ļ»æMarc Hyde Full Interview Transcript
Learning to Value Your Skills and Charge Appropriately
[00:00] AJ: Welcome to the Thriving Through podcast today. My guest is Marc Hyde. Marc, I'm so glad to have you on the show.
[00:13] Marc: AJ, thanks for having me.
[00:16] AJ: So I'm going to launch right into a problem that you had, that you figured out, that you learned something from, and that really informed your consulting business as you move forward. And that challenge is one that's so common amongst self-employed consultants: learning to value your skills and charge appropriately. So, tell me the story about where you were at the beginning and then how you got to the point where you were very comfortable charging the right amount.
[00:56] Marc: You're asking the juicy questions right off the bat, that's a lot of fun. You know, so I don't know about you or listeners. I have done a lot of home improvement projects around the house. I've owned three different houses and at each of the houses, I've had so much different work done. Out of all of those, I have pretty much rebuilt from the ground up so far on my own three different bathrooms. But then, I hired one of those bathrooms out because we just didn't have time to do before we were trying to sell the house.
It's one of those things where I started doing it because it's a lot cheaper to do it yourself then hire it out. But when you look at the three bathrooms that I did versus the one that I actually professionally paid out to do, you could tell which ones I did versus which ones the professional did. And obviously I got better as I went along and watched more YouTube videos. But when you looked at the price tag versus just parts of materials that I did versus what a professional did, there's a stark difference. I mean, we're talking like seven, eight grand difference, just because of hiring out that professional.
When you look at that in the creative space, in today's day and age with DIY builders or the Wix or the Squarespaces where they just say, "hey, just put in your content and we'll pop out a website," there's that little voice in the back of your head where it's like, "Well if they could do it, why would they pay me to do it?" And I know contractors have that same mindset of "Well, if they can just go do their own bathrooms, why would they pay me to do it?"
The answer is pretty simple: it gets done a lot faster, it gets done a lot better, and then you actually feel better about the end product. And so with primarily my main core of work with website design development and digital marketing SEO-type stuff, I have taken so many people's websites where they put them together and it was working for a little bit, but they're like, "We're trying to do X, Y, and Z and we don't know how to get there."
Once you start quantifying their problems with the results of those problems, then the conversations get bigger. Like a comedy club locally, I built them a website. They can put in their upcoming show feature event, get money, all those different things. I mean, today I would charge a lot more for it than what I did back then. But back then, someone asked the owner, "Why are you paying some random dude three grand to build you a website?" And she said, and I quote, "This will bring our business millions of dollars if we do this right." That's a game changer.
Once you start talking with other different folks and start seeing what they're charging, what are industry standards, what are expensive price points, lower price points, you're able to find your sweet spot somewhere there in the middle. But at the end of the day, it's the fact of I can get projects done a lot faster, a lot better, and you're going to feel better about the product when it's all set and done. Because it's set up to help you win. That's kind of where the mind shift and the mind change started for me.
[03:57] AJ: I love the quote from our pre-interview - you said once you started charging the right amount, all of the sudden people start to see you as the expert. And it took you two solid years to feel like that expert.
[04:13] Marc: Yeah. A hard two solid years.
The Power of Gap Selling
[04:16] AJ: What I love about the story that you just shared is a couple things. We were chatting right before the interview and you do something - I don't know if it's if you've trained or if it's something that comes naturally - you do something I call gap selling. I didn't create that. There's a fabulous book called Gap Selling. But you help people understand that there's a gap between their current state, their current situation and where they want to be, and in particular you're talking about their websites. But we all want our website to work, meaning bring in revenue. And most websites don't, as you know, because you're up to your elbows in website development. But you naturally kind of show people that there's a gap between where their website is and where it should be, and they're probably not going to be able to get there because it'll take too long. They don't know what they're doing. It won't look professional when it all comes down to it. So tell me, does gap selling kind of come naturally to you, or how did you acquire that?
