clients.

So the fear underneath is that I'm going to lose my existing clients.

Yes. Yes, sir.

Okay. So, what would you ideally love to be charging for that if there was no fear?

I think I would love to charge maybe $2,000 per trailer.

So, you're going to go from $500 to 2,000. So,

hi friends. Welcome to Be Yourself podcast. It's the start of new season and my guest is Matt Essim who is a business coach working exclusively with creatives. is an author of two best-selling book, Create and Prosper and Creative Studio Road Map. Matt, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, dude.

How are you, man? Where are you right now?

Uh, I'm currently in the UK, and we have had an incredible summer here. Some people will say it's been too hot, but uh it's been an unprecedented summer of blue skies and sunshine, so uh I'm feeling pretty happy at the moment.

Awesome. So, let's cut right to the chase. I have a pretty big uh opening question for you. Um, your title on LinkedIn really stood out to me. You say that you're giving award-winning creatives the courage to do their most meaningful work. This this is a very uh specific and interesting and informative sort of way of putting who you work with. So what went into, you know, uh this particular uh title of yours?

So over the last 10 years, I've been lucky enough to work with some incredibly talented creatives from ex Disney executives all the way through to uh internationally recognized DJs. And what I thought was really interesting on that journey was that when we finished our coaching journey together, the one thing that they all said that they got as an outcome or as a result from that was confidence. And when I kind of dug into that a little bit more, like confidence around what often it was confidence around pricing, it was confidence around just being a business owner, like calling themselves a business or confidence to fire their clients that they didn't really want to work with. And ultimately, the reason that that was so significant to them is cuz they felt like there was a part of themselves that they weren't really being true to or authentically aligned with. And therefore, they kind of, I suppose, felt like they weren't living up to their full potential. And they knew that there was like another level to their life and their business. And ultimately, from my perspective, that's about doing your life's most important work. Because I believe when you put that version of yourself out into the world, you're able to solve meaningful problems. You're able to do work that you're truly proud of, you're going to look back at your life and be proud of the people that you helped and the problems that you were able to solve. So ultimately that was my attempt to articulate this journey that my clients go on and I think the key ingredient in that journey is courage. Courage is the muscle that we have to exercise regularly if we want to have these breakthroughs and have more confidence in these particular areas of our life.

Why creative though? Um, I have my innate understanding of why, but I'm interested to to know why you specifically target people from creative industries.

Essentially, that's my background. So, I my first job out of school was for a small video advertising agency who did commercial TV commercials. And that was kind of my first experience of working in the creative industries. And I just loved it. And even beyond like if we go back before that um I went to university and the first degree I studied was actually computing and business and it was hell like I absolutely hated it. It was like the worst. I was like I cannot believe I've signed up for this thing. I was way over my head. I didn't understand anything. I found everything so boring. And luckily enough, I was able to kind of talk my way into restarting the year and choosing a different degree. Um, and so I then transitioned to new media. And I remember that feeling, that same feeling of going, "This is so much fun. This almost feels like cheating, you know, like I'm learning about Helvetica and web design and photography and film and what I'm going to get a degree at the end of this. This seems like crazy, right? I'm just doing all this stuff which is really quite fun. And it was that same feeling coming out of um school. Um, I remember that feeling of kind of I've been forced to be studying geography and, you know, it and all of these things. And then there was this one subject that we were allowed to do at Alevel, which was new media. And we got to pick up these cameras at the time, these kind of old Sony cameras, which all ran on film. And it was just like the most exciting and interesting thing. And that has kind of been my journey really from since I was at school um, all the way through to now. And I I ran my own web design agency for a while. I worked inside big agencies. I freelanced in lots of different So I really kind of got that feel for what the creative industry was like. And there was a clear theme which was the most talented people that I met in those roles were often the ones that struggled the most with their confidence outside of their craft. So whether that was pitching themselves, whether that was, you know, even basic stuff like when I was working within agencies, the most creative people were always the ones that were afraid to ask for the raise or challenge their boss or whatever. There just seemed to be this real theme. Um, and that's kind of where this idea started from.

It's interesting because I do you know this guy um win he's a public speaking an Asian guy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I do know. Yeah,

I I think he he went to on Chris's pod once and he talks about that you're only good you're as good as you can present yourself like and he works a lot with technical people you know the programmer developers and I can understand this um audience like it it kind of I can intuitively arrive to the point where I I see them not being confident and sitting, you know, nerding out, sitting in their apartment, you know, by doing some some amazing coding uh task or whatever. But for creative people lacking confidence, this is this is an interesting uh twist here, Matt.

