Build a Badass Brand That Commands Premium Prices with Pia Silva

Build a Badass Brand That Commands Premium Prices with Pia Silva

Pia Silva: Okay, so it's March 20 14. We're in 40 K debt. That's the extent of our credit. So we don't have any more credit. We have no cash in the bank, and we're getting overdraft fees. So I'm talking literally we are bone dry here. Wow. Um, and we have to let our employees go because we have no choice. Which I, to me, was admitting like failure and defeat.

Yeah. That was. If we let the employees go, we are shrinking. We have failed.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This

is the Business development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

And broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development CapitalBD.ca.

Let's do it.

Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 322 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Pia Silva. Pia is a serial entrepreneur, brand strategist, TEDx speaker, and the founder of No BS Agency Mastery, where she helps one to two person branded agencies scale to consistent 30 K months without employees burnout or bs.

She's also the host of the NO BS Agency podcast, author of Badass Your Brand, and weekly contributor to Forbes. Pia is a partner at Worstofall Design, the branding agency she co-founded with her husband Steve Wasterval. He specialized in building badass brands in just one to three day intensives. Their revolutionary approach to branding has helped hundreds of service-based business owners position themselves as premium experts and take back control of their time.

Through her no fluff, coaching, writing, and speaking, Pia has become a bold voice for solopreneurs who wanna grow powerful, profitable businesses without compromising their freedom. Her work has been featured on M-S-N-B-C, EO Fire and Top Stages like Goldman Sachs, 10,000 Small Businesses and Social Media Week.

Pia doesn't just teach business, she builds it, lives it, and fiercely leads it. If you're ready to stop blending in, start charging what you're worth, and finally own your badassery, Pia Silva is the fire starter. You've been waiting for a Pia. It's an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show.

Pia Silva: Woo. What an intro.

Kelly, thank you so much. I'm fired up to be here.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, a well deserved intro.

Pia Silva: Appreciate it.

Kelly Kennedy: Um, yeah, really cool. I I honestly don't take a lot of reach outs to my show, so it was really like I was immediately intrigued though when I saw what you did, when I learned about your book and when I learned kind of like branding bad Assery.

'cause I love that, you know, I'm in business development, a great brand helps me do my job like no tomorrow, right? So for me,

Pia Silva: absolutely,

Kelly Kennedy: I'm a hundred percent on board with amazing brands and I think it's something that's so challenging and hard to grasp for a lot of people because. I think so many people start a business just thinking, well, I'm good at this.

I could do this and sell this as a service. Not ever thinking about like what the whole thing actually looks like until they're well down that path. And you and me both know a lot of trial and error on that path.

Pia Silva: Absolutely. Say I went through the same path so I, I know what you're talking about.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, your book, badass Your Brand, the Impatient Entrepreneur's Guide to Turning Expertise into Profit. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I can't say that about a ton of books. Like I, I I read decently. At the same time, I don't typically finish a book and think, holy crap I wanna start figuring out how I'm gonna implement these things in my business.

And I absolutely did do that with you. And so I have to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you, because you actually sent me the book. So not only did I get to learn all that great information, you know, I got to, I got to learn it for free because of you. So thank you so much for that.

Pia Silva: Yeah, absolutely.

My pleasure. I'm, I'm so delighted. Every time I hear that it changed the way somebody thinks. I mean, that's what a, a great book should do. And that was always my goal with it too, so that's awesome.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, it's incredible. So, you know, if you're listening to this, just get the book. I'm just gonna start out right there.

It is. Good. We're gonna get into it today. We're gonna talk about concepts in the book, but you gotta just read the book. It's a really quick incredible read. It's got, you know, amazing, amazing chapter ends where you can kind of go through and fill out stuff for your own business. And I would highly suggest you do so.

I actually haven't gone deep in it, but I'm, I'm gonna hit it again, Pia, I'm gonna hit it again and do all of those, uh, do all those workbooks for my business on the way as well. But, uh, incredible book, but. Take us back to the beginning. Our listeners wanna know who the heck you're, who is Pia Silva?

How did you end up the rockstar serial entrepreneur you have become today.

Pia Silva: Huh? How far back do you wanna go, Kelly? You know, I, I can't say that I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I do know that I always wanted to do my own thing, be in charge. That's what I used to tell my parents and adults when they said, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

I was like, in charge. Yeah. I don't care what it is, I just wanna be running it. So I guess that was saying entrepreneurship. That's, I didn't have that word. I wasn't necessarily saying business owner. I, I remember for a time I said I wanna be a movie director because I like Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Yeah. And so director sounded right to me. But that means that I have actually never applied for. And gotten and worked in a traditional job. So the only, like, quote, real job where somebody was paying me to show up and do stuff in a structured way that I, that I've ever had is bartending and that's not,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Pia Silva: Super corporate.

Kelly Kennedy: I did that once too.

Pia Silva: Yeah. I loved bartending. I loved bartending and in retrospect, bartending was sales. That's right. And, you know, client service and management. So it all worked. I did real estate for a little while. I, I like did consulting and gig work through my early twenties because I just, I couldn't.

I didn't, couldn't summit the idea of going into an office every day. So I did like temp work and stuff, but I just always needed to have that flexibility. Yeah. So I was trying things. I helped this friend of a friend open a pizzeria cafe once, like he was opening a pizzeria cafe, and, and through the grapevine was like, oh, Pia is smart.

She can help you do that. And I did that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: I was, um, quote, VP of sales and marketing for a tech startup. Cool. At one point, because again, other friends of friends were doing this and they were like, yeah, smart. Like she can figure this out. Yeah. And I was like figuring out sales and marketing for them.

So that was actually my journey. Yeah. And then, um, when I was 24, I met my, my eventual husband, Steve, and he's an artist. We, I tried to help him sell his art on the street for a little while. Um, then we were both gigging, he was freelancing. We ended up going on this epic trip to the, uh, British Virgin Islands to camp and like work off the land for a little while.

Just I was trying to find myself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: And all of that led us back to, you know what I think we wanna, I think I said, Steve, you're really talented at the design. You kind of suck at the client management, the billing, the money. You're not charging enough. Like all these things. I said, lemme just take that over for you.

We can work together. I'll handle everything. You just do the design work and I don't know how to do this, but I'm gonna figure it out. And that's how we actually started the business.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. So Steve was really good at design. So your idea was, I think I can sell this and I think Steve can ultimately.

Make the designs for the branding, but like, talk to me because branding you sure. Design, but there's so much more to it. And you know, like branding is just, or like design story is just really one very small part of your book. Like so small, it barely gets, you know, anytime at all. Right? Like, I think people automatically think, well branding is, you know, just the image I show to the world.

But it's so much more than that, isn't it?

Pia Silva: When we started, I didn't know what branding was either. I actually have a book. It's so funny. I actually pulled it out and showed our clients when they all came here for a treat last year because I was like, look how cute this book is. It was like explaining what branding was and yeah, like explaining logo hierarchy and stuff.

I remember us sweating over this book at some point. Oh my God, we have to build a brand. Like, what is that? And like reading through this text textbook.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Um, so no, I didn't know what it was either. And we weren't selling branding at the beginning. We were just selling hourly graphic design services.

You know, Steve was ki knew how to put together like a, a website page. This was 2011. Yeah. There was no Squarespace then. There was nothing, built out of the box. So it was very hodgepodge. We would make banners, we would make, you know, postcards. But through the through the efforts of trying to get clients through all of my networking, communicating with other people who were, who owned little businesses like this, little design companies. I was like absorbing everything they were doing. I was trying to copy what I saw them doing. Yeah. And over time I learned, not from the book, but just through my own experience of trying to stand out.

Yes. Trying to explain why we were different than the other person at the next BNI chapter. Like trying to understand what, like, explain what we did and how we did it. It was over years of trying to get it through people's heads, so they wanted to hire us. That I kind of naturally developed my understanding of branding and Worstofall Design was always the business name, but I kind of grew into understanding why it was a really good Yeah.

