Why Hiring Employees Might Be the Worst Way to Scale with Pia Silva

Why Hiring Employees Might Be the Worst Way to Scale with Pia Silva

Pia Silva: Everybody comes to me and they, I just want X thousand dollars a month. And I'm like, but that's a job. You know, I, I don't want X thousand dollars a month. I want big months and $0 months because those zero $0 months are when I'm traveling in Italy. You know, like,

yes. Like, so we need to plan for that and kind of normalize the rollercoaster of cash and not think of it as a negative thing.

I think a lot of people talk about get off the, you know, get off the rollercoaster in the fee. It's like, no, we can plan a business so that we make all of our revenue in shorter periods of time so we can enjoy the lifestyle we went into business for ourselves to achieve

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 323 of the Business Development Podcast.

And for the very first time ever, we are featuring the same guest back to back in the very same week. And honestly, it's because one conversation Pia simply wasn't enough. Today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome back Pia Silva, who made a massive impact in the very last episode.

If you missed it, episode 322, where we talked all about positioning authority and standing out through her very first book, Badass Your Brand. But that is only half the story. Today we are going deeper into her newest book Scale Solo, and we are breaking down how to actually scale revenue without scaling stress overhead, or building a big team, which sounds incredible to me.

This one is a masterclass on designing a lean high profit freedom first business. So. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the show Pia Silva for us longtime. No, see, but for the listeners it is literally the very same week. Welcome back, Pia.

Pia Silva: Ah, thank you so much for having me back, Kelly. It's been so long.

Kelly Kennedy: It's so funny because it actually has, it has, it actually has, it has almost been an entire year since our very first recording together, and that just happens to be our crazy schedule here on the BDP. But, uh, you know, we've become friends since that time. I'm a huge advocate of Badass Your Brand. I tell everybody about it.

Anyone who knows me knows I've mentioned your book. If they ask about marketing. And so I, for one, I haven't read the whole thing yet. I'm excited waiting for the release, just like everybody, which right now is out. It's been out for a week, so it's perfect timing for anybody listening to this who's like, I wanna pick up both of Pia's books and you should.

But I'm excited to get the final copy of my hands. And today we're gonna be chatting all about Scale Solo, but. Guaranteed. There's people listening right now, Pia, who are like, well, I missed the last episode. Who the heck is Pia Silva? So in two minutes, give us a brief overview of who is Pia Silva and if you want the deep dive, listen to episode 322.

Pia Silva: Yes. Okay. I am Pia Silva. I own, uh, no BS Mastery and I help experts Scale Solo, how to scale profit freedom, and.

Like 62nd overview of how I ended up here. In 2011, I started a business around my husband's freelance design career. We, uh, we grew it into a small agency by hiring employees, mostly because I read E-Myth and was shamed into doing it. Um, that landed us in debt three years into our business. We then had to let our employees go.

We ended up finding, developing this model of intensives and made $500,000 in the following 12 months. Wow. A few years after that, I wrote Badass Your Brand, which I released in 2017. I did that to build my authority and attract clients to my branding agency. But in the four years that followed, I had a lot of small branding agencies contact me and say, Hey, I read your book.

I really wanna understand how you run your business. So in 2021, I decided to go all in on starting a new business training, small branding agencies on how we ran our business. I've been doing that for the last five years. In great detail. Hundreds of people I've taught this business model to. And, um, I always knew I wanted to go back to my original expert based businesses, which includes the small agencies.

Yeah. And so, six months ago I decided now was the time, and that's when I decided I was going to also write this new book, detailing out everything I know about how to scale your expert based business without employees.

Kelly Kennedy: And love it. Because so many people I know are very small businesses, you know, uh, under five employees, let's call it.

And they are trying to scale and they are trying to figure out how do we leverage this new world in order to do it. So for them, this is absolutely the perfect book. I've actually met a lot of people in marketing, Pia, who are. Letting go of the big teams and they are finding ways to do it with smaller teams.

So I think it's the way the world is moving, so it's Right, I know I, a. And I'm really excited, like I said, to just dive deep into this because I know a lot of our listeners are also solo founders who are trying to do something big, who have big dreams, big aspirations, but maybe not the big wallet to handle the extremely high costs of employees.

And so let's just talk about it. You just released Scale Solo. It's been out literally for a week. What problem did you see in the market that you felt this book had to exist?

Pia Silva: Yeah. Well, one problem that I encountered myself that I alluded to before is this idea that, um, we're fed this story, that you're not a serious business owner if you don't have a team, and also that you need to.

Be pushing growth and revenue, and it's the reason I hired a couple of employees and it made me wildly unprofitable and it didn't take anything off my plate either. So over the years, what I found is that there are ways to make more and more money in less and less time. This is specifically for people who are selling their services.

So even though I don't want you to trade time for money, you are showing up with your skills. In order to sell. So what I found over the years is that it's really a very simple mathematical equation where, you know, we, there's a certain amount of money you wanna make, you have a certain number of hours in the year to make it.

And we just work backwards from that to figure out, this is how you need to sell, what you need to sell, what your offers need to be, and what they need to be priced at in order to achieve your financial and freedom goals. And so I just feel like most people who start a business. Expertise. They didn't go into business because.

Have an MBA because they had a business plan. They went into business to do the work themselves that they really like and that they're very good at. And what happens is actually the better you get at your skillset and at your expertise, almost like the more complicated you make your business, and my goal is to show.

Experts. Experts, you know, experts, expertise is about doing the same thing over and over again and becoming excellent at it. Yeah. And we actually have to do that in all aspects of our business. From the marketing to the sales, to the delivery. We wanna simplify it, get rid of all the noise, all the clutter, and just do a few things better.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. It's, uh, it's funny because if I look at my business and what's made me so successful in the business development space isn't that I'm like the best business development person ever because I'm not there. I'm sure there's lots of people better than me out there, but what worked for me was creating a process that I could repeat week over week.

