My guest today is Patrick Hill who is the founder of the creative problem solving agency Squatchin. In this episode, we discuss Patrick's journey of starting Squatchin, why problem solvers don't have to worry about their jobs being outsourced, not participating in RFPs, survivorship bias and unfair advantages to starting your own thing, staying small on purpose, job vs doing your own thing, working on projects that multiply your effort, donating your time to others for free, value based pricing, finding new clients, leveraging your network and much more! For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show Level Up Your Design Career (Free Email Course): https://levelup.designmba.show/
Patrick is the founder of Squatchin, a creative problem-solving agency in San Antonio, Texas. He works with brands that desire to do a net good through people focused initiatives. Additionally, he's an advocate for creatives. Through the Master of One Network, he highlights creators and works to connect them and their work to others. And what's awesome about this guy is that the Master of One Community on Slack has more than 300+ members, he has conducted more than 400+ interviews, seen 400,000 downloads and now he's using this platform that he's built to give other people an opportunity to shine!
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Jayneil Dalal: My amazing guest today is none other than Patrick Hill. Patrick is the founder of Squatchin, a creative problem-solving agency in San Antonio, Texas. He works with brands that desire to do a net good through people focused initiatives. Additionally, he's an advocate for creatives. Through the Master of One Network, he highlights creators and works to connect them and their work to others. And what's awesome about this guy is that the Master of One Community on Slack has more than 300+ members, he has conducted more than 400+ interviews, seen 400,000 downloads and now he's using this platform that he's built to give other people an opportunity to shine. So, quick shoutout, if you are looking to get any kind of media work done, design, web development, web design, hit up Squatchin. That's once again, Squatch.in.
Patrick, welcome to the show, man. Super excited to be chatting with you.
Patrick Hill: Hey! What's up, Jayneil. Thank you. I’m pumped to be here and it's fascinating for me being on the other side of the microphone as it were and like now seeing your process. So, this is a learning experience and I’m excited for it.
Jayneil: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I’m so happy is because, as I was telling you, I mean, you're a pro at podcasting and I’m still trying to learn the ropes. So, I was spending a lot of time just editing these things and I was using Descript and stuff. And when you're editing your own work, it's really hard because you want to cut out all the uhms and all these things which may not even matter. So, I was spending two to three hours and then I found this Elwick via Upwork and my mentor Tony Daussat connected me to him. And, dude, this guy, he just does it for me.
Patrick: Honestly, he doesn't charge you enough. I wouldn't do it for that price. No, I mean it's an interesting thing. It's already tough editing. That’s one piece of it. So, I have two other people I normally podcast with, it’s three of us and I always find it … it makes you super aware and super critical when you have to comb through everything that you're saying. And so, that already is just a challenge in itself. And not to mention it is a lot of work. I mean, we have one show we do that the episodes are only, let's say, 20-25 minutes but those I have been spending like three hours to put out what's like a 25-minute show but I did not know that this other guy existed and I didn't realize it was so affordable to hire this out. So, I might also be sending this content to your guy as well because I’m spending too much time on this.
Jayneil: Elwick? You got to give me that hook up, man. I’m connecting with all these folks. So, I think …
Patrick: I’d have charged Jayneil more because I know you're editing this. Charge him more.
Jayneil: He increases rates and I think now it is like 10 bucks an hour or something like that, which compared to the people who do the editing in US, some of the rates I’ve seen is 200 an hour. And I think part of why they charge so much is also they do the strategy component like they'll help you write show notes, market better but I think that we can already do ourselves as creatives. We just need to …
Patrick: Maybe. So, here's what I would say. If you are creative and especially if you're a creative that's trying to make money doing your own thing, you need to be bringing a strategy component because at the end of the day, if all you're doing is just executing work like if you're not providing any direction, if you're not answering questions, if you're not solving problems, if all you're doing is someone is handing you a punch list and you're checking off items, then they're going to put that on Fiverr and they're going to replace you or someone else is going to compete against you and drive the price down. So, if you want to make any type of money, you need to be a problem solver. Those are the people that make money, not the people that can just check off a punch list but the people that can say “All right, we're standing here at point A. You want to get to point B and you don't know how to get there but I’m going to show you how to get there.” That's where you'll do well.
Jayneil: So, it seems like that is might be one of the reasons why you started Squatchin to be a problem-solving agency?
Patrick: Absolutely. And it's the reason I call it that. I've worked at agencies. I’ve worked at other companies as well. I know, Jayneil, you and I connected when I was at Sketch but I found that I do enjoy the personal connection that I get to have in helping other people realize what their dream is. So, working for a big product, that's great too and I worked with an awesome team there and I love my time at Sketch but I just really like when I, as an agency, get to come along someone that isn't that developed, that isn't that far along, they can't afford to hire 100 or 150 people, the people that really just don't know what the next step is. So, to be able to have a personal connection with them, to be trusted with this thing that's like their baby, that's really important to them and to get to see that flourish alongside them, it's just really exciting. I mean that, gets me really pumped. So, I tell people that the thing I want to be is a cheerleader. So, I’m not looking to be the person out front. I’ve decided in my life, for me personally, my fulfillment comes from seeing other people's dreams realized and from enabling other people to realize their dreams. And so, an agency just fits perfect within that. It allows me to do that very well.
Jayneil: Wow! That is so apt but I wonder if you had any fears when you were going to leave your full-time job at Sketch and other organizations you worked at to do this agency. Did you have like a savings saved up or did you have like clients lined up? How hard was the transition to just quitting everything and going full-time on the agency?
