S06 E05 - Mindset and How Goals Inform Your Pricing with Vito Peleg

Vito Peleg 0:00
Think that a know is good. Getting a know is essential for getting a popular Yes, not everyone needs to be your client. And this is something that took me a long time to realize, you know, it’s actually better that I would say no to clients. And then for them me approaching small time clients trying to sell them something that is beyond what they can comprehend.

Jason Resnick 0:31
Welcome to Episode Five of season six of live in the feast. I’m Jason aka rezzz helping you grow your business by having a conversation with someone who’s been there had success and built a business designed around the life they want to live. That’s live in the feast. This is your first time listening hit that subscribe button so that you will get notified every time a brand new episode drops. Obviously live in the feast is in your podcast app of choice.

If you’re listening right now, if you’ve heard this show before, leave us a review on iTunes or drop us a comment in breaker or cast box if that’s an app that you’re using. Today’s co host is Vito Peleg. Vito learned how to run a business while he was on tour with his band, filling up arenas of fans from the back of his van. Yep, he lived the live rock star lifestyle. But Vito has since built a business built an agency in fact, and as a result of solving his own agencies needs to be able to communicate with his clients in a way that his clients wanted to communicate with him. He was able to build, sell and launch a product that’s turning his agency into a product company. In this episode, we dive into the mindset of pricing and how powerful that can be not just for yourself, but for your client as well. We also talked about the importance

understanding your client and how important your service is to them. And not to assume that what you’re selling is what they ultimately want, and will also break down how you see your end goal and then break that down into a price for your services and products. I thoroughly enjoyed this chat with Vito, you could tell that he’s a genuine person and ready to help. I’m so glad to consider him my friend. Vito offered a coupon code for you. Resnick rocks for his product WP feedback, head on over to wp feedback.co. To redeem that it’s 10% off. It’s an amazing product. If you’re an agency owner, your designer, your developer, anybody that’s working with clients where you need feedback from a website. Take it from me, this is the product that you’re going to want to check out and use for your business saving boatload of time, it’s going to save you a boatload of back and forth emails. And it’s going to save you a boatload of frustration head on over to WP feedback dot CEO and use the coupon code red rocks for 10% off now let’s just head in and dive in. Know You gotta love this rock star. So let’s do it.

Hey Feasters, Welcome to another episode of live in the feast and today I’m super excited to be bringing to you Vito Peleg Welcome Vito. I know that we had some communication back and forth timing of things. So I’m really excited to actually square that up and have you on the show. Vito, I know your background. You basically started as a musician building websites, right and has

love that. And we’ll get into that. But for you that are listening, the reason why I think Vito has a unique insight into this is is that he has had a couple of transitions. One, he was a musician, and he did services work. And now he’s got a product called WP feedback, which is essentially a plugin that allows you to get feedback from designs functionality from your clients real time in the ecosystem of the website. So now, I mean, as far as pricing goes, I mean, he’s run the gamut, right? gigs, during music, music, but his band traveling all that stuff, then providing services work, and now he has a product. So I wanted to bring him onto the show to talk a little bit more about pricing and his journey and unfold that a little bit more. Vito, first of all, how long did you tour with the band, and what kind of music was it?

Vito Peleg 4:56
Alright, so I actually have been musician since I was 14 years old. And that’s pretty much the same time when I was actually built my first website, which was for skateboarding crew that I had back in the day, on geo CPG to remember that, yeah,

