“I Want This to Drag Out.” Said No Client, Ever.

Yeah…that’s not gonna work in my agency…

OK. I hear you. No BS Intensives aren’t gonna work for you.

Your work is customized, bespoke, tailored.

There’s a lot of other people involved - you’ve got a big team.

You don’t do your web development in-house, because you do packaging, so you have to get samples.

Well, I get it. If you were to do the No BS Intensives in exactly the way I do them, it may not work.

But I don’t teach my students to do that.

The way I do Intensives is probably the most intensive end of the spectrum. 

Say, for instance, you have a more complex process, like custom illustrations, or maybe brand photography. Whatever it is, your version of the No BS Intensive is just going to look a little different. 

What I teach is not that it has to go exactly this way. 

Instead, I teach all the steps that are involved in an Intensive that will make it effective, and, most importantly, profitable.

The first step is getting the mindset that clients are into Intensives. 

To do that, you need to fix your own mindset first. If you think that when clients pay a lot of money, they want something to drag out, we need to cut that BS out straight away. 

Everybody wants things faster - that's just human nature. We all want it faster. So then, how can we do an Intensive so that we deliver high value? 

Well, I've had people do intensives over 1, 2, or even 3 weeks. I’ve even had people who deliver the whole project via video.

And yes, you absolutely can do that - your Intensive might just look different. 

So the goal is not that you do it exactly the way we do it or in 2 days.

The goal is that you do it in a super-concentrated, one-client-at-a-time way.

I have a student who does custom illustration. So her way of implementing Intensives was that they would have a meeting at the beginning of the week, where they would show the direction of the projects.

She does an awesome presentation, where she gets the client’s buy-in, and then they go to work. And it’s the presentation process (that we also teach our students) that gets them to love it. 

Their Intensive Days are not consecutive - they have a ‘half-Intensive’ day at the beginning of the week and the rest at the end of the week. 

As long as the numbers work, an Intensive can still be over a period of time.

Provided you’re charging enough to pay for your overhead and your time, it makes more sense for you to do it to completion. 

And that's really the heart of the No BS Intensives Model. You're not working on any other projects - you're only working on one at a time until it's done. 

What if you're reliant on other contractors, like outsourced web developers, etc.?

Just make sure you’re clear with them upfront. This is what the project is - they either do it or they don't. 

One thing I teach my students about outsourcing is that you can hire in a couple of different ways. 

You can say, 

“Hey, how much can you quote me on this project?”

Or you can say to someone,  “Here's the project, this is exactly what it is, here's how much money I have for it, and here's how I need it.”  And they can say yes or no. 

The benefit of doing the Intensives model is that usually, your contractors are going to have to do a lot less work. 

Because the reason that they give themselves a lot of time and try to charge more is that they know that there's going to be this back and forth after. But you already cut out that BS with the Intensives!

It's up to you to be organized, clear, and confident enough to say this is what it is, this is how much I'm gonna pay you, and then find someone who can deliver - it will be a great gig for them.

Just because you haven't worked with people like that doesn't mean they don't exist - it’s like this because you've been wishy-washy. 

When my students bring in contractors this way, they start adopting this model too.