Sarah Masci: Hey there and welcome to this presentation. Um, Getting Started With Day Rates. This presentation was designed for designers, freelancers done for you, service providers, anyone who's really used to working with clients on a project basis. So, um, you know, proposal based projects, custom proposal projects. And, um, if you are doing that type of work and you're feeling like you're working all the time and you just feel like you keep getting stuck in the weeds, you're getting over, you're overwhelmed by client work. You're getting stressed out by client work and you feel like you're not really making any forward progress with your business. Then you are in the right place. That is, um, this business model. The day rate business model is, um, something that I started doing a while ago and really escaped that whole overwhelmed, stressed out business model, um, of project-based work. So, um, if that's you, I would love for you to stick around. And I think you'll learn a lot about this brilliant freelance business model. So let's go ahead and dive right in.

Sarah Masci: Okay. So my name is Sarah Masci and I am the founder of booked me for a day. Um, my specialty is bringing brands and websites to life in one day and charging a premium price for it versus spending weeks months, or in some cases, years on a design project. And with several years of experience working only with day rate clients, I'm now able to teach fellow creatives and done for you service providers, how to do exactly what I've done, which is to escape that feast or famine cycle with a day rate business model. So before we get started, I would love for you to turn off all distractions, get a notebook and a pen to take notes. I am going to be sharing a lot of valuable information throughout this presentation, and I think you're going to want to take notes, so get ready to do that.

Sarah Masci: And if you have any questions at all, you can use the chat box if this is being presented live. And I will answer those questions for you during the chat, or, um, if once the masterclass has ended, if you want to connect with me, you can find me I'm on Instagram, actually at Brackenhousebranding. And, um, I believe I have a link at the end of this presentation, but it's Brackenhousebranding on Instagram. So let's go ahead and dive in my guess is that you started your own business because you want it to be more present for your kids, your spouse, and your loved ones. You craved more freedom and more time for travel, self care and hobbies. You wanted to set your own hours so that you could create the perfect work-life balance. That makes sense for your situation. You wanted more control over your earning potential and you want it to be able to financially contribute to your household.

Sarah Masci: And the idea of working from home in yoga pants every day was a hell yes for you, but perhaps things are not going exactly as you thought they would let me know in the chat. If this is live, I would love to be chatting with you in the chat box here. Let me know if this sounds like you you're spending way too long on non-billable work, like trying to get leads through social media sales calls, answering emails and writing proposals, which don't always turn into a client. Clients are late providing you with their content file. So you can't start on time and then they're inconsistent with their feedback. So your projects just keep dragging on and you're not getting paid on schedule. Everything is just delayed and inconsistent and you know delay after delay. And you're just not making any money for the amount of work that you're doing.

Sarah Masci: Maybe you have taken on more projects or retainer clients to fill the gaps that those delayed clients have created. And then when the delayed client is suddenly ready, you're in this full on hustle mode to meet all of your deadlines. And before you know it, you're working on six to eight or sometimes more clients at any given time. Let me know if that sounds familiar and you can't leave home without your laptop because your client work is so random and inconsistent that you're always trying to catch up, or you're worried about your retainer clients who might need something from you while you're gone. So you have to pack your laptop every time you go on vacation. If you want to go on vacation, I know that I used to have to do that. I would take my computer with me, on vacation

Sarah Masci: And scope

Sarah Masci: Creep is out of control. So I don't know about you guys, but I have a folder full while I have many folders that are full of all of these revisions from my clients. Like I have that final, final, final, final client name, logo dot JPEG. So let me know if that sounds familiar. If you feel like the project is just about done, you feel like this is the final version of the logo or the copy or whatever it is that you're providing. And they just want revision after revision, after revision, and you don't know how to like, just stop the project and end it and move on. So let me know if that sounds familiar and maybe you have found yourself daydreaming about going back to a real job, because then at least you could clock out at five o'clock every day and get paid on time.