Jason Resnick 5:11
I had a geo city. So

Vito Peleg 5:14
that was the kind of the first first introduction to HTML and understanding or these kind of things. And, and I kept doing this mostly to promote the stuff I was doing for music. So I learned Photoshop to create buyers integrated official designs, and I learned how to get to edit videos and to do all of this kind of stuff to for the band, but I’m now it’s a, it’s a really valuable for me, recording and sales, like says a, you know, a creating relationships and building partnerships with, with record companies, booking booking agencies, venues, other bands, all of these kind of stuff. That was kind of the my school, if you will, and and after a few years, and will while I was watching, we’re playing and you know, just trying to make it back home. And it was really, really tough, because the style was like we’re we’re doing like nice rock and roll kind of music, like AC DC vibe to it. Awesome. Nice, nice. And, and no one really cared. So that was a, that was an uphill battle, to get people to kind of like come on board, which was a huge kind of influence on the way that I did everything else afterwards. Because, you know, if you’re trying to sell something to people that don’t want to buy it, when you have good product market fit, then everything is just magical, you know, you feel like you You made it sure and and that kind of also this, this passion of running after that dream and making sure that it’s going to happen working for years for free. And and you know, you know how that’s like AM but also not only working for free for myself, but try to get a team where we’re like, we were four guys, and everyone was working for free. And I had to keep them motivated and keep everything, you know, kind of running smoothly, to make sure that it works well. And then after a few years we started, we kind of like said, All right, let’s just rebrand the whole thing. Let’s create like a new band, same guys. But let’s try and approach like the international market. And so that’s when I really dove in. And I really like every marketing book that I could find back then back then I literally I went to a bookstore and bought all the books about marketing from the show. And I did some like a training on the on the business consultancy and all this kind of stuff to understand how to make it happen. Mostly for the band, that was the initial objective. Then when we took all of that, and we placed it, we created the product, we created an album that is done right. So it’s not just done, it was still the same style and what we love to now out, but we already knew who the target audience is, we knew how to approach them even before we created the product, which was the album. And so within the first 30 days of just putting it online, and we got signed here in the UK. And that allowed us the entire band to move here to the UK and start touring the world. Nice. And and we did like, you know, when we first came here again, we started from scratch, it was like you know, 10 people at a show, then few dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. And then the band broke up.

Jason Resnick 8:36
I mean that that’s so awesome. I mean, as I love music, I mean, Led Zeppelin is my favorite band of all time. Awesome. And so, you know, to hear that you at least the initial was, you know, more of the classic rock feel kind of genre. I mean that that hits home. I mean, I’m in heavy metal, a lot of hard stuff,

Vito Peleg 8:55
you would have loved our man.

Jason Resnick 8:57
Yeah, like, I mean, right now, like MIMO life, like, it’s funny, when my wife and I started dating MIMO a bunch of my friends, we went to a metal concert, local metal concert at a club here. And you know, it was between the buried and me. So it’s a band that’s very, very hard lot of screaming musically wise, like, I mean, outstanding, right? And so it’s a band that I love. And you know, she’s like, I guess she just wanted to impress sort of thing. She’s like, she’s not into that at all right? And she’s like, I asked her just because, you know, I was being a nice guy. I was like, do you want to go, I’ll get your ticket. She’s like, sure. I’m like, you sure. I’m like, you’ve heard the kind of music in the car, like what I listened to, that’s gonna be that life. It’s funny even now To this day, she’s like, I should have just let you go by yourself. Like when we talk about that. So but

Vito Peleg 9:52
with my wife is actually a lot more political when it comes to the to her metal. Like I like that like, like you like the Zeppelin style, the old cool beats, you know, and melodic, more melodic rock and roll. By choosing to plant a line machine has these kind of things. So, so now, it’s kind of the opposite from what for more were used. And he’s, she’s telling me Do you want to go see a rise against and I’m like,

Unknown Speaker 10:18
that’s awesome. Yeah.

Jason Resnick 10:22
Awesome. But it what’s kind of cool is like, you know, obviously, I followed, you know, bands and heard their stories and all that stuff. But you took that I’m interested to hear like, you took that from like a business perspective, like, it wasn’t working. I went to the bookstore, got some marketing knowledge from that, and then repurpose that and rebranded your band, essentially, yes, what made you do that go that route, instead of just saying, you know, what, this isn’t working, let’s break up.

Vito Peleg 10:52
Right. So first of all, it wasn’t kind of a, it wasn’t in my in my game to break up or give up on these things, I really want make it happen. So that was the kind of the biggest driver of of, of me wanting to acquire knowledge to make it happen. And But more than that, you know, really early on, I realized, as we were starting to play, and we got, you know, we were screwed a few times by venue owners, and, and all kinds of like, you know, fake managers and so on, I realized that I needed to take care of this thing. And it’s a business, you know, it’s like, it’s the show business, you know, like, it’s, that’s the, there’s a term to it. And I really kind of stopped when I was even in high school. And I already knew that, that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a musician. So I started reading these kind of books about it. And I realized that it’s hard that it’s really, really hard to make it actually there is the chance of owning a home as a musician is 0.001%. And so, so I I tried to look at this from a different angle. And I read, you know, all these kind of a Think and Grow Rich and Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and all these things that were kind of bestsellers at the time. And that really changed my mindset about this whole thing. So music was still the craft, but it needs to be driven, it needs to be pushed forward. And and this is something that I still think about, and this, I think that without this knowledge, the stuff that we’re doing for clients, and within my agency, and within my own stuff that my own businesses, nothing would have happened to that same speed, you know, because basically, instead of just being a musician for 10 years, and then starting to learn how to run a business, I was always doing that even a while, you know, sweating and jumping on stage. Right, right. Yeah.