It's simple, it's not complex, but if I execute it every week, I get results. And you talk about it all the time, it's always about the results, not how much time it takes for you to get them.

Pia Silva: Yes, absolutely. And I think a lot of. A lot of service based businesses because we were kind of raised to equate time and effort with value.

It's very hard to break that habit of thinking. So first of all, you just mentioned it, you know, selling based on value. Actually, the better you get at something, you're gonna be able to do it in a shorter amount of time. You should get paid more for that, not less. So. There's a lot of mindset. You know, rewiring, there's a lot of just like pretty simple math to do, and then we just wanna see, this is the, my, the whole purpose of the book is to say, Hey, this business model is absolutely available to you, and you can stop worrying about all the things you think you should do and just do a couple of things over and over again.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's so funny 'cause like so many people that I talk to are new entrepreneurs. I, I, I meet so many of them and I love them all. They're incredible. They're doing big things, but many of them, especially in the service-based space, are coming there from employment. And so one of the challenges that they're all facing is that they've always measured money in time.

Always. And so when you become an entrepreneur and you start to sell services and you start to try to do it based on value, not time, it's a really hard mind shift to break them outta, and it takes a long time and usually, you know, a half an hour, a full hour conversation on it. Before they're like, oh, I never thought about it that way.

Pia Silva: Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that comes with having been employed your whole life is you think monthly. Yeah. And that's actually something I really try to break people out of, especially when you are scaling by yourself. We don't, everybody comes to me and they, I just want X thousand dollars a month.

And I'm like, but that's a job. I, I don't want X thousand dollars a month. I want big months and zero months because those zero are when I. Traveling in Italy, you know, like

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes.

Pia Silva: Like so we need to plan for that and kind of normalize the rollercoaster of cash and not think of it as a negative thing.

I think a lot of people talk about get off the, you know, get off the rollercoaster and if it's like, no, we can plan a business so that we. All of our revenue in shorter periods of time so we can enjoy the lifestyle we went into business for ourselves to achieve.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And one of your priorities, like especially if we go back to the last book, Badass Your Brand.

You were talking so much about the value of your freedom that everything you went to, you went into business for was about buying your time back so that you could go to Italy so that you could enjoy your life. And I talked to so many entrepreneurs who that is, if you look at their number one value, it's freedom.

And what is the thing they have the absolute least of freedom.

Pia Silva: Yes. That's such a good point. And you know, I, um, I attract people. My marketing has often said, you know, I'll show you how to get 30 k months, which is a whole other story. Like you have to give people a number to get clarity around when I said more profitable, nobody understood what I meant.

Yeah. But most people come to me and they aspire to 30 K months, and once they hit 15, 20 k. They work less. They don't try to make more money. They actually realize, oh my gosh, this is actually. What I needed. Yeah. And I am not trying to just make more money for no reason. I actually am gonna re, I'm gonna take that time and go hiking with my kids, you know?

Yeah. Like, I'm gonna take that time and have an extra, like long weekends, every single month because that's what I value. And I almost nobody that I've, I can't even think of somebody that I've worked with. Who didn't say the second, I'm making enough money. I am, I'm looking for ways to spend more of my time with the things that matter to me.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Like if you look at all of it, like what does all the money in the world matter? If you can't do anything with it, if you can't enjoy it, if you can't take that day off, I'm totally with you. And I know there's so many solopreneurs who are out there, right there with you too.

And they're screaming, Pia, how do we do this? How in the world is this even possible? Because it feels impossible, and it's not that it's. It's not that it's impossible if we could have all the money, it's that they're saying, you know, Pia, we're only making $15,000 a month and we're just getting by. Right.

And I know to a lot of people who maybe aren't in business for yourself, that sounds like a lot. It's not.

Pia Silva: Yes. Okay. Well, should we break it down? Should we,

Kelly Kennedy: let's break it down.

Pia Silva: Break it down.

Kelly Kennedy: Let's do it.

Pia Silva: Okay. So we start with. The numbers my favorite part. Um, yes. I ask people, you know, how much do you wanna make? And usually they'll say something like six figures or you know, $20,000 a month or something. And then I say, oh, is that before taxes or after taxes?

Is that with your business? Or not? And usually I get a blank stare and you know mm-hmm. If I ask that, they go, I guess after, I guess that's what I wanna take home. And I go, you know what, if you're trying to make $200,000 dollars take home, you're gonna need to make probably something closer to $350,000. In order to pay for your taxes and your business.

So we need to get clear on the numbers because imagine if you are hustling to make $200,000 a year because that's what you wanna take home, and then you realize you're like 60% of the way there. So that's the first problem. So we gotta figure out what you actually need to take home. And then I use something I call the fifty twenty five twenty five Rule to Profit and Freedom, which.

We talked about on our last episode, I'm positive.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Pia Silva: Um, so you figure out, you know, how much we want to, we need to charge for our offers, and then once we know what we need to charge we are probably not charging that right now. So we have to put a plan in place to go from, let's say, my main offer.

I'm charging $10,000 for right now, and I need to be charging $20,000. Okay. That feels like a big gap. Well, there are really two ways to get there. I call them levers. So there's lever number one, which is we need to increase the real and perceived value of what we're offering. And there's lever number two, we need to decrease the amount of time that we're spending, and as long as we're tweaking both of these levers, we will eventually get to a place where it is profitable enough to support our financial goals.

In like simplest terms, that's what this model is all about. Figuring out those numbers and then figuring out where we're gonna pull those two levers to get us to that profit price point.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I know like many people are afraid to raise their prices. They're saying like, well, you know, I've been with this customer, let's say for a couple years and we haven't really done anything on this price point, and I'm afraid that if I up my prices, they're gonna leave me.

What do you typically say to those people?

Pia Silva: Yeah, I mean, I think that's like not even really the right question to be asking, right? It's not a matter of just raising your prices and I think when people tell, give the advice of, um, oh, you're just worth it. Like you should be charging more. I feel like that's really dangerous advice because you're right.