Brand. When we put, you know, we build Badass Brands without the BS as our, our homepage tagline that came from starting to really embody and embrace the way that we approach things. That was different than the, you know, I remember a company like. It was like gray box, something like, like these companies that were the complete opposite of Worstofall Design.

Yeah. So it was a really organic evolution where I started to understand more and more why branding was important, what it means to stand out, what it means to have a brand that's really authentic to you. And um, and then of course, as I learned this for myself, started to apply it to all of my clients and realized that, whoa, that's where the money is, that's where the value is, and I can charge a lot more for this.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And, and we gotta get into that today. Yeah. Because I think that's a big, a big piece of value we can provide to our listeners today For sure. Because I think many of them are undercharging and working their asses off trying to keep up. Mm-hmm. It's, uh, you know, I mean, it's not, it's not easy starting a business.

And I wanted to chat a little bit about that today because you know, a lot of our listeners. They might be high level executives, they might actually already have really great ideas of things they wanna do, but making that leap is really hard. And I want, and, and you know, you talk in the beginning of the book about how, you know, you guys started Worstofall Design.

You were doing it kind of the old fashioned way, hourly, trying to just build your brand, build your business. You hired a couple employees hired. I think everybody does that pretty quickly thinking that's the secret to success. Right? Worse, only quickly you realize, holy shit, I'm going into debt real fast.

'cause these employees eat 80% of our revenue.

Pia Silva: That's so bad.

Kelly Kennedy: Walk me through the launch of Worstofall Design. How do, and and you know, you have a very different approach than many other entrepreneurs have to making the, the leap to entrepreneurship, but still a decision and bravery has to happen to make that leap.

Can you talk about that?

Pia Silva: Yeah. I feel like there were phases of making the leap, because I feel like what we started with was really that basically me managing Steve's freelance career. Yeah. That's really all it was. I was just calling it a business. Um, so I'm just hustling trying to find clients and sell the work hourly and over time.

And by the way, my goal was just for us to make enough money to live and we were living as cheaply as possible. Right. Because to me, I had no idea what I was going for. I had no reference point. And I had, like I said, I, it wasn't like I wanna start a business. I was like, no, I just wanna not have to go work for someone else.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: And I wanna be able to pay my bills. Yeah. That was, I mean, that's a pretty low bar in retrospect, but at the time that was, and I don't wanna bartend till four o'clock in the morning anymore. Sure. I mean, that was the other thing. So the leap there was enough, I don't want to get me, ironically, to get me off my butt at 6:00 AM every morning and go into the city in the freezing cold and network with people at 7:00 AM you know, over coffee.

I mean, I did that. I was relentless pounding the pavement because I didn't know what else to do. I thought if I just talked to enough people and get in front of enough people, I will get. Some business. Right? Yeah. And, and I did like we hit our first 10 K month three or four months in. Yeah. But, and that sounds, you know, exciting because I know sometimes people, it's hard to get there, but you gotta remember, we're two people

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: Working around the clock. Yes. And, you know, and I'm a hustling. It's not I am and I'm not. And this was, we weren't on social, there was, we weren't really on social media then. So there was no like sitting back and creating content. I was out in public all the time. Yeah. Just like, you know, hoping to cross paths with someone who, at that very moment needed graphic design work.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: So to, to say that it was a hustle in the beginning is, is truly an understatement.

Kelly Kennedy: My goodness. Yeah, no it really is. And I think the other side, you know, you talked about 10 KA month, it sounds like a lot, but you know, by the time you pay taxes, you pay overhead and you pay yourself.

It's not a lot at all.

Pia Silva: I got, I got a good story for that. So like, we were, what we were a little over two years into our business, not even, yeah. And we had by the, it was like towards the end of the year, we had about $20,000 in the bank. I, Kelly, I thought I was a fricking millionaire. Like I had never had that much cash in the bank.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And I'm just feeling like I'm on cloud nine. That's when we got this studio. That's when we got this office here.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: We, we split it with a friend at the time, but still, we were like, we gotta get out of this, you know, we're too big for our purchase. So we got our studio. We were like, we need to really front, like we're a professional company because Yeah.

And of course we need a studio. I know people think that too. I need an office.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: So that people take me seriously. And then I hired two employees. I did all of that because I had 20,000 in the bank. Wow. In December.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: April comes. And my dad's like, you owe that in taxes. Like, oh my God, I forgot.

I had never made enough money to owe anything substantial in taxes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: So, um, yeah, I didn't make that mistake again. And, and that's like something I'm like constantly talking about to my students and anyone who will listen. How you need to know how much the taxes are before

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Like as you're making the money.

Um, or else to get into the situation that I was in.

Kelly Kennedy: I, I got blessed. My sister's a bookkeeper, so she smacked me into line real quick. When I launched my company. She's like, look, immediately you're putting away this much.

Pia Silva: My dad's a CPA. Oh, okay. He didn't say that until the taxes were due.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: I appreciate his hands offness.

Kelly Kennedy: But, uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's, uh, it's one of those things that I've been really, really fortunate with where, like, from the very beginning, from the first dollars we ever started making, I was taking 20% and just hucking in an account for a rainy day. Right. But yeah.

And yeah, I got a lot of it back at the end of the year, but.

I never owed taxes and I never worried about 'em. And I know a lot of businesses, they don't make that choice and they end up, bankrupt because they can't afford their taxes.

Pia Silva: Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, to your point, it was definitely, um, scary and a lot of work. And then what we didn't hire those employees just for fun.

We hired them because we were feeling so overworked, which I think you're kind of alluding to, people hire so quickly because they think, oh, I'm so overworked, so that's why I need to hire. And I try to stop people. I'm like, if, if your, you should be uber profitable, there should be a huge profit margin to be able to start outsourcing.

Intro: Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: Especially to a full-time employee, maybe to a contractor, maybe to a va. But I think it's a really, it's a messy middle. Time. Yeah. Where you gotta be really careful about hiring before you figure out if what you're selling is profitable enough to support those hires. Yes. And mine were, was not, was not at all, I didn't even know, I really didn't understand what, what was and wasn't profitable at the time.

So those employees are, are most of the reason why we ended up in such debt three years into our business.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think a lot of companies run into that exact same place. 'cause you know, you know, we alluded to it with the taxes. Mm-hmm. You don't know what you don't know, and you just, you start this business because you think, okay, well I'm great, I'm a great electrician, or I'm, I'm an accountant, I'm awesome.

I can do this for myself, right? Mm-hmm. And then you get into the field and you realize that that's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle that you don't have all the pieces for. And then, you know, you're, you're out there networking, trying to figure out what you're missing or what you don't know. You know, I'm, I'm five years into running my own business, and I'll regularly look at my fiance and say, what is it that I don't know right now that's screwing me over right now in this moment?

Because there's something that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing, and I know it. And that sucks.

Pia Silva: Which is why, I, I didn't, I started pretty early on, but not early enough working with coaches and consultants. Yeah. Like those first couple of business coaches that told me in retrospect, like the real basics.

I owe them everything. Right. That's how I started writing. I mean, my first blog articles were total crap, right? And, and now people love my book. Right? I, I, I developed that skill because he told me to start writing in 2013, 2012.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Pia Silva: You know? So, um, it, it's priceless to be around other people who've already done it, who've already worn the path.

You don't have to do everything that they did or said, but just get that information more quickly.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I've learned more in the last, like two years of doing this show than I think I did in like 20 years preceding it. Totally. It's incredible how much you learn in these conversations. It really is a blessing.

Pia Silva: Yes. I'm with you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. One of the things that, uh, you talked about in the book, and I love this, was you were talking about how, many companies are not taking their own medicine. You know, they might be web designers, but they have the worst website on planet Earth, or, you know, they're business developers, but they never do their own business development.

