DH ### Joel Miller
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Meet Joel Miller
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Jonathan Stark: Hello, and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I am rejoined by Joel Miller. Joel, welcome back to the show.
Joel Miller: Thank you so much for having me.
Jonathan Stark: So this is the "where are they now" episode that everyone's been waiting for, right? So Joel came on back in 2017, so almost nine years ago. I think it was episode 33, and we did a short episode about you pulling the trigger on value pricing, jumping from hourly. It's been nine years since then, and we're ready for an update. We want to hear what's going on.
Joel Miller: Yeah, and can the world be any different? Like, 2017—we've done COVID.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: We've all done more video meetings than we ever probably anticipated in our lives.
Jonathan Stark: Exactly, yeah.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: And of course, AI.
Joel Miller: Yes.
The Sky Floor Then and Now
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Jonathan Stark: So let's start off by reminding folks about who you are and what you do, and then we can jump into business stuff.
Joel Miller: Sure. So my leap-day-born identical twin brother and I own The Sky Floor, and so we're about ten and a half, coming around to ten and three quarters, I don't know. And we are a—well, a web design agency kind of originally, and now we like to say more that we're a problem-solving agency that uses digital tools to help people reach their goals. And so we're way more focused now than we were in 2017 on digging into what a potential client needs, and then really using our philosophy of lifelong learning to help meet their needs if we can execute it well.
Jonathan Stark: Mm. Okay, cool. And are you still using a value-based pricing or more productized?
Joel Miller: Oh yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Or how does— Yeah, okay, cool.
Joel Miller: I mean, there's some productization in there, but it's largely custom proposed projects that people agree to that are extremely focused on what they're going to get out of it, and then long-term relationships. I think a big difference from 2017, because it wasn't even possible then—now we've been doing this business for 18 years—is that our average client's been with us for 8 years, and our longest client's been with us for 12 years. So a lot of long-term relationships.
The Why Conversation in Practice
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Jonathan Stark: Okay, cool. So there's a lot to unpack there. So the work was sort of garden-variety web design, so people would understand what that is. And how did it start to morph? Like, what did it morph into more specifically? Because I looked at your website before we jumped on, and it's things like improving the checkout flow and—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —integrating inventory across multiple locations. So it's still sort of websitey stuff.
Joel Miller: Yes, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: But, yeah, so give us, give folks an idea of the kind of transformation of what your outcomes or outputs or deliverables, how it's changed from just garden-variety web design.
Joel Miller: Right. I think it's really, in large thanks to reading your work and speaking with you, it's moving away from having conversations where we're like, "Yeah, we can do that. What do you want? What do you need? A website? We make websites. Sure. How much is that? That's around this." And just having these very flat conversations that really, frankly, aren't convincing anyway to a potential client, because at that point—and especially now, right—why don't they just go to Upwork? Why don't they now just go to Claude or ChatGPT? So the difference was really buying into what you call the why conversation and just continually peeling back layers in conversations and having the confidence to do that and the confidence to ask those questions that I was curious about—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —and just sit there in the silence and be like, all right, now you reveal the thing you didn't want to reveal to me. And then I'll get excited about how I might be able to help you. And once I'm excited about that, it becomes—the clients usually get excited too, and it becomes new work, a lot of times in new ways that we weren't expecting to be doing something.
Jonathan Stark: But I'm going to assume it's always sort of webby, right? It's always digital.
Joel Miller: Yeah, it's very much always digital. Like, we have one client right now who—we're the remote marketing team, so we do two websites for them, any kind of digital product that they're like—you know, we've created LMS systems for them, we—
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: —we help optimize their Salesforce, and they're actually helping replace their CRM now, and we're running their Google Ads and Facebook Ads. So it's kind of—that's why it's like, it's a little tough. Like, I still sometimes feel convicted when I read your emails about getting very specific—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —about who you serve, because it's been hard for us to do that. But don't listen to me if you're listening to this—listen to Jonathan.
Jonathan Stark: I'll bet you—
Joel Miller: Go, go his route.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, I'll bet you there's some patterns, though, so—
Joel Miller: Yeah, I bet, I bet.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so, I mean, it's not a vertical, and I saw that from your website.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: But I wouldn't be surprised if you are working with companies of a certain size and working directly with the founder or someone very close to the top.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing, you know, within an order of magnitude revenue from each other. You know, maybe I'm wrong, but is that more or less true?
Joel Miller: No, that's very fair. Yeah, definitely, right? I mean, so whether or not it's a shoe brand that has 25 stores and needed their website to represent the locations and the inventory and all those kinds of things, or a tutoring company that is trying to expand their footprint because they tutor online now thanks to COVID, right? There are some similarities in their size and the problems usually that the people near the top are trying to solve.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the reason I can guess at that is because value-based pricing doesn't really work unless you're talking to someone who—
Joel Miller: Exactly.
Jonathan Stark: —really has control over the budget. It feels like their money, or they're strongly incentivized based on their spend of their department. Like, they might be a department inside of a big company, but it operates kind of like a small or medium-sized business.