You might just raise your price. And then you lose the client or you just double your price to the next person you speak to. I know we all hear the story, well accidentally put a zero and they said yes, but for the most part, if you double your price, the person may, um, you may just not close that client and then you'll go, oh no, I doubled my price.

That's too expensive. And you get all up in your head about it. So

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Pia Silva: even if we figure out this $10,000 offer needs to be $20,000. The last thing I would do is say, so double your price because it's probably not even worth 20,000. Sure. So we need to put a couple of steps in place to, again.

Increase the real and perceived value of what you are offering. And that can look like one of the things that I have been teaching forever, and I did mention in my first book, is this leap product idea of selling upfront that will help you increase the perceived value of what you're doing and the real value.

Because when you give somebody a really clear strategic plan upfront it is more valuable for them.

In many cases, actually. Increase the size of the project because the thing that most people ask you for upfront is usually not exactly what they need. Yes. So how many times, you know, I've got lots of students. A client comes to them and says, I just need a logo. They put them through the LP process and they end up buying an entire brand and websites.

Because that's what they needed. And they didn't know that until they went through this discovery process, this interview process of uncovering, you said you wanted a logo, but, but why? Because a logo's not gonna do anything. Oh, it's 'cause I need more customers. Okay. Well let's start there. What can we do to help you get more customers?

And how can the logo and probably the messaging and the website in our case will actually get you there? So that's. One important thing and it happens over time, right? Again, I wouldn't tell somebody to double their price, but what I do think you need to do, especially if you're scared to increase your price, is sell, raise sell, raise.

And

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Pia Silva: by incrementally increasing your price, you, you, um, you develop. Confidence about those prices. So if, for example, you were to, you know, sell something 10 times for $10,000 and then the next person you sold it to you offered it to was 10,500, and they said, that's too expensive. You wouldn't question whether it was too expensive because, well, the market says it's not.

I've just sold it for, you know. That's right. But if you de multiply it by two and the person says, oh, 20,000 is too expensive, you're gonna question everything and you're gonna waiver and you're not gonna have a confident belief in your pricing, and your buyers know that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's so much of it, right?

Mm-hmm. Is you gotta be able, uh, it was funny, I was asking somebody once, how do you know that you have the right price? And they said, you have to be able to say it and not laugh. I was like, that's pretty good. That actually makes sense if you could say it with a straight face and not laugh at yourself.

You're probably doing just fine. And I have to say too, speaking about that like LEAP offer that you're talking about, it was like right after I read Badass Your Brand, I started looking at that because I've sold retainer services for years, but we didn't really have like an easy, let's just solve a problem offer.

And so after that, I actually created something called the Business Development Breakthrough tm.

Pia Silva: Nice.

Kelly Kennedy: After reading Badass Your Brand? Mm-hmm. And we just priced it at like seven 50 bucks. You know, we'll do 90 minutes. We're gonna get into your business, we're gonna figure out where your biggest business development challenges.

We're gonna fix it. We're gonna give you a report. And then we're gonna, you know, have that relationship And it has been awesome, Pia it has been awesome. Absolutely awesome. And so that's so great. Not only, not only have I read your book, I actually did implement it. Love it. And it absolutely works.

Pia Silva: It absolutely works.

Yeah. I mean, that piece alone can completely change people's businesses and anyone selling expertise can add that in. Um, and it's totally, and it's, while all of your, especially if you're selling services that are really high ticket, while all of your competitors are writing up their lengthy proposals for 10, 20, $30,000 projects, and you just swoop in under them and say, Hey, we can get started right now for $750 and I'll give you a bunch of solutions.

How many pe, how many clients have I stolen from my competitors by doing that? And they're like, thank you. Absolutely. I don't wanna, I don't have time to be looking through, pouring through all these proposals. Let's get something moving.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. And at the end of the day, you really just have to demonstrate your value as quickly as humanly possible.

Yes. So those introductory offers are super, super powerful. And I know we talked about that briefly in the last show, so we're not gonna go too deep into it on this one, but it is an absolute winner. It is an absolute winner. Having that introductory offer. And obviously that was kind of the start of everything that you've built was creating an introductory offering and being like, holy shit, this actually works.

Pia Silva: Yeah. I know it was kind of accidental. I actually did it 'cause I just didn't like selling.

Kelly Kennedy: Who likes selling? Who like selling.

Pia Silva: None of us like selling.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah,

Pia Silva: exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: It

Pia Silva: makes it way easier. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: So, with regards to scale, let's go back to that for a second. Because when people hear scale

Pia Silva: mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: They absolutely hear, hire a bunch of employees, grow your business, start two branches, whatever else. You are flipping the script on what scale really means.

Pia Silva: Mm-hmm. Yes, I am very, um, this is like the anti-growth. Anti unintentional growth permission to, to grow without building a big team and having high overhead, because I think that's where people get into trouble.

They hire before they're profitable enough to support it, and they don't even realize that because they don't know what it would look like to be profitable enough to support something and to be able to, um, support it on an ongoing basis. So I tell people like, if you're not already personally bringing in at least 20,000 a month, you probably can't afford any sort of.

Like employees, you know? Mm-hmm. VAs great. You can use contractors. Yes. But any sort of like building a real team, I think it's pretty hard. Depends where you live, but like, I think it's pretty hard until you, until you are reliably making about, you know, $200,000. That makes sense. A year. But yeah, the way that you get there.

Is by being able to continually increase the price and decrease the delivery time. So the, a main thing that I am teaching in this book is the idea of intensifying your process and how do you, and I think anyone who is selling services can intensify your process. We do entire brands and websites the entire, um.

Branding, copy, website, logo, all of that in a two day intensive for $40,000. We do the work upfront ahead of time, but that is our intensive, that's about as intense as it gets. I've taught plenty of people to intensify their process where they break. They take things that are months long and get it down to a week or a couple of weeks, or even something that maybe took a year now down to three months.