They're always out there trying to find clients, but they're not doing business development for themselves. I've been guilty of that, so, of so many companies. Right.

Pia Silva: Hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: Let's talk a little bit about that, about companies taking their own medicine, you know, why was that important to you?

Pia Silva: Oh, it's just, it's such a missed opportunity, not only because this is supposed to be your wheelhouse, the thing that you are most expert in.

So, you know, I like to say that you are your most important client.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And not only is it. You know, I think there's something to be said for, I'm selling this to you because it's so important, but I'm not doing it for myself. How important do I really think it's right? So there's a mismatch in the messaging.

If I'm saying, I think branding is so important. I know my brand is nothing, forget about my brand, but, but branding is really gonna help your business. And also, I'm struggling. I'm struggling in my business and my brand sucks, but you should pay me for brand. I mean, it just doesn't, it's not congruent.

So, you know, we gotta walk the walk. But this actually mostly came to me again, kind of organically. We really started to lean in more to this, that as your brand, Worstofall Design, you know, um, badass brands without the bs, which I have to say as a side note. In 20 12, 20 13, when we were saying badass, it was like we were

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Cursing in people's faces. I know now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Pia Silva: It's not nearly

Kelly Kennedy: no at

Pia Silva: different world at all, right? Yeah. We're in a completely different world, but at the time, like some people like almost had to censor me. So, so we really started leaning into that and I, I kind of got really into it because I loved that.

I loved some

Kelly Kennedy: people would, would be edgy, edgy brand.

Pia Silva: I loved the edgy, but I also just loved that everybody had a reaction and some people would kind of win, since I don't really get it. Like why? Worst of all, like, wouldn't you wanna be the best? And I'd be like, it's cool. You're just not our client. And I would, you know, I had all sorts of quips by the time because I talked to so many people and then other people would go, oh my God, I love that.

Like, tell me more. And then I would tell them the story behind the name and then they would go, oh my God, I love that. You know? Yeah. So it was so much to talk about. So I really saw how powerful it was just as a talking point, but also. We ended up you, if you even go to our web website, and by the way, I haven't changed our website in like 10 years.

I kind of did it on purpose because it's really simple and there's not that much going on. Yeah. And it has brought me so much business and I like to tell people that like, because branding is not about, oh, you know, I need some custom widget button somewhere. It's, it's the messaging and it's the vibe.

It's the, it's how you're connecting with people. Okay. So I say that because we thought badass brands, like we're gonna attract all these super creative, cool, young, I was picturing like lots of 30 something dudes. We attracted like so many straight la like straight laced industries. We would, we got so many lawyers, financial planners, con contractors, like people in industries where they would come to us and they would go, I want what you have.

We can't be Worstofall Design. And you can't say something like badass, but we want like. Your version of what we need to be. Yeah. Yeah. And that blew my mind. We got creative people too, but I was just so it, I could tell my experience every day was I wanna hire you because of your brand. Yeah.

That's what I want. I want what you did for yourself and, again, missed opportunity. I loved when I, the call kind of clicked together because I said, every minute that we work on our own business and our own marketing has dual purpose, we're showing off what we do. Yeah. And it's helping us get clients and it's helping us get better at what we do.

Now I can spend money left and right on building my, my skillset in here because it's always got this dual purpose, which I love to spend money on my business. So

Kelly Kennedy: yes,

Pia Silva: anything that made me more confident about spending lots of money on my business, I was all for. I was like, there's, you can't spend too much money on this because the value is only growing exponentially.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think so many people are so reluctant, you know, like, and it's funny 'cause I'm sure you see it all the time when people will come to you and be like, ah, few thousand dollars. Like, do I really want to spend that? And it's like, well, it's your business, right? Like what is the, what is the value to you?

Pia Silva: You know what I like to help people do like, close your eyes and imagine the business you wish you had. Mm-hmm. Like just not your business. Like even picture someone else's business, right? Like, if you see a business that's not yours and you go, God, that's the kind of business I want. What do they have?

You know, what, what's going on for them? What, what are they doing in the world? Guess what? Go do that. And you'll have that business. Yeah. Okay. But that costs time and money. But if you just, like, you don't have, you don't have a 300, what is this three 24th episode? You don't have 320 something episodes of your podcast and nobody knows who you are and nobody listens to your podcast.

Like, I'm sorry, that's not how it works. So just do the thing and, and you'll have the business that you want. But I think that people, some, there's a disconnect there. It's like they don't believe if they do the thing, they'll have that business. It's like, no, that's exactly how it works.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, you, you alluded to something that you really.

You know, I mean, I, I maybe you can spend enough money to, to bridge that gap, but there's this thing that's just time, right?

Pia Silva: Like that too.

Kelly Kennedy: Everything takes time. Anything worth doing in my experience has taken time. Like I recognize that my show was not going to be popular at episode 20, probably not even popular at episode 100.

I think we might be getting popular now at episode 220, whatever we're released to today, and by hopefully by 3 22 we'll be super, super popular. But it takes time. And like this is, you know, we're recording this like pretty much a year out, which is amazing. So thank you for doing that.

Pia Silva: But yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: But for two, like, that's the time commitment that I just, I made, I recognize, you know what, this is a long game, podcasting's a long game.

The podcast that I love are all in there, like, let's call it 600, 800, a thousand Yeah. Episodes.

Pia Silva: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: That's where I gotta be. If I wanna be successful and it's gonna take me, let's call it seven, eight years to get there. Let's do it.

Pia Silva: Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, oh, I just love that you said that. Yeah.

It's. You have to have some patience, but it's not like it's all or nothing. It's not gonna be nothing. And then it's gonna, the switch is gonna turn on. There's micro wins along the way, and believe it or not, I, you know, you were just remarking on I've got a little over 200 episodes and I do one episode a week.

It's like, gosh, it's been four or five years. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Like that went by pretty quickly. I remember when I launched it feeling like I was really behind because I had been thinking about launching it for two years before I did it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: That was five years ago. Oh my God.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. It's amazing how fast time goes.

I think we, we really underestimate. How fast time is actually gonna go by. And so don't waste any more of it, really. Like at the end of the day, if you have something you wanna do,

Pia Silva: get going.

Kelly Kennedy: Today is the day, get to it, get going. You know, same with me. I, um, I decided, I think it was November of 2022, we were gonna launch a podcast just 'cause we love podcasts.

I had like no other reason to it other than the fact that I knew that with business development specifically, there was nothing. Mm-hmm. And I mean nothing like, nobody had touched on business. Like how in the world in 2023 was the business development podcast even a possible title, option. I can't tell you luck of the draw, but it was like one of those things where I saw it.

Wow. I'm like, yeah, this is go like, I have to go on this. This is the only time I'm probably ever gonna get an opportunity like this again. So here we go. Let's do it.

Pia Silva: That's awesome. Oh, I kind of similarly, mine was, mine was actually had a different name. It was called, um, show Your Business, whose Boss Podcast.

Cool, cool. And it was me just interviewing my friends and that's not what it is anymore at all. Although the themes are probably very similar, but. I mean, it was a

Kelly Kennedy: different thing.

Did you, because, okay, so I found, I found that you did, and then I found, was it the Pia Silva podcast? Like did you have another name in the middle?

Pia Silva: No. You probably just found my brand.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Pia Silva: On stuff.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That's three name changer.

Pia Silva: I'm married to a no, no, just the one. And that was tough for me. Yeah. And I went all in on this niche of one, two person branding agencies. And it took me a full year before I finally was like, okay, yes, I'll obviously need to rebrand my podcast.

But it, it, it was hard to do emotionally.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about that really quick, right? Yeah. The company's coming to you that are realizing, oh shit, we have a bland name, and it's not doing mm-hmm. Work for us, but we're connected to it like, no tomorrow because we've been operate a hundred for 10, 15, 20 years.