[05:39] Marc: The verbiage definitely, I was taught how to appropriately speak to that story. When you look at my history of professional career and even training, I was trying to be a pastor, I'm ordained in the Southern Baptist tradition. I was a local church pastor for many years, and something that they always teach us is as a teacher of the Bible, that's what my job was as a pastor. I had to figure out what did this mean 2000 years ago in a Jewish context or six thousand years ago in a Jewish context. So, how far is that gap between back then and today? Let's build a bridge to get over to that gap. And so, that's how we were taught to study, and then teach it.
Same with counseling. When we're trained how to counsel people, you talk to people about where they're at right now and then you ask that simple question of, "Okay, so where are you trying to go? What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to be?" Whether I'm sitting someone down for premarital counseling, that goal is obvious. That goal is very simply, "We want to get married and not have a sucky marriage. We don't want to get divorced in five years because of this, we don't want to just end up becoming roommates. We want a great marriage." That's the goal. Okay, cool. Let's figure out where you're at right now. Let's figure out your past through your family story, the chatterbox of what's going on inside of your brain about who you think you are versus who your potential spouse sees you as versus what we know to be true. Where is that gap? And then let's get you to that spot.
People do this in all rounds of life. If you're trying to have a fitness goal, there's two different types of people. There's the people that just go to the gym because they know they're supposed to and they just want to not - they just want to go do something, there's not a goal, they're just going because they're supposed to go. Or there's somebody like my buddy who went from couch to not 5K but like half marathon type level and he had a goal in mind and he was like, "Okay, if I'm going to do this I need to do all of these things to get there and that's the gap I have to accomplish."
A lot of what my work is, is talking with business owners to go, "Okay, so what are you currently doing right now? And then my favorite part of the job is to paint the picture of what they want and what they envision. If everything went right, if everything is just perfect in five years, what does that look like?" I've had people give me like that comedy club. They're like, "We want to be the best comedy club in the entire area." Okay, cool. Can a website really do that or not? Well, yeah, give a good experience. We have to make sure we have things in order and that money's coming in. And if we're having to refund a good user experience with that, emails, all the different fun things.
Or if you're in eCommerce, here's what that looks like. Or one of my favorite clients, her name is Laura, she was just an Instagram influencer who sold her cookbook on a third-party website. And she's like, "My dream is to have my own website with my own recipes where I can sell my own cookbooks. And everything is just owned by me and the only money I'm losing is just to produce the cookbook, not paying all these extra fees to get it to where it needs to go." And like, "Okay, if that's the goal, here's where you're at right now. Here's the path that we're going to take to get there. You ready to get started?"
That's when selling becomes easy is when people get sick and tired of being sick and tired, they're ready to do something about being sick and tired. Got that from Dave Ramsey. If I'm just like, "Oh your website sucks, you need a new website," they're going to be like, "Who the heck? Excuse me, that was rude." That's like walking up to someone just eating McDonald's and being like, "You know, you're overweight, right? Like, here's some supplements to help you and we can get you on the right track." Nobody's asking for that.
Whereas, if I ask you to paint the picture, now you're inviting me into your story. And now I can say, "Yes, I can be part of your story. I can be part of that story, as long as you want. Maybe I can get you to maybe the next step because let's be honest. I know you know this and I've heard some of your other guests say this, too. There's other people way smarter than me in other areas and in digital marketing and so if I can at least get you to this specific point, maybe I can hand you off to the guide to take you to that next point."
From Pastor to Digital Marketing Consultant
[10:27] AJ: I want to back up. I want to because you have such an intriguing story going from being a pastor to being a digital marketing person. Tell us a little bit about how you made that transition. Tell us about your path to self-employment.