I just, um, I've been working with it consultant. Working with these big companies for a year. Yeah. And for the same price, he can get it done in three months. I mean, that is incredible. You know, like, so the idea that you would be just more concentrated on the project, not be as distracted by a bunch of other clients and.

Work on it more more fulltime until it's finished, is a value to your clients because they get the outcome faster. To your point earlier, it's all about like, how can get you this result? Um, and it's also much more efficient to you because when you are not, juggling lots of different clients. You're not losing all of that inefficient inefficiency in the context switching.

So it is much, I've always run my business like this too. Chunking my work. I call it chunk and stack. When you're doing your clients, do a project till it's done, then stack the next one. So that's another like very simple system that anyone can implement that can already have a dramatic effect on the profitability of what you offer.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, now we have to dive deep because I think something is really important in what you just said. Yeah. You are making a case for less clients, and I can hear people saying, what do you mean Pia? Like, what do you mean we can do this better with less clients? Like, why wouldn't I get 10 clients when I, but what you're ultimately saying, I think, and let's spend some time there, is that it's better to have fewer. Profitable clients than it is to be spread thin between, let's say 10 or 15 clients. And that might be something that no one's ever considered.

Pia Silva: Yes. So I will say yes and um,

Kelly Kennedy: okay.

Pia Silva: One of some of my best, my best years in terms of profit and freedom, where when we were doing $30,000 intensives, $30,000 two day intensives, they took me and Steve about an a week total to do.

Yeah. And we are doing like 10 to 12 of them a year. Okay. So we're working one week a month. We're bringing home $360,000 a year. That was Chef's Kiss. Okay.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: That's a lot fewer clients at a much higher price. However it's not just about. Just increasing the price and decreasing the profitability.

Sometimes I, oh, actually this happens a lot. When I first evaluate somebody's offers, often they will have a big. $30,000 project that they do a lot. But when I evaluate the profitability, that project is often the least profitable one. Wow. And imagine if I'm looking at three offers, you know, they're small, middle, and big package, and their big package the way I assess profitability is using the.

The formula. Formula and seeing what's the max, I call it the max profitability. Like if you were working all of your working hours on this project, what's the most you could make sure. So sometimes I'll look at that and the $30,000 project, the max profitability is $120,000. But for the, $5,000 project or $8,000 project, the max profitability is $300,000 dollars.

I go, don't ever sell that 30,000 project again. It's not worth it. Yeah. And if you're intensifying do, maybe you have to do. 30 of those projects. However, I'm not doing the math in my head, but like. If it's that profitable, it probably means that each of those projects only takes you one or two days.

Yes. And if that's the case, then you're not gonna be frantically jumping around from project to project. You're just gonna be doing a project till it ends and you're gonna work. As long as it fits into, the 50-25-25 rule, you'll be working the same number of hours in the year to hit that profitability.

Kelly Kennedy: That's so interesting because I see that too when I'm working with a lot of clients and I'll take a look at their offerings and it's like, you're absolutely right. That really expensive offer, that's always the one that they've, they've cut all their profit out of in order to sell it. But it's like, why?

Why even sell it? 'cause you're right, usually the first offers, maybe the ones that take a day or two days. They make the most money. And their thought was, and I can already like see their thought when they created the package mm-hmm. Was, well, we'll probably sell more of those anyway, so let's make those more profitable.

And then every once in a while we'll get this big cheese. But they didn't think about like. Do I actually make money with the big project? They just assumed they would.

Pia Silva: Oh, I don't, I don't, I think you're giving them too much credit. I don't, I don't think they're saying like, more profitable. I think they're lacking the, the assessment of profitability.

And by the way, that's no knock on them. I'm saying that from personal experience. I, when we got into debt, we were selling a $30,000 project. We brought in $250,000 that year.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: We ended up in debt. We started selling three one day projects and made the next. The reason I use the 360 as like kind of my, my the pinnacle of all of this is because when we made 500,000, we were working all the time.

We were just doing, we were churning them out. Yeah. But my, my point being it's, to me, it. Doesn't matter as much about the price point, it matters about the profitability and if it supports you. Yes. And then if you, and we did get our $3,000 one, we had a $5,000 two day when we first started. We got that 5,002 day back up to $40,000.

But in order to get there, we did it profitably the whole time. So it's not, I just wanna make sure I, I, I get the point across that it's. There's no pride in the high price getting to the high prices. Yeah. The pride comes in the profitability, not the revenue.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. Yes. Preach. I'm with you a hundred percent.

Pia Silva: I know, I know.

Kelly Kennedy: Um, yeah, it's so, it's so important. And what's funny, Pia, is being in business development, I've seen this at scale, at massive, oh my gosh. Massive scale. I've seen projects that were a hundred million dollars. The profit was only like two to 5% if you were lucky after paying all of your expenses, and you have to ask yourself why.

If you want a project like that, that takes five years, three to five years to execute and you make no money at it, they're literally just keeping their companies alive. That's all they're doing. They're paying their employees, they're keeping sustained, but at the end of the day, they have no money for growth.

Pia Silva: Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's, um, and they're, I, do they see, do they not know? I mean, I don't,

Kelly Kennedy: they know. They know. And the, the argument is, well, that's just the way our industry is. And I, and I hear that so often. I'm, you do as wells. Interesting.

Pia Silva: Yeah. I mean, if that's your take though, I'd go, so why are you in this industry?

This is terrible,

Kelly Kennedy: right?

Pia Silva: Yeah. Yeah. This is just not, doesn't make any sense. I'll take it down to a, a micro level. I remember speaking to this woman who was like. Proudly telling me that she made $20,000 a month. And then I said, how much do you guys take home? Her and her husband, they took home 1500 a month.