Patrick: Yeah, all the things you just said would have been very smart of me to have those things. I did have fear because it took me five years to ultimately do the thing I wanted to do. This is not something that I woke up one morning and said “Ah, today, I’ll just quit my job and start an agency.” It is something I’d wanted to do it. It is something that had been kind of sitting in the back of my mind for a while. Terrifying, absolutely terrifying but it was only terrifying until I walked through that threshold. After that point, now you're in it. And we talked about this a little bit before, you and I connected a couple weeks ago, and it felt really like surprisingly easy like inside my mind there's one part of me that's kind of yelling like “This is terrifying. This is awful. What are you doing? This isn't going to work.” So, I know that that is I’m aware of that. And at the same time, I feel more calm, I have less anxiety, I feel probably the calmest about this, about my work that I’ve felt in years but I think it's because I’ve gone from thinking about all the what-ifs to just being in the moment and I’m just resolved to do well and it's just shifted. So, it's both very difficult and really surprisingly easy. And, unfortunately, I don't know a better way to say it than that. It's just I don't have a lot of anxiety about it. My mind still tells me it's terrifying like objectively I know that this is some scary stuff but if you're resolved to do it, then, I don't know, it just feels very easy now that I’m resolved to do it. So, it's not to say that this process has been easy. I mean, I’ve sure learned some hard lessons already.
Jayneil: Like?
Patrick: Oh man! So, I have to be careful how much of what I say because obviously a lot of this stuff involves clients. One of my most recent lessons I’ve learned is that I am not a fan of RFPs. And in fact, I am resolved to not participate in RFPs moving forward. In the bio that you read, one of the things you mentioned is that I care about people basically. Relationships are super important to me and RFPs don't allow you to build relationship because if you work with someone and you do a great job and the next time you go to work with them, they want you to compete again …
Jayneil: By submitting, oh my God!
Patrick: Well, then you don't have a relationship. So, if my goal is to deepen these connections with people, RFPs don't allow me to do that. In addition, what RFPs force you to do is they force you to change what you prioritize. It puts you in a position many times where you have to prioritize cost cutting over anything as opposed to executing at a high level with a strategy you've developed. And so, it shifts kind of the goal posts. And because of that, I think it kind of perverts what I want to be doing and what I believe my approach should be. It doesn't allow me to bring the approach that I believe will be ultimately very successful. So, I just learned through a couple of recent situations that I’m not going to touch RFPs again. It was a tough lesson to learn. It was, unfortunately, a lot of time invested but as you participate with this stuff, then that comes to light.
Jayneil: But I’m assuming there's still so many other clients and small businesses that would be more than happy just not to get involved in all this request for proposal bullshit.
Patrick: I don't think anybody's malicious with it. I think a lot of companies, they believe that's the way business is done. And I understand, I can empathize with why someone would want to position a product that way. From their perspective, if they can get the same quality work and get it for less money and from just as reputable of an organization, then they feel like that's a win and I understand that. The thing that I would stress is I believe that even if … I ultimately value relationships more than anything else. I think relationships pay the most dividends. Those may not always be financial dividends but relationships will pay the most dividend over the course of your life or over the course of your business, etc. And so, from that standpoint, I need to make decisions that continue to prioritize those relationships. And, yes, there are of course plenty of organizations and companies that don't rely on an RFP system or don't expect that but yeah.
Jayneil: Wow! An analogy that that came to my mind from a recent experience when you were talking about just making the leap and just doing it full time and starting Squatchin is over the weekend I was in Nashville with the cousins and we took a boat and we were going out in this lake, we were pretty deep into it and there was like a little bit of a storm. So, it was like raining a little bit and then everybody's like urging me like just “Jump, jump in the water.” And before … Man, this is stupid. Do not do this. Before coming into the docks, I read a sign that 175 people had drowned by not wearing life vests. So, I do know a little bit of swimming. So, I didn't wear life vest and I just jumped in that water. And as I went down and I came up, the immediate fear that I had was like what if there's some kind of animal I don't know. I mean, there's not going to be a shark. I know it's a man-made lake but I was like “What if there's a shark? What if there's an alligator beneath?” And it was like in my head. After a couple of minutes, I just settled in. I was actually enjoying. So, it just reminded me of how you just took the leap and you mentioned the anxiety went away and then you're just going with the flow.
Patrick: Yeah. And let me clarify because I do want to be careful. So, from interviewing a lot of people because I’ve, again, talked to several hundred creatives, which has been an awesome opportunity, but I think there is an issue where it's very easy to present … Let me say this another way. If a creative is being interviewed on a podcast, that means that things probably did ultimately work out for them. However, there are lots of people that things did not work out for them. And so, I don't want to give this false sense of “Oh, if you do it, it's just going to work out.” The reality is there are plenty of people that are capable and do ultimately make a jump and it doesn't work for one reason or another. And that's fine. That's a totally cool healthy thing but when we are consumed or inundated with these posts on LinkedIn and these podcasts and the people that you meet at conferences and conventions, it's easy to get this … we're just seeing these highlights from everybody. We're not seeing the whole kind of scope of experiences that people have and we're not seeing all the bad typically. We're only focusing on good. And so, I do want to be clear that it is possible you can make that transition and things not go well. And in my favor, I do already have a network of creatives, I do already have a network of potential clients from being in the agency world, from being a part of Sketch, from building Master of One for the last six years. So, all of those things do give me a foundation that, I believe, has enabled me to jump into Squatchin rather quickly where other people don't necessarily have that or any of that. So, I don't want to make it sound like it's all just like roses and sunshine. The fact I’m able to do Squatchin is because I’ve been spending years developing relationships and developing community and developing my craft that's allowed all this to happen.