Jason Resnick 12:50
That’s awesome. So what’s the name of the band?

Vito Peleg 12:52
I was gone chase the ace, chase the ace. Yeah, it’s actually still on Spotify. They’re still on YouTube. There’s all the videos there on YouTube. It’s like, awesome. Awesome.

Jason Resnick 13:00
Yeah, I have to go check it out. So fast forward, you know, obviously, several years, you doing services work? Right? And what you told me anyway, was the first year of services work, right? You did out of the back of the van, so to speak, right? Yeah, but yet you were successful at it? Like, how did you? How did you I mean, to dive deep into the pricing aspect of it, right, like, and you talked about working for free, and things of that nature. But when you’re working at an event, initially, how did you know how to price what you were providing to those clients? So

Vito Peleg 13:38
like, the entire subject of this conversation is about the pricing. And I can actually summarize this pretty well, you know, it’s going to ruin the rest of the show. Because let’s try some ideas in one sentence. Pricing is mindset. It’s nothing more than that. If you believe that you earn that you should earn what you what you’re asking, then people will pay that. And that’s how it’s been my experience with this forever. So whenever when I started building websites, I didn’t really believe I can make more than $500 for a project. And so that’s what I was paid for. But when someone paid me $500, I was like, okay, maybe I can ask for 750. And maybe, then I can just go 1015 hundred and 2000 3010 thousand. That’s kind of like how it expanded based on my ability to ask for what I think I deserve. So at the beginning, like the idea was just to make some because it was good touring, the band was working, but no money still. So so I had to do something, you know, to sustain myself and thinking of the future, and so on. So I just thought, like a, I reached out to some people that already seen the stuff that I’ve done with the band, and they liked the promotions that I’ve been doing and and the website that I mean for us, and I just offer them, you know, how about we do like this photographer, and not really random websites that we all start with? And, and they were like, yeah, sure, let’s do it, you know, it wasn’t much for them. So we did it. And then I once I had just a few pieces of work to showcase. And that’s when I started looking at this in a more serious manner. And, and, and again, went to do the research, I checked out what other what other web designers are doing. And because I was already looking at myself as London based, even though we were touring the world, most of the clients I was kind of aiming at, at the UK in London here. And and so I called up a bunch of other agencies, and I told him, I want the website to see how much they’re charging. And which really blew my mind because I didn’t think that these are the numbers that people are talking and you know, and but but then he kind of just the more you speak ability, just start feeling comfortable asking for it. And you stop stuttering when you say, you know, and and that’s when you know, people just start giving you what you asked. And I was doing just one website at a time just to sustain myself. So it wasn’t really a scalable thing, or I wasn’t even thinking about scaling because how would you manage manage a theme? When every time you need Wi Fi you need to stop next to McDonalds on the road?

Jason Resnick 16:21
You know, right?

I couldn’t agree more with what Vito is saying about mindset. And yes, it may seem a bit whoo, whoo, or fluff. And that’s not what I’m about. But I’ve experienced this firsthand, real quick story. And I’ll actually elaborate more on this in a minute. But when I was doing websites on the side, I too was only charging a few hundred dollars, until I worked for an agency charging 10s of thousands of dollars for a simple 10 to 15 page static website, it blew my mind. But that’s when I realized that price isn’t based on the skills. It was based on the problem that was being solved for the individual client, and the belief in knowing that this was providing that value. It’s why when you are on platforms like up work, it’s a complete race to the bottom and you’re being compared to everyone else completely on price. If you’re serious about not competing on price, and having clients that respect you and your expertise, and pay you what you’re worth, head over to feast course.com today. And if you use the code mindset, you’ll get your first month for only $20. As a member of fees, you’re going to get the processes and templates to not only figure out who your ideal client is and the services that you can provide for them. But you’re also going to figure out the exact price to put on those services. That makes it a complete no brainer for the client. feast is the community, every first hub for developers and designers ready to get off the project searching hamster wheel and actually run the business that they set out to build feast helps position you in the market with what you do, who you help, and helps you build the processes and systems for client management, sales and marketing, delivery. And obviously, pricing your business isn’t the same as everyone else’s. When you are a member of feast, you get personalized guidance from myself, it’s essential for me to meet you where you are, and make sure that you’re getting the exact tools so that you don’t get lost in the shuffle. The moment you sign up, we’ll have a chat so that I can create a custom syllabus of resources within feast to meet you where you are, and get you those quick wins. If you want to stop chasing down that next project all the time, so that you can start living your life, go to feast course.com today and use the code mindset at checkout and get your first month for only 20 $20.