[10:27] Marc: That's a fun one. So I'll give you the Twitter story. I won't give you the TED Talk story. So back in 2019, I was actually a pastor here in South Bend, and if you see behind me, I got all my Notre Dame stuff, so we're hometown heroes over here. South Bend pastor locally. One day found out my wife was having an affair, and that's when a lot of things changed. So I found that out in the middle of 2019 and then going into 2020, I was not okay, made some boneheaded decisions. You can't help people when you're bleeding yourself. You got to get yourself out and hurt people, hurt people. And if you're going to not bleed on people, you gotta stop your own bleeding. And so that's what I did.
So I technically resigned from the church in January of 2020, not knowing what was about to happen, but the church said, "Hey, can you be here through the end of the school year, get these seniors to graduate, keep the cart on the horse," and that was just me and my kids, and they're like "We want to make sure you guys are okay. So we're not going to let you just resign. We're going to take care of you until you can figure things out."
I had a couple really good job opportunities lined up. I was in money conversation with a local promotional company in the Michiana area, had a really great interview lined up with one of the daughter colleges of Notre Dame, it was Saint Mary's, had a really good interview lined up with them, talked with other people, and then all of a sudden COVID happened and the world changed. So, I went from talking actual salary package with benefits, all these different things, and lined up some great interviews because I got through all the recruiters and stuff like that to all of a sudden, nobody called me back because they don't even know if they'll be in business.
Thankfully, the church kept me on, they're like, "Hey, we're going all digital. We need you even more." That's why I stayed on through the summer, but between honestly, that mark of the summer of 2020, through the end of that year, it was just hustling the crap out of everything, and I leaned extremely hard into my network to just do random odd projects in the creative space in some way, shape, or form, which got me connected to so many different people that I would not be here today if it wasn't for them.
For me, it was one of those the carpet got ripped out from under me. I had two kids to feed, and I wasn't going to let them down, and I really did not want to actually have to go get a job if I didn't have to. Because, I got two kids to take care of, and they both were extremely young, not even in school yet. And so for me, it was one of those like if I could fight to stay home to take care of the kids and then when I don't have the kids, just work the crap out of those days, I'd be okay.
It really was just a hustle to figure out what creative space I wanted to do. And then I didn't choose websites, websites chose me, it's kind of how I say it. I started working with another marketing company here as their, not even junior developer, but kind of like an outsourced guy, and that helped me fall in love with the system and the process, and then I started going, "Okay, if I can do this and all I need to do is put these extra few pieces together, why do I need to be the last thing on the totem pole to get money?" Because you know how it works. If you're the man at the top, you get most of the cut, and then you pay your people on the way down, which that's just a normal business model. So I'm like, "Okay, what can I do to go from the bottom of that totem pole? Maybe not the tippity top, but at least like somewhere in the middle, like I don't want the scraps."
I had a very unorthodox journey to that. The freelancer life, the consultant life, I didn't choose it. It chose me, and I'm very thankful it did.
The Biggest Challenge: Building Monthly Recurring Revenue
[23:51] AJ: That's a great segue into the next question. What has been the biggest challenge that you faced as you've ramped up your business and how did you overcome the challenge?
[24:05] Marc: These are juicy. The biggest challenge. There's been a lot of them. I'll say on the personal level, one of it was believing that I could do this, like having the actual thoughts of "Holy crap, we're doing it." It went from my first full year of business, I was making less money than I even did get paid at the church, and then all of a sudden year two, year three, year four, it's like "We're making real money now, we're doing this." And that was a big challenge.
But the biggest one that everyone always said, and I'll share a story about the moment I realized this: if I was going to be successful, I couldn't rely on the next project. I really couldn't. I had to figure out monthly recurring revenue. I had to figure out some sort of, even if I signed no new clients, no new projects, I'm still getting paid. That was the biggest challenge I had to face.
I remember it clear as day because my wife told me, she gave me an ultimatum. I finished the project. We signed the deal, or not signed the deal, we launched the website. It was great. She's still one of my clients to this day. I'll say she was one of the first bloggers to really give me a shot at a decent price point. And looking back now, I'm like, it was like 1800 bucks, which I'm like, I don't get out of bed for that now, but back then I was like, "This is awesome." But we launched the project. It was great, it was good. I signed her up for like a low-key maintenance plan, like 50 bucks a month, just to make sure things were good. And then I had nothing, I had no projects after that. I had no leads. I had nothing to follow up on, it was just that was it.