Jayneil: This is like one of the disclaimers that people need to hear when they hear those investment websites and advertisements like “Please consult your lawyer before investing in this. Investing is actually a risk subject matter expert.” And then it goes on very fast. And you're right, there's not any podcast which is very popular, something along the lines of agency failures where every week someone comes on the show and openly candidly talks about “Well, I tried to start an agency and this is what went wrong.” So, you're absolutely right.
Patrick: Well, it's kind of like we were talking about COMPANY of One, the Paul Jarvis book, and in there, he's talking about VC-funded companies that are, I guess, worth over X amount of dollars. This is very early. I want to say this is in chapter two in the book. And they basically look at the companies today and then they look at those companies, I believe, it was five years later. And it's some insane number. You'll have to remind me the exact, like 75% of them don't exist or they were sold for less than they were worth. And now, there's a lot of reasons why. And, obviously, throughout the book, he spends a lot of time talking about what could create those situations but I think my big takeaway is you could be super capable and you could have a great product, you could be so convincing that you could have someone hand you tens of millions of dollars. I mean, this isn't just some random guy down the street. These are really smart, capable, talented, already probably experienced and successful for people and you can still fail.
Jayneil: True.
Patrick: That's fine. That is something I also think people need to see and understand and accept because if failure becomes this like naughty word, if failure becomes this thing that if we experience, that makes us less than someone else. If that's how we approach failure, then it will prevent you from taking these big jumps that you want to take in your life, from taking these big steps but also, it'll make it really tough for you to recover when you do experience failure.
Jayneil: And, I think, to your point with the Paul Jarvis book Company of One, what I loved from that book is the idea that the media glorifies that you have to grow big, you have to become a billion-dollar startup, you have to become this huge agency, hire hundreds of people but there's nothing wrong in staying small, staying a company of one, just one person running the show or maybe freelancing some other parts of the business but just staying small on purpose by choice and enjoying the quality time instead of all the headaches that come with just growing more than you're supposed to.
Patrick: Absolutely. And he gets at it here. I think a great way to look at this is make the decisions that make sense for what you want from your life, whether it's having a big company or small company, whether that's prioritizing money or prioritizing relationships or maybe both of those or whether it's moving to another part of the world or maybe you do want to work for someone ultimately and you want to sit in the same job for 25 years. I mean, there's different types of people. There are different personality types. Just because this person over here experienced success doing these three things does not mean that everybody needs to do these three things to experience success. And we also need to detach the idea of success from just monetary return. We have other metrics that can make us successful or that we can rank as being successful. We don't have to always put our stock in that. So, for me, obviously, I want to make enough money to have a certain type of lifestyle and of course provide for my wife very well but at the same time, I’ve also decided that I have these other things that I actually value more and would forgo money if it meant building this other thing over here. And, again, I talk about relationships a lot, my connection with others is very important. Me respecting people is very important and me seeing the those around me succeed is very important. And so, I try to prioritize those things over money if it has to be made. Now, sometimes you can do both those things at the same time and that's exciting but again, it might be that someone listening here, the thing that would make them super happy is to clock in at 8 o'clock in the morning and then clocking out at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, have two days off on the weekend where their phone doesn't ring and that's fine. Establish what that is, what that is that’s unique to you because you're an individual, you're a unique person, and then lean into those things and there's no shame in doing it a different way than someone else.
Jayneil: One of the quotes you had mentioned to me earlier that really, really resonated with me, and I’m going to try to paraphrase it correctly, you said that, and it was like pretty much a comparison of working full-time at a company or a startup versus doing your own thing, your agency, so the quote was something along the lines of when you work full time at a company, the ceiling is capped in terms of how much you can grow because there's rules, there's promotions, there's bonuses and whatever the reviews you get from other colleagues that decide your ceiling. So, it's kind of capped but the same time, the bottom, the floor at the bottom of your feet is also like not too far down. So, even if you fall down, it's not that bad. You've got that safety net, you’ve got the benefits but then you said if you do your own thing, suddenly, the floor is way down there like suddenly the depth becomes way higher. So, if you fall, yeah, I mean, it's scary but just because you're taking more risk, there's also more reward and the reward is that the ceiling is uncapped. It's up to you to decide what your ceiling is and there's not anybody else dictating based on certain rules and stuff.
Patrick: Yeah. Talking about audio editing, it's like having a compressor turned on, right? It's like we've lowered our peaks but we've raised our floor. I mean, certainly, if you're working for an organization, assuming the organization is stable, then you're going to have a guaranteed level of stability, you know that your check's going to hit your bank account, you know that you're going to have benefits and you know that those things are available to you but at the end of the day, there's not really any magic to it, right? You probably have a pretty established line for promotion and probably have established pay grades and caps on these other things. So, that's just reality. Now, if that's the environment you want to be in, awesome, be in that environment and may all your dreams come true. For me, I decided that I wanted to have, yeah, higher ceiling, I wanted to have more magic as it were. Now, that also means much more risk and it does mean that I also not only can I succeed beyond my wildest dreams, I can probably fail beyond my wildest dreams as well. And so, there is just that understanding that that goes both directions. So, yeah, I love the fact that there is ultimately no ceiling on what I can accomplish but I have a healthy understanding that there's also not a floor either.
