How to Badass Your Creative Business – In Just 7 Minutes with Pia Silva

Resources/Links:

• Get the FREE Price To Freedom mini-course: Calculate your key price that you MUST charge to achieve the life & business you want: www.piasilva.com/badass/

Summary

Is your brand message aligned to your key audiences? Why is your brand messaging seem to transcend to be very ‘generic’?

Do you want that cut-through to happen? A show-stopping moment that makes people crave to know more? Then, you should probably zoom out and step back and assess your business’ best opportunities if you are willing to grow and expand.

Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Do not become another ‘me too’ brand.

Pia Silva is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author of Badass Your Brand. She helps service businesses badass their brand and business to scale their freedom with profit. She is a weekly Forbes contributor and has been featured on MSNBCs Your Business, Entrepreneur On Fire, and the UGurus and Million Dollar Women Summit.

In this episode, Pia shares how she helps creative services business owners uplevel their brand to the point where they have freedom from profits.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:38 – Pia’s ideal client: “One to three-person creative service businesses who are super badass at what they do.”
• 01:51 – Problem Pia helps solve: Generic, unprofitable business, overworked, underpaid, always looking for clients because they’re so generic, and they just fade into a sea of sameness.
• 02:45 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Pia: “Well, they are frustrated that they are so good at what they do and their clients are so happy and yet they’re working all the time and they’re not making enough money. They’re always pitching for work, and they’re not always winning it. All their projects go out of scope, they never end on time. They never feel like they’re getting paid enough. They can’t charge what they need to make cents. And they never know where their next client is coming from.”
• 03:47 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: “They are often casting a wide net. So, I need more clients so I’m going to try to work with everyone. I’m going to bend myself to try to pitch to every potential project. I need more clients and more revenue; I’m going to offer lots of services. Here’s a menu of services that can do whatever you want, here, pick off my menu of services. Because of either of these things, they don’t own anything. So, they are not owning whatever it is that makes them so badass. Instead, they’re trying to be whatever they think their potential clients want them to be, which is why they’re so generic and so lost in a sea of sameness.”
• 05:17 – Pia’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): Look at where you provide the most value and what you love to do most. And look at all your past clients and pick out the ones that have been most successful and see if you can focus wherever that all intersects because that’s where you should start looking to focus and niche.
• 05:51 – Pia’s Valuable Free Resource(VFR): FREE mini-course: Calculate your key price that you MUST charge to achieve the life & business you want: www.piasilva.com/badass/
• 06:46 – Q: “What’s the most important part of having a badass brand and a badass business?” A: Having the guts to go all the way with what you’re all about and what your focus is. And I don’t mean just putting it on your homepage and saying it. I mean being it with all of your being and in everything that you do. And that takes guts.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Look at all your past clients and pick out the ones that have been most successful and see if you can focus wherever that all intersects because that's where you should start looking to focus and niche.” -@pialovesyourbiz Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09
Tom Poland 0:09
Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. I’m Tom Poland, joined today by the vivacious Pia Silva. Pia, good day, welcome, thanks for coming to the show. Where are you hanging out?

Pia Silva 0:22
I’m hanging out in Brooklyn, New York.

Tom Poland: 0:24
Brooklyn, New York. Wow, that is perfect for the title of this interview, which is, “How to Badass Your Creative Business,” in just seven minutes. Because Brooklyn somehow goes with badass, I think. So, Pia…

Pia Silva 0:36
Very authentic.

Tom Poland: 0:37
Pia is sprinkled around the internet like confetti at a wedding. And the reason is that she’s incredibly active social media-wise but also with public speaking. She’s been featured in MSNBCs Your Business, Entrepreneur on Fire, which is one of the world’s biggest business podcasts, UGurus and Million Dollar Woman Summit. She’s also, in addition to being her, having her own business of being an entrepreneur in her own right, she’s a speaker, the author of Badass Your Brand. She helps businesses badass their brand, and forgive my Australian accent when I say, badass.

Pia Silva 1:13
I like it.

Tom Poland: 1:14
What is badassing your brand all about? It’s all about getting your brand and scaling your business to the point where you have freedom from profits. Aha. So, with that in mind, with that context, Pia, we’re going to have seven minutes you’re going to tell everyone how to badass your creative business in just seven minutes. Your time starts now, who is your ideal client? That’s question number one.

Pia Silva 1:38

One to three-person creative service businesses who are super badass at what they do.

Tom Poland: 1:44
Perfect. Succinct too. Six and three-quarter minutes left. Question number two, what’s the problem you solve for them?

Pia Silva 1:51

Generic, unprofitable business, overworked, underpaid, always looking for clients because they’re so generic, and they just fade into a sea of sameness.

Tom Poland: 2:03
So brilliant at what they do, very creative, probably don’t like the word sales, particularly. So, you’re going to take their 10 out of 10 for service, and transform it because currently, their marketing is two out of 10.