So my wife gave me the ultimatum of I think it was six months or something like that. It was like, we originally had a goal of like, if I could make the business successful after like I think it was like two years, it could be like I would stay with what I'm doing. And I had like six months left, and she was like, "If you don't get this thing figured out in six months, we had to do something," and we figured that crap out.
Since then, it's been a fight for MRR, and ever since that became the goal, like getting new websites, yeah, that's where the money's at, but the goal isn't just to get the new client, it's to keep them for the next multiple years. I've taken on projects where I'm like, "Hey, I'll rebuild your website honestly, for free because they hired me to do some different things." Like this thing is completely broken. I have a junior designer. I need to teach her the ropes. Can she rebuild your website and I just want to host and maintain and support it. And here's the price point for that because I know, once I get different people in, relationship marketing is how I built the whole business. They'll tell their friends, like, "Hey, you just took really good care of me, you should reach out to them."
I found that any time that I mean, even scripture says like you're going to reap what you sow and some people call that manifesting, some people call that putting good vibes into the universe. But it's really just the fact of, if you plant seeds and you water them, it's going to grow because that's science. So I try to plant seeds anywhere I could. Sometimes I took cuts, sometimes it's just normal cost. But yeah, we just kept growing and growing and growing. And now, I'm at the point where for monthly recurring revenue my entire salary is paid with it and some of my contractors get paid from just the MRR as well. So it's been a really good fight of a transitional the last few years for that.
[27:42] AJ: What is MRR?
[27:45] Marc: Monthly recurring Revenue. Monthly recurring revenues. So basically, I make money just for waking up. I have hosting and maintenance clients where they host with me, I maintain, I support it. I have Google Ads clients, I got SEO clients where it's just no matter what that money's going to hit my account. So even if I don't sign a contract for a new client, which hasn't happened because I said, I'll never let that happen again. It hasn't happened in, I don't know, almost three years now. It's been the fact of now, the whole goal of everything is just monthly recurring revenue.
[28:25] AJ: And you call it a snowball business.
[28:28] Marc: Yeah.
[28:58] AJ: I love about, and I challenge the listeners to think about how they can do this in their business. You have overcome such a big issue. I see it with consultants so often, is that feast or famine, the revenue roller coaster, and you have figured out a way to get off that roller coaster and smooth out so that you have consistent, predictable monthly income.
[29:00] Marc: And I learned that from a buddy who was a realtor because he does the same thing. He goes, "Dude, you really think I'm selling that many houses in the winter? No, I'm selling all my houses in these seasons." And he goes, "Do you think I'd save all that money after I sell his houses? No. They sit in high-yield savings accounts or savings." He goes "because I don't want to wake up one day and go, sorry, honey. Sorry, kids, we ain't eating because we partied hard back in the summer." So a realtor kind of set me up in that regard and other coaches who positioned me to do that as well.
Building a Healthy Pipeline
[29:36] AJ: There's another thing that you talked a little bit about that is also important. You talked about the pipeline, that you were at a point where you didn't have any prospects. That helped you understand the importance of having a pipeline of qualified leads that you were nurturing into prospects and into clients. How do you make sure that you have a healthy pipeline?
[30:04] Marc: So I did a few different things. Number one is I diversified how leads get to me. During that time, he took a big gamble on me, and it's paid off for both of us really well. There's a church marketing company who primarily were like social media, but they offered websites because they knew they went hand-in-hand. But the owner was like, "Dude, I don't touch websites with a 10-foot pole," and their last developer went and did a different venture. He's like, "I need someone to start tomorrow," and he's like, "You're a pastor, you know the church talk, you know the church language, you know all the things. Do you just want to do it?" And I'm like, this was all over DMs. This wasn't even a phone call. It was nuts. He's one of my greatest friends now. That was three years ago.