Joel Miller: That's right. It needs someone who can actually determine that what you're pitching is valuable to someone, right? Otherwise, to them, it's just, "Well, we'll do our due diligence and get back to you."
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, we'll shop around.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Building Client Lifetime Value
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Jonathan Stark: So what do you—let's talk about the customer lifetime value and your really long-duration client relationships. What's the secret there? Like, how does it not happen that, you know, a big project comes along, say the inventory thing for the shoe company comes along, and then it's done? At some point it's done. And is there a gap there before they say, hey, we've got a new project, we should call Joel again? Or is there some kind of ongoing relationship or monthly retainer or something that keeps you engaged through what I'm imagining are some up-and-down projects? When I say up and down, I mean level of effort goes up and then it kind of launches and then next thing. So how do you keep that continuity?
Joel Miller: Yes. We always launch or propose in every project that we're available to them in the future and kind of outline what that looks like—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —with a maintenance agreement or some type of ongoing relationship. But what's been really powerful for us—and I don't know, it might work for other people, I don't know—is trying to convince them that, because it's been important to our clients, we absolutely want them to be able to do the work themselves after we are done with our work.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And then, invariably, when we get done with our work, they say, "We really want you to keep doing the work." And so it's not like a Jedi mind trick or something, but it's interesting that sometimes you get to offer something as a benefit, as a selling point, that you make yourself so indispensable, they just can't imagine doing it without you.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. And does it evolve into sort of additional projects, or is it more like there's one big project and then it's updates and security patches and tweaks and little feature additions? Or do you see this pattern where like, okay, we did the big inventory thing two years ago, and now we want to incorporate AI into the sales system or something like that, and it's like a brand-new project? Does that happen? I would imagine it has to if these are eight-year relationships. So when that happens, and say they've been in a maintenance agreement, how do you structure the new project work? Does it just roll into, you know, they're paying you 5 or 10 grand a month to help them with whatever, and you just keep doing that with the new thing? Or is it like a discrete proposal for some new work?
Joel Miller: We've had it happen both ways, but I would say my absolute favorite—well, there are two things. So I'm going to think about the tutoring company because that's one of my favorite clients.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
The Client Who Came Back
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Joel Miller: And with them—well, first, interestingly, quick side tangent—they left us. We did maybe work for them around 2017 or 2018. They said—and it's just my twin brother and I, we still do all the work.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: We believe in that. We believe in you can scale without headcount, and—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: So they left us. They were like, "We need a 50-person agency, and we need that full service." That gets you, right?
Jonathan Stark: Okay.
Joel Miller: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they replaced the website we made for them, and we weren't really doing strategy for them at that point. And they, for 18 months, they work with them, and then I get a call from someone on the team who says, "I really don't know why we left you. Here's what's going on. Business is not going well. Things are a little bit headed—you know, the graph doesn't look good. We don't like the experience with the company. Not only do we want to come back, but do you do the type of work we think we thought you didn't do?" So, because they kind of remember, right? So that kind of shows that in that era I wasn't doing a great job of demonstrating how we help people solve their problems across a lot of disciplines.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And so I said, "Yeah, of course we do that." So they signed on, and what I love about working with them is that we have a value-priced monthly agreement—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —that allows us to be strategic partners. Jargon, right? Like, what that means is that we are in calls constantly with them looking for opportunities to solve a problem they might not even see.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And because we bring those things up, we're extremely valuable to them. Well, that has spawned other projects. So we have the very lucrative monthly engagement with them, but then we have one-off proposals that also happen where we're saying, okay, we're going to tackle this piece separately of that other work. And here's what that looks like, here's what you're going to get out of it, and here's the project price for that. So it's kind of both, in my ideal world.
Value-Based Monthly Retainers
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Jonathan Stark: Okay. And how—so I don't hear too often people who are doing a monthly recurring situation where the price was based on value. A lot of times people just set a price and it's sort of take it or leave it. If you want my brain in the room, it's 10K or 5K or 20K, whatever it is. And, you know, they just—but that's a very specific kind of retainer. There's certainly no reason why you couldn't set a price based on value, but with an open-ended engagement, it's not obvious to me how you would define the success criteria for an open-ended engagement. So what—how do you even do that? Is it really value-based, or is it just custom per client that's more on the areas of involvement and a little more scopy?
Joel Miller: Right. Yeah, I think that—I can only speak specifically of the example I was just giving with the tutoring company. It is value-based because we're in such a tight cycle of demonstrating what our both strategic work and some of our execution is actually doing for the bottom line, that keeping the engagement is a no-brainer to them because they very tangibly see it. So it's somewhere maybe in the middle, right? Like, we're definitely in there doing strategy work. It is sort of "we want The Sky Floor to be in the room with us." But there's also some real execution work that still happens within that.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. So the ROI is very clear.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: So they're like, well, why wouldn't we keep doing this? We give them a dollar, we get two back, so that seems like a good thing to keep doing.
Joel Miller: Yeah, exactly.