Sarah Masci: Okay. So I want you to close your eyes and just imagine, so really you can just close eyes. You don't need to read this slide, but I would love for you to just close your eyes and listen, and just imagine if you only had to work two or three days per week, and you knew exactly what days they would be. Imagine if you knew exactly how much money you were going to make each month and you could control whether or not to make more or less, depending on your life circumstances for the month. Imagine if you didn't have to waste hours on discovery calls, writing proposals and calculating how long an entire project is going to take only to be let down when that client comes back and tells you that it's too expensive or out of their price range. Imagine if you no longer had to deal with red flag clients who you knew you should have said no to, because those are the clients that turned into the never ending scope creep client.

Sarah Masci: Imagine if you had dream clients raving about the work that you've done for them so much so that you no longer needed to spend hours inside of Facebook groups, promoting your services. And imagine if you no longer had to worry about whether or not you were going to be able to pay the bills because waiting to get paid is a thing of the past. You can go ahead and open your eyes. And I want you to know that doing freelance work, whether you're a designer, a copywriter, a marketer, any kind of done for you service provider doing freelance work does not need to be draining soul sucking or a recipe for burnout. So in this presentation, I'm going to share with you the following, we're going to talk about what is a day rate. Then we're going to talk about the biggest mistake that most people make when they start offering day rates, the three parts sweet spot day rate offer formula, and the correct way to price your day rates so that you have clients lined up and wait-listed to work with you.

Sarah Masci: And finally, how I consistently earn over $10,000 per month, just on client work, doing one or two client intensives per week. So I told you to get a notebook and get ready to take notes. We have a lot to cover. So let's go ahead and dive right in actually. But wait, you do want to have a little bit of background. Um, I know a lot of these presentations go into background stories and it can be really long and drawn out and boring, but I do want you to listen and understand my background so that you can really understand the impact that a day rate business model has had on my life. And you can put yourself in my shoes and really envisioned how I could change your life as well. So here we go. This is me. 16 years ago, I was a brand new mom and my own mom had just passed away and my world had been rocked.

Sarah Masci: I was working as soul sucking corporate job that left me uninspired and allowed me barely two hours per day with my son. If any of you are in corporate nine to five type jobs, I am sure you can relate to this. And deep in my heart, I knew that there was more to life than this. The internet was still relatively new at the time. And there weren't nearly as many online opportunities as there are today, but I dove head first into the world of figuring out how I could work from home, just so that I could be home with my son. Like that was my number one driving. That was my mission was to be home with him. And so I just went online to figure out what I could do to work from home. And I spent five years side hustling and chasing various online, shiny objects, all in the name of having a lifestyle that would allow me the flexibility and the freedom to stay at home, raise my family and still bringing enough money to help pay the bills.

Sarah Masci: And then in 2010, I discovered my passion for branding and design. And so I spent the next several years teaching myself brand strategy, learning WordPress and fine tuning my craft. And you can see here had all sorts of businesses. Over the years, I had a online store. I had several blogs, I had an Etsy business. Um, and then you can see, we started getting into design and mood boards here at the end. So I definitely tried all of the things. Trust me. It was about six or seven years of trying all of the things before I finally decided, um, that branding and design was like my true calling. And so that was in 2010, but you know, I was still struggling. So even though, um, now we're like, you know, between 2010, 2015 ish, even though I had established myself as a really good designer, I had great clients and I had invested in the best coaches and programs hoping for that magic pill.

Sarah Masci: I still found myself working endless hours and feeling frustrated and overwhelmed from all the hustle and yet barely able to make ends meet each month. The numbers were just not adding up. And I was stuck in this vicious feast or famine cycle. I knew all about scaling and, and, you know, creating digital products. I knew how to do that, but there was no way that I could personally do it because I was working all of the time. So maybe you can relate, let us know in the chat, in the comments, if that is how you're feeling with your business right now. And then one day back in February of 2018, while I had been in nonstop hustle mode to meet all of those deadlines. I received this email from a client. This was a former client. I had already designed her brand and her website.