So I still work with him hand-in-hand with some websites where if they come to him, I get paid less than if it was a direct church coming to me, but it's still good revenue. And I have a really unique relationship with him where, again, MRR of if they go to host and maintain and support their website, I get those clients, not him. He doesn't take anything off the top. So I have about six of those clients who now make up about, they're 100 bucks a month. That's 600 dollars a month just through that partnership. But then through that, some have upped their sales. They want to have higher, different packages. They want retainer packages. One has already done a complete redesign. So I've redesigned the same church's website twice. That's a lot of fun. But those are big staples in my portfolio where I've gained other leads because of it. So that's been really, really good.
I've also pushed extremely hard for local SEO too. And so if you look up or even ChatGPT, Claude, look at web designer in South Bend, your boy's at the top. I might not be number one because I don't have a physical business address in South Bend, so that kind of sucks. But right now I'm getting really close to 60 reviews on Google Business. No other web designer in our area has that, and it should be way more. People are just dragging their feet. So I worked really hard where, if people are looking for a web designer, they find me first.
And then once they find me, the question is, "Okay, so what's the difference between you and all these other people out there?" Number one is, I always tell people when you work with me, you work with me. There are other people, but I'm not alone. There's more people on my team to make sure we get the job done to serve you better. But you're going to be on a first-name basis with your website designer. And I think I joked with you about this in the preview as well, AJ. I joke like, "And just so you know, you might be my friend by the end of this project too." And so, like one of my clients, her name is Soleil, her husband Eric, like we text now because we're both college football nuts. Like, we're buddies now. Like, how on Earth did that happen?
And then all these other different clients. Once you serve people super, super well, they're going to talk about it. And if you get in the right circles, your name gets passed around, you become the guy. And that happened for this creative network that I'm a part of. They're a bunch of bloggers and creators for Instagram and socials and websites out in Utah. I'm like five of their guys. Like, everyone knows who Marc is. And so whenever their friends, who are also business owners, need help, guess whose name is passed around? It's me because I'm on a first-name basis. I'm not trying to hide behind an agency thing. It's like, I'm Marc. When you work with me, you work with me. I take care of you. That's the way Mama raised me. If it ain't good enough for me, it ain't good enough for you.
When people do find me, I want to set myself apart in that regard. You're going to see my face all over the website. You're going to see videos, you're going to see pictures of my kids. I'm going to talk about my kids. I mean, heck, even in my monthly newsletter, which side note, you can sign up for by going to MarcHyde.com, I call it Marc's Marketing Minute. I always give a family update. And so all of my clients, and even if you're not a client, you get a family update from me every single month of what's going on with the Hydes. Because at the end of the day, I'm a person and you're a person and we work with people.
There are some people who choose not to work with me because they want that agency touch. They want that agency level, they want that agency whatever. And I say I'm okay with that, that doesn't bother me at all. In fact, that actually is better because then that proves that you're probably not a good fit for me then too. But then at the same time, that makes people go like, "Oh, dang, I got a guy" and that's what everyone wants. They want a guy, and not just the guy who works out of his garage working on cars. Some people like those types of guys because they're cheap, but it's more like, yo, if you came to me and said, "Marc, I got car issues, who do I call?" I'm like, "Yo, you gotta call Steve at Precision Transmission South Bend. They've taken care of me. They've taken care of my mom. They take care of us for generations. He'll take good care of you." Yo, that's a glowing recommendation. That's always been my goal. When someone then says, "Hey, I need website help. I need this. I need that. Who do I talk to?" Like, "Oh dang, dude, you gotta go talk to Marc." And it's like, "Okay, just a random dude, like MarcHyde.com." Okay, cool. And then all of a sudden, we just try to social proof the snot out of that thing.