Yeah. And and obviously it's not everyone, right? So you've got people like Chris Doe, you've got James Martin, you've got a lot of people who have really lent into social media and have built a massive audience and it's been hugely successful for their business. But what I would say to anyone listening is don't be fooled from just that because a lot of the people I've worked with, you know, like ex Disney executives, people who were the lead designer at Spotify and then they quit their job and started their own business and ran it for years successfully. Like from the outside, it really did look successful. It's only when I have conversations with these people where I realize that there is something internally blocking them. And don't get me wrong, their business isn't broken. They're doing well. They just have this innate feeling that they're not doing as well as they could be. Things feel a bit flat. Things feel a bit plateaued or there's like a decision that they're really putting off. So to give you a tangible example, one of my clients, the guy I was just talking about who used to work at Spotify, for him it was as simple as going from a kind of solo founder with a bunch of freelancers and transitioning into being a creative studio.

Wow.

And he just had this block around calling himself a creative studio cuz he was like, but I'm not a creative studio. It's me and freelancers. And so a lot of the work that we did was really getting his identity to shift and to embody this idea that he was a business owner rather than just a freelancer.

You know, I get goosebumps a lot when I hear something that I really like. This is the reaction of my body and I and I'm really happy that you're saying something that really resonates with me. I have a problem right now because I uh own a creative studio. were focused on videos. We started as video podcasting uh production company, video podcast production. But now uh since I have a lot of podcasts who are also speakers, uh a new market opened up for me uh the market of a conferences. Conferences need to advertise themselves and they need a lot of these videos, right? Like hype trailers or compilation trailer that that they can use to sell tickets for the next event, right? So right now I had this roadblock in my head just the

way your your clients could have a roadblock uh that I cannot raise the price for like a trailer that will be used to magnify right to amplify the entire brand but I for some reason I cannot at this point I cannot charge more than $500 and I don't know how to deal with this man because I know the value of this trailer could be two $2,000 three, four, but I just can't get over this hump.

That's that's crazy. You want to explore that? I think it's an interesting topic.

Yeah, if you if you could.

Yeah. Well, we'll just see where it goes. And like you said, um if we make this two episodes, then we could do that. Yeah. So, in my experience, um, if there's kind of like a logical knowing but an emotional feeling, it's because those two things are, um, coming into conflict, right? So, it's like you're saying to me that logically, you know, that the trailer is super valuable, but you don't feel like you can raise your prices. Is that right?

uh it it appears so or yes something's blocking me from from just saying this price you know I don't want to be judged I don't want to you know maybe that's an imposttor in syndrome of of a little boy living inside of me don't want to you know be rejected again but that's like stuff that I I cope with my therapist I don't want to this to be a problem in my business world you know

well unfortunately we are our business and So, one of my beliefs is that anything that shows up in that way in like a personal development therapy way is usually the tip of the iceberg for the thing that's blocking you in your business. And so, people don't necessarily want to do the therapy or they don't necessarily want to explore that because it's like, well, that's personal stuff. How does it relate to my business? But all the decisions that you're making right now, how much money you charge, who you hire, what you spend your time on, they are all dictated by you.

So the quality of my life is the is the direct result of my choices, right? Nothing's like I understand that it's not that black and white. It's not that easy, you know? I I bet a lot of people say this to you, but it's not that easy. It's not that such an easy fix. I I can't just raise my prices to 4x.

Why not?

Uh cuz I'm going to lose my existing clients who got used to Yeah.

So, the fear underneath is that I'm going to lose my existing clients.

Yes. Yes, sir. Okay.

So, there's a couple of ways we can deal with that, right? There's the emotional way, which is a slightly longer conversation and a slightly more therapeutic conversation, but then there's also the logical way. So, what would you ideally love to be charging for that? If if there was no fear, there was no resistance, what would be the number that you would ideally love to be charging for that trailer that you would feel really good about and that you would feel that would really represent the value that you're potentially bringing to that client?

to hire the best people who take ownership, who we brainstorm as partner with. Like these people cost a lot. I think I would love to charge maybe $2,000 per trailer.

Okay. So, $2,000 per trailer, right? So, you're going to go from 500 to 2,000. So, I'm just getting my phone cuz I'm just I want to do some actual maths on this. Right? So let's say you have 10 clients who are paying you 500 per trailer. That's five grand.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Currently.

Yeah.

So if you raised your prices to 2K, how many clients realistically do you think you would lose?