They were paying out. Wow, my gosh. All of that to all of these employees. And when I first, because I, I was trying to figure out like, why are you on the call with me? Right. Because they were potentially coming into our program. It couldn't because they were only taking home 50. I said, you guys. Fire everyone right now.

You don't think that the two of you could make $1,500 just doing anything? Yeah. Like you guys have so much value between the two of you. It just doesn't make any sense, you know? Yeah. Just stop. Just watch Netflix for, for. 25 days and spend one day doing something for a client Yeah. For 1500 bucks and you guys will have the same amount of money.

It's crazy.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, at the end of the day too, there's certain things that are cash generating. Mm-hmm. And I think what ends up happening is, is that we hire for the wrong reasons. Pia, it's not that. Hiring more people isn't beneficial, but if we don't them for the right reasons, generating on.

That's when we end up in trouble. I don't think you're necessarily saying don't hire. No. I think what you're ultimately saying is if you are hiring, make sure it is for those very specific cash generating positions within your organization that have an ROI of let's call it 10 to 15 or more times.

Pia Silva: Yes. I mean, a lot of my students, once they get this down. Hire contractors. Right. So they do. Yeah. They do less and less of the project, but they do it really intentionally. They do it when they already have built the systems, they understand how the project goes, and they're able to hire someone and plug them into a system that is already profitable and they already understand how much money they have available to pay that person.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Pia Silva: So that they maintain their profitability. And so I've had a.

They let them go, they build their business back, and then they hire them back. But they don't, but the business is completely different when they hire them back. So my philosophy is, again, especially when you're selling services, this is a different conversation. If you're an e-commerce business or you know, retail retail store.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. B2C B2C is a different

Pia Silva: world. Yeah. Yeah. But, but as a. Service expert based business. The numbers just have to work. And I've just, you know, for 15 years I've been working with service businesses like yeah, the numbers don't change in if you're selling services, there's hours and there's dollars.

That's it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Let's spend a little bit of time in the numbers.

Pia Silva: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Because I think that's something that a lot of business owners, once again, not knocking any of them, they're all incredible individuals. Many of them had insanely great careers. And they made the jump into entrepreneurship without having a business background.

Mm-hmm. And I see that all the time. Mm-hmm. I'm one of those people. We were never taught

Pia Silva: no.

Kelly Kennedy: What numbers to pay attention to, how to actually know what's profitable, what's not. When you were going into these businesses, I imagine, especially when you're doing your consulting and coaching, probably the first thing you're saying is, show me the numbers.

Mm-hmm. Show me your, your income statements. Show me your P&L's. Walk me through. They don't have this. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So walk us through what is the math, what are the numbers that we need to be paying attention to?

Pia Silva: Yeah. So, most people that I'm working with you and I are the same and everyone I work with, so we went into it because we love what we do and we're very good at it.

Yeah. And we don't bring this business background in. I had to figure this all out myself at the school of hard knocks. So, yeah. And also like, didn't know what a p and l was and my dad's an accountant, like, did not know, you know, could not figure this stuff out for a while. So what I do is I say, I just wanna know what does it cost for you to live, right?

I need, so I have them fill out, I have an app now. It's a freedom calculator, so. All of your personal expenses, all of your business expenses, and then the app will calculate how much tax you're gonna need in order to take that home. Okay? I have people calculate that based on a good, better, and best. So, needs, wants and desires.

I wanna know what your bare bones is, and this is how I did it too for a long time. I wanted to know. What's the amount of cash that I bring in that I like, don't have to worry. Yeah. So that's like, good. And then what's better? Like, what do I actually want? And then what's best? Like what do I desire?

What are my goals? This way I have kind of three stepping stones to be going for. And then once we know that, then I wanna know your offers. What does it cost? What are you charging? And how long does it take to deliver? Yeah. And those are the only numbers I need because as long as I can evaluate each of your offers based on what you're charging and how much, how long it takes, and I see what you need because it's not, there is no correct number for anybody.

You know, I live in one of the most expensive places in the world, right? Like in New York City, my number is gonna be. So different from somebody who might be living in a more rural area. And that's awesome because like you, there's so, you know, there's so much wiggle room and it's really, there's no right or wrong.

It's just what do you need and

Kelly Kennedy: what do you need?

Pia Silva: Yeah. And I, I tell people we wanna price based on what we need. So to your point about, you know, not laughing, when you say the price, my, my indicator is. You know, does this support my life or not? That's why this is the price. So if somebody said to me, that's too much, I'd be like.

Cool. You're not my client because I can't charge less than this or else my business doesn't work and I should be That's right. Doing something else. So it's more like having that foundation and understanding why this price is what it's, and how it does actually support not just a, like a vague goal number, but an actual lifestyle and set of things that,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Pia Silva: Means something to me.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that. I love that because you know, at the end of the day, businesses don't operate without money. And I know so many entrepreneurs who completely forget that. And it's honestly, because they're all incredible people. Mm-hmm. We're all, you know. Yeah. So many entrepreneurs are just the best, the salt of the earth, best people.

They really are great. And what they wanna do is they just wanna help. They just wanna help. And I know so many of them that the very first piece of advice I have to give them Pia is to stop giving away their services, literally. Mm-hmm. Giving them away. Because they'll be like, well, I got asked to, to do a speaking event here.

I got asked to teach and do a lunch and learn, or I got asked. And it's like, well, are you getting paid for any of this? They're like, no, no. Well, we'll get some customers eventually from it. Right. But I'm seeing that more and more and more. And actually I'm, I'll be honest, I'm gonna say something that might get me in a little bit of trouble.

Most of the people asking these entrepreneurs to do stuff are government organizations, which honestly pisses me. No kidding. Right off because they're the last people who should be asking for a handout.

Pia Silva: Yeah, no kidding. We already gave them all our taxes. Taxes know I'm gonna get trouble for that.

We already gave them all our taxes.