Jayneil: But going to that ceiling part, I mean, if somebody were to work at a company in Dallas as a designer, even a lead designer, I would assume they would get paid 100,000, maybe with bonus 120,000, 130,000 a year but I have met creatives who are a company of one like a small agency and they're like hitting half-a-million-dollar mark and I can see that because they're doing their own thing, the ceiling is suddenly way higher.
Patrick: And that's just assuming that … Again, that's just focusing on a financial piece.
Jayneil: Yes.
Patrick: For me, I decided that I don't want to spend more than 50% of my time working for other people. I believe that I also need to invest time in myself and there's also times I just don't want to show up for work and that's fine too. I get to make those decisions. So, financially, the way I’ve structured Squatchin so far, it's not like I’m having some financial big windfall over where I was. Frankly, right in line with what I was making last yea, that hasn't changed. What has changed is I’m not spending more than 20 hours a week actually doing billable work. And so, then what that allows me to do is say “Wow! I have all this extra time that I can invest into my family or I can invest into friends or I can invest into personal projects.” And that has completely changed my quality of life. That has completely changed the quality of work. And it does mean when I am sitting down to work on a client project, it's really easy to be very engaged because I’m not feeling any burnout. I know what it's like to put in long weeks and, yes, you might be pushing around or hitting keys or whatever but it's very unlikely that you're bringing the same intensity to your work if you're trying to actually clock 40-50-60 hours a week.
Jayneil: It is hard.
Patrick: I’ve talked to a couple people that run agencies that have said their average billable they get from employees is 27 hours a week. Even when their employees are working 40-45-50, at the end of the day, they're only billing about 27. So, anyway, that's a side note. So, the point is when I’m sitting down, because I’m not feeling all that burnout, it's really easy to do very intense, very focused work but then I get to pull away from it and I get to go invest in myself or invest in people around me.
Jayneil: Damn! So, my mind is just blown away right now because you are in a way, I mean, making the same amount of money while working full-time at a company but now you just got something which is the most valuable commodity in the world, you got your time back, you got that time now to do other things and that's so dope. And the reason I was able to relate with it is when I left my job full time at AT&T on June 20th, now I pretty much just do teaching and I teach starting from like 1 p.m. Central Time to all the way to like 10 p.m. Central Time and everything before that in the morning is dedicated to my workouts, working on the podcast and for me, like you, like it's growing the brand. And then I just teach Monday to Thursday. Friday, it's all about just podcasting and side hustles.
Patrick: Even with the time that I’m investing in myself, so even with that other bit, that is frankly to work on projects that allow me to gain even more of my time back. That's when we start talking about building projects that multiply the effort of your work.
Jayneil: Can you give an example, if possible?
Patrick: I mean, generally speaking, if the only time I’m getting paid is when I put in an hour of work if, it's a one-for-one trade-off, then the first day I step away from my job, my income gets cut to zero or the first time there's unrest or even if I was working for someone else, if they suddenly have mass layoffs or furloughs or there's a pandemic, then the second that those hours go away, the money goes away as well. And so, for me, I need to be working on projects, and I know we use passive income a lot, but I need to be working on projects that either multiply my effort. So, over time, an hour of work is going to equate to the money that used to take me like a day, for instance, or two days or whatever it is or I need to be working on projects that ultimately generate income even when I’m not working on those projects. So, I actually have a product I’m working on now, hoping to launch by the end of this month. That is the first thing that will have come out of this idea that “Okay, 50% of my investment is going into other people and 50% of my investment goes into myself” with the ultimate hope that the investment in myself will be the thing that pays dividends in the future. And then what that allows me to do is it allows me to be in a position where I can become even more picky. So, for me, I enjoy donating time to people. There are several people that I support through giving things away for free because I believe in what they're doing and it's important me to be promoting organizations that, again, do good in the world. And so, if I can get to a point where my projects are ultimately what's sustaining me or sustaining themselves, then that allows me to, frankly, invest more into other people that can't do for themselves. And that's the position I personally have decided to make. Nobody has to make that decision for themselves. And making that decision for yourself doesn't make you a good or bad person. It's very important that in thinking of company one, it's very important to ask and answer these questions for yourself and for yourself only. These are just the decisions I made for myself.
Jayneil: But I think it's smart as hell too because you are trying to get in a place where you're not trading time for money because that's just like a transactional exchange like you're trying to like do relational exchanges. I won't even call it exchange but just you're trying to build relation and, like you said, grow that passive income. And would it be fair to say that Squatchin right now is the company of one, it’s primarily just you?
Patrick: Oh yeah, absolutely. So, the way Squatchin is set up, and I love this structure, is that I’m the only employee of Squatchin. Now, what I do, because I have a network of creatives, when I have a client project come in, once I talk to that client, then I’m able to say “Oh, man, this artist I know would be perfect for this project. This developer I know would be great for this project. Man, I’ve got this copywriter that would be an awesome fit.” So, I’m able to pull from my network. I’m able to connect them to the project. For me, I’m getting to put money in the pockets of people that I love and I appreciate. And then on top of that, I’m also getting to keep a portion of that because I’m the one connecting these projects or I’m the one managing these projects. So, I certainly still get paid to a degree but I love the fact that I’m doing multiple things. I’m satisfying a client's needs; I’m running a business and I’m putting money in the pockets of people that I love and respect. And so, it helps, frankly, build a lot of things that are important to me.