Yeah, no, I think that’s, that’s smart. It definitely is a mindset thing. But I think it’s also a validation, like the validation of somebody paying you what you’re asking for helps that mindset and that confidence to then go ahead and turn that back around the next time and say, Hey, 500,000 10,000 and I think a lot of people have people struggle with that. Right? Like, people seem to like, you know, like, Who am I to ask these numbers and like yourself, like you called up agencies to find out what they were charging. For me when I was doing the side hustle thing and building websites much, much like what you’re, you’re describing photographers, and yeah, local businesses and that sort of thing. I was working for agencies, right? And when I would see these contracts come across my desk, I’m like, Oh, $30,000, for what? Are they getting their five page website? Like, how is this possible? Right. And it just, it was one of those things where it was like, it was like a switch for me, it was like, a if these people are delivering this for this amount, I know I can add more value. And if I could do it for half the price. I mean, it puts positions me as a no brainer for the potential client.

Vito Peleg 20:25
I agree. And and it’s just that it’s just that mindset is just like that, how far are you able to push your comfort zone when talking when you’re doing these sales calls and creating these proposals. But to be honest, you always need to add more because because, you know, whatever you think is possible, is not as big as it can be. and and you know, I even have an account in the bass player for the band. Now he does videos, and he does like after the kind of stuff, you know, explainer videos and such. And he asked me about that this exact question like, how do I price it? What do I want? How do I charge for my services? So I asked him, How much are you charging right now? He said there 150 pounds a day. I told him, okay, charge 300. And he said, okay, he thought that that’s what and after a few months later, that’s what happened. He just started saying 300 and people paid in 300, double this pricing in a in an instant. And then he came back to me and he asked me like, how did you know that that’s going to work? And I told him, I just made it up. But you believed it. And that’s what matters, you know, because you believe that you’re worth 300 because you trusted me so much, then it worked. And so I told him now that you know the truth, let’s make it full 50. And now that’s what he’s charging.

Jason Resnick 21:45
So, okay, so, I mean, obviously, there’s there’s that mindset that I mean, I would love to say, you know, with my next consulting client, 100 grand, right?

Vito Peleg 21:56
Yeah, why not? You know, us, Russell Brunson big said, pick some one minute, right.

Jason Resnick 22:00
But at the same time, they have to see that value just because I believe it, they don’t, you know, the price has to reflect the value that I’m turning around, right. So like, obviously, if I’m going to charge $100,000, in my mind, that should be 10% of the value that comes back. Right. So right. So they should be able to make a million dollars off of the value that they’ve gotten from me. Do you factor that in? When you think of like you mentioned, you have to continually continuously add value? Yes, with regard to your services and get into the product here in a second. But with regard to the services? How do you factor that in? Like I think of it as a 10%? You know, I want what they pay me as 10% Yes, of what their ROI is, do you do you factor any of that stuff in

Vito Peleg 22:45
and not to that degree, I would say that, that it kind of sorted itself out, because the clients that don’t see the value in what price I offered to them, we’re just not to go for it. And it’s just the way And again, it’s not because of the I’m going to create a different product for different people. It’s because a their business and their, you know, glass ceiling is stopping them from seeing what can be achieved. So it doesn’t really matter if I believe that the value of this is a million dollars, if they if the client can see that, then they’re just going to think it’s expensive. And so so the idea is then this happens over time, as you kind of as you start, let’s say insisting on the prices that you think you should be getting, you’re just going to clean up all of these small clients, I want to I want to do the same client that I did, you know, five years ago, the same photographer that could afford only 500, because he was doing it on the side, that’s what’s the value for him, you know, right, right. But if you go and you’re working with like a big charities or you’re working with a with like real estate companies are you working with with a with app, with App com app startups need a platform to sell the app on the web, you know, and they see the value in a they see how this is not a website, this is a marketing platform, you know, and, and when you factor this in as a as a marketing platform, then the sky’s the limit, you know, when it comes to marketing is depends on how much a product market fit and how much you have in your budget to spend to scale this up, that will determine the value of how much the website was worth. And so basically, that the idea is that if you price yourself or position yourself in a in a higher ticket, a you’re going to attract the clients that can afford it. It might not happen instantly, Bobby Not going to happen instantly. But But after a while, that’s what’s going to happen. Because the people that that said no still have that in their mind. Like, why did this guy asked for 7000 for the website? And you know, but maybe there’s something there, you know, who start justifying this themselves? Sure. Yeah. So that’s kind of the game, I’m not really concluded the percentage because it’s so different. I don’t know what’s gonna, what’s the structure of every business that I send a quote to such an early stage of the relationship, you never know, kind of how they’re going to react. You know, we had we had businesses that went for a few thousand pound websites, or people that were in for a few thousand pound websites, and then ended up not doing anything, including not giving us the content or the other stuff. So they obviously couldn’t see the value in their own business, let alone in the website that we’re building for them. Sure, sure.