There's been a connection of networking and people please come in that way. A crap load of local SEO, but my main one is word of mouth. And I've had three leads come in this past week. Two of those are word of mouth, and one of those was from local SEO. So it's definitely been a long, long fight, but it's paying off.
Building Authentic Relationships vs. Social Media Dependence
[35:28] AJ: You know, and what I'm hearing, what I'm not hearing that's notable is, I am not relying on LinkedIn or social media to get leads.
[35:39] Marc: I don't fully understand. I understand it. I mean, voice of Maloney's. So, like, give me Instagram all day long. I mean, I run Facebook groups for crying out loud for my own little fun adventures. So Facebook, Instagram, love it, LinkedIn. I know I thought we got connected, but I'm trying to figure that out. But no, I don't rely on other people's land to get me my leads. Now, a lot of people use those tremendously, and it's absolutely great. I'm not going to shirk back from that. But for me, as a web developer, my joke is, if you found me, I can help people find you online too. And so that really is a big, big game changer there.
[36:19] AJ: And that's important. I mean, I just see so many people saying I'm just going to, that they bought into this myth that putting content out on LinkedIn is going to do the job, and it doesn't. It's just a way for some credibility.
Marc: And that's it. I mean, there's still things you need to do, like, yes, you need to have authority engine. You need to, like a friend of mine, Beth. But it's not my wife's name, different person. I love her LinkedIn because she is just authority boosting the tar out of it, and she does find a lot of work that way. And she does a great job with it, but then there's also the question of if that's the only thing you're doing, is that the people are going to come? Like another buddy of mine, Craig, great on LinkedIn as well. Like, holy crap, dude's got it figured out, but he is a connector of persons. Like, that's really what it comes down to. Like, he doesn't want to just produce content for content's sake. He's connected to a person.
Here, locally in Michiana, he goes to our church, he's a buddy of mine, I helped him start his podcast. Potentially great connection for you too. So he started this podcast. I think it's like The Path Untraveled is what it is, and what he's doing is sitting down with Michiana, which is our area, Northern Indiana, Southwestern Michigan. So Michiana business owners just talk about their stories, about not just the business, but them personally. And then what he did is this past, well, it was two weeks ago, they actually rented out a massive space at Notre Dame football stadium sponsored by the insurance company that he works for. So, let's be honest, I mean, they don't get their business, he knows what he's doing, but he connected all those people at the University of Notre Dame for a big event from all the people from season 1 of his podcast, and they networked. And they had just good conversations, they ate dinner together. They actually had a speaker come in and encourage them for their business, and all of a sudden he's looking at this, and I had a, let's talk about what's the goal of this thing.
It's just for funsies, he goes, "Well, there's a business aspect, obviously, like I want to be their insurance guy. Like, that's really what it comes down to, but he goes, when you look at every single person in this room, business owners kind of live on their own islands because they don't always have someone else to talk to. And unless they actively go get their people to talk to, they'll have people in their friends group. They might have small groups for church. They might have their friends group or like my mom hung out with the Little League moms back when I was a kid. But that's different. Like, that's completely different. These are people who are owning seven, eight, nine-figure businesses here in Michiana that they just can't talk about their problems with somebody else who just doesn't understand it."
He goes, "What I just accidentally created was a network of other like-minded people who have very similar journeys, very similar faith but very, very different worldviews. And we brought them together," and now he's known as the guy, like he is just the network of all networks. He's winning awards, like 30 under 30, 40 under 40 type stuff. And that's what it is. It's all about people, it's all about relations.
For me, it was a very natural thing. I know, like for you, AJ, I'm not sure what your personality is, whether introverted or extroverted. I'm on the extroverted side if you can't tell, and my wife is even more than I am, which is hilarious. But as a pastor, I shared my life with people. That was my job, my job was to legitimately walk alongside your family with my family. If you look at pictures of me doing my ministry, you'll see my son there. Like I'm speaking to people, homeboy's right next to me, like during, like even this past year. No, I'm not on staff at a church anymore. But like, when we're doing VBS, I was part of like the big on-stage skit type stuff. You'd now see my youngest son at the foot of the stage, looking up at me, like, that's what we do. We share our lives together, and I am a lot more comfortable with sharing my family and my family's story.