Scaling Without Headcount
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Jonathan Stark: Okay, so let's talk about capacity, because if it's just the two of you and you're sort of super dedicated to that approach, which I applaud—what happens when—and you listed, I mean, you've got all these long-term clients, there must be ten, right? Like, how do you not get too busy?
Joel Miller: Right. Yeah, and it's interesting because if you look back when it comes to busyness, probably in 2017 and certainly before that, we were co-founders in a startup for a while as well as doing our work.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: And I was working 80-hour weeks and making some tiny hilarious fraction of what we do now.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And now I have a normal life, and I turn off my notifications at night, on the weekends, and I just don't let it rule us unless there's an emergency.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: So, how do we do that? We do that with the use of tools, typically, right? How can we gain efficiencies? And then another thing that I think I was already working on in 2017, but getting your emails has been huge. I mean, reading some of your books too, to like get permission. I kind of needed permission from someone who's ahead of me.
Jonathan Stark: I do hear that sometimes, like, oh, okay, this is not crazy necessarily, or maybe we're both crazy, but someone else is doing it. Yeah.
Joel Miller: Yes, exactly. So finding tools—and the latest one might be AI, but it's really, that's just the latest one. I mean, all along the way, there have been opportunities to find something that costs us a little bit now, a little bit both in cost and maybe learning curve or something like that, but it's just exponential in our ability to deliver a quality product—
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: —so that we're still providing that value in a way that seems obvious that we're worth it, but it makes the work efficient and easier. Maybe, you know, easier, simple, however you want to put it.
Jonathan Stark: Right. Yeah, just more leverage. So can you give us an example, just so—are you talking about things that, I don't know, like you buy some kind of plugin on behalf of the client to make the project go faster, or you're talking more like administrative things behind the scenes, like project management or something like that?
Joel Miller: I mean, all of the above, but I'll pick specifically on—because it's already shifting so fast, it doesn't even—you know, nothing's a secret, really.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: But the moment that—I think specifically in the WordPress realm—that Elementor came out, that was a huge win for us because it made all this tedious manual work we were doing before a lot easier for us to set up, and it was developer-friendly, so we could do some custom things with it—
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: —that felt very impressive to the client, but it was so much easier to accomplish than it was three years before that.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And so that's when you really unlock that it doesn't matter to the client how you do something.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: What matters to them is if you're actually accomplishing the thing you said you were going to do.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And that it benefits them. And so that was like something to also get over, but that may be the number one tipping point where we were able to—I don't know, probably do four or five times the amount of work with one tool—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —when we're doing WordPress specifically.
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Joel Miller: And to actually do it faster so they're happier, you know, still produce a great outcome, and actually also have that little built-in lever of, "Hey, you get to manage this if you want," and then we always end up doing it anyway.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Are you sort of standardized in WordPress, or doesn't matter? You'll do Shopify and anything?
Joel Miller: Doesn't matter. Yeah, we've done Shopify, we've worked in Webflow, we've worked in Craft CMS, we've done some things from absolute scratch. So it really depends on what's going to serve the client the best.
Indirect Word of Mouth
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Jonathan Stark: Mm, okay. So do you get—it almost feels like you wouldn't want leads if you're keeping all of these clients for such a long time.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: But of course, you always are going to get leads, and you probably—
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: —do want them. So even if it's, you know, "get on the waiting list" or something, where do they come from? Is it just word of mouth, or what are you doing to attract new clients?
Joel Miller: It is word of mouth. I would say, although a certain kind of word of mouth, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I call it indirect word of mouth.
Jonathan Stark: Okay.
Joel Miller: Like, the warmest, most direct referral for us almost never works out, even though—
Jonathan Stark: Hm.
Joel Miller: —the person comes to us and they want to meet, and they're like, "You know, Gary told me about you."
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: Let's meet, and then it always sort of fizzles out. You know, not every time, but a lot of the time.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And my theory on that is that they didn't get the discovery process, that a lot of the people who are decision makers, they want to have a little bit of that.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And so they're less likely than someone who just heard about us a while ago, and then they're coming back around, and it's the right season for them. Those are the word of mouth that convert for us, and not the ones who are like, "You must use The Sky Floor." Probably not working out.
Jonathan Stark: That's pretty interesting. And so say more about the indirect word of mouth. How do you foster that, if you do anything? Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: You know, we haven't. It's something that when I am advising someone I'm mentoring, I give them a couple of ideas, you know, at certain points in the project, asking about their networks, just some basic stuff that I think we've all heard. But we haven't done it for ourselves, and you're kind of right, like, we always have enough people. We haven't been in a famine cycle in so long that—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —we have enough ongoing work. I'm not really hungry for leads, and we get the opportunity to then really vet people and make sure we're going to be partners—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —and not just a client-vendor relationship.
What Keeps Clients for a Decade
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Jonathan Stark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's a great position to be in, of course.
Jonathan Stark: And I would say that the—in case this wasn't obvious to the dear listener, of course—I talk to lots of people that have sort of, kind of this business model—
Joel Miller: Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —shape, let's say.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: And the thing that is really standout here that you guys have unlocked is the really long client engagements.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: I don't see that as often—
Joel Miller: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: —especially when it's projecty, when it's projects come and go and there's a sort of, you know, maintenancey—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —period in between. I haven't seen a ton of that.