Sarah Masci: And this is what she sent to me. I'm just going to read the highlighted sections. She basically was looking for some updates to her website and she said she tried to do it herself. Um, and she said, I thought it was pretty foolproof, but maybe I messed it up. And then she said, it would be great if you could help me switch to active campaign. I also wanted to get a quote for you to build a new page for me. I wrote the copy here, let me know what it would cost. Also. How much would it be for you to create a blog for me, give me a quote for how much it would be for you versus me and on, you know, there's all of these things that she wants done. And I don't know about you, but for me, I was like just the thought of itemizing a punch list like that was making my head spin the amount of time it was going to take me just to figure out how long everything was going to take and then price it out and then write the proposal, email it to her.

Sarah Masci: I was like, I don't even have time to do this. Like let alone itemize and price it all out. So those were the thoughts that went through my head when I just told the client, how about you just pay me for the day and we'll get it all done. And she agreed to do that. And that was the pivotal moment that will forever be ingrained as my life-changing moment. And so after a bit of testing with a few more existing clients, I knew I was onto something. Like I knew that doing design in a day was, uh, uh, something that was really gonna work for me. And so I shared this idea on Facebook and my friends on Facebook went crazy for it. So here are just a few comments from that post. I think I had 30 or 40 comments from it, but people were loving it.

Sarah Masci: They were so excited. Like they were like, yes, this is amazing. I want this right. And then, you know, everything changed from that point on, after that post, like my life literally changed. I booked three intensives from that very first post, no proposal, no contract, no questions asked. And over time I went from working seven days a week to just two or three days in client work, my income rose from 4 to 6K per month, just steadily over $10,000 every single month. And within six months I dropped all of my retainer clients except for one. By the end of that year, I announced that I was no longer available for project work. I stopped bringing my Mac on vacations. I stopped feeling the need to be constantly scouring social media for my next client and clients were coming to me and I became consistently booked out four to six weeks in advance.

Sarah Masci: And I have never looked back these days. I spend usually a few days per month doing client work and the rest of my hours are spent speaking on this topic and supporting my fellow creatives to be on my course day, right mastery and my high level coaching program momentum. When I am not working, I'm enjoying time with my husband, our four sons, our two dogs, Mabel and Maverick. And we do have a new pandemic hobby, which is raising chickens. So, um, I'm able to take tons of time off travel as often as I want when we can. And I do things that I love and thanks to day rates. I finally have the freedom lifestyle that I was chasing for so long. And you can do this too. You can do what you love and you can do it on your terms. And so I want to talk to you more today about how you can do this.

Sarah Masci: So introducing this brilliant business model of day rates also known as VIP days and one day intensives day rates at the practice of working with clients one day at a time and charging a flat fee for the day, not the deliverables. Unlike hourly billing, the client is paying a premium price for the convenience of getting your undivided attention for the day. The ability to be more involved in the process and faster turnaround for their project. So here we have like this vin diagram that shows, um, three types of services, great cheap or fast, and client, your clients have these three options, but they can only pick two so they can have great work and it can be cheap, but it's going to be slow. They can have fast work and cheap work, but it's going to be bad or they can have great work and they can get it done fast. And this is where you want to be right here. This is the premium expensive pricing to do great work and to do it quickly. You're getting it done in a day. So your clients desire a quick and efficient process that is as stress-free and drama free as possible. And while this process isn't for everyone, the fact that I am booked for two months out with premium rates tells me that there is a market out there for there's a market for being great and fast it's called day rates.

Sarah Masci: I love this quote here by Davy Greenberg, um, from Twitter, he says, if I do a job in 30 minutes, it's because I spent 10 years learning how to do that in 30 minutes, you owe me for the years, not the minutes. So, so many people say, well, isn't the client going to question my hours? Aren't they going to question? Well, if it's only taking you this many hours, why are we, why are you charging me a premium rate? It's about the quality that you're delivering, just because you can do it fast and you can do do a quick turnaround does not mean that you should be charging any less than what you would normally charge. So if you would normally be charging $10,000 for a website or a project, then there is no reason why you can't charge the same amount, just because you can do it faster at that. That should not make any difference at all. So I think that's just one mindset shift that a lot of people need to make. When they're considering day rates.