This is going to be a tough conversation. I I don't know how many I'm going to lose.

Okay. So we don't actually know how many we're going to lose, right? So, what you're actually afraid of is having the tough conversation. And what you just told me earlier was that you don't want to be rejected. So, I don't think you're actually afraid of the tough conversation. I think you're afraid of having the conversation and them saying, "Oh, that's too expensive. Sorry, we can't afford that."

And I know I know Chris says Chris Doh says that we are the price. in the one of the recent videos he said like clients is like we should treat ourselves with respect but there's always this um fear of losing what you have already and unless you have a constant inflow of clients right doing something like that and increasing your prices like to two times I mean could be not a great great idea

yeah 100% so our brain is very good at trying to logic our way out of this conundrum, right? And so what you just did there is you went and you created a narrative and you justified with your logical thinking why it's not a good decision.

Yeah.

Which avoided the feeling of rejection cuz your body goes, I don't want to feel that. So, I'm gonna say something clever to make Matt go on a different route to talk about the logic of pricing rather than actually experiencing the feeling. Am I right?

Uh, yeah, you are right. You are right. That's exactly right.

So, the the real breakthrough for you, Sergey, and in like not the cool thing about this is when you break through this block, it will change so many different areas of your life. So I just going to ask you now and I just want you to tell me whatever comes to your mind. If I asked you this fear of rejection, this fear of uncomfortable conversations, where else does this show up in your life?

H Matt, I don't want to go that that path. I think it's it's really therapeutical uh more than anything else at this point. There are there are yeah there are there are places where it shows up I think in my relationships with uh with someone who I respect or or it rings the bell of you know previous rejections. So yeah, I for me uh my clients I work predominantly with men and uh I lost a couple of men in my life and I lost the respect of a couple of male figures in my life and now I really worry to lose the respect of other you know and and now since I work with men they kind of respect me and you know the current pricing is the part of the deal and maybe I just don't want to lose their respect. because in their in them I see other male figures who I who I was um ignored by or disrespected by. So you see it it it's it's difficult, man. I I

I'm not sure it's not difficult for me. It's difficult for you and I appreciate you being vulnerable and I appreciate you sharing that cuz that's not easy to necessarily admit and especially on your own podcast, right? So So it takes a lot of courage, right? And what you're doing right now is courageous.

Thank you. Thank you.

And I mean that. I really, really mean that. I'm not just saying that to blow smoke up your ass. Like you, what you're doing right now is courageous because you're facing what I believe is a childhood wound of some kind.

Yeah.

when you don't have to lost the respect from those people that you admired created a significant emotional response in your body and your body stored that emotional response and your nervous system stored that emotional response and it stored it as danger as if this happens to me there is something bad that's going to come as a result of if I lose this person's respect, I will be out on my own. I won't be loved. All of these things, right? So, I totally get it. It's not It's not difficult. It's not confusing, but it is for you.

Yeah. Yeah.

My question to you is if you were able to overcome this and this no longer affected you in any way, what do you think would be possible on the other side of that?

I mean, I'd achieve my goals much faster, you know, financial goals, well-being goals. Mhm. That probably reach new um levels of selfrespect, you know, because when your work is paid uh handsomely, you know, and it's paid for what really the according to the value that you bring. I mean, I think you start respecting yourself even more, you know, and treating yourself, you know, showing up with more confidence. So I think that will that will really affect more areas of my life than just than just than just business.

Yeah. And if you respected yourself more and therefore showed up with more confidence, do you think people men in particular would respect you more or less?

Yeah. I think I think the I think that uh I think that uh men actually would respect me for you know uh standing on my ground or or what is this phrase in English? Yeah, this is not the first line. Yeah, but I think they would respect me being firm and protecting you know uh my value. So yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense.

Yeah. Right. And so what's interesting about a lot of these patterns that we all have by the way this isn't a you thing. This is we all have this. It's just whether you have the courage to acknowledge it and face it. Right? So the interesting thing about a lot of these patterns is they don't actually make sense. Our brain logically knows that if we were willing to have uncomfortable conversations and we were willing to charge more money and we were willing to respect ourselves more and do those things because we respect ourselves then we would actually get more respect not less.

Yeah.

But the pattern emotionally says this thing happened to me and I acted this way and because I acted this way those people lost respect for me so I must never act that way again. So therefore emotionally we can't allow ourselves to do the thing that we believe led to the outcome that we didn't want. But as an adult you know that that's not true.