Joel Miller: Hmm.
Jonathan Stark: I'm trying to think of the only example that I can think of—maybe it's not so different. Okay, so there's a sort of all-you-can-eat subscription service type of model—
Joel Miller: Sure.
Jonathan Stark: —that I know, probably a half-dozen people use, and they're agency types, so design or development.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: And those are sort of like a staff-aug model with experts and not freelance, you know, sort of like newbie freelancer types. So you get these recognized experts at this particular thing, and, you know, it's X dollars per month. Everybody gets the same price. It's right on the website. You can click here to sign up now and pay your 10,000 dollars, and you get like an expert or three working on your problem, like the next day. Right. And those can go fairly long-term. Sometimes people pause, sometimes people cancel, but once they're rolling, as long as, you know, the clients at the end of the month, they're like, yeah, that was totally worth it, that was totally worth it, that was totally worth it. It just goes on for a long time. But your model sounds—it's definitely different because you do have project proposals that are sprinkled in there.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: And the price for the ongoing monthly thing is different on different, you know, depending on the client situation. So, you know, what could you say to people—what do you think is different about what you guys are doing that maybe people could, who are in the more projecty feast-famine kind of thing, that could keep the clients engaged with them, that would smooth out those dips—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —and make it less important to generate more leads.
Joel Miller: Right. Yeah, I think it really comes down—for us, it's been two things. One, recognizing that we have so much value to offer, and we've gained so many different areas of expertise, and we shouldn't be afraid of talking about that throughout the project. So the project is—you have an audience right there with someone who already knows who you are.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And so if you're not—it's not about sales, even though, of course, sales is not a dirty word, it's part of all of our lives.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: But it's not about just being salesy. It's about, again, focusing on your client. What do they need? What do they want? But really, what do they need, and what maybe are they not seeing that you—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —can then say, "Oh"—I mean, and sometimes I think it's okay to be honest as well if you see something and you're interested in tackling it and saying, "You know, I don't actually know exactly how to do that yet.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: But I believe in being a partner with you. I want to see you succeed in this area, and I think it's a big gap. I'll either help you find out how to do that, or I'll figure out how to do it myself."
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And just having that kind of authenticity and honesty and openness, and then confidence to claim it—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —seems to open those doors. And then I would say, like, long-term, just being personable. Like, I'm—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: I've been saying more lately, like, people over profits for us. So, like, the—it's, we're focused on the relationships within the client work more than anything else.
Joel Miller: It's so weird because I don't know how you—I think every, all of us can grow in that, but it's such an important factor.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, and I know exactly what you're saying. It's really hard to give anybody prescriptive advice about how to be likable or something like that. It's—
Joel Miller: Right, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: It's like, how do you tell someone how to do that? But it's really important. I would say that the people I'm working with right now who have no problem getting leads are super smart, likable—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —and they get energy from being around other people, which I—I'm better one-on-one with people. With like a big group, I start to feel drained. Like, I can do it. I like, you know, speaking—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —at conferences and things and getting mobbed afterwards—I like doing that, but it drains me. So, and I see in these other people, they're the opposite.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: And, you know, I think it's—I don't know, something you can learn, but certainly you can still foster one-on-one relationships, right? And yeah, I wish there was a way to say—it's not "be nicer." It's like, actually, really actually care about them getting better, you know? I guess probably if there was one thing I would say, it's like—if you genuinely care and it's just oozing off of you, you obviously—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —totally care about your client's success.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Profit, you know, you just said people over profits. Like, that's almost like a superpower to actually care that they're better off, and it's not just like, "Oh, they closed the deal, now, like, what are we going to do?"
Joel Miller: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: So—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, go ahead.
Joel Miller: Well, I was going to say, like—and this is probably on the wrong track here. I listen to a lot of true crime, so I'm very intrigued by conmen because I listen to them, and I'm like, these guys can sell anything to anyone, right? Like, in unbelievable circumstances. And then I think, if I could go back in time—if you're listening to this, like, one way to kickstart your career—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —is to be a conman who can follow through. So be inspired by the con. Like, be a sociopath when it comes to confidence, but a counselor when it comes to empathy—
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Joel Miller: —and your ability to care about the person in front of you.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And if you can marry those two things up, like, I think you can double your business, triple your business in the first few years where a lot of people are just learning, like, they're accidentally learning those skills versus developing them.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they know how to do their thing, like their craft or their—
Joel Miller: Right, right.
Jonathan Stark: —designing website or whatever, but they don't know how to do the client relationship thing. And a lot of people, especially when they come from employment—they've been employed.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: This was totally me, where it was—you know, I had one real job my whole life, like corporate job, and it was very—it was sort of a contentious thing, like I felt like I was underpaid, and like they say they'd give me a raise, and then the time comes and they're like, "Oh, sorry, budget cuts." And you know, it was just very contentious.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And so then when—and I see that in a lot of people—and then you go out on your own, and there's still this residual me-versus-them thing with the client.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: So you really had to—you know, it's extremely beneficial to get rid of that, and hourly billing is one of the things that really feeds that.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: That thing.