Sarah Masci: Here are a few client testimonials actually, just to show you that clients are actually loving day rates. So, um, you can see here, Janice says we got excellent results. Um, I loved being so close to the process. Amy said, I love knowing the cost up front. And I love knowing that I would have your full attention. The site is stunning and I am grateful. I will have your help over the next month. Thank you for everything you made this so easy and fun. Nicole said, I'm so amazed by what you accomplished in one day. And so thankful I've had your assistance in my online biz journey. Um, this was the best investment I could have made so that I can focus on scaling my business. And then Renee said, um, you are incredibly talented. And I loved it. At the end. I had a live website.

Sarah Masci: It was the biggest relief and hands down the best web design experience ever. And then here's a few more, um, Sarah says, I think you've nailed it. When it comes to web design, I felt involved while also confident having an expert executing on the changes. It was so quick the day flew by, but I had fun watching it come to life. And then over here, this client says I have been in business for several years now, and I've worked with more than one designer and none compare with Sarah and nothing was easier than booking Sarah for a day. Um, so you can just see, these are just testimonies to show you that people, clients are loving this business model and they're paying those premium prices for this type of work. So most people start out with a day rate thinking that they need to just to sell a package, but there's a big problem with this.

Sarah Masci: Um, and let's talk about what that problem is. The big mistake was trying to sell a day rate package. What if your client isn't happy with how the design is going? What if your client changes his or her mind about something halfway through the process? What have you need your client's feedback on something in order to proceed and they don't get back to you quickly enough? How is that going to factor into your day if your client is in, is unresponsive or they're asking you for all of these changes and that's contributing to scope creep. That's why your projects are dragging on because your client keeps asking for changes. So promising a specific deliverable when the actual completion of it depends on variables that are out of your control, including the client's responsiveness to your work is not how to do day rates. So the bottom line is the amount of work that you can complete in a day is very dependent on the client.

Sarah Masci: And it's never going to be exactly the same. So the most important thing your client needs to understand is that they're booking you for a day, not a set of deliverables. So instead of promising deliverables, you're going to promise to work quickly and efficiently, and you're going to get done as much as possible, but there are absolutely no guarantees on anything. You want to follow this up by showing this potential client examples of work that you have completed in a day. So this is a big question that I get asked a lot. If we can't promise deliverables, how is the client even going to trust us? And the trust comes from your portfolio and the examples of work that you have already done. Like you want to do this work and have things in your portfolio to say, this was a one day project. This was a two day project.

Sarah Masci: This project took one and a half days because you know, you can book projects for more than one day. So you can have a client book you for two days, if they have a bigger website that they need, or a bigger project that they need your help with, you can definitely do more than one day of booking, but you're at least putting them into one day containers. But anyway, by showing your clients examples of the work, this shows them like what you are actually capable of achieving, but it also lets them know that in order to get what they want, they need to be responsive, engaged, and an active participant in the day's work. So how do we get there? How do we get that those portfolios full of work to show those potential clients? We test, we test the model, we test it, test it and test some more.

Sarah Masci: So we're going to talk about what will you offer? Um, your offer. We want to talk about being realistic about what you can get done. What is something that you are consistently asked for? And what is something that you are passionate about doing? These are the three things that you need to consider when you're considering how to test out your day rate offer. So let's dive into being realistic about what you can get done, to figure out what you can actually do, in the timeframe that you're going to allocate to your intensives. You need to start practicing, think about a current client that you're working with right now. And think about the tasks that you're working through set aside a day or half day this week and start timing yourself. No multitasking allowed. Um, multitasking, if you don't know is a time sucking monster and it eats up a huge percentage of your work hours.