Pay us. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And you know what I tell, because of course like. I completely agree with you. That's why I'm so passionate about helping this particular group of people make money and have, have, um, abundance of time and money. Because when small businesses have extra money and time, we invest it in our families and our communities and other small businesses.

Yes. So we're the best people to have that kind of abundance. So, you know, I'm, I'm completely with you. And what I tell those people is. Especially the people who, I'm sure you get this too, it's like, oh, but I wanna help the people who can't afford the high prices. Yeah. I tell them, awesome. I want you to help those people too.

Instead of keeping your prices low, I want you to subsidize them. Right. So I want you to make it a mission to get your stuff to a profitable place so you can just donate it to that nonprofit,

Kelly Kennedy: love it.

Pia Silva: I'll, I'll give you an example with my, like friends and family. Like we, we have made a rule a long time ago.

We don't work with friends and family, but

Kelly Kennedy: yeah,

Pia Silva: Steve has made logos for friends and family. He'll do it for free because we don't need the money and it, it create, it's much nice. It's like, I would love to brand that for you, he'll do and he'll pour his heart into it. But it's like no expectations.

This is a gift that we wanna give you because we don't need the money. And you know how hard it's to work with friends, family.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. So

Pia Silva: I'm trying to get in that kind of relationship. You know, it's like, take it or leave it. You know? This is great. So that's how I look at it. I prefer to subsidize those relationships.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh, I absolutely love that. Because, you know what I mean? The moment that there's money involved in that kind of area, it always goes poorly, always. You're absolutely better off to do that. And I like what you're saying, and actually I agree with you and, and the piece of advice that I give to people is.

Don't stop necessarily doing free things, but limit them. I only do three a year. There you go. Pick and choose the three you're gonna do. Everything else has to be paid, it has to have a dollar amount to it because your business does not operate on goodwill. It just doesn't.

Pia Silva: Mm-hmm. Right? Yes. And, and you also have to put the mask on yourself, right?

So who, how many people have you met who are kind of perpetually in, um, struggle mode, but are giving it away? It's like, well, you're not gonna be able to give it away for much longer if you can't.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: Support yourself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. Let's talk about offerings too. Mm-hmm. Because one of the other things that I see when I'm dealing with lots of organizations is they're in a lot of different shit at one time.

Pia Silva: Oh my gosh.

Kelly Kennedy: And I see so many different offerings, just throwing stuff at the wall, hoping something will stick. What do you do when you hop into an organization? You're starting to evaluate all these offers, and you're going like, you have like eight offers. What do you, why?

Pia Silva: Yeah. I usually start with what's the most profitable thing you do, right?

So

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Pia Silva: That evaluation is also a good opportunity to say, well cut these three. You're losing money on these three, right? Every time. And I don't think, I think we talked about this earlier, like when there's revenue coming in, well, what do you mean I'm losing money on this? Well, there's an opportunity cost for doing something that is yes, unprofitable, right?

If you didn't do that project, you could have spent all that time finding another client that was. Much more profitable, right? Yeah. There's so many things you could have been doing with that time. So the first thing is like, let's just cut out the stuff that's unprofitable. I also always ask, you know, what, where do you think your value is best?

Like, what are the, who are the clients that you enjoy working with the most? And in a lot of times with experts, because when you become expert, you end up. Getting really good at the thing you do. And tangentially good at a lot of other stuff, right? You have to, yes. In order to be really good at something, you kind of have to understand not just your thing, but a lot of stuff.

Kelly Kennedy: Correct.

Pia Silva: So if you really wanna be effective for your clients, you usually wanna have a more holistic hand in whatever it is you're doing. Right. It's very hard to stay super narrow. And so, usually I'm helping pe for the, so for the, um. And I didn't even describe this in my book. I had too many things to say.

I had to keep some things out. Um, one of the things that I recommend in terms of packaging when it comes to services is literally small, medium, large. That's what everyone should do. Three offers, small, medium, large. What exactly is in them? Because for each client, you're gonna, you're gonna customize exactly what's in it.

It's gonna be a lot of the same stuff, because you're gonna work with the same kinds of clients a lot. So you're gonna see a lot of patterns. But the specific things that go in that client's package are gonna be determined in the lead product process. So once you really uncover what's going on for this client, what are their biggest challenges, and here's the plan.

Small, medium, or large package, and you're gonna tell them exactly what is in that package and that's it. And it keeps it so simple. It keeps the pricing simple from like that first call where they're wondering how much it's gonna cost. You know what? These are my prices. They're three of them. Based on what we said, you're probably the middle one.

I'll find out more in the lead product process. And that's why the lead product is so effective, because there's not even anything to buy. It's just one thing. So that is what simplified it for me. It's like, well before we anyone does anything, they buy this one thing and that just makes buying so much easier.

'cause when we have too many options, an analysis paralysis, it's very hard to buy actually. So when you simplify it, it's actually easier to sell.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my goodness. Wow. Okay. Let's spend a little bit of time there. So you go with ultimately three offerings. Mm-hmm. They are still your main bread and butter offering, but they're three tiers and you even list the pricing so that people aren't confused because you know what I mean?

I see a lot of people put together the packages, send the proposal, there's not even a dollar rate on it.

Pia Silva: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Right. So what you're saying is be transparent about the price from the very beginning. Would you put your pricing right on your website? Do you do that?

Pia Silva: Yes. Yeah, I've had my pricing for my services on my website for 15 years.

Um,

Kelly Kennedy: wow. Okay.

Pia Silva: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, okay, so there are times when that does and doesn't make sense, but again, we're talking about expert based businesses, staying small, scaling up. All of this is about cutting away the waste. I want you to know that my prices are between 30 and $60,000. When we get on a call I don't wanna have a call with you.

Yes. And then you go, absolutely. This is gonna be like 500, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: So I, I think it, it is just, it's just faster, you know? Let's just cut through it now. One strategy that I use and I train people on is, sometimes a client is. The highest package, but the lowest package is there for when they come on board, like when they're interested because like they don't, yeah, they're not ready to even consider the middle or highest package, but the low package, they, that's in their budget.