Talk to me about that. You know, is there a lot of like. Yeah. Emotions you have to deal with when you're going through a rebrand.

Pia Silva: Yeah. Um, let's just talk rebrands, right? Because naming is just one piece. Sure. And actually I have, I have, uh, strong feelings about the fact that names don't matter at all.

Except when they do I, I think I'm like, people are way too hung up on names, especially for service businesses. It's different when it's a product and you're trying to like scale and I think that's a different conversation. But I live in the service business space, so let's, yeah. I'll keep the conversation there.

For service businesses, I think the name doesn't matter unless it's wrong. So if you are, if you're missing the mark with a name, like it's hard to spell. It's hard to say, it's hard to remember. It's generic and other people own it. There's lots of ways you can get it wrong. Yeah. But I think it's I think people think that the right name is gonna make it, and that is so the wrong way to think about it. So I try to like loosen people up a little bit. Yeah. This is more for new businesses. Um, I'm like, it doesn't matter. Just don't, just don't make all these mistakes. So I guess it does matter a little bit to me. It's really obvious what a wrong name is, but but in terms of rebranding, I always tell my clients we're not gonna change anything that doesn't need to be changed.

Mm-hmm. And we're not gonna change anything unless there's a reason to change it. So we always start from the point of view of what's the problem that we're trying to solve? Where are we trying to go? Where are you right now? And we'll make all the changes and not one more that will get us from A to B.

That's it. Yeah. So that when I'm showing them these changes, I actually don't find that they have a hard time because I connect it always to that end goal. And as long as the client can understand why each change or new thing needs to happen in service of their goal. They're always excited and on onboard.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the mistake that branders make is they don't make that connection for the client, or they get too wrapped up in their own creative juices and they just wanna make it look cool without thinking enough about the strategic reason. You know, I have people come to me sometimes and they say, I wanna, you know, I wanna hire you to make me a new brand new website.

I'm like, oh, okay. Tell me why. They're like, because it's old. And I'm like, well, that's not a good reason. What else? And if they can't give me a good reason, like my business is suffering, I'm not getting the right clients. Um, my clients are confu. Like, if it's just, oh, I just personally don't like it, I won't do a vanity brand because that's really, you're really hiring me.

You're like, commissioning me for a piece of art to, um, to fulfill on some sort of, creative vision you have, which is a different thing than strategic business-minded rebranding, which is where the money is and where, you know, I think serious business owners operate.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. That's gonna lead me into a new question then.

What, how does a company know it's time to rebrand or that their brand isn't doing it for them?

Pia Silva: Yeah, I mean, I think it comes out of a business development conversation. So I think it, it should always come from first let's look at what's going on in the business, where are we struggling? And branding is often a piece of that.

So, you know, the first step when people come to us, I want a new website. I want redesign. Great. We do the brand shrink first. And this is what I teach all of my students, by the way. I'm like, you always gotta start with this first interview. Understanding the full picture. Yeah. 'cause we wanna, again, make these decisions based on business reasons, not just clients, design ideas.

And so a rebrand could touch, it could touch visuals a lot. It could touch visuals, maybe not that much at all. It could be really heavy on how are we positioning who we're speaking to? How are we talking about them? What kind of language are we using and not, you know, that's brand messaging.

That is a big piece of this. How are we pricing our services? How are we presenting them? How are we packaging them? What's the sales conversation look like and why do people buy from us? All of that is brand when you get that stuff really Right. A good designer and I, you know. I'm like lucky to have somebody in my business who's kind of amazing at this.

But it's like once we get all that strategy clear, the design is kind of obvious to him. He's like, oh, it, it just has to be this. And so when we present it, it's like, this is the only thing it could be because we did all this workup front to figure out what the brand needs to say, do feel, communicate to who and why.

And so then the design is I mean, not to say it's easy, but it's like if you just follow that path, it kind of leads you to the answer sometimes.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, once again, it's a bigger change. It's follow your very specific process that has taken years and years and years.

Pia Silva: Yes. That true. That's Well that's why you need a process though.

That's right. The process. I can, I, I trust the, I trust a good process, right? That's right. And I know if we do this kind of work, it'll be clear what that redesign is and sometimes Steve will scrap what they have. Because there's nothing to salvage. And sometimes he'll, he'll keep everything about it, but level it up.

Yeah. And it looks like a completely new thing, but it's, like, we'll often, like, just as a, an easy example if their thing is this particular color blue, we might just tweak the hue of it and modernize it. And we'll tell them that we'll be like, we love that you're using blue that really works for you.

We're just gonna tweak the hue saturation a little bit. And they love that because they see, oh yeah, it feels fresh, but it's not like you turned my brand yellow. Right? Yes. So we do that too. Not just because why change it if it's not, if it's like Right. But also because we want the client to, to feel like bought into it too.

You made a good decision. Yeah. We're just gonna modernize it a bit's, so that's a little, there's a little tricks of the trade.

Kelly Kennedy: No, absolutely. Absolutely. Pia, I wanna get into, man, the beginning of the book. I wanna get into the beginning of the book.

Pia Silva: Okay.

Kelly Kennedy: So you'd had. You'd hired employees.

Mm-hmm. You know, you had a, you had these like grand plans to do the expansion. I'm not, you know, it wasn't really clear whether or not it all went to plan or not, or whether you might have lost a client or whatever. But basically, yeah. Basically suddenly we're $40,000 in the whole, as opposed to making money.

And you know what? That happens to tons of businesses. So like, but that's not the crazy part. The crazy part is one year from that exact moment you guys had $500,000 in revenue.

That is a, that is a turnaround on monumental epic proportions that any business would be ecstatic. And everybody listening right now is like, what You did what?

Yeah. I wanna talk about that. Yeah. Walk me through the steps of how the hell do you turn a company that's $40,000 in the hole but bankrupt basically.

Pia Silva: Mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: To, you know, we did half a million dollars this year and we're gonna do even more the next.

Pia Silva: Yep. Yep. And. With lower overhead.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Okay, so it's March 20 14.

We're in 40 K debt. That's the extent of our credit. So we don't have any more credit. We have no cash in the bank, and we're getting overdraft fees. So I'm talking literally we are bone dry here.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Pia Silva: Um, and we have to let our employees go because we have no choice. Which I, to me was admitting like defeat failure and defeat.

Yeah. Yeah. That was, if we let the employees go, we're shrinking. We have failed. So luckily Steve, didn't have that perspective. He was like, no, that this is not failure. This is just like the next evolution of our business. I don't know if it's his creative artist thinking or something. I'm like, where did you get that brilliance?

Because I was just so myopic and my, you know, I'm on this train. I mean, that's me. Yeah. I'm on this train. I got these goals. You're not derailing me. Oh my God. The train has crashed. We're all dead. So he said that and I was like, okay. So we got rid of the employees. And we said, okay, well what can we do? And the reason we ended up in debt, we had actually generated $240,000 in that past 12 months.

So it's not that we weren't bringing cash in, it was just that it was so expensive to have this studio and the employees and we live in New York City and all that stuff. 40,000 like now it doesn't seem like so much money at the time it was just, I mean, we'll never get outta this. But how did we generate that money?

It was mostly from selling these $30,000 ish, 20, $30,000 projects and they were full branding website projects. And to justify that cost, we were putting like, our whole team was working on it for like six, 12 months. There was just so much involved in each of those. Yeah. And they were really hard to close.

Lots of proposals written that didn't get closed. Lot of proposals, ghosted pitching all the time and wishing we would win. You know, hoping we would win some just to keep the lights on. We go into debt and we go, you know what, the year prior my business coach Evan Horowitz, I had been just complaining to him because I had been networking with so many people.