Joel Miller: It creates toxic relationships—
Jonathan Stark: Toxic.
Joel Miller: —immediately.
Jonathan Stark: Immediately, yeah.
Spotting Hidden Opportunities
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Jonathan Stark: So let's jump back a little bit. There's a cool little side road we just went down, but there's something I'd love to get a little bit more specifics on, if you can think of an example.
Joel Miller: Sure.
Jonathan Stark: You do the project with the client, they trust you, they're happy, they're getting good ROI, and you said something like—and then you'd notice something that maybe they didn't notice that you think would help them in some way, deliver some ROI, maybe bottom line, or maybe just less stress.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: Can you think of an example of something like that, where that actually happened, and, you know, you propose it to the client, and they're like, "Sure, give it a try." You know, like, what's—just to give people, like, to get their gears turning, maybe—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —on a client project they're on right now. Kind of like, what should they be looking for, and how would they recognize it when they saw it?
Joel Miller: Right, yeah. One example immediately comes to mind, which is that we were in a client's CallRail in order to—
Jonathan Stark: CallRail?
Joel Miller: That's like call tracking for leads, so it, you know, differentiates the number on the website with a pool of numbers, dynamically changes them so you can see where people are coming from. And, which is a fascinating tool, it's great. It also has the ability to record the incoming calls if you want. And now—you be cautious, I have to say—if you were going to try this on your client and they're the type of people who would not like this, please don't do this, and don't say I told you. But we're in there, and I am so fascinated by the sales process—and I think you have to kind of be, right, if you're in calls where you're selling yourself. I started listening to their calls, and then hearing their—they don't call them a sales team there—but hearing their team and how they interacted with the clients and thinking, "Oh man, this is crazy. They are leaving so much money on the table because of little things that their sales team is doing that they don't even realize." And so I then went through and listened to probably 30 hours of calls.
Jonathan Stark: Wow.
Joel Miller: And I'm—that's sometimes—
Jonathan Stark: You're just nerding out.
Joel Miller: Yeah, I'm nerding out.
Jonathan Stark: This is on the side.
Joel Miller: Like, yeah, I'm not saying you guys gotta—I mean, they're not going to pay me for the hours anyway, right? So it was worth it to me still. But they—so I'm listening to all this because I find it curious, and I found six, to me, places that these sales reps are consistently falling short.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: And then I thought, well, there's a—we can't use the human element for this because it's just going to be such a waste of time to go through this amount of things, but it has an API and, you know, it pulls the transcript in. So I made—and this is a couple years ago now, so I might do it differently today—but I made a custom GPT that used the criteria and graded the calls on what was going on and created a doc and emailed me and the marketing director with the results of those things so we could instantly see how things were trending, if there was anything coming up on the call that wasn't being surfaced by the sales team, because they, you know, sometimes they handle other issues.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And made that part of the engagement, and they just loved that, of course, because—
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: —it gave them visibility into something that they didn't think they would get visibility into, and we weren't there to be the sales team helpers—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —consultants—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —right? So it's stuff like that. It's like just being curious, taking things from your own experience, and again, with the right partnership and framing of things, you can find, I think, a lot of opportunities.
Think Like a Business Owner
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Jonathan Stark: Mm. So let me call something out, which maybe is not obvious to you, but might be—
Joel Miller: Okay, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —the dear listener might be a little mind-blown. You're a web designer, you're a web developer.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: What are you doing listening to sales calls? What do you know about that? You know what I mean? It's outside, way outside—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —of the skill set that you started with in 2017 or when we talked last. That's a different skill set completely. And I was kind of hoping it would go in this direction when I asked the question, which is—one of the things you can do to find new opportunities that maybe the client is blind to—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —is think more like a business person and less like a web designer—
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: —or a web developer or whatever.
Jonathan Stark: And as you—it's good for you because then you're doing things where you're working on your business more and you're, you know, these other components of running a business. It's not just like "I need to be awesome at WordPress and the world will beat a path to my door."
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: You still have to build a business around it, and if it's just you, then you have to do all the other things. You know, maybe you have someone do your accounting and legal, but you're going to have to do your marketing and sales and delivery and all of the things that lead up to, you know, post-delivery. All that stuff, it's all on you. And if you're paying attention to your own business, separate from you as the employee in the business, then you'll start to think more like a business owner.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And then you'll see things where there are just opportunities laying around, like money just falling on the floor—
Joel Miller: That's right.
Jonathan Stark: —that they're not bending over to pick up because they don't see it's there. And maybe it's not always going to work, but when they trust you to—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, then they can—you just like, yeah, give it a try, see if it works.