Jason Resnick 25:38
So okay, so that that’s awesome transition, right? Like, the product that you have now is web feedback, right? And, and, dear listener, Vito has graciously shared with us a coupon if this is something of a need for you. And to be honest with you, I think it’s a great plugin you can use for your clients and be able to get that feedback, right? So find that in the show notes. I’ll link it up for sure. And you can go grab it. So thank you for that Vito, my pleasure. You said that you had a client that you struggled with to get feedback from essentially the content, whatever you’re asking questions they were maybe not responding or timely, is WP feedback that back scratcher of that

Vito Peleg 26:26
itch. And I would say that it’s it started from this and because as I was scaling and you know, kind of scribbling this, but when once once I started once the band kind of ended and I started the growing my own agency. And within the first year, I already was in six figures. And within the third year, I already had 12 guys on my team. So I grew really fast. And and when you grow, it’s all about processes and systems. That’s the name of the game. And because if you need other people to replicate the level of work that you’re doing gold, or the amount of detail that needs to happen, you have to have processes and systems in place. And so as we were scaling or taking on more, more and more projects, and we started, I started noticing that the the biggest thing is stop to a project is just the client, giving up, you know, the client, not giving the content, not approving the designs, wasting so much time on just back and forth with not giving us enough information to help him, you know, just by sending like three words in an email, or an expecting you to go through the entire website and figure out what’s that about, or alternatively sending like 50 emails for one request. And we’d like a one image on each, you know that you know how it works. So, so the plan that so as I was inspecting this, I saw that this is ruining my business, this is costing me a lot as the tin roof, this is what’s costing me a lot of money every day, have wasted the time that the guys need to chase clients that they’re they they need to do that these annoying back and forth, managing massive spreadsheets with tasks and all of this kind of stuff. And really, really boring work very far from the creative work they wanted to do. And, and I just thought that I need to figure out how to do it better. So the way that we did it is we just figured it out from the we tried everything we know for spreadsheets and project management systems, we work with invisionapp we work with a you know, with whatever solution that was out there, whatever courses that we’re out there about the subject I bought, and you know, I really kind of research that that subject and, and it all came down to this to the communications. So what I decided to do is flipped it on its head. So because we’re all digital people, it’s really easy for us to think of things as a, in a digital way. So like, for us creating a the process of someone needs to fill out a form to give us the content, or to go into a third party platform to input some stuff in there and manage tasks and, and learn new interfaces and all of these kind of things. You know, it kind of comes naturally to us. And but very far from the reality that most of our clients live in. And you know, I like to say that when we’re looking at the computer or the screen, we’re seeing the design, we’re seeing the colors, the branding, we see code we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing the matrix, right, and they screen, you know, that’s it. So, so I tried to flip it on its head and instead of over complicating the process to make it as simple as possible, because if the client is not going to do it, then it’s not worth anything, right. And so the best thing that worked for us in the agency, when it had some downsides, but the best thing to actually get a response from a client is to get them here, said get them to sit next to you pointed the screen and tell you to this move that here we need to save this here, we need to change that. But you know, having the guy next to you also can easily help them become the, you know, the the puppet master. And then he just like a mouse for hire, which we which we don’t want to be. So they The challenge was how can we get to that same level of precision without the client sitting next to it. So that’s what we did, we created the like a post it note system for a live website where the client can simply click any element on the website, on his computer, or even on his phone. And it creates this new sticker, that stickers that are sprinkled throughout the site, where this each sticker is a task that is assigned to this specific deal where the where the comment was created, you’re getting a notification back to your email, with that five words, you know that that we we always used to get, but only that now when we click on that link, you’ll be redirected to the exact location where the problem is you if it’s a 10,000 page website, it opens the thing and you reply. Even even with that I tried to make it to the point where for us as an agency, it’s as easy as clicking the Reply button on the email. So you just instead of clicking reply, you click the link and you reply in there, but you already got all of the information that you need. It also connects the screen size, which browser. So you know if if you see that the browser is like a Internet Explorer from four years ago. And you know, you need to file the client. Right?