I know. I knew so many people. And I said, everybody says they wanna work with us, but they don't have anything close to $30,000 and that's what we need to charge.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And he said, well, how much do they have? And I said, well, they've got like $3,000. And he was like, well, what could you do for $3,000? I said, oh my God.

Nothing. I could do like one day of work, like me and Steve could work for a day and, you know, we could do a lot of stuff in a day, but you know, clients, they're so difficult and, and they won't just take what we make. And he was like, well, why don't you why don't you try it, like pitch it. So we had been doing those here and there.

We had been telling clients, you know what, we can do a day's worth of work with you for $3,000. You kind of have to trust us, like you're gonna get whatever we make we'll work with you for the day. We'll make tweaks, we'll make as much as we can. So it'll be kind of up to you, like the more you say yes, the more stuff you'll get.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And we had people buy in. We did a handful of these throughout that previous year. Secret didn't tell was not on the website, didn't want anyone to know.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Pia Silva: Because it was you know, it was cheap and we were trying to sell these big projects. So then we go into, we get rid of the employees and I go, you know what?

That, that thing's starting to look pretty good. Like, we need some money right now. And, I could probably go sell a couple of those. And then I started to evaluate. I was like, you know what? I could probably sell a lot of those $3,000. And now that we don't have the employees and it's just us, we could do, we could literally do a couple of those a week.

And, light bulbs are going off in my head, $3,000 for a day. I didn't put these words to it at the time, but in the years after, I was like $3,000 for one day for the two of us versus $30,000 for who knows how long we were working on it. Many, many. If you had to add it up, probably 20, 30 day 30 days

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Is so much more profitable. And that's when the light bulb went off for both of us and we said, forget these big projects. We're only gonna do these. And I went back to all of the outstanding proposals that I had for the big projects and I said, you know, I called them up and they were like, oh yeah, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet.

I was like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. I, I'm calling to tell you that proposal is null and void, so I'm not even gonna do it if you want it, but I'll do the same project for you for. You know, it was either, if it was a smaller one, like a $3,000 one day or a 5,000 2 day, I said, I'll do the, the same exact thing for $5,000 in two days.

The the catch is you just have to trust us and you can, you're kind of gonna, like, you can make some tweaks, but like, you're kind of gonna just take what we make, but you want it because you were considering a $30,000 project with us. You like us?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And they all said yes.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Pia Silva: Because they all had this expectation.

I didn't plan it like this, but they all had this they're looking at us like we're this expensive agency. They wanted it, but they couldn't pull the trigger. And then we basically said, we'll give it to you for like a tiny fraction.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. A 10th

Pia Silva: all said yes. Yeah. All said yes. So we start doing them.

And they're so awesome and easy to do and they start sending their friends. I mean, it was, it was like I had been chasing and, and swimming upstream, and then all of a sudden the water came like gushing towards me because. Especially at the time, nobody was doing one brand in a day Yeah. Brand in two days.

Right. We were one of some of the first people like really using Squarespace in this way. Yeah. Um, so we were like, we can build you a whole website in two days and a brand. And it was really easy to sell. So now I go back to my whole network, remember I've been networking with these people for years.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And I just tell them, Hey, we're, we're like, I know you think of us as this, this, we've actually changed it and we're doing these one and two day intensives, three and $5,000 to an entire brand website. And I was just getting referrals left and right because all these people who knew me, it made it so easy for them to send people my way.

And people loved it because people love, instant gratification. Yeah. We already had some cred. We have a cool brand, and then after we did a bunch of them, I was like, oh my God, I should raise the price. So then I started raising the price, I was raising at a thousand dollars every month.

Wow. Um, we got it to, with within that 12 months we got that

and we were doing a couple of them.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That is incredible. Yeah. I have to ask though, how do you take, okay. And, and you know, this takes, I have to give you massive kudos because I can't imagine the wheels that have to turn or the things that have to happen to take, I get it. Like, sure. You know, before, like you said, it would take 30 days to do essentially a branding project, months.

Mm-hmm. By the time you're done, how in the world do you take something like that and shrink it down into one to two days? Mm-hmm. Like, I don't, it, it sounds like magic. It sounds almost impossible. I

Pia Silva: know.

Kelly Kennedy: And for a business thinking about that or like thinking, how do I take all my services. Let's say that they are an an accountant company or that, or they are, you know, a business developer like me.

Mm-hmm. How do you take something that typically takes time and shrink that down into a service you can provide in a couple of days?

Pia Silva: Yeah. Okay. So there's two pieces to this question. Okay. The first one, I'm just gonna explain that what we've, what we deliver now, because now our two day is $40,000 is a completely different thing than what we delivered when it was 5,000.

I just wanna be clear, we didn't just raise the price and it's exactly the same thing, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Pia Silva: So for example, now that $40,000 project, based on a strategy that we got paid to write beforehand. So everything is super clear. Steve and I will spend three or four full days beforehand.

Doing the project. Project. Yeah. And then we, and then we execute the intensive, which is mostly getting the client on board and making final tweaks and, and launching it. And that's a fully comprehensive, messaging strategy, copy, website, identity materials. Like it's a full on thing. The, the $5,000 two day at the time we did a little bit of prep because we didn't have any process to follow.

We did some prep, but then we built it before their eyes and we were sweating and we were doing it in real time. And you know, we were definitely like but we were, it was a pretty simple website, the thing that we were cutting out was the BS that you don't realize is taking up so much of your time.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: I would argue that when we did those long projects, I would argue that 70 to 80% of what we were doing was not. Helping the brand and the project. It was emails, phone calls, revisions, back and forth. Oh, where's the feedback? Oh, can I get this?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: You know, it was so much bs. That's why when I say bs, I mean, I mean it,

Kelly Kennedy: you gotta remove that bs.

Pia Silva: This isy fun word I came up with.

I'm like, no, I'm literally getting rid of this. That's what we got rid of. Yeah. So even now it's like we're doing, instead of what a lot of designers do is I'll work on this and here's like the mood board. Let me show you. Oh, get your feedback. Okay. Next week let's meet and I'll show you the revised move board.

And we will do that for 50 steps until this thing is done. And, and along the way the client will get distracted. Your basement will flood. This payment will so much happens in that time. So. Even if nothing goes wrong, technically, like things just, life happens, stuff happens. So a lot of reasons that projects get derailed and scope creep happens.

And by the time you're doing this, like by the end of this project, everyone's tired, there's no enthusiasm left. Yeah. The designer is, is just trying to finish it because the client has like, whittled down their amazing work with all of their, you know, revisions and like opinions and, you know, their cousin's friend has an opinion and now we gotta see this five different ways.

You know, we're getting rid of all of that. And that's what we were doing for even in the early days, we were saying like, we're still gonna do our great work. We're just, you're just gonna get out of our way.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting. Interesting. It just, it still seems like an astonishing amount of work to you.

Even even in the beginning. Even in the beginning. I get it. But like, holy cow, it seems like a lot to do in a couple days.

Pia Silva: Um, a another reason like we're, and listen, I have students and they take longer and that's okay. Like for me, the, the philosophy behind it is not so much that you have to do it as quickly.

Kelly Kennedy: Like I would hope that the more expert you get at something, you can do it better.

Pia Silva: The better. It's in the shorter time. Like shorter time, right? Like this is our process, so we should be like the best at it, right? Yes. Um, and we have developed, like Steve has a really awesome creative process that has shrunk.

He used to spend 60 hours on a logo and he used to tell me. I must spend 60 hours on a logo mm-hmm. For anything of value to come out. And the way that the way, and he was like really resistant to this at first, but the way that we've developed his process, we've actually flipped the creative process on its head.

So he does the logo last after he's developed the brand.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, interesting.

Pia Silva: The logo like falls out at the end. Like he does not spend more than a few hours on the logo and he makes awesome logos. He's also good at logos. But I'm saying like we've tweaked a lot of things about the the work process, the create the creation process to make it shorter.