Jayneil: And going into like the specific mechanics of it, let's say a client approaches you and says “Patrick, we need this website design done.” Now, you know this guy Jayneil who can do the website design for you. So, do you connect me with your client directly or you keep the communication one-on-ones between you and the client and you just outsource that part to me and then I do it and give it to you and then you talk to the client.
Patrick: Yeah, you probably would not see the client unless that was important for your process. So, I think of it this way. I put myself in the Project Manager role and I also put myself into the Accounts Manager role. That's how I would talk about it. So, I’m talking one-on-one to the client. I understand the processes frankly very well. So, I can communicate whether technical or kind of more of these feely concepts. I can do that. And so, I talk to the clients, I have the meetings with the clients, I lead the clients through, I do all the presentations. And then I’m able to turn around and take that information back to the people that are doing the work and say “These are the things we need. These are the revisions in this.” So, I’m managing all that communication. I mean, frankly, there's a couple reasons. One, I respect the people that I work with. And because I respect them, I don't want to create a situation that feels confusing or uncomfortable. Two, I want the client to have a very professional experience. And so, from that standpoint, it would not be professional to say “Well, you have to have email threads with three different people or four different people.” That would be a horrible experience. And then, from my standpoint, it would make it very difficult for me to keep track of what's actually going on. So, I’m the sole point of contact and then I make sure that the client I’m working with that I’m only dealing with a single point of contact on their side as well. So, that way all the communication is very tight. From a client standpoint, I do have a line in my contracts that mentions that basically labor is going to be a mixture of in-house and contract workers and that's at my discretion. There is a line in my contract but when I’m talking to my client, I don't say to my client “Hey, I’ve got these three contractors” or “I’m sucking out your work.” I don't say that stuff. From the client standpoint, as far as they're concerned, I’ve got an agency of 300 people behind me. They don't need to know any differently and the work is getting done, the work is high quality. So, that's kind of what that looks like.
Jayneil: And then this is a conversation that I probably think that most people find uncomfortable or awkward. Thinking about it is making me feel a bit awkward. So, going back to the example we set up. You got the client that gave you the website design work and you came to me to give me “Hey, Jayneil, you need to like … Are you available?” I’m like “Yeah, I’m available.” So, talking about money. You know like 300+ creative. So, obviously, everybody's got a different rate. I probably got a different rate.
Patrick: You live in Dallas. So, I can't afford your rate.
Jayneil: So, do you tell me like “Hey, this is your rate” or you ask me how much time it’s going to take me to do it or how does this conversation go? And then what if I were to ask you how much you're getting paid for that? Do you disclose that or just keep the conversation to just I get paid?
Patrick: I don't mind disclosing any of that stuff. I don't have any ego when it comes to the price conversation. And, at the end of the day, I would rather the person working with me feel fully comfortable. So, from that standpoint, I never ask a creative to discount their rate. That's very important. If the creative wants more than I’m willing to pay, then I’ll go to someone else but I’m never going to ask them to discount it because I think that's rude. And out of wanting to respect people, I think part of respecting someone is not trying to beat them up over price. So, from my standpoint, if I have a project and, Jayneil, I think you'd be great for it, I have been in the agency world enough and I’ve seen enough, I mean, I’ve worked on hundreds of projects, I have an idea of what people's rates typically are, I have an idea of what this would cost at different agencies. So, I already in my mind kind of know what it's worth to me and what I think it's worth to the client and what it's worth for the scope of the project. So, I’ll have that in mind but I’ll come talk to you and I’ll say “Hey, this is the information. What do you need to quote this?” So, you let me know, we work it out, you're going to give me a quote. And then if that lines up or if it's within 10% or 15% of what I’m expecting, then I’m going to go “Awesome” and bring you into the job. And if it doesn't line up with that, then I’m going to go “Hey, I appreciate this” and then I’m going to frankly go talk to someone else until I get the work out. So, that's kind of my approach for it, from the client's standpoint. The money conversation is pretty big when it comes to pricing stuff because I don't price things out hourly for a client and I also don't break things out necessarily like I’m not going to break out every line item because if you do that on a quote, every one of those line items is a lever that the client can pull. Every one of those line items is something that client can go “Well, I don't want … I can just scratch through these four things and pay 5000 dollars” but that's not how it works. A lot of these components only work if they're done alongside these other items as well. So, my quotes, they never disclose if they're hourly. They look like a per project. Many times, for larger projects, I give a range. So, I kind of will have like a do-not-exceed number but in order to give a do-not-exceed, I have very clear end conditions. I’m not going to say “When you feel good, we're done.” I’m going to say “When we've satisfied these six things very clearly, we're done.” From your standpoint, Jayneil, even if you used hours to calculate what you're going to invest, ultimately the client's not going to see any of that and I just be careful not to give the client too many levers because I don't want to get bogged down into that back and forth. At the end of the day, someone wants to work with you or they don't and I believe that I can sell them on the rest of the process. And I think if I do that well enough, I don't think they’ll question the money. I mean, I’ve had clients tell me like “I want to work with you. I’d love to work with you. I think you're perfect and I don't want to ask you to do this for less than you want because I totally understand it but I can't afford that” and that's fine. And if a client wants to say that, that's great. I very rarely have a client that actually wants to pick a part price because I think I sell them so well on all the other aspects of it. So, my point is, if you're listening and you're putting together proposals and stuff, don't feel like this has to look like a CVS receipt. You don't have to have 150 items on it just thrown out there.