Jason Resnick 31:31
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that’s that’s what I love about it is that, you know, what I’ve always struggled as a developer is much of what you said. And when I first saw your product there, I immediately thought of the commenting system in like Google Docs, right? Like where you can highlight it and click the little plus. But what’s always frustrated me about that is, when I do click on the notification email, it just brings me up the document. So now I gotta go trace to figure out where that comment sits. Right? Exactly what, as a developer, I’ve always I’ll I even have a shortcut key for this question. What browser what version? What oS? Exactly? Right. And so for me to have that information, like I’ve used all those bug chasing tools, and like, you know, fog bugs like it completely all over the map, same thing, like you always trying to solve the problem. Yeah. And to get that information, because even still, people are like, how do I find that information? Exactly? Like, how do I know what browser I am? You know, I’m like, Oh, geez. Okay. So I think it’s super smart. It makes everything streamlined in a way that that makes sense for the client. And that’s what I love. Like, similarly, I had base camp, I used Asana, I used all these project management tools, I tried to push my clients to use them as well, they never want to write it. Because for one, those things are very commonplace in our world, but it’s not so much in their world. So for them to remember that the URL or the login, or whatever it is to go use it that’s creating a hurdle. So instead, I said, I use those project management tools. How can I make it such that my client who knows email understands email, can just send me an email, and then I pipe that ticket into my project management tool, and then I do what I need to do and come back up the chain. And that’s when I found help scout and some of these other ones out there that can do that. And I just changed my whole way of communicating with clients to make it easier for them. Right. And and I think that’s super smart that you did that with a plugin,

Vito Peleg 33:40
I totally agree like we’re using, we’re still using teamwork as the project management system and the support desk. And even with this, like every task that comes in, doesn’t go into emails, it goes into the support desk. And with Zapier, it also creates a task within this the clients project on our platform, so we can manage all of the clients from one place on our side, but they don’t see that. So to them, it’s transparent. And that’s the magic here. Because Because as soon as you ask the client to go in, and you know, I this is even the one of the craziest thing that we’re doing in the community, like, it’s, if you’re building a website, for the for client that pays, you should pay you good money for it right? Then we never send them to the website, we always send them to everywhere else like login, they’re going there a lot, you know, a, send me an email from this platform, you know, comment on this thing, you never send them to the link that they bought. So what and that causes a lot of other problems, like for example, they become dependent on us on all of these small, annoying tasks, like changing the title here and there or changing the text on the button, which they can do on their own, if they would feel comfortable using their own website. But also, once they do feel comfortable using the site, what we’re seeing is that it kind of once they get devalued you have it, it inspires them to invest more. So they would they would come back and older, not change, not that not just change the color of the header. But let’s let’s add a booking system, let’s read the funnel, let’s do a client management area for my clients, you know, on my website, so it kind of inspires them to a to expand the relationship in a more interesting way for us as developers, and what’s that?

Jason Resnick 35:25
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s really smart. I mean, it’s it’s giving them hey, here’s the ecosystem that you bought from us use it. And then as you’re using it, yeah, like you spark other ideas on how you can use it. So I think that’s super smart. So a lot of the listeners, myself included, have thought about building software, or building a SAS or building a plugin of that nature kind of transition or get another revenue stream into the business. Yeah, to help their services side and maybe, you know, as the holy grail of passive income, which I don’t need is some such thing. But, you know, the idea of passive income is appealing. Yeah, haven’t you now that you have a product here that you’re you’re selling? How do you transition your mindset for pricing, from the services, the high ticket pricing to a product that, you know, may not be even though that there’s tremendous, tremendous value? It’s not the same price? Nobody’s going to pay $10,000 for that, right? So how did you transition your mindset there.