And a lot of that has to do with having a structure to follow so that you're keeping your eye on the ball of what you're trying to accomplish. If you have a really clear strategy, there are so many guardrails around your work. And I think what I watch creatives do, especially 'cause of creative personality, is someone that is gonna follow lots of ideas and like have fun with it and get lost in a hole.

Yeah. Right. Of, of things. They can sometimes spend hours. I watched our employee spend hours like just futsing with something. It's like, neither here nor there. Yeah. Like it did not add anything, but they were just kind of like really in love with their playing of the things. So I try to and I have, get resistance from creatives about it.

They're like I love to do this, you know? I said, wouldn't you love to do it for your own project? More like, this is not helping your client and it's unprofitable, so how about we make your process really sharp, you're gonna do awesome work for them, and then you're gonna take all that extra time. Go paint something.

You know, that's, that's how I got, that's how I got Steve off of it. I said, I want you to take those 60 hours that you don't need to spend on this and go make a painting. Wouldn't you rather do that too? Like,

Kelly Kennedy: absolutely. Absolutely.

Pia Silva: So, so that's, I think that's a, a big mindset shift that I have to help people with.

And it's not, by the way, about taking value away. Like it's about, I actually find we're able to deliver more value to the client by doing it this way.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, you sat down and you said, take away everything. What are the most important things they need and how fast can we deliver on all those things?

And then obviously we're providing a tremendous amount of value, which means we can charge for it. It's a win-win all the way around. It's a win for you. It's a win for them. Mm-hmm. It makes a lot of sense. And you know, this particular service we were talking about, it's called the Brand Up. Correct?

The one that you started with?

Pia Silva: Mine, I call mine The Brand Up. Yes.

Kelly Kennedy: The brand Up. Perfect.

Pia Silva: But I encourage all of my students to name theirs.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, that was it. That was what I wanted to say, because most people are like, well, I'm, you know, I'm an accountant. So like, okay, it's accounting services. Right.

Or whatever. Right,

Pia Silva: right.

Kelly Kennedy: How did they pick you? You really talk about, and all the examples you've give in the book, every single person named them trademarked the name. Talk to me about the power of naming your product.

Pia Silva: Yeah. Oh uh, such a good question. I am a. Listen, it's a product, it's a, a process, it's a framework.

It adds so much value on top. It makes it easy to buy when something is packaged as a branded item. It what it tells the person buying it is. This is. Reliable. I've done this a million times. Yeah. There is a reliable thing that we're gonna do to get the outcome that you're looking for, particularly in creative services, but in all services I pay more because you have a good process and I know I'm gonna be taken care of, and I, I can see how it's gonna go for creative work.

I don't know what I'm buying, I'm buying hope that you're gonna do a good job. That's really, I have no idea. This is not like trying out a pair of pants and I can see if they fit me or not, you know?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: I just hope that you're gonna do a good job for me and I can look at your work and say, well, you've done a good job for them, but, but really, I don't know what you're gonna do.

So I need something to hold onto. And what I'm gonna hold onto is I'm buying your process. I'm buying that. You've done this, this way, and I'm not gonna be, you're not gonna be figuring anything out. I'm gonna feel really taken care of the whole time. I'm gonna feel like I'm going through something that.

That's what expertise looks like. I got this, here's what happens next. You know, I, I always teach people, you gotta use language like that. Okay, so here's what's gonna happen next. Yeah, I'm gonna do this. You're gonna do that, you're gonna get this email, you're gonna click, and clients will fall in line and they're happy to because you're directing them and they feel, again, taken care of care.

Um, but I just wanna, um, because I, there was one more point I wanted to answer on your previous thing, and this is to the accountants out there or whatever service you're offering.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: The other concept about the intensivess that is really important is that we work with one client at a time. So we are not what's it called?

Task switching. You know, there's a lot of, um, you're

Kelly Kennedy: not jumping around. Yeah,

Pia Silva: yeah. There's if a lot of efficiency lost when you're going from project to project. What we do is we go with one client. From beginning to end until it's done. That's also a way to do something in much less time. It's very efficient.

And so in any service you can kind of do that too. If you can package your service up, say, Hey, this is the week where I only work on your thing. You can get an amazing amount of work done for a client if that's all you're working on for a week. Yeah. So that's, that's a other concept that can be very helpful.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I, I, yeah, and I, I got that from, it was the videographer example that you gave in the book where you were talking about they record every Tuesday. That's it. Mm-hmm. So there's a new client recorded every Tuesday, and between that Tuesday and the next Tuesday, they're finishing that client up, basically doing four a month, being their capacity they can work at, at that time.

But being able to kind of, always know where they're at. One of the things that I've always taught in my business development coaching is simply that it's like you need to know where you're at because it's so easy when you're doing business development to just be able to sit down at your desk and be like, what should I be doing right now?

Yes. It's so important to just be able to know where you're at and what you have to do next, which is why process is so important there, but it's clearly important in everything. No matter what the task is. You need to know where you're at and what to do next.

Pia Silva: Yes, absolutely. And so the other piece of it is really about this selling that first step up front, which is so critical.

And that actually also simplifies your biz dev. And how am I supposed to get more clients? We, we only, we're only trying to sell this one thing. It's really simple and easy. I know how to talk about it. I know how to qualify people. So that's like simplifying what you're doing when you're a small service business, I think is critical to being successful.

And I think most service businesses, they just have a lot of things they could do. And you end up not quite doing anything that Well Yeah, because you're unfocused and you always kind of feel like you should be doing something else. So I, I try to tell people like, if you can get clear on this is the only thing I need to do.

And for me it's all you need to do is sell lead products. You're just selling lead products. Everything else comes after the lead product and it makes sense and we have a process for it. So your job is just to sell this easy to buy lead product?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. We're talking about selling, so I want to get into the selling aspect of the book where you literally said, stop selling.

So stop selling Pia between me and you. Stop selling me.

Pia Silva: Between you and me. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: What do you mean by stop selling?

Pia Silva: Stop selling. Yeah. You know, I'm being a little tongue in cheek here selling. I think everybody thinks selling yuck, right? Who wants to sell? Who wants to be sold to? Um, the reason we feel that way is because I think selling implies that you're trying to convince someone to buy something that they don't need or want.

And so when I say stop selling, I mean, don't even your goal should not be, I want this person to buy my thing instead. Think of it like this. Like if somebody has a headache, you ask them, do you have a headache? Yes, I have a headache. Okay. Would you like some Advil then? Oh yeah, sure. Thank you.

You don't try to give Advil to somebody who doesn't have a headache. Yes. I don't want your Advil because I feel fine. So that's what I mean by. If someone doesn't have a headache, don't offer them Advil. If somebody doesn't have a problem, don't try to force a brand or a website down their throat.

And that's why it feels salesy. It's when you're trying to convince people that they need something that they don't really think that they have a problem or that they need.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, and I think too, there's a psychology of it as well, right? Like if you don't need, you know, you talked about it when you were talking about selling the art, right?

Once the company was doing great and you didn't have to, you didn't have to sell the art.

Pia Silva: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: You didn't give a shit if the wrong, if, if somebody wanted to buy the art or not for whatever your price was. Right. There's a lot of power in being able to not give a shit like, and I mean that in the best possible way.

We obviously all care about our services and products, but there's a lot of power. You know, you talk about being able to turn somebody away, being able to say no. And that's like a whole aspect we're gonna get into in a minute. But the power of being able to say no is probably the most powerful thing that any business owner has in their tool belt, and yet almost none of them use it.

It's a really scary, interesting concept. Right. But if you are able to say no, you know, you give a lot of reasons in the book why being able to say no is powerful. I, uh, probably 10 different examples, but, but the being able to say no to the wrong things lets you say yes to the right things. And you hit on in the book that the right things are probably the best paying and the best clients anyway.