True. That is true. And if we're going to publish this as like a break breakdown, like a coaching session, Matt,

why not, man? But here's the thing. What the reason I said what you're doing is courageous right now is because I guarantee there

is somebody else in your exact situation.

Yeah.

And all they need, they might just need to hear you as somebody they respect who has his own podcast being vulnerable about the things that impact him to know that a he's human and b he's actually more like them than they realized.

I think this is the value of you know I think Bren Brown she's got like third most popular talk at TED and uh the it's called the power of vulnerability but I think we conflate uh real vulnerability with fake vulnerability a lot you know real vulnerability is not wanting to admit anything like me right now I didn't want to say this stuff you know what I'm saying but

Yeah, that's that's that's a that's great work on your part because you kind of you kind of laid a great great uh foundation for me to talk it in a comfortable and safe safe environment.

Yeah, I appreciate that, man. And like ultimately this is this is what I do because I know what is on the other side of those uncomfortable conversations for you. I know what life exists on the other side of those convers uncomfortable conversations. I know what life exists for you when you own not only who you are but also do the things that make you respect yourself more. That radiates through everything that you do. And it radiates through your client relationships. it radiates through who you attract into your business, onto your team, like literally everything. And so, the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I know that this one thing that we just talked about in this last 20 minutes is the key to you unlocking a totally different life and a totally different business.

Let's return to our previous uh topic.

And so I'm going to ask you uh along these lines of courage and finding your why. Um I read that right now you have this period in your life that you were you're rethinking stuff and maybe gonna reposition yourself and so um what's been the thought process for you right now and what is the courage that you are amassing for the next uh step in your life?

Yeah, for me it started about 6 months ago when I was showing up to my group coaching program which I launched last year and I was feeling a real sense of heaviness and it felt a little bit more like a burden than something I was passionate about. And one of my mentors once said to me, as a coach, the worst energy that you can show up with to your clients is the energy of obligation. And I realized that I was showing up with that energy. And a few of my older clients who had been with me for many years actually mentioned it to me in private and said, "Is everything okay? You seem a little bit, you know, not quite yourself." And I was like, "Yeah, I don't know. there's this feeling in the background that this is starting to feel really heavy. This isn't fun anymore. And when I first started my business and I guess throughout my life, you know, we spoke at the beginning about um doing things at school I didn't really want to do and then being shown a subject that I really liked. Then going to university and choosing a a degree that I didn't really want to do and then finding this thing that I liked. At that time that felt like a really big decision because the reason that I chose computing and business was because I believed that it was the safe path. I believed that if I had a computing and business degree I was almost guaranteed to get a job out of university. And so I chose something that I didn't really want because I was scared of what was on the other side of not having that. And so that courage at that time to choose a degree that I didn't really know what the future of that was, but I knew it was something that felt aligned with who I was. And I knew it felt easy and I knew it felt like I was in the flow when I was studying these things. Deep down, I knew that was the right decision for me. It just felt like a scary one. Yeah. And so I've had all of these instances throughout my life where ultimately I was faced with these two decisions. One was doing something that felt right intuitively but was also very scary because there was so many unknowns. And I went back to this moment and I reminded myself in my business like this is why I started this business. You know we as business owners we are creating our own future. There are no there is no right way to run a business. There are principles. There are strategies that get more of certain things, but the only way the right way to run a business is the right way for you. It has to be aligned with who you are as a person. It has to be aligned with the things that you feel easy and fun and flow like like they're in flow. And so I realized that my business was drifting away from this feeling. And I basically came to the decision. And I had a call with my accountant and I said, "Look, what would happen if I didn't sign a client for the next 6 months?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, this is the cash flow projection and this is when you'd run out of money." And I came back to the UK and my dad at the time, my dad's got Alzheimer's and he had progressed quite a lot. It had gone downhill quite a lot since I had come back last. And so I spoke to my mom and we decided that he needed full-time care essentially. And so the thing in my body that felt like the right decision was just to down tools completely and just drop everything. But at the same time, that felt quite scary cuz I'd made promises to people. I had a business that had overheads and we had freelancers and different people that we worked with. But I just knew it was the right decision. And so we can kind of go into some of the tactical practical things I did to make that decision easier, but ultimately it came down to I need to live my truth. And that takes courage because often our truth is things that are uncomfortable conversations and are inconvenient for other people and are sometimes letting other people down or making other people feel a way that we don't particularly want them to feel.

So you're right now in a transition period. Do you know what you're going to do next?