Sarah Masci: So you want to block off a chunk of time that you can dedicate to this exercise and just start doing the work. I promise you will be amazed at how much you can get done when you're not jumping from one client to the next. So you want to pay attention and keep track of the following. What were you able to accomplish? How long did it take you? And if you did a four hour chunk of time, you can just double that and think about what's possible for you in a matter of eight hours. And then I want you to think about what are you consistently asked for next time? Um, you, you want to think about existing or prospective clients and what is, what is it that they repeatedly ask you to do like me? Maybe you find that your clients are always asking you to help them refresh an unprofessionally designed website or maybe creating brand identities is your specialty.

Sarah Masci: And you're always asked for branding help beyond just the creation of a core brand identity, brainstorm all the possible combinations of services or mini packages that you could create, keeping in mind, your allotted timeframe and test them out with a thorough time tracking exercise. And then lastly, just because a client wants something from you all the time, doesn't mean it's the work that you were born to do. Ultimately I want to help you get to a point where you were doing the things that you were made for work that is equally as impactful on you as it is on your clients. So you want to take some time and journal about what you want to be doing all of the time. If you could be doing anything in the world, what would that be? What does it look like? Think about your picture, perfect clients, your ideal day.

Sarah Masci: How does your work make you feel? How do your clients react to your work? What are you able to do more or better of as a result of the, of the work, um, of what's your feeling for the work that you're doing? So get specific on what you really truly want to be doing. What is that work that lights you up? So your action steps here are to think about your current work. What clients do you have, who you can test this model on. Do you have some existing projects going on that you can test and then make a list of all the work that you always get asked to do? And then think about journal on the things that you've really love and want to do more of. And that the intersection of those three things is really where your perfect offer is going to start to take shape and form.

Sarah Masci: Um, it's not going to be perfect right away. We're definitely going to be testing this out with a variety of different types of projects. Um, most of my students go through many tests of this before they act to actually figure out what is that core day rate offer that they want, I want to make. So the next thing you need to talk about, um, in order to, you know, uh, be able to test this out and make sure that it's going to work for you is you want to price your day. And let me preface this by saying that your rate will go up over time. Unlike hourly billing, your client will pay a premium price for the convenience of getting your undivided attention, the ability to be more involved in the design process and the ability to get a high quality outcome in record time.

Sarah Masci: Okay. So I want you to think about your current average hourly rate, or if you gave up hourly pricing a long time ago, just calculate how much on average you're making for the amount of hours that you're working. Then I want you to consider the number of hours that you plan to offer your intensives for. I personally out offering an eight hour intensive and I quickly found that that was too long for me. So now my intensives average around seven hours, this is super important. I want you to also factor in a few extra hours for pre and post intensive support.

Sarah Masci: So if you're charging $50 an hour and you want to do a seven hour intensive, plus you factored in three hours for pre and post intensive support, that's 10 hours for $500. Now I want you to take that total dollar amount and add 50% more. This is the buffer amount that you want to include because we always underestimate what our time is worth. Remember, people will pay more for convenience and getting their work in one day as opposed to waiting six weeks. So surely that one day is it convenience that they will pay extra for, so now we're at $750. Does that sound good to you? If not round up or down and come up with the perfect price, it feels attainable and realistic. Multiply that by the number of days that you can realistically work in in a week and then in a month.

Sarah Masci: And is that number aligned with your income goals? So let's just look at an example here. Um, if we're doing two or three days per week, that's kind of your sweet spot, starting point. You don't ever want to do more than three intensives in a week. Trust me, um, usually about two. So if we're doing two days per week as $750, that's 1500 for the week or $6,000 for the month, or if you're going to work three days per week as $750, you are looking at around $9,000 per month, or instead of just instead of 12 days per month, you could just aim for 10 days, which would give you $7,500 per month. So you get to decide what your day rate is and what, how many days a month you want to work. And so it's very easy. It's very simple math that is going to allow you to calculate number of days that you want to work, what each day is going to pay you.

Sarah Masci: And there's your monthly salary or your monthly income. So how would it feel to be making 6,000 or $9,000 or more per month just by working two or three days per week? And then imagine if you were charging a thousand dollars or 1500 per intensive, what you will work up to if you don't start there in the beginning, I personally started at $500 before I factored in the pre and post intensive work. And then I quickly increased to 750, then 950 then 1250. And I have worked my way up to charging $3,000 per day. So $3,000 per if you do the math, you who quickly realized that I do not need to work a whole lot of days per month in order to have five figure months. So just imagine how that could change your life. And then the unexpected benefit of day rates is that when you switch to day rates, you will finally have the time to create and launch passive income products.