Pia Silva: Yeah. And I think this is something that you, it's like a muscle that you build over time. It's really hard to say no in the beginning when you need money and somebody's offering you money. And I get that and I don't even think people should say no in the beginning, especially when you haven't worked with that many clients.

But after you've been working with clients, you need to start to clear up your schedule from those time sucking projects that aren't paying you that well anyway, and are taking up a lot of your energy and. There's gotta be a little bit of faith and belief that if I redirect all of that time that I just saved by not taking that client, I can use that time to go find the clients that I do wanna work with, who are gonna value what I do, and pay me the prices that I want and need to charge.

So saying no to certain things is like the only way to get the clients you actually want to say yes to the things you actually want. And it's a hard thing to do. It's hard. I think there's a messy middle time where, well, I, you still need to take some of those clients. I've done it too, right? It's like I need, I need this client this month and that's cool.

Just be clear. This is one, I call them fast cash. This is one of those fast cash clients. I'm doing it. I don't like it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah,

Pia Silva: maybe it's not that profitable but it's gonna bring some cash in right now to buy me more time. Because I'm building my skills, building my marketing, building my, you know, my brand.

I'm building my network and I'm doing that in service of one day. I'm not gonna take any fast cash clients. Yes. So I think it's just being strategic about it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It's knowing where you wanna go and being able to 'cause that, that was one of my questions. Reading the book is like, that makes a lot of sense.

Like this all, you know, implementing all this, it requires a bridging period, right? Yes. And, and I was just like, okay, well what about the bridging period? 'cause you really need

Pia Silva: that bridging. I don't think I write the bridging period in the book. I'm very black and white.

Kelly Kennedy: You didn't, you didn't. But I'm, I'm putting my own words into it.

Yes. Because that's basically what it is. It's, it's a bridge who you were and who you were about to become. Yes. Right? Yes. Yes. And, and there's gonna be, like you said, that messy space in the middle where you're still doing a little bit of the old stuff, you're doing a little bit of the new stuff. But I think what you're kind of saying here is everybody's gonna have to figure out their bridge.

It takes bravery and badassery to do it, but the faster you are able to embody the new version of yourself and say no to those old things, the faster you're gonna be who you wanna be and, and the company you wanna be.

Pia Silva: Yeah, I think that is beautifully said. I think it's really about just know what the vision of what you're going for is and what those principles you are wanting to embody.

And it's okay. Entrepreneurship and success is not a straight line, right? It's okay if you kind of meander your way there as long as you're really clear on where you are headed. Because what I find is a lot of entrepreneurs are not clear on where they're headed. Take whatever they can get. Oh, I wanna just raise my prices.

Oh, why aren't people paying? It's very, it's a little aimless. There's not clarity around not it's, I wanna charge as much as I can, not, I wanna charge this much because that's a profitable amount to charge for this service. And once you have that clarity, that's how I got to 10,000 for a day so quickly.

I realized that that was the price I needed to charge to get to a certain level of profitability to afford me a certain lifestyle.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: And then I got there really quickly because I had a clear goal. Yes. And I was tweaking things as I went to get to that goal. And I, I, I couldn't believe how quickly I got there after I set that intention.

And I don't mean that in any sort of woo way, so I'm not very woo woo. It was more just like, oh no, now I see the path.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I don't wanna be where I'm at and I wanna be over here, and I wanna be there as quickly as humanly possible. And you, you logic your way to it. What are the steps?

Right. I think so many, so many things, if we were just willing to sit down and write out the steps, we would accomplish so much more. I, I guarantee you there's people listening right now who are gonna, after this show, they're gonna buy your book guaranteed. And then they're gonna start figuring out, how the heck do I change my company into the company?

I wish it was because every one of us started a company with a dream. Many of us have fallen short of the dream or feel like that dream is, maybe it was woo woo. It was impossible. We just didn't see it at the time. But it's not true. It's not true. We just didn't have the right steps to get there. And really, I'm, I'm not even overtalking it.

Your book has the steps.

Pia Silva: Oh, thank you. Thank

Kelly Kennedy: you. Before we wrap up today, my gosh, I could talk to you for like two hours, but I know we both are very busy. Before we wrap up today, I wanna chat with you about pricing for freedom. Yes. The 50-25-25 rule. I think this is powerful and I want our listeners to know about it.

Pia Silva: Yes. Okay. Love it. One of my favorite concepts this is actually how the $10,000 one day came about in my brain because we were working. We were doing all of these one in two days and we were burning out. Yeah. And I was taking every project, so I was, I mean, Steve hated me 'cause I was like, we've got this little pocket and this person wants to do it.

Let's, how can I say no? You know? Yeah. It was, I, I was so, and I had so much, uh, trauma from being in debt. So now that we had money coming, and I was like, we must take all of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: So then, like, this is like halfway through the year I sat down and I said, wait a second. Like, how much money do we really need?

And I evaluated, you know, this is what our business costs, this is what our life costs, and this is what we'll need for taxes. Didn't make that mistake again. So how, how much like do we total need? And I realized, okay, if we were making about $20,000 a month, that would pay for everything and we would be happy.

And so I said, okay, well what if. We did two one days for $10,000 and we, we like buffered ourself like a full week because at that time I said, well, if we're gonna charge 10,000, we'll probably have to do more pre-work. So

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Pia Silva: let's just give it a week for each. Then we'll have two weeks a month available, and then I can use that time to, build my marketing and, and do all this stuff and you can paint.

Because that was always like part of the intention of our business. Sure. Steve, be able to,

Kelly Kennedy: how do you put more time back in to do the things you wish you could?

Pia Silva: Exactly. And part of like figuring this out was also so that we had a clear strategy on how to put weeks aside so Steve could paint. Because again, I would always take clients and say, oh, let's stick them in there.

I know you were gonna paint that week, but I'm not gonna say no to $10,000. So once I did this, I said, oh, great. So then the next time a client wants to come in, instead of sticking them in that third or fourth week, I'll say our next availability is

Kelly Kennedy: yes,

Pia Silva: whatever the next month, on the first week.

And it worked great. That worked fine. And out of that I developed this concept of the 50, 25, 25 rule to profit and freedom. Essentially. I need, I needed a, an equation. So if you can make the total revenue that you need and you have to account for taxes, personal and, and business in order to do this, yeah.

In two weeks, a month or less. I eventually it became just 50% of your working hours a year. Then you can take the other 25 and 25%, 50% total and put 25% away. For business development. People do biz dev like in their spare time, and that's not how you develop a business. This is strategically saying, I will, I will spend at least 25% of my time yeah.

On business development, only building my skills, building my marketing, networking, whatever it is. And then I'll have the other 25% for freedom.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: Um, because we built our businesses so we could have freedom and flexibility.

Kelly Kennedy: That was the goal. Right?

Pia Silva: That was the goal. And you know what, if you are like me and you stick things in, you never go anywhere.

That's right. And you never have freedom. Um, especially if you're doing well, because you'll always have clients. Yes. So when are you gonna take this time? So instead we had to start scheduling our freedom in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Um, and with this schedule, um, like a year or two later, we, we did like five projects in a row.

Once. We did literally every week of, um, may and the first week of June, uh, at that time we were charging like 20 grand each. We banked a hundred grand and then we went to Europe for three months.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Pia Silva: Um, and. Didn't tell anyone because we didn't have any clients. We didn't have anyone to tell. Yeah. And I was just booking our next clients for when we came back.

So like amazing. I just told them, oh, we're busy until September. Yeah. And, uh, and then I just booked them in for September. And that's what it looks like to be able to think annually about, okay, as long as I'm hitting this top number and I'm doing it in 50% of my time, I've already allotted that 25% of my time for biz dev and that 25% of my time for freedom and flexibility.