Jayneil: I think it's pretty much like going for value-based pricing, as like Chris Doe mentioned it. Two questions come to mind. One, is you have a talk with a client and let's say you come up with the idea that, okay, what the client needs is going to be maybe in the range of 30,000 dollars let's say for building the website and everything you need. And the client says “So, Patrick, why don’t you back to me with how much this is going to cost you?” So, I’m assuming then the next step would be for you to touch base with me like “Jayneil can you do this?” So, do you ask me to charge hourly or do you just ask me to give you a project-based price, how much I would do for the whole website? That's the first question. And second question is if I can't do it, you probably have to hit up other people in your network. So, that's going to take time but you still have to get back to the client by Monday or something. So, how do you manage to do that?
Patrick: Sure. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, I’m going to let my, in your case, a designer, I’m going to let my designer quote it how they feel comfortable quoting it. I’m not going to babysit you. I’m not going to make you go into Everhour or Harvest and like log your … I don't care. Here's my perspective, okay? If I’m working on a website, because I am a developer, my background is in development, that's what I … in all my agency work, it's been frontend development. Okay, let's say I’m working on a website, right? And, yes, maybe I am sitting at my desk staring at my computer for six hours that day but when I’m in the bathroom or when I’m eating dinner or when I wake up at 3 in the morning or when I’m driving in the car, I’m probably thinking about some of these problems I’m solving. So, the effort that you expend is not just the effort where you're punching keys on your keyboard. You're expending mental effort. You're putting work in even when you're not sitting at your desk. All of us do that thing where like I’ll be taking a shower and then I’ll solve some problem in my head that I was stuck on when I was sitting at my desk. Well, it's a bit weird to put a line item of like 35 minutes for a shower. I don't take 35-minute showers. That’d be way too long but that'd be a weird line item to put. So, I don't expect people to log hours. Hours aren't accurate. Now, I understand companies that need that and I understand whatever, there's a whole conversation there but, me personally, even if you did give me your hours, that would not be an accurate representation of how much effort you put into the project. So, I don't need to see that stuff from you. If you want to bill hourly or if you want to do it project based or, I don't care how you want to approach it. I’m going to work with you to get that number from you based on how you feel comfortable but I’m not going to tell you, you have to do it this way, this way or this way.
Jayneil: Got it
Patrick: And at the end of the day, if you and I have any amount of discord like if you feel like I’m trying to get work out of you without compensating you fairly or if I feel like Jayneil is doing this or that or whatever, if you and I have any type of tension in this relationship, then ultimately, it's not going to go well and that's not good for either of us. That doesn't enhance your life. It doesn't enhance my life. So, I want you to feel comfortable. I want me to feel comfortable. And if we feel comfortable, we're going to work together. And if we don't feel comfortable, we're not going to work together. And I don't need to like force the matter one way or the other. Now, as far as the second question, as far as turnaround time, I don't know, I just haven't really had an issue. Again, I have an idea of what this stuff takes. I know what all the processes are like. I could sit down and write out the “Here's the seven major phases and here's like 50 individual steps and here's the …” I could probably tell you like you could give me a project right now and I could probably be within 15% of the amount of time it's going to take you to complete that project because I’ve worked with a lot of designers and I’ve worked on a lot of projects. So, at the end of the day, if I have to give a client a number, then I’ll write down the number I think it is and then I’m going to add 10% to that number or 15% to that number, I’m going to pad it and then I’ll just return that because I know, at the end of the day, I can make it work for that number but if I can get an answer from you, then I’d rather get an answer from you so I have more information but frankly, people love doing work and people love being paid and I haven't had anybody drag their feet with sending me a quote.
Jayneil: No, I was thinking more in terms of availability. So, let's say you reached out to me and I said “Oh, I’m not available,” then you would have to like … So, you told the client the number. Let's say it's going to take 30,000 to build a website but now you still have to get somebody in your network to maybe do the design work. So, I guess, that's where I was thinking about.
Patrick: Like the actual timeframe, like the timeline?
Jayneil: No, just like getting that person on board. So, let's say you contacted me, it took like one or two days and I said “I’m not available.” Then the second person you hit up, maybe they say … So, I guess, I was just figuring in my head like …
Patrick: Yeah. I mean, if I feel like that piece has taken too long, I’ll still run with a number that I feel comfortable with even if I have to sort that bit out a bit later. Now, if you're listening to this and you're trying to run an agency and you don't know what those rates are, you haven't done enough projects to be able to accurately scope them, then maybe don't just guess. That would be bad to do and you can put yourself in a bad position. From my standpoint, it's not a guess because I’ve done it so many times.
Jayneil: Wow! And the way you've done your Master of One Podcast, it's just insane. A lot of people do podcasts for what I call the vanity metrics like the downloads and tweets and the followers and stuff and I’m also guilty of that but you've built a whole network of creatives now that can work with you in collaboration on awesome projects, get paid, get their work featured. So, did you know that going in when creating the Master of One Podcast and now, do you look at guests and say that “Oh, I’m going to interview this guest because potentially we can work with them at Squatchin?” So, how does that work?