Joel Miller: And then you do it, and that becomes something, a skill you develop further.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: Oftentimes, while someone else is paying you to do it, and now you have this thing in your pocket that you can start to see it for other people too.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And I wouldn't say that your skill set's getting fractured—I think it's maturing.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And you might actually find a niche that's like, this is the thing that really gets me excited to get up in the morning. So maybe—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —your business pivots a little bit, and there's more value to provide there, so then there's a little bit more opportunity for income as well.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, I mean, I'm an example. Like, I got to the point where after, I don't know, 15 years of software development and then consulting, I was like thinking so much more about the business that it was kind of like, responsive web design—who cares? Like, a thousand people can do that, like—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —but not a thousand people can run around the world telling people to stop billing by the hour. You know, there's not that many of those people.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: So, so what are we saying—like, don't be afraid. It's almost like—it's more than "don't be afraid of it." It's like, look for opportunities to get better at the business stuff because, you know, a lot of people want to say, "Oh, we're not a vendor, we're a partner." It's like, well, if you can't think like the business owner who you're serving, then you're just showing up with a toolbox and saying, "Tell me what to do." And you might do a great job with the tools, and you build the thing that they asked for, and they're happy with it. But this feels like, to me, this would be the takeaway for someone who does want that continuity between projects.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And to stay in the room—it's because, Joel, you're actually partnering with the client as like two business people.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: Not like a—you happen to be skilled in the digital space and—
Joel Miller: Yes, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —like lots of different things. So this is one of those examples where it might sound to the listener like Joel is a generalist because it sounds like—"WordPress, whatever, Squarespace, Shopify, we don't really specialize in any tool." But what you're turning into, if it's not obvious to you, is like a business consultant or like a digital transformation person.
Joel Miller: Yes, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: And that's a specific thing. And you benefit from having—not deep necessarily, but like broad experience, a working knowledge of lots of things.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: So that you can take stock of the landscape and say like, "Okay, in this particular situation, based on the constraints of the client or maybe the industry they're in or if there are regulations or something, we can pull in these 10 things and put together the pieces there." So it could sound to someone who really just thinks of their craft as the place where they could specialize or stay general—you're specializing into a small-business consulting role, digital transformation, that kind of thing, and having a working knowledge of lots of different tools, maybe not having gone super deep on all of them but maybe some. And the reason why I'm talking about it so much is because it's not being a generalist.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: It's the way that a consultant would be.
Joel Miller: Yes, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: And the skills that you're really developing are—
Joel Miller: Yeah, it kind of started off as a joke sometimes when I'd get off a call and then I'd call Alan, my brother, and be like, "Well, that was another episode of Alan and Joel Business Therapy or Alan and Joel Business School." And then I started to realize that that's part of our perspective that is positioning us as valuable.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: And it also shifts that relationship again, so it can be a partnership, just like you're saying. If there's this power dynamic you're trying to avoid where you're just the vendor and the client's in charge, well, start to develop a perspective where you have more of a consultant mindset, and it'll instantly start to erase that gap because—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —now you're approaching it like you're on the same team, looking at it from the same perspective. You're not adversaries, you're—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —partners.
Jonathan Stark: Right. Right, and that's where it actually helps if you really care that they succeed.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And if you're setting prices based on value, you really care. Like—
Joel Miller: Yeah, right.
Jonathan Stark: You're one step away from almost like a success fee type of business model where you only—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —get paid if they have some big win, like a salesperson might have, or getting paid in equity or something like that, where you're super aligned with the business success. So, yeah, that's great. I love it.
So it's a nice, normal, organic transition. It's been nine years since we last talked, and moving into that space where you can kind of look around once you're inside the business, you're in the guts of the business, all of their digital systems, it sounds like.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And just being exposed to that, but having a business mindset. Think of how scary it is for a business owner to hire a freelancer for—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —100 or 200 bucks an hour to take orders, and you know full well, as the business owner, that you might be telling them the wrong thing to do. Like, they might be great at doing everything you tell them, and maybe they aren't great, maybe you're telling them the wrong thing, and then there's this invoice, invoice, invoice, invoice, and they're building things, and you're getting deliverables, but they're not moving the needle at all.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: It's terrifying. And I've hired people by the hour to either do things around the house, or a long time ago, I've hired people to do, you know, design people for my website, just as an experiment—end up throwing it out. But yeah, it's terrifying. So if you aren't that way, and you actually care about them getting better, you can really partner with them. Your compensation is not based on the hours that you put in, so you might as well do it as quick and good as you possibly can. Everybody wins.
Why do you—just using yourself as an example—why do you think so many people, I think a lot of people take a long time to get there.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And a lot of people never do, and they never kind of drop the employee mindset, they never drop the hourly billing. It's like, "I put in the time, you owe me the money, sorry." And what do you think it was about you that, I don't know, that got you moving in that direction? It sounds very organic.
Curiosity and the Entrepreneurial Spirit
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Joel Miller: It was very organic, and I can't maybe pick anything but the word curiosity.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: So my brother and I are both very naturally curious people, and we love—we didn't go to college. We had the benefit of going to an amazing private school—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —that was like a college prep school, so we also disappointed everyone with not going to college because we ruined their stat for the year. But we learned from a young age, and our dad's a cinematographer who worked for himself. Our papa owned a store on State Street, downtown Chicago. I don't know if it's in the blood or what it is, but we have this notion growing up that you can carve your own path. And to me, that's what entrepreneurship is at the end of the day. So I would kind of call all of that the entrepreneurial spirit.