Yeah. So one of the things I've realized is that there were two aspects of my business that were impacting how I felt. The first was who I was working with and the second was what I was working with them on. So the conversation we just had is really when I'm in my flow. Like if you gave me an extra 10, 15 minutes, we could have gone quite a bit deeper into that and probably at the end of a 30 to 45 minute session, you would have had a breakthrough and changed the way that you operate in your business. Now there has to be a little bit of, you know, I typically work with people over about six week period.

Yeah.

So, there has to be a weekly great like what decisions have we made this week and is this pattern coming back up and how are we dealing with it? But for me, that's when I'm in my flow and that's really where I feel like my zone of genius is when I talk to my clients

and I say like, you know, what's been most valuable working with me over the last three or four years and it's like that they describe that the ability to get into my head to simplify things, to change the perspective, etc., etc., etc. Right? So that's like what I'm working on and what I'm doing. So I'm making the courageous decision that I'm not doing any kind of like tactical strategic stuff anymore. I'm not talking to people about how to position themselves on LinkedIn. I'm not talking about lead generation. I'm not talking about productizing offers because it's just it doesn't give me the right energy. So that's the first thing is what I'm then who am I working with? Well, I'm working with people who are already successful. I'm I need to work with people who already have things in place and when I when we create a breakthrough, they go and act on it and they have the courage to follow through and they don't keep coming back with the same problem because that's draining for me

because this is what stood out to me because your uh target audience is very very niche award-winning creatives really. I'm like, Matt's cutting like 90% of creatives right away, right? It's really courageous.

But to give you some context, so you said, "What am I going to do next?" So in September, I'm going to launch onetoone coaching and I'm only going to take on five clients at a time and we're going to work together in six week sprints. So five clients at a time gives me roughly two days a week of work. They get support in between via WhatsApp and things like that, but it's roughly 30 to 45 minute call every single week. Um, so with that, I only need five people. So out of all of the award-winning creatives in the world, I only need five of them to want to work with me, right? So, and also at the prices that I charge, I can have a really if I if I don't have like a whole business set up like I had before if for now I I will be building something again in the future, but for now if I just stay lean and if I just stay as myself and a coach and some some tools and some things like that, you know, I can I can have a six figure income on two days a week and I could be doing really deep meaningful work with the kind of people that I love.

Are you taking uh this advice that you given to me in your new stage of work? Like are you upping your prices? If this you can if you if you don't want you can you can uh not give me an answer but I mean I'm interested to know like

I'm dude I'm an open book. You can ask me whatever you want. Um, I I've always charged a lot of money, so this is not a kind of new thing to me. Um, my my thinking around pricing is it has to be something that feels aligned to your nervous system essentially, right? It has to be like, you know, if the number is so crazy that even you don't believe it and you can't say it without sweating, then you pro that's that energy is going to come across.

Yeah.

Right. But if it's too low, then you're not going to get paid what you want. And so even if you say that you're not, subconsciously, you start to show up to that work with an air of resentment.

Yeah. Yeah.

because you don't really believe you're getting paid what you're worth. And it's not the client's fault. It's cuz like you've just said 500 instead of 2,000. So they're like, "Okay, cool." Right? So it has to be the way that I price things and I advise my clients to price things is it has to be aligned with who you are and it has to feel good in your nervous system. It's allowed to feel a bit scary like, "Oh, that's quite a lot, but I know in my nervous system that is still like, do you know what? I know that is worth it. we do a really good job and like I really know that that's worth it. So that's the balance. And so for me, you know, I'm happy to happy to tell you how much I charge. So for for the six week coaching is £3,000. And so for me, five clients at £3,000 every 6 weeks 15 grand works out to be about 10k a month. So for me to do that deep work with those people and create transformation for that at the moment feels like a really good price. Now, we used to charge I've actually lowered my prices because we used to charge 30 grand a year. You couldn't work with us for less than 12 months, but it was a very specific program. It was like growing small studios and small creative agencies. There was a road map that we had. It was very tactical. We helped people with their messaging. They're like, you know, it was a kind of agency growth accelerator if you like.

Yeah. Yeah.

So different product really to what I'm doing now. But also at the same time, I know that's worth it because if I like just as you as an example, and this isn't a pitch to you, right? But if I charged you £3,000, but I could get you going from £500 to 2 grand in your pricing, you only need to sign one or two clients, and you've paid for the work that we did together over those 6 weeks. Now, what most people don't realize is that's not just a six week thing. That's you going forward. now charging two grand and then realizing that actually two grand is probably quite cheap and then going to five grand and then in a year's time I catch up with you. Oh Sergey, how much do you charge now? Oh, it's 20 grand for one of these trailers.