Vito Peleg 36:37
So first of all, you you hit the nail right on the head, because it’s all about the transition in the mindset. That’s the point. And and I actually I read a really interesting article about how to frame your clients as to how you can get to 100 million recurring revenue per year, right. So So the way that they structured it is they called each bracket or each level of client in different kind of animals size. So you can go after the mice, or you can go after the rabbits, the mice will only pay like 10 or $15 a year, the rabbits will pay like 100 $150 a year, that’s pretty much the bracket that I’m working with, then you have the the I don’t know what Coons like a bigger animal, until you get to the until you get to the whales, where you get like a one client or you get 100 clients for $1 million each, to get to the 100 million recurring revenue. So that’s the so that’s the first thing just realizing that you now talking to a different segment of the market. And, and to me, I what I really liked about this is that with high ticket a clients, there comes a lot of responsibility, you know, so and responsibility to me means my time, you know, it means that I need to invest my personal time talking to clients. Even after the Scott, I have a call with a client, I don’t even want to see them. But by this point, I just want to do before that, but but I still I still have the agency stuff running. And so but because they’re paying a few thousand pounds every month, they deserve my time they deserve my attention. So that was the kind of the biggest thing for me, I wanted to move away from it from this huge responsibility of people are calling in, they’re getting in touch stressed in that night, and holding against you that they’re paying you 5000 a month, just because I don’t know what the the footer link is missing. So, so so that’s kind of the mindset that I needed to to figure out then. And what I did is I started with, with the big number. And I think that’s the that’s the power of it. Because we the agency, I worked the same for the first year, I put myself I put a goal for myself, I want to get to six figures in the seal. And for the second year, I had the same thing. And for the 30, I had the same thing. And so here I just looked at the the big number, what do I want to make this year, and then I tried to break it down as to how many clients can I serve to get to this goal, and still be sustainable? And and based on that creates the kind of pricing around this. And to be honest, something that was really interesting. And I came up with with with the pricing structure for the product. And you remember at the beginning, I told you that I called up a few agencies to ask how much they’re charging. So here I did kind of the same thing. They had my beta group, which I kind of opened, I just flashed on a landing page describing the idea and shared it with some Facebook, some Facebook groups, you know, WordPress Facebook groups, and I got 1000 people signing up in that in 30 days, just telling me about just wanting to use the product that just appeal to them. And so I think the first hundred and I made them, the better users, I gave them plugin for free. And I asked them, How much are you going to? How much are you willing to pay for something like this? And it was four times more than I priced? It

Jason Resnick 40:12
was crazy. Let me let me stop you there. Right. So one, you found that the core customer that was going to and you present that the idea you didn’t go ahead and build that out. And then

Vito Peleg 40:26
we already had an MVP, but it was very, very basic, just the concept of sticking those stickers. So they see Ryan,

Jason Resnick 40:32
right, and then you grab the group of those people, gave them the actual MVP product, and then asked them, How much would you pay for this? So you didn’t assume a price?

Vito Peleg 40:45
I flipped it?

Jason Resnick 40:46
And had you assume that price? Right? You would have made four times less per customer? Then had you done it? Had you done any other way? Right. So I think that’s so smart. Because one thing I always try to instill in my coaching clients into when I’m talking with other developers and designers, is talk to your customer talk to a client understand what they’re thinking understand what they value. Once you do that, then you’re you have the privilege to put a price tag on what it is that you’re giving them. And I think that was well done. I congratulations on that process alone. I mean, I think that that even if just, there’s one takeaway in this whole thing is that talk the customer. So I apologize for Stopping, stopping you interrupting you, but I really wanted to call that out. Because I think that that was super important. So

Vito Peleg 41:48
I agree it was a shock to me, you know, just seeing that and, and getting that this because you know, the plugins called WB feedback. So just from day one, I decided that that’s going to be the the main value, let’s just talk to people ask them what I have the idea, you know, but I didn’t want to be a, you know, I I like to say that I love the product, but I’m not in love with it, you know, so if they need something about this, and if they need the new feature, or a few people are going to ask me for something specific, I’m just going to go ahead and build it, you know, and this is, this is a great advantage that that we all have, you know, within our community, because we’re working with clients that actually came up with ideas and told that and basically directed us to, to their solution to their desired solution. You know, when you’re building a website, when you’re building web applications, and on and so on, you’re basically doing the same thing that I’ve done every month, three times, five times, 50 times a month. So so you’re we’re all already doing this. We are all creating products on a monthly basis every month. It’s just that after we’re done, we just give it away, which is and now looking back thinking about it. Maybe it’s kind of crazy, right? Yeah, yeah.