Sarah Masci: Thanks to the free time that I now have. I've been able to create courses and programs that bring in an additional 500 to a thousand dollars every single day. And none of that was possible when I was working on the old model, because I never had time to create anything. So now I'm not only working less, but I also have income coming in from products that I had time to create. So your action steps here are to figure out what your hourly rate is, decide how many hours you want your intensives to be. And then add three or four more hours, calculate the hours by the rate, and then add 50% more and then calculate how many intensives you would need to do each month to meet your income goals. So let's recap what you learned here today. You learned at the big mistake is that when you offer day rates, you should not guarantee any specific set of deliverables.

Sarah Masci: Remember, the client is booking you for the day, not the deliverables. If you promised deliverables, what happens when the client isn't happy and they want you to go through and change the entire thing when the day is almost over, then you're stuck working through all through the night, into the next day, just to fix it because you promised a deliverable. So you do not want to promise deliverables. You're promising your time. Clients can always book another day. If they need more work done from you, they will book another day. And trust me, clients do so many of my clients have come back for more days. Um, they add on half days, there's so much opportunity with repeat day rate business. The next thing you learned was how did you determine your offer? You learned that the perfect day rate offer happens at the intersection of being realistic about what you can get done in a day.

Sarah Masci: What is something that you are always asked for? And what is something that you are passionate about doing, you learned how to calculate your day rate. You learn that calculating your day rate is not just about slapping your hourly rate on an eight hour session and calling it a day. You are allowed to charge a premium for your day rates and you learned that 10K months are possible quickly. You can quickly scale to five figure months with a day rate business model. You learned exactly how I escaped the feast or famine cycle, and now consistently earn over $25,000 per month by just doing one or two day rates per week. And finally having the time to digital offers. So now is your time. It's your time to escape the feast or famine once and for all so that you can start making more money working fewer hours and living the freedom filled life that you deserve.

Sarah Masci: I want to invite you to check out. I have a, I have a larger free masterclass is called The Life Changing Magic of Day Rates. And in addition to what I've already taught you here, there is even more that I go into in that free training. Um, we're going to talk about the five essential components of a successful day rate model. So what is the big picture? Like we've talked about the offer and the pricing, but there's so much more to day rates than just an offer and a price, like so much more to it. So we talk about that inside of The Life Changing Magic of Day Rates, you'll also receive a free copy of my day rate calculator. When you head over and sign up to watch that free masterclass, I'll give you my free day rate calculator so that you don't have to worry about all of those numbers and percentages that I just shared with you.

Sarah Masci: Um, I make it super easy if you just plug in your numbers and come up with your goals, and you'll also learn more information about my program, Day Rate Mastery, and how you can get listed in my Day Rate Creatives directory. So for all of that, goodness, you can head over to dayratemagic.com and, um, it's just a si-. It's an opt in page where you can sign up to get access to The Life Changing Magic of Day Rates. So thank you so much. Um, I just want to encourage you with what you have learned already here today. You can absolutely get started on day rates right now. You do not need to have all of this stuff to get started. I would encourage you to test it out, test out a few day rates with your existing clients, put a price on it, using the pricing, um, outline that I just showed you here today and truly test it out.

Sarah Masci: And you can see you will. I mean, I can almost guarantee you will immediately feel the relief that comes with knowing that you can work on a project for one day and be done with it and never have to think about it or worry about it again, it has truly been life-changing for me. And I would love to hear about how we know what effect this has on your life as well. So please reach out to me if you have any questions at all, I am at Instagram at Brackenhousebranding, or you can find me over there at Day Rate Magic to get access to The Life Changing Magic of Day Rates and all of this goodness. And I can't wait to get to know you more. So thank you again and have a great day.