And it just makes things so simple. 'cause it, it allows you. It helps you figure out what you need to charge Yes. For what you're delivering. Yeah. And, and when it's profitable.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: And, um, I actually have this this thing called the free, uh, price to Freedom calculator, where you can just plug these numbers in and it'll spit out for you exactly what you should be charging right now.

And it's not that you are necessarily charging that. Usually people aren't charging that yet. Yeah. But it's like, well, now I know what I need to be charging, so I'm not there yet. At least you have what I had. Oh, okay. But when I get to 10,000, I will have priced my business for freedom. Yeah. And then I can continue.

Um, it's just really nice to have that that like hard number.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, absolutely. And one of the things I, oh my goodness. Like I said, I could, I could ask you a thousand questions. One of the things that I wanna ask about now, just from that. Was in the book you talked about, you know, the amount of products that a company should really have.

And, you know, maybe I'm a little bit bad for this because let's just give my examples. So for the podcast, we sell advertising for the show, which is amazing. Love it. Uh, we do coaching now, which is a new development for 2024, which I do business development coach coaching. And I'm still somewhat stuck in my old world of actual business development where I still do business development, retainer contracts, but I find myself in this really weird place where like my passion, you talk about follow your passion, like at this point teaching.

I love teaching the show. We teach, uh, you know, when I get to do my coaching programs, there's so much fun there. Like, it's like, honestly, if you were to take like the best parts of my job, that's it. And if I could do that 100% of the time, I would. But it's kind of that like weird space right now where, you know, you still kind of do that old thing and that's the thing you're known for.

And then you're kind of trying to transition into this other space. How does a company make that choice? And I, I know for you you'd say follow your passion, it's big in the book, but like, how does a company decide. How many products make sense? Like how do you do it?

Pia Silva: Yeah. I mean, I think it should start from, well, what do you, what's the goal?

Right? Yeah. Like, what are you trying to do? What and I don't, I mean that in the big sense, you know, like, what do you wanna spend your time doing? How much money do you wanna make? Make, there's a lot of paths

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: To an amount of money. And sometimes just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: So, I I, I have friends who have killed, I was just talking to a friend yesterday, she killed a $11 million a year business.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Pia Silva: Um, a couple of years ago because it was stressing her out and it, and she was tired of it, and it was going really well, but it was, you know, she had a different vision for what she wanted to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: And, I mean, obviously that's like, huh. But it's, but it, it just kind of shows when you're really tapped into, yeah. This is exactly what I want my life and business to look like. It's, again, with that clarity, knowing that number, I think that should dictate the things that you sell and how you sell them.

And I often coach a lot of my students who are selling high ticket, premium services, right? Premium design services. Yeah. They always, and this is actually not just for them, this is for like all services. They always think, oh, if I, what if I sell a course? Like I just need some passive income, which is obviously hilarious because there's nothing passive about passive income until you have a really big marketing machine.

And even then you're constantly feeding it. And I always tell them, I say, that's not an, that's a different business and hundred percent, I'm a big fan. I have those things too. But I can tell you from having made the mistake myself, that you don't just offer. Like, you don't just offer a a course on the side of your high, premium services.

You gotta market it. You go behind it, just buy them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: It's actually a completely different message marketing funnel, like everything. And so if you wanna do that, just know, this is my goal and I'm, I'm starting a new business to do that and make sure you're giving it that kind of attention. Yeah.

So that's how I think about all the things. It's like, how is this in service of what the bigger goal is? Is this something that I'm gonna give my time and attention to? Do I see it in the long-term as, as in service of my long-term vision for myself?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Um, that's how I make all decisions in my business.

Kelly Kennedy: It makes a lot of sense. You know, I mean, you're making all your decisions based on how does this impact my freedom? And is it, does it align with the amount of money I really wanna make? Right. Let to have those two things.

Pia Silva: Yes. Let me tell you how that, that really influenced me.

All of our brand up clients wanna hire us after for retainer work. Yeah. All of them. Yeah. They're like, can you do, because I do, I have a lot of marketing, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: So you see me on social media. Everybody wants to hire us with social media. I've never done social media for anybody and I won't. Yeah.

Because I don't want retainer clients.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: That's it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and you know, like you said, it ends up just becoming this long, drawn out thing that almost always goes longer than it should. Like I think the nice thing about what you're doing is there's like a fixed start date and a fixed end date.

And there's a lot of power in that for a business, right? There's so many companies that are like out there chasing that like long term retainer or whatever else. But like, guys, that sucks. That's a lot of work to upkeep. There's something really nice about being able to know, I'm working with this client this week and this client the next week, and eventually that's gonna be done and we're gonna find new clients.

And it's priced at a, and if you do it that way, you can also price it at, at a value that they see value in its value for you too.

Pia Silva: Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I honestly, I, I'm gonna be, I read your book and I'm gonna be like, yeah, I gotta go back and do the workbook on this.

Pia Silva: Yeah. I mean, it, it was, it's a good example of me and Steve knew exactly what we wanted, right?

Yeah. And we didn't want to be servicing clients all the time, and we're both intense workers and we, you know, in our bubble. Completely absorbed in this brand. We love doing that. And we're so done when it's done. You know, like, I'm like, don't hit the, let the door hit you on the way out. Like, I love you, but goodbye.

You know? So

I

Kelly Kennedy: love you, but tell your friends

Pia Silva: for us. Yeah, tell your friends, but also like, don't call us. No, I'm, and I mean that with all the love in the world. It's just, it's just how we are, you know? Yeah. It's just my personality. So it works really well for us. And some of my students, like, they also do retainer work, but they do it in intensive.

I teach them to do it in an intensive way. So you do, an intensive day every month. Yeah. So you still have that retainer work, but it's profitable. And that's all I care about. Is it profitable? Is it servicing what your goals are? That's it.

Kelly Kennedy: Goals. Well, and I think for every business owner, remember why you did this.

You did this because you, you did, you wanted freedom. Yes. I know. For me, that was a huge point of why I went out on my own, because my brain, for whatever reason, I saw all this freedom of being able to do my own thing, and then Pia ended up deeper than ever working harder than I ever have in my entire life.

Pia Silva: Me too. Like what the hell?

Kelly Kennedy: There was nothing freeing about becoming an entrepreneur other than the fact that it's nice being your own boss.

Pia Silva: I know. What do they say? Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to not work 40 hours a week.

Kelly Kennedy: That's a really good line. You should trademark that too.

Pia Silva: I read that somewhere. That's definitely not my line, but it's good.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, Pia, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for coming on today. Please do lead us into the No BS Agency Mastery. What is it? Who do you serve?

Pia Silva: Oh, thanks for asking. Um, I serve, uh, one to two person branding agencies who wanna scale to 30, 40, $50,000 months without employees.

And I do that by teaching them this model and all the things around building a business like this. So very specifically for people who want profit and freedom and ease, not necessarily looking to build a big team, scale up products or anything like that.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And if they want to get ahold of you to do that, what is the best way?

Pia Silva: Yeah. What is the best way? I think you should go? Okay. Well, you've been talking about my book, so I'd love to offer your listeners. You can absolutely go buy my book if you like. If you like a paper copy, you should, um, you can also go buy it on Audible or Kindle if that's your speed. But I actually, um, recently took the, uh, I took the exclusive rights from Amazon back so that I could gift it in certain situations.

So I actually put it up on, uh, no BS agencies com business development just for your listeners.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, amazing.

Pia Silva: Okay. Um, if you wanna grab a private audio feed of my book.

Kelly Kennedy: Cool.

Pia Silva: Um, that would be the best thing. And you'll, you'll end up getting on my email list and can. Reach out to us there.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. It's powerful.

Please, anybody listening to this right now, if you run a business, you need to listen or read this book. Pia, it's been incredible. Thank you so much.

Pia Silva: Thank you so much, Kelly. My pleasure's all mine.

Kelly Kennedy: Until next time you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast, and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.