Yeah. I've seen my competitors charge 5K. So even when I told you 2K it's already me down down downplay.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. So it's way too cheap. And interestingly, this is just a side note for you so that I don't forget, there's a market out there who if you told them it was 500 for a trailer, wouldn't use you because they would believe that it wasn't good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's too cheap. Yeah. Like if I had a big event that was making, you know, some of these big events, right? They make hundreds, sometimes a couple hundred grand per event, and you said to me, "Well, I'm going to create a trailer for your next event to fill your event and it's 500." I'd go, "No way." Like, I'm not I'm not even listening.

Yeah.

Cuz that can't be it can't be good, right? But if you said to me, "It's 10 grand." And I was like, "Okay, well, it's 10% of what we could do." do. Well, we're doing 100 at the moment. So, what could we do with a trailer? Maybe we could double that.

Yeah.

Right. If it went on the right channels, if we put some ad spend behind it, okay, 10 grand, that's that's probably about right.

Yeah. I have to think uh in in the business terms. That's why that's why but way I wanted to um talk I wanted to say uh about you know us equating our work um to our nervous

system like aligning the value to the stress or whatever that we're going to experience. Uh I think this is true to people who are in B2B right specifically because for someone who's in B2C they can probably dis distance themselves from uh the interaction with clients probably but with us we probably are always the face because I'm in B2B you're in B2B we're always the face of the company maybe I'm not sure those two things are are correlated

I don't like the terms B2B and B2C. I like H2O to H.

What is H2H? Human to human.

Human to human. Yeah.

Wow. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Because a dog doesn't have a credit card. And if it gets one, it can't use it. The only people that can give you money are humans. So why do we say I mean I understand from a technical perspective when you're in things like e-commerce and stuff why you differentiate between B2C and B2B, but it's just human to human. like you are creating a conversation, you're creating a transaction, you're creating a value proposition for another human. The more you understand about humans and your own psychology, the easier it is to navigate that world.

Matt, I have a segment um called one thing that worked and um if there was one area where you could single out one strategy or one approach that you can shed the light on, what would be that area? And then the following question will be to share this this one thing.

Yeah. So the area you might have guessed this because you watched the video, but the area is partnerships.

Okay. So tell us so this is client acquisition basically uh tell us about one biggest thing that worked the best for you in terms of acquiring ideal customers.

So a really simple concept

I'm going to ask you about your book new book and we're going to close it close it. Uh so how what is the name of the book and what's it about?

Yeah, so it's called the creative studio road map and it's a culmination of over a decade's worth of coaching and consulting with studio founders. So branding studios, design studios, animation, film, audio, typically service-based creative businesses. Um, and we realized that there was an order to things as we were working with a lot of these businesses. We realized that there was a kind of order that you had to do things if you wanted to grow and scale that business. And the three kind of outcomes that we're optimizing for is more freedom as a founder, so you're not stuck in the business, more fulfillment from the work that you do, so you're actually working with the kind of clients that you really want to work with and doing the kind of work that lights you up. and more financial stability so that you have money to spend hiring the right people paying yourself well. And so I've basically built this road map which is where are you right now and how do we get you to the top of that pyramid which is freedom, fulfillment and financial security and it's kind of got three core pillars and it's got three layers to it and so the book is essentially about that. Um the first part of the book is a little bit about what we had just had a conversation about where I gave you a little bit of coaching and I talk about these idea of phantom loops which is essentially patterns that keep us stuck the fear of rejection the fear of you know raising your prices all these things. So there's a little bit about in the beginning of the book about that um and then the rest of it is quite strategic and quite practical.

Awesome, Matt. I'm I'm really really thankful uh that you agreed to come on the show because this is not the first time I tried to get you on the show, but for all of you guys watching this, uh I must say as a podcast host, uh you don't you have to really persevere and you have to try your luck. Uh nothing comes easy. Um so m any last message for this show to our audience?

I always just say to people like I'm a real person and so if this resonated with you, I would love to connect with you. The platform that I use is LinkedIn. Now, if you use Instagram, you can you can drop me a follow on there, but I'm not very active. LinkedIn is the platform I'm on every day. And I do respond to DMs. So, if something about this resonated with you, I'd love to just connect with you and just let me know what about this podcast and what about what we spoke about today resonated with you.

Awesome. Thank you, Matt.

Thanks, dude. Thanks for having me.