And that's how I met my wife. She was a single foster mom and adopted all five of her foster care placements, and she shared her story online. So I found her, interviewed her on my other podcast, Real Talk Christian Podcast. And then we got married a year later. And so we've always just shared our story because at the end of the day, people don't connect with a website, they don't just connect with an output. They connect with stories because they can see themselves in your story. Maybe they're like, "Oh, like that's just an interesting person. I want to get to know them a little bit more," but when you share those stories, those more intimate details of the relationship, they're going to trust you more. They're gonna value you more. You're their guy is really what it comes down to.
For me, I know I don't quite fit the consultant realm of what a lot of your path gets would mean, you got some incredible guests. By the way, a lot of them are more of the tried and true consultant. But that's what they do 24/7. Whereas for me, that's just a wing of my business. When people have learned to know me, like me, trust me, and value me, yes, they will give me their business, but they'll keep giving me their business. Why? Because they trust me, they don't want to go somewhere else because what if that person screws them over? And we've had people walk away and then they've come right back because they're like, "No, I gotta come back." And so I found people who have come back after their own personal financial struggles, or choices or whatever. But you know, if you take care of people, they'll come back.
[37:32] AJ: Consulting is a relationship business, and you recognize that and have mined that for gold.
The Power of Professional Development and Coaching
[42:52] AJ: I want to switch to another topic. Professional development. You invested heavily in coaching. Why?
[42:52] Marc: LeBron James got a coach, Messi's got a coach, the world's top athletes have coaches. Why? Because there's certain things that even if you're the best ball player in the world, Michael Phelps talked about. He was the best swimmer in the world. There's still things that he can't see looking at him being in the middle of it, that a coach from the outside looking in, with that perspective, can see.
For me, like in the business, I have a lot of people that I can give credit towards. Some people have not actually been officially paid coaches. They just have basically helped me like I stand on their shoulders and they know who they are and I still am connected with them. But it seems like every time I was like, "I'm not super comfortable with selling this product or doing this because I'm not going to sell to you if I don't fully trust it and fully believe it." And so I had people who were like, "Why aren't you doing this, Marc? You can sell this." I'm like, "because I don't know if I fully even know how to do it. I'm not a sleazy snake oil salesman. It's more of a I eat my own dog food type person."
I found myself where I'm like, "Okay, I'm at a point now where I know if financially investing in this will work out very, very well." And thankfully, it has worked out well because I would just do it and not tell Beth, "Hey, I just dropped like two grand, three grand on this coaching program." She's like, "Are you what?" And this is before I was making decent money. But those people helped set me up to know just what's out there, how I should shift my mental thinking, how I should position myself, and even just give me tangible things.
I primarily have had three coaches. One was Lee Blue, and he gave me tangible things to put in my hands to be like, "You can sell these types of products and these types of ways." And then it also just gave me a price point. He goes, "Well, I know all these people in the group sell it for x amount, you only sell it for this amount. You can go up a little bit more," and so that gives me a little clarity in pricing.
Another great coach of mine, Josh Hall, another fantastic podcast. Josh Hall, I'm inside of Web Designer Pro, and that's where my growth is exploding, like, we're talking 3x explosions. And because he's done it in such a way where I'm able to show him something. So here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm processing, here's what I'm trying to figure out. Am I right in this? Am I wrong at this? Like, Jeanne, call me out on my crap. Do you need me to get my head up my butt? Do you need me to, like, okay, Marc, stop throwing your pity party and get on your horse and start doing something.