Jonathan Stark: Mm, yeah.
Joel Miller: That it's like—on some level, not every level, but on some level, I'm in charge of my own story, my own destiny. And if you believe that, then you have to believe that the things you learn and pick up along the way and the ways you improve yourself matter not only to your tiniest sphere—which is you—
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: —then to your family, but then the other people you interact with. And if you want to run your own business, well, your sphere is even bigger.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And I can help all these people. I mean, I don't know how many millions of dollars hinge on some of the work we do per year and how many hundreds of employees. There's a lot of them.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And I view it as like—I get to operate in this sphere that helps all of those people while I'm also learning and improving myself. I'm sort of rambling about this, but that's kind of—
Jonathan Stark: No, no, it makes sense.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Joel Miller: The thread is just the curiosity and the caring about the other people tied into the improving of the world around you, bringing order to chaos.
Jonathan Stark: Right. It makes total sense because if that's a driving force, then you're naturally going to kind of morph in the directions where you can maximize that positive influence across that whole sphere. So, of course—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —you're almost certainly—no one would be equipped to be able to deliver value or make people's lives better across—you have to kind of evolve.
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: And I know from talking to lots of people and from even going through some pivots myself, it can be a little bit of an identity—your identity might try and stop you from doing it because one of these things that you see, the opportunities, like listening to the sales calls and being like, "There are some opportunities for improvement here"—which is so far outside of what a web developer is, it's comical.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: And it might be, it's like, "Oh, well, I don't want to be a sales consultant," or like, "I don't want to introduce myself at parties as this other thing. I'm used to telling people I'm this thing and that they know me as this thing." And that can be a little bit of a cage that you put yourself in. And if you don't—this is important. This is actually really important because now that I'm talking about it, I see it happen all the time, where people are blind to those little opportunities because "that's not my job."
Joel Miller: Right. And that's the employee mindset, right? What's my job description?
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: You know? I don't go outside those borders, and if things start to change—and I don't disagree necessarily if you're an employee—but "they've changed what I do. I need a new job description." And so if you leave that world—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —all of a sudden, it can be hard to let go of the fact that you don't have a job description, potentially.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm, right.
Joel Miller: Like—or maybe you change what that means to you.
Jonathan Stark: Right, you're positioned in your own mind as something. And when there are opportunities that fall outside of the responsibilities of that kind of person, you might just not even see them. You'd just be blind to them. Even if they're staring you in the face. And so that professional identity that you have—and I'm always telling people, like, position yourself very clearly so people can understand what you do.
Joel Miller: Of course.
Jonathan Stark: But at the same time, you don't want that to become a cage or a prison that you're stuck inside of. So notice that stuff, and maybe if your ultimate goal is to positively impact the lives of 10,000 people across your client base and their employees and family and friends, you're going to evolve over time, and that might take you in some really unexpected places, and that's—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —normal, that's totally fine. And so now you have permission to evolve, dear listener.
Joel Miller: Yes, yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, yeah.
People Over Profits
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Joel Miller: Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of related, but one kind of circle back to people over profits and that idea. One thing—and I have to tell you this because you've been influential for me in where my life is now. I mean, I'm sitting in a house we built two years ago on 43 acres in northern Michigan. I used to live in Chicago.
Jonathan Stark: Oh, wow.
Joel Miller: And we can afford all of this, right, because of shifts we've made in our business. And so I feel like I'm a success story of your work, so thank you.
Jonathan Stark: Cool.
Joel Miller: But also, like, something that we always liked—being generous people—but nothing increases your ability to be generous more than not worrying about money. Not having to— And so—
Jonathan Stark: Yes.
Joel Miller: And even professionally, like, I love to help my friends with things that they need, and it's often a learning experience for new ways to provide value, but I can do those things because I'm value-pricing my work in a way that shows that we have a lot of worth, and then pays the bills so healthily that now I can actually be more generous with my time and even with my clients.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Having bad cash flow—it is almost impossible to not have a scarcity mindset.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: If you don't know how you're going to pay your rent next month, ooh, that's a tough spot to be in, and it really makes it harder to be generous and to be in an abundance mindset.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: So, you know, so stop it. And not to always pull it back—I mean, the show's called Ditching Hourly—but it's almost, with some exceptions, almost impossible to get to that place when you're trading time for money.
Joel Miller: I mean—
Jonathan Stark: I would call it impossible.
Joel Miller: Yeah, right.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, I mean, I know some people that charge 400 dollars an hour.
Joel Miller: Yeah, right. Your best—yeah, I was about to say, your best effort is just getting to that, but at that point, don't you think that they just haven't realized that they are value pricing, essentially? Because—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, it gets to a point where— Yeah.