Patrick: Yeah. So, the podcast initially was absolutely an exercise of vanity. Well, maybe not vanity. It was started probably the way a lot of stuff like this has started off – “Oh, you know, I enjoy listening to myself and yeah these other people enjoy listening to me. So, maybe a lot more people will enjoy it.” So, it was definitely very me focused. And not just me, again. I do have two other people that I podcast with. Shoutout to Andrew and Lauren and then also an ex-member Luke. You're still cool too. So, anyway, initially it was probably a bit of vanity but then what we realized over time is that we had built a platform that people were paying attention to and within our space, I feel like we're very well respected within our space. I mean, it's taken time. It takes time for people to see your intentions and for people to kind of to trust that you really are an advocate for the community. And so, that took us several years to get that point where people trust our intentions but once we got there, there was this kind of collective realization of “This doesn't need to be about us. We can now leverage this platform we have to really highlight other people.” And not only that but, man, there are so many people creating good work. It is insane to me how much good work exists out in the world that you never see. So, what we started doing, we started going to conferences and conventions and we work with the organizer. This isn't a fly-by-night operation. We work with the organizers, some events fly us out and that's awesome, and what we do is we just say “We want to give people that are coming to this event even more value, more bang for the ticket price.” So, we have an extra microphone and we invite anybody that wants to that's attending that event. We don't care if you have a name or don't have a name. We don't care if anybody's heard of you. I don't care if you only have five followers on Instagram. Anybody that wants to, we want to sit down and we want to do a 10-minute interview with you. And so, over the course of a couple days, we'll do 30-40 interviews with a whole range of people. In some you're sitting down with someone that has 200,000 followers on a social network and sometimes you're sitting down with someone that just picked up a pencil for the first time six months ago or three months ago. And it's always awesome meeting people and it's always great getting to push those people out in the larger community. So, from our standpoint, that's a positive thing we get to do. Those people may not ever come back and connect with us but what they might do is end up collaborating with someone else out in the community or they might make a connection with someone else out in the community that's very exciting or the people that want to have that connection with us, we want to have that as well. We want friends and we want to kind of do life together as best as we can in like a digital world hidden behind avatars but because we start building these relationships within our community, because people connect with us once in a hot seat or connect with us on the show and then come back and join the Slack channel, as we build up a rapport over time, then it allows me, when I have a project come in through something like … I already have a relationship with these people, I already know that. I don't have to Google like designers in my area.
Jayneil: Or go to Upwork.
Patrick:I don't have to do that because I already have people that I’ve been talking to, frankly, for several years that I still may have never met them but I see their work, I see how they interact with other people, I know if they're aggressive or if they're kind because I I’m seeing those conversations, I know their interactions with me and it becomes really, really easy to reach out to someone and trust that they can do the work and they're going to bring a good attitude and they're going to be timely. So, that said, the people that I’m connecting to are people that I have been interacting with. It's rare that I just would reach out to someone out of the blue and it's rare that I would reach out to someone that I’ve only talked to once. Typically, it's people that I’ve connected with and they've decided to have that back and forth. Those are the people I try to work with because, again, they're being intentional about wanting to have a relationship, I’m being intentional about wanting to have a relationship. And so, therefore, I want to also try to take that to the next level and support them in other ways financially if I can.
Jayneil: Oh wow! So, pretty much there have been like multiple touch points, maybe meetings at conferences, getting to know them maybe lunches, dinners to the point where you feel like “Okay, this is a new project. I think I can take a shot on this person.” And also, pretty much where the issues can happen, I think it's more about pay, micromanagement, but I think it seems like you give all these people, freelancers the autonomy, you pay them well. So, it pretty much removes all the potential cost friction. Now, it’s just like “Do the work. Let's make this work.”
Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. And I have this feeling too. I think some people focus a lot on pay. I said that thing earlier about putting your effort into strategy, into problem solving. If your perspective is solving a problem and solving a problem for that company that’s unsolved, you can't really put a price on that, right? It's a very abstract thing. It's very easy to put a price on build this component or build this widget or whatever. That's very easy to do but when a company has a problem, they know that problem exists but they can't see the way through, when you're bringing those type of results … Don't get me wrong, you do need to understand a bit about what the actual value return for the company is and those things need to be clear but when you're bringing those type of results, it's very rare that someone's going to nickel and dime you over price because how do you price that. And so, from my standpoint, I have no problem paying people their full rate and I have no problem giving people exactly what they want because price is not the most important thing. The clients that I’m working with, solving this problem is the most important thing. That's kind of where I’m shifting focus. Now, again, you still need to understand the value you're bringing to the client and that value sometimes is money but sometimes there's other things. The same way that I said we find value may be money and it might be something else, same thing for the company. The thing you're billing for them, the return could be money but the return could also be customer connection or the return could be brand awareness. Whatever the return is, I think, you need to determine that, you need to understand, obviously, what the mechanism is for measuring that and then that will allow you to know that your price isn't crazy but, again, when you're problem solving like this, people aren't getting hung up on price.
Jayneil: And how are you finding these amazing clients? Is it word of mouth or somebody referring to these clients or is there a marketing strategy you have to find these clients?
Patrick: Primarily referrals. I mean, again, this is where the benefit of being in a design community for several years. And what's funny is I primarily interact with designers and not developers. I’m a developer. So, you would think I would interact with developers but developers, a lot of them don't have a lot of a personality. I’m just kidding. So, anyway. So, I primarily interact with designers. This was not intentional at first. It has worked really well in my favor because how many times is someone brought in because someone wants them to design a website and then they'll ask the question “Okay but do you know someone that can build it?” And then that becomes a very easy thing, that becomes a very easy connection for me because I’m the one developer hanging out with several hundred designers. And so, that has been awesome. So, honestly, the majority of my work has been referrals from people that many of them I’ve never met in person, I’ve just talked on a podcast. I mean, I had one recently. I don't even know the person that referred me. I mean, they told me the name. The company I was talking to said “Oh, you were referred by so and so.” I did not recognize the name and I feel awful. Especially if I met them in person, I’m going to feel awful but that's the kind of stuff that's happening because I’ve been intentional about community building for years. Because people, they see me as a friend or they see me as a trusted source, people are confident, frankly, referring these things to me and it's people that many times I’ve never even worked with.
