The Secret to Getting Paid What You're Worth!

8/7/2019

This week I want to share with you some secrets.

Many of you don’t know this about me, but when I was younger, I was actually an aspiring rock star.

YES…..A Rock Star! In fact, I was part of a “Big Hair” band during the Heavy Metal era of the 1980s.

Can you guess which one was me?

Yes, I spent a good part of the late 1980's playing music putting on shows in venues all over California.

It was during this time I learned some of my most important lessons in business. One important one was how I experienced the harsh reality of "pay to play".

In the 1980's rock music industry, up and coming bands would have to literally pay to play shows.

Clubs would require bands to buy their tickets in advance so that they received money regardless if the our band actually sold the tickets.

This left the clubs with a safety net of compensation and the bands to work up front with no guarantee they would be paid.

One time, my band and I played a huge show with over 500 people. The agreement we made with the venue was that we would receive 50% percent of the "door" earnings after the show that night.

When it came to the end of the night after rocking the house and playing one of our best shows, our total earnings came to a whopping $50!

This experience left me with my second important lesson:

Working up front is something you want to avoid.

While I know in some industries and bigger corporations this is unavoidable, but in my experience, the majority of the time it's a matter of positioning your services and offerings in your terms and require payment up front prior to starting the work.

Paying to play isn't just something you want to avoid in the music industry.

It's something you want to avoid in any business industry because it essentially leaves you at risk for not getting maximum compensation for your value and leaves you acting as a credit union to your clients.

On this episode of The Pricing is Positioning Podcast, I discuss these topics further and I get to talk to you a little bit about a time in my life that my kids are embarrassed I talk about!

In this episode I talk about:

Secrets on how to get paid what you’re worth
How I went from being in a hair band to high-end consultant
What pay to play is and why it’s not good in any industry
Lessons I learned in the music and consulting industry

2 Comments

Sal

9/3/2019 09:55:45 am

Hey Paul, great episode on getting paid what you're worth. I'm comfortable with being on Net 30 payment terms with some long-time business relationships, but I do worry about projects with new clients that I don't know. I like your advice and am wondering if you use any online tools to get paid electronically and quickly. If I require getting a check in the mail before starting work on a project, I think that might jeopardize getting hired since most corporate companies run checks only weekly. Then I'd have to wait for mail delivery after that. Any recommendations? Thanks.

Paul Klein

9/4/2019 04:06:11 pm

Hello Sal and great question!

Yes, I do a mix of snail mail checks as well as electronic payments and we have several clients where we are set up on ongoing direct deposits.

We use Quickbooks Online for all our invoicing, and it has an option where you can send out an invoice with pdf attachments.

So what we do for new clients is send the services agreement with our W9 through an autogenerated email with an invoice from QuickBooks.

You can personalize the message which helps and the best part is that the client can print out the PDF and snail mail it if they prefer or they can click on the "pay now" button and pay immediately online credit card, debit card and even direct deposit ACH.

It works well. The other payment platform that I use to help expedite the on-boarding process is Stripe.

Stripe is excellent for taking credit cards, processing subscription payments, and is super easy to incorporate on a web site.

I have some email templates that I use to make it real clear that we won't be starting any work until we receive the payment.

Something along the lines of: "Once we receive the signed services agreement and payment, we will schedule your project kick-off call. Please mail to....." you get the point.

Again, this helps get your payments upfront, allows the clients multiple options to engage with you but at the same time protects your time and from billing in arrears.

Hope that helps Sal!

The Secret to Getting Paid What You're Worth!

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