That's all we need these three packages for. We need to give them an idea. And I, I do strongly feel that three packages is better than a range. I think it gives a concreteness, it gives like a confidence in process and it's it's just communicated I think more clearly when you say, well, you know, my, I used to say, uh, my, my one, two and three day brand up are, 10, 15, and $20,000 respectively.

You're probably the middle package that's 15,000. Yeah. We'll find out in the lp. In 10 seconds. I just gave you a lot of information without locking myself into anything. Yeah. And you feel really clear on my prices so that

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Pia Silva: When I send you the thing at the end, when I send you the, it's

Kelly Kennedy: not a sticker shock.

Pia Silva: There's no sticker shock. You already, yeah. You had a lot of time to adjust to these prices and while when you heard it, you may have been like, oh good, I hope on the 10,000 by the time you've read my whole thing and I say, actually, you're the 20, but I just blew your mind with this. Well, that's a steal for $20,000 because that's, that outcome is worth every penny.

So,

Kelly Kennedy: absolutely.

Pia Silva: Yeah. It's about using the pricing to bring people through the process gently, but clearly. Yeah. And to your point with transparency.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Okay. And I feel like there's something else we have to touch on. Okay. If we're talking about pricing, we're talking about products is value.

Pia Silva: Mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: How do we increase the value higher than our prices? How are we able to show the customer and, and I've always kind of said, you either gotta show them how you're gonna save the money or make the money. Mm-hmm. Because all business decisions are made on do you save me money? Mm-hmm. Or do you make me money?

Walk me through how you make sure. That your value is higher than your price.

Pia Silva: Mm-hmm. So, I think this is going back to the lever of like what's the perceived and actual value. Um, when we do the lead product process, we are communicating value in a way that I think a lot of times we forget to do when we don't communicate exactly why and the thought process behind it.

So sometimes. Deliver the goods, but they won't explain the thought process behind it. When I put somebody through an intensive, like when they, you know, we work with them for two days, I don't just show them the work. I have a very. Uh, presentation process that I take people through. Yeah. That involves, you know, reminding them of the goal, um, showing them all of the thinking, ex like bread crumbing them basically from where we started to the end product so that when they get there, they understand everything that we did, so that they just go, oh yeah, that's it.

And say yes. So I think part of it is just communicating. Which we just forget to do because it's so obvious to us. Yeah. Um, the second thing is taking things off of client's plates. I'm a big believer in that part of this whole, like intensifying and being more holistic is about taking things off of a client's plate.

Another thing is having such a dialed in process communicates so much value. So

Kelly Kennedy: yes.

Pia Silva: You know, again, designers. There are a lot of talented designers out there. A lot. There's Canva, like there's pretty nice design on Canva. It's not about that, it's about the discernment. It's about the actual person being able to communicate why that value is why that value is important and connects to those person's goals.

And it's about having a proven process that the person buying can rely on. And I think that is like one of the most important things when it comes to selling services because when you buy somebody's expertise. You are buying the promise of an outcome. You can't try on the pair of pants. You know, you can't be.

That's right. Do these fit me? No. And I'm not gonna buy them. You're basically just, it's a leap of faith. I trust. It's a leap of faith.

I, that you're gonna deliver to me. So how do I communicate that trust besides having a book and a podcast and all of that, which you don't need by the way you communicate it through process.

You communicate it by, through confidence and by leading a client. Confidently through a process which communicates to them, I've done this a million times, I know exactly how this goes, and you can trust me. And I think those are some of the most important indicators that will make a client say, oh, this is worth more to me.

I mean, have you ever tried to hire somebody where they were a little all over the place and you're like, geez, like I, I don't know. I don't wanna kiss person, anybody? No. Thank you. Yeah. I just dunno if I'm gonna get what I, you know, what I need.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I, and I think we have to talk about your personal brand as well, because I, I wasn't even thinking about my personal brand Pia in 2023 when I launched the show.

Honestly, it hadn't even like crossed my mind. I was like, I'm just gonna like talk about business development and see who will listen. Maybe someone in Calgary, the next city will listen. I like, I'd never thought that people from around the world would listen to this show. It's incredible.

Pia Silva: It's amazing.

Kelly Kennedy: Uh, blows my mind.

But we have like listeners in 152 countries around the, around this planet. That's amazing. Planet. And I, I never set out to do that. And so it was literally in the building of this show that I started to realize, holy crap, I'm building this thing called a personal brand. And in 2024, it felt like that's all people were talking about.

And I was like, holy shit, I guess I'm doing that. I didn't even realize it at the time. Naive Kelly didn't even know what he was doing. But it absolutely has helped me massively in ways I could have never seen coming. I've met people like you that I, I would've never had the chance to meet without it. And I have to say that, a lot of the success from my modern day here in 2026.

Comes from the trust that we've built through this platform.

Pia Silva: Yeah. Well, I have to say, I think you built your personal brand the exact right way. You know? I think you built

Kelly Kennedy: unknowingly.

Pia Silva: Yeah. Well, you know, you did it by showing up and, and doing it organically and being yourself like, I think it's a hard, and this is true for business too, it's like you can't.

Just from zero on a blank piece of paper be like, okay, what's my personal brand gonna be like? You gotta kind of start showing up and being yourself and, and it's not that you're, it's not that you're testing to see like, what do people like, but you're kind of just figuring out what, what is. What, how am I authentically when I show up on a podcast and interview people?

Like, I just don't think you can just decide that from day one. Just like, I don't think,

Kelly Kennedy: no,

Pia Silva: I would never, I, I haven't taken a, a beginner client for a brand and website in 12 years because I'm like, well, you don't have anything to base this brand on yet. You know, go work with some clients. Let's, I need some data.