Joel Miller: They found the right audience who thinks that they're worth that.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: When you're in that zone, you're so close.
Jonathan Stark: You're so close.
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Right. You know, lawyers that get 2,000 dollars an hour. It's like, people who are hiring them don't care about the money.
Joel Miller: No. Yeah, you could—they could say whatever, basically.
Jonathan Stark: And it's—
Joel Miller: Right, they can basically say whatever.
Jonathan Stark: Yep, 100 grand, great, do it. They're right there, right? They just—they're used to billing by the hour.
Joel Miller: That's right.
Jonathan Stark: So most people, though, are in competition, or at least they're attracting the kinds of clients who think they're in competition with people in the Philippines that are charging 10 dollars an hour to do—
Joel Miller: Right.
Jonathan Stark: —the same thing, air quotes. And it's just very difficult to get to abundance. It's very difficult to get to the 40 acres in the Upper Peninsula, or whatever you said. So yeah. Cool.
Never Stop Asking Why
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Jonathan Stark: Well, where should we wrap up? I'm looking at the clock on the wall. What would be—maybe a riff on people over profits or, you know—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —like what someone who's stuck in, maybe not hourly, but maybe they are—I think the really interesting thing about your story, the unusual thing about your story is how long the clients are staying with you.
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: So what's maybe something inspirational you could say to folks like that, that they—
Joel Miller: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: —can start doing today on existing clients that would perhaps move them in this direction?
Joel Miller: Yeah, that's a great question. When I think of how we've been able to maintain clients for as long as we have, and then like that—that it's tied to, as we've discussed, how you care about them, genuinely, authentically care about them as people.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: I think that a lot of it comes down to asking the right kinds of questions, even in the client engagement, even when you're in the relationship.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: So if you've listened to what Jonathan says, and you're doing why conversations for the beginning phase, and you get through some of those hidden layers, and the client says something that they maybe didn't expect to say, and they're giving you the cheat sheet for your proposal—that's all great. Don't lose that attitude when you're actually working with them. Don't let their cows become sacred to you.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: Keep asking why. Keep trying to figure out what's going on. You don't have to be weird about it, but—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —look for natural opportunities to check in truly about what's going on instead of just getting into the status quo. "This is just what we do, we have this monthly meeting—"
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: "—we say the things."
Jonathan Stark: Are you actually excavating—
Joel Miller: What's going on?
Jonathan Stark: Yes.
Joel Miller: And even in the relationship when it comes to you—don't be afraid to ask to find out what their expectations are for you. It doesn't mean you always have to meet them, but you certainly can't guide their expectations for you if you don't ask about it.
Jonathan Stark: Mm.
Joel Miller: And so I think if you do those things and you're honest—so you also tell them when something's going wrong—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —and you say, "I did that."
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Joel Miller: When you do those things, people want to keep coming back because the trust that is built—it's really about trust.
Jonathan Stark: Trust, yep.
Joel Miller: —is completely irreplaceable and—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —almost impossible to value. So—
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: —in that it's highly valuable.
Jonathan Stark: Mm. Yeah, and the trust thing just keeps coming up more and more now. AI—people think they can—
Joel Miller: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: —do their own stuff. It's like, well, do you trust it? Really? If this is important, you might want to actually get somebody who knows what they're doing. But that was a great answer to a really hard question, and I love it. So it's kind of like, don't stop having the why conversation once you're in the engagement. Yeah.
Joel Miller: Exactly. I mean, that's going to be—if you need a little bit of a catalyst for how you do that, you can just take those lessons about the proposal phase, the prospecting phase, and bring that into the relationship.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: And you will find that you not only find out things you didn't know before, but you'll grow that sense of partnership and trust automatically—
Jonathan Stark: Yep.
Joel Miller: —just by asking a question and listening.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, imagine that.
Joel Miller: Right?
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Cool, this has been great. Thanks so much, Joel.
Joel Miller: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Jonathan Stark: We'll have to do it again in nine years. See how this goes then.
Joel Miller: That's right. We'll probably be robots or like heads in jars or something.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: Heads in jars.
Jonathan Stark: Heads in jars, right.
Joel Miller: Yeah, that's right. Futurama.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, instead of heads and squares.
Joel Miller: That's right.
Where to Find Joel
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Jonathan Stark: Well, cool. Where can people go to find out more about what you guys are doing, maybe get in touch with you, follow you on LinkedIn, something like that?
Joel Miller: Yeah, you can find us at theskyfloor.com. And I also have a little thing that probably relates to your audience. It's theskyfloor.com/capacitytax, and it's just a very simple thing to kind of help you see if you have a client that is taking up—is probably stopping you from your next growth pivot or moment in your business when you do what we do.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Joel Miller: So you can go there and try that out and see if it helps reveal anything about—
Jonathan Stark: Cool.
Joel Miller: —about that client that you might think of when I say that.
Jonathan Stark: I like it, I like it. Great. All right, well, thanks again, Joel.
Joel Miller: Yeah, you're welcome.
Jonathan Stark: All right, folks, that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time for Ditching Hourly. Bye.