Jayneil: Oh my God!
Patrick: It's amazing how it's worked together. It's fun, there's some stuff we can be super intentional about and, of course, I want to be intentional, I like to believe I’m an intentional person. This is one of those things that I absolutely was not intentional about and it completely worked in my favor. I feel very lucky that that's the case.
Jayneil: That is insane, Patrick. What advice would you give to a designer, developer trying to set up their own shop and follow your path?
Patrick: Yeah. I mean it's always a really tough thing because there's so many factors at play. So, specifically if you're wanting to start building community, if you want to start building relationships, the biggest thing I would say is intentions are really important and people will ultimately sniff out those intentions. So, if your belief is that “Oh, if I get close to this person, it's going to help me do X, Y and Z. And so, the only reason I’m getting close to them is to do X, Y and Z,” then I don't believe those relationships will ultimately work out or what happens is it'll be very easy to drop those relationships if you feel any tension or uncomfortability. So, I would say that if you want to build relationships with people, you need to genuinely want that and you need to genuinely be willing to put in effort with an understanding that you're putting an effort for a relationship that. You may never see return in your business but that's okay. I mean, if you love people, then love people. So, that's what I would say about relationship building is intentions are super important and, again, people will sniff out bad intentions. When it comes to the business aspect of it, ultimately, you need to be able to communicate how you provide value to someone. So, if you're working with a client, you need to understand what is valuable to them, you need to understand why it's valuable. And once you understand what's valuable, you need to understand the mechanism for determining if you've increased that value. Once you have those things, I think it becomes very easy to be able to say “Oh, we can do X, Y, and Z and then we can test it over here.” I think that mentality has worked very well for me but understand not all clients are the same. Man, there's so many aspects to this. I believe communication is insanely important, very, very important and I mean that in two ways. One way, I mean, it is just clear, consistent, trustworthy communication. Be upfront. Radical Candor is a great book about what healthy communication looks like but the second way that I mean it is your communication is going to need to shift based on the person you're talking to. And so, you need to understand that. So, in the same way you need to understand their business well enough to understand value, you need to understand them well enough to be able to communicate that back to them in a language they understand. Some people love abstract feely stuff. They want you to dream alongside of them and very ethereal and that's great. I mean, some people, that's how you get on board with them. Other people want facts and figures. Other people need to see data. So, you need to be able as a person to adapt to that. And if you're unwilling to adapt to that or if you don't have the self-awareness to adapt to that, you're going to do very poorly, in my opinion. And, in fact, it's funny because we've talked about Company of One several times, Paul Jarvis talks about self-awareness as being a super important factor to doing well. And I would just say yeah, like if you don't have awareness about you or your relationships or how you come across, you're not going to do very well. So, as far as specifically finding clients, if you're at the place where you're starting a business or you're just trying to find a client, then I would say that you need to build relationships with people because more often than not you're going to find that client by a word of mouth or buy a recommendation. It's not because you throw a form on your website. I mean I’ve worked at many agencies and I think most all of them would tell you that they could probably delete that form off their website and it wouldn’t change their business at all. Obviously, if you have brand recognition, then maybe that's not the case but I would say you're more likely to get work and you're more likely to get work that you're going to win if you get that from a referral or you get that from word of mouth. So, if you want to do well, you can't just sit in your bedroom and wait for work to come to you. You have to start building relationships with people.
Jayneil: Got it. Amazing advice, Patrick. And how can people get in touch with you? How can people follow you? What if they want to get featured on Master of One Podcast, how do people reach out to you?
Patrick: So, actually, we're doing this cool thing right now called Makers Dozen. For those that don't know, a makers dozen would be 13. I like to think in terms of doughnuts. Whenever I think, I just assume 13 donuts. I assume it could be 13 of any item that a baker would make. Anyways. So, we're doing Makers Dozen. They're these short interviews. They're 13 questions and they're all written. So, for us, we haven't done much written content in wanting to highlight people but then and also wanting to expand our reach, then this is a way that we believe we'll do that really well. And so, we're excited about that. We're featuring creator every single day of the week. We've committed to at least do this for the next year and probably beyond that. So, if you want to get featured on Makers Dozen, we'd love to have you. You can just a) reach out to me, hello@Squatch.in or Patrick@Mof1Podcast.com or what you can do is just go to Moff1.network, that's the website, join the Slack community and then spark up a conversation in there. So, you'll see a slack link amongst our social links on the website but certainly, feel free to listen to the show and all that stuff. If you don't like it, that's fine. And if you don't like it and you still want to connect with the community, then still join the Slack and connect with. There's a lot of super awesome artists in there. And the amount of talent in that community is stupid. I do not know why this group of people decided to congregate within this community. If I tried to start it again, I don't think I could. It feels like a moment of favor that, again, these amazingly talented artists have decided to kind of come together around this point of commonality and I feel very lucky to have any part in it. So, I would love if you would also join it and meet these other amazing people, not me, meet these other amazing people. Outside of that, if you actually want to talk about a project, then go to our website Squatch.in or hello@Squatch.in and hit me up.
Jayneil: Awesome. Thank you so much, Patrick, for coming on the show, man. I had a blast.
Patrick: Absolutely, man. Look at this. 60 on the dot, right? You are such a professional.
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