Pia Silva 2:19
Yeah, and it’s a combination of making their marketing great and also their business. They go hand in hand.

Tom Poland: 2:25
Okay. So, it’s not just their marketing. Brings us to question number three, six minutes left, what are the typical symptoms? You’ve got this head of the small creative agency, they are brilliant what they do, but they’re not growing their revenue, they’re not building their business. So, what are they feeling, what are they thinking, what are they experiencing, the symptoms of needing your service?

Pia Silva 2:45
Well, they are frustrated that they are so good at what they do and their clients are so happy and yet they’re working all the time and they’re not making enough money. They’re always pitching for work, and they’re not always winning it. All their projects go out of scope, they never end on time. They never feel like they’re getting paid enough. They can’t charge what they need to make cents. And they never know where their next client is coming from.

Tom Poland: 3:08
Wow. Okay.

Pia Silva 3:10
That’s a lot of bad stuff.

Tom Poland: 3:10
That is a lot of stuff that needs fixing. So technically, you bring in the business growth structures and methods, etc. Crude way of putting it, it’s a lot more sophisticated than that, I understand, I’m sure. But, tell me this, then, question four, five minutes left. You’ve got this head of the creative agencies, brilliant at what they do but not growing, building business development, etc. They’re going to try stuff. I mean, these are smart people, but a lot of things they’re going to try before they find you are going to be a mistake. So, what are some of the common mistakes that you find that your ideal clients have made before they get to your solution?

Pia Silva 3:47
So many. They are often casting a wide net. So, I need more clients so I’m going to try to work with everyone. I’m going to bend myself to try to pitch to every potential project. I need more clients and more revenue; I’m going to offer lots of services. Here’s a menu of services that can do whatever you want, here, pick off my menu of services.

Because of either of these things, they don’t own anything. So, they are not owning whatever it is that makes them so badass. Instead, they’re trying to be whatever they think their potential clients want them to be, which is why they’re so generic and so lost in a sea of sameness.

Tom Poland: 4:28
Okay, and do they sometimes try to think fix it with lower prices?

Pia Silva 4:34
They will negotiate, they often charge based on hours, which is a big mistake in my book. Every project is custom, they think that custom is how you make money. I say that standardization is how you make money, and processes how you make money. So those are some very common mistakes.

Tom Poland: 4:50
Right. And there can be a lot of creativity within the framework of standardization.

Pia Silva 4:55
The work is custom, but the process is standard, yeah.

Tom Poland: 4:58
Right, so they still get to express themselves. Question number five, just over three minutes left, what I’m after with this one is one valuable free action that someone listening or watching this can take, it’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it’ll take it a step in the right direction. Give listeners a tip that’s going to help them move forward.

Pia Silva 5:17

Sure. I would say, look at where you provide the most value and what you love to do most. And look at all your past clients and pick out the ones that have been most successful and see if you can focus wherever that all intersects because that’s where you should start looking to focus and niche.

Tom Poland: 5:36
Brilliant. Yes, success leaves clues, so look at the past. Question number six, two and a half minutes left, heaps of time, what is one valuable resource that we could direct people to that’s going to help them even more.

Pia Silva 5:51
So, I built a small free mini-course called Price to Freedom, because the pricing is so important in all of this. It’s at piasilva.com/badass. And basically, you just plug in a couple of numbers and it will spit out the price that you need to be charging if you want to have a profitable business that also gives you freedom in your life. And gives you enough time to do the business development and marketing that you need to do in order to build a badass reputation.

Tom Poland: 6:22
That, because of some pricing, that one resource could be literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone. So piasilva, P-I-A-S-I-L-V-A, dot com forward slash B-A-D-A-S-S, because I’m a gentleman, I can’t say the word. Question number seven, 90 seconds left, what’s the one question I should have asked you, but I didn’t? And the answer, please.

Pia Silva 6:46
Ah, this is a tough one. Well, what’s the most important part of having a badass brand and a badass business? I guess that would be a good question.

Tom Poland: 6:53
So, Pia, what is the most important part of having a badass brand and a badass business?

Pia Silva 6:58

Having the guts to go all the way with what you’re all about and what your focus is. And I don’t mean just putting it on your homepage and saying it. I mean being it with all of your being and in everything that you do. And that takes guts.

Tom Poland: 7:18
I am loving that; my soul is reaching out on that one. Pia, as custom with your overachievement, you’ve finished with a great aplomb given 40 seconds spare.

Pia Silva 7:29
Can I get a pie?

Tom Poland: 7:29
Yeah, I’m going to give you, I’m going to give you a digital chocolate fish. How’s that?

Pia Silva 7:33
All right.

Tom Poland: 7:34
Thanks so much for being on the show, but also for being a badass in delivering great value. Cheers.

Pia Silva 7:40
Thank you so much, Tom. Cheers.

Tom Poland: 7:37
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.