Yes, there are things inside of those courses that I learned. Like, in fact, before I even became a student of Josh Hall's course, the ongoing monthly recurring revenue with hosting maintenance support, that all came from him because I bought his course when I was getting really, really stressed out and I had a panic. I didn't mention this, I had a panic attack when I had no clients. At that one point, a handful of years ago, I woke up in a pure panic, and so I bought his course and that set me up for that trajectory. But because of Josh, I'm able to be connected with other web designers who are also smarter than me to see what they're doing, how they're doing, and what ways are they doing it? Here's different ways to grow the business. Here's different ways I can maybe potentially package this or do this. Here's a proposal. Am I missing something in here? Am I not? And is my hand in my client's wallet? Am I making it a yes or no decision for them rather than just saying, here's what it is to work with me, and then you're going to say yes or no yourself?
He's taught me a lot more. I would even say not just how to do my job but how to have the right mindset to do my job and to do it well. And I've been part of his group now for a year and a half, and Josh is absolutely terrific. And now I'm also, and like, I'm still part of his community, but he's not my, like, I can't even coach right now that he was my first one. I'm still with Josh.
And then the other guy that is one of my coaches now is Austin Church with Freelance Cake Community. And he's like, it's pretty much a lot more on the consulting side of the business with being not just the website designer, not just the pixel pusher, not just to make the pretty things on the page, but how do you be a critical strategist in all of this? And how do you not just position yourself as, "Oh, I'm a website designer," where it's like, "No, like, I legitimately can get you from point A to point Z if you really let me." And so he's done a lot of different work with even just money mindset. Where are holes in my bucket, or where can I start plugging up some of those gaps, and which holes am I okay letting go because something, when water falls out of the bucket, it gets below, and it gets watered. And so sometimes, it's okay to have some holes in your bucket of like, "Oh, I'm losing money here, but I know it's going to grow something beautiful because of it."
And so he actually like, I'm going to jump ahead because he has this book, this is one of them, not the only one but like this book Free Money by Austin Church, it's nine counterintuitive moves for life-changing freelance income and that book he was on Josh's podcast. I bought the book that same day, read it in like, I don't know, about a month and a half and there was so much just good mindset things in there. And then I'll talk with another friend of mine, Michelle, who is in Josh's community too and he goes, she goes "Marc, you got to come over here with me with Austin. This is, this is incredible. This is your next step too." And so, we're over there together, doing that.
I just have found that even he, like okay, like I'll call it what it is like even for like Josh's website to look at design development. I'm better. Like I just have a natural gifting with that. However, what is he better at? He's better at calling out my crap. He's better at pulling me up to where I need to go. He's better than the people where it's like, people like "I can't believe you're doing this" because if you surround yourself with a bunch of names that you're gonna be coming in there, he's like "not dude, like you can do more, you can be better like here's your next target. Here's your next. Here's your next. Here's your next steps."
Every single year I have a coaching call with Josh and he goes, "All right, this was your goals last year. How did you, did you complete them? Where are we at?" And he DMs me with these things too and then we set the next goals and we set the next goals, and we set the next goals. And so, if you don't have someone there, who's pushing you to be better who's pulling you out from the crap, you're gonna find yourself very alone and very confused and even scripture says, one person may easily fall but two but two people are better together because they can pull each other up. But a cord of three strands can't be broken. And so the more people you surround yourself with to encourage you and to build you up, I mean, gosh, freelancing can be a very lonely life, but not if you do it right.
Connect with Marc Hyde
[49:50] AJ: That's a way to kind of wrap up. So I'm going to ask the single most important question now. How can listeners connect with you if they want to learn more about your work?
[49:50] Marc: Yeah. The easiest way is I made a link just for you AJ. So if you go to highlight I think it's AJR is what I got. So marchyde.com/ajr, it'll take you to a landing page where it's just all quick links about me. A quick little video. Learn about the family. There's some freebies, you can download right there, views on my recent work and just learn how to work with me.
[50:12] AJ: Wow. That's a thing for all of us to remember, too, is when you are guesting on a podcast. Put together a landing page for it. Well Marc, this has been a fantastic interview. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. And for listeners, that's a wrap on today's episode and keep thriving through.