I need something. Yeah, I need something to look at. Be like, oh, that's your brand. You know, why are people, why are people enjoying working with you? Like, what's the value? What are they saying? What? Why are they coming to you? And then let's dissect that. So I think you did it the exact right way. And I say I want to say that because I think sometimes people are like, oh, I gotta figure this whole brand out, and that's gonna, yeah, that's gonna solve my promise.

Like, no, you showed up, Kelly, you showed up and you gave value over and over again, and you built your personal brand from that.

Kelly Kennedy: Do you, how do you recommend people start to take on that angle though? Because I know when I got into business, I never set out to build a personal brand. I didn't know how to use social media.

Mm-hmm. Like, I didn't know how to do any of that. Right. I knew how to make phone calls and book meetings.

Mm-hmm.

Pia Silva: Well, and,

Kelly Kennedy: and so, and so I never set out to start a business. And then I realized that once I did start a business. I need to learn this marketing thing. I need to learn how to grow a business.

And building a personal brand ended up being a part of that, but I never signed up for it. You know, I never signed up to become good at social media or to put out a bunch of videos or to show up, in a lot of cases, nearly every day. Yeah. On one platform or another. I think it's that one like unspoken thing that like nobody who starts a business really considered.

Pia Silva: Mm. Um. I'm gonna say something maybe controversial as somebody who also shows up a lot online. So you'll be surprised to see in my new book that I actually tell people online content marketing, don't worry about it right now.

Kelly Kennedy: Love it.

Pia Silva: Don't worry about it. Um, yeah, not because there's not a ton of value in it, obviously.

I think there's a ton of value in it. I do it. Um, but because the amount of effort and time you need to put into showing up online and creating, creating content, finding your voice, like giving, create valuable information in order to create, to build an audience that is going to bring you cold traffic.

You have to create, you have to do such a sustained effort for an amount of time that if you don't already have. Paying clients that are supporting that effort, you will go out of business very quickly. So yeah, what I give you in this book is kind of the blueprint for it. No, I wanna show you how to get clients now and how you're gonna get clients for the next 3, 6, 12 months.

And that comes from relationships, that comes from your network building and nurturing existing relationships. And not only that, but what you're gonna say online and what, how are you gonna show up and all of that. Yeah. You're gonna figure that out by talking to people in real life and building those relationships.

So I feel like the relationships and the networking and the nurturing is the foundation. And then you put the authority content and building the brand, like you layer it on top once you've got some traction.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that. I love you gotta know who you are before you can start talking to people

Pia Silva: and building a brand.

If I had, if we had marketed online when we first started, I would've been like, we design for small businesses. We're good because Steve's an artist. Like that's what I was saying to people at BNII was like, he's an artist. So obviously we're good at design. That's what I was saying, that's not a great, that's not a great positioning.

So it just wouldn't have worked. It would've been a lot of effort. It worked out. Talking to thousands of people first.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, we're kind of heading to the end of this conversation, Pia. We could talk for hours, I'm sure, but you do a lot of stuff and so I kind of feel like we have to touch on not just the books, but we gotta talk a little bit about no BS Agency Mastery as well, but.

Last week, your brand new book, Scaling Solo, released March 4th, I believe March 3rd was the launch date. March 3rd. Mm-hmm. Okay, so it is literally one week to the date. Mm-hmm. That people are hearing this. So you can pick it up anywhere you find great books, but there's also another book, which I'm such a massive advocate for, Badass Your Brand It we talked about in the last episode.

I love that book. Thank you. I love that book. I recommend it to everybody who asks anything about marketing. So anyone listening right now, just get it. You can thank me later, thank Pia later. It's an amazing, amazing book. But please can you go a little bit into Scaling Solo a little bit into Badass Your Brand and then spend some time on No BS Agency Mastery, please.

Pia Silva: Sure. Um, so Badass, Your Brand is about how to, stand out and own your bad assery. And part of that is how you position and sell your offers. I mean, I touch on all of it. It's kind of like a high level overview of bad assing your brand and your business. And then Scale Solo is like how you actually run this kind of business.

Yeah. Going into great detail. It's twice as long as badass. Okay. Um, because I go into great detail 'cause I've just unpacked this so much over the last five years, um, I really give you the manual on how to do these upfront sales on how to intensify your process and all of that. How to do marketing, how to be really intentional about.

Marketing and building a referral engine and network so that you don't feel totally overwhelmed all the time and you don't feel like, oh my God, I have to be showing up everywhere. Yeah. And so you can actually get those really high paying clients. And then no BS mastery. So I'm actually launching no BS Mastery, which is my new version of no BS Agency Mastery, no BS Agency Mastery.

I've been is a training program. I've been training one to two person branding agencies on this model for the last five years. I continue to run it. And, um, those are my, those are my OGs and, um, they're some of my most important clients. Um, but I'm launching a new version of it that's like a, a tighter, shorter version of it for experts.

Okay. On the back of this book. So no bs uh, mastery.com is where is our new brand. Like we're actually okay. That's like the parent brand is no BS mastery.

Marketed that. Yeah. 'cause I've been doing so many things.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, we'll get it in the show notes for you,

Pia Silva: but yeah. But that's, that's the idea. I really, I really like I was touching on earlier, I really wanna help those solo experts who are really good at what they do, who really, really care to do a great job.

I want those people to feel less overwhelmed by having just a really clear blueprint and framework to follow, to have more abundance, have more freedom, more profit, and more ease in their lives.

Kelly Kennedy: I can't wait. I'm very much looking forward to getting the final book in my hands. Thank you. Yeah. This has been incredible.

I appreciate you. I appreciate our relationship, our friendship. Thanks for all you do and, uh, I wish you the greatest of success in this, uh, in this newest book launch.

Pia Silva: Oh my gosh. I cannot thank you enough, Kelly, for having me on twice. In a week that is just over the top and you're always such a generous just person that I know in the business world and full of value and valuable advice.

So thank you so much for having me.

Kelly Kennedy: Thanks, Pia. Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will 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.