Jason Resnick 43:04
No, I yeah, I think that’s well said for sure. But you know, I think, for one, I love it. I love the fact that you found the audience first, and then presented the idea to the audience. And, you know, like, as you said, like, it’s all I mean, you said it at the top pricing is a mindset, right. And if you believe that it’s worth something, go ahead and ask for it. Right. And I

Vito Peleg 43:29
believe it was worth a quarter of what other people believed it was worth right. Now, I believe that this is what it’s worth. And that’s right,

Jason Resnick 43:37
because they validated higher value than what you thought initially. Right. And so that’s where that you flipped it on its head, right. But like, we talked about those clients that you have on the services side that don’t see the value in a $7,000 website, right, yeah. And they go away. But then when you present a valuable thing to them, that you think let’s just save, you know, you think it’s $1, but they’re willing to pay $4 for it. Right? Okay, then you didn’t paint yourself into a corner at that point. Like you’re, you asked them, and I think that that’s super valuable. I mean, you know, I’ve experimented a little bit on the services side in much in the same way. When I’ve tried other services to try to like carve out products out of the services, and say, Hey, if I was to be able to do X y&z for you? What would you pay for that? Right? And so

Vito Peleg 44:31
yeah, as casual as that, that’s it?

Jason Resnick 44:34
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s, you know, it’s, again, it’s that confidence, it’s a mindset to the go ahead and ask that, but I think a lot of people do struggle with that. But, you know, hearing your story, I mean, obviously, I hope, hope you listeners are inspired by that. Because, you know, hey, if you don’t ask you don’t get Right, exactly. So go ahead and ask for what you think you are valued. And just because one person says no, it doesn’t mean the next person’s not going to say yes. So I think that that’s smart.

Vito Peleg 45:03
Yeah, it’s actually I think that, uh, no is good, you know, getting a know is essential for getting a popular Yes. And because every know is its potential for learning and getting that feedback. And also, not everyone needs to be your client. And this is something that took me a long time to realize, you know, that, it’s actually better to get to say that I would say no to clients. And then for them, me approaching small time clients trying to sell them something that is beyond what they can comprehend. So if I, if I see that type of customer coming up coming our way, and to be honest, even with the plugin, you know, I get people that that come in and and say, like, why is it so expensive, I have a logical kind of breakdown, because we’re seeing after, after the pricing it we we check how much time it’s saving. So we kind of calculated it, we’re saving three hours a week, every week within my agency just built the member app, which comes down to 90 $980 a month, same just by using this solution. So then, who cares about 70? or whatever?

Jason Resnick 46:14
Yeah, perfect. I think I should bring you in for a workshop, a pricing workshop, into the community, because that’s what I say that all the time, all you have to do is figure out what is important to them. And then price anchor to that, right, like if you’re saving time, because that’s what I was thinking immediately, like, all the back and forth in the emails and all that other stuff, like, you know, it worse the amount of like, worst use of your time, you know, because it ties you to your inbox for several hours just to correspond back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And that’s time that you’re not doing coding, you’re not doing designing, you’re not doing actual progression on the project. And yes,

Vito Peleg 46:53
we have a business. Yeah, sure.

Jason Resnick 46:55
Awesome. So before I want to be mindful of our time here, I know you have a client calls. So before I let you go, what’s next in the next six to 12 months.

Vito Peleg 47:04
So the plan is to stop client work altogether and focus solely on the plugin. That’s the that’s the game for me to reach the next level. And the way I see it with this solution, it can easily become a standard of how we’re going to be managing our clients communications. And you know, if we’re looking back, because I’ve been in the WordPress ecosystem since 2008. So I’ve seen the transitions, I’ve seen this stuff kind of move up move along, from the most basic basic themes to the page builders, custom post types, and all of these things that just, it just seemed as a given nowadays, but a few years back, it was only a dream, or you would hire a developer for for thousands to do so. So that’s how that’s my vision for this. There’s a bunch of new kind of a features coming up coming out. And right now within an expedited day release kind of a process where we’re releasing an update every Friday, today, we’re releasing another update. And next Friday, another one and next Friday after that another one. All of the stuff that we’re building is based on client requests, I stopped thinking of ideas. So we have a public roadmap, and the clients tell me what they want, and they upload it up there. And whatever reaches the top gets on the development, Q and A and yeah, so it’s in there, to be honest, in terms of where the plugin will go is out of my hands.

Jason Resnick 48:35
As you said, plugins is the name of the customer, right? It’s whatever they want, whatever feedback they

Vito Peleg 48:42
owe them, basically, you know, if they use it, and their clients use it, then I’m golden. You know, I’m not going to, I am going to kind of think about because a lot of us don’t have that. clarity, let’s say, you know, I don’t know if I if I do but I like to believe I do, indeed terms of what the client will do and will not do. So I’m just thinking in all of my experience and trying to make that make an educated decision of taking their ideas and crafting a solution out of it. That will work both for them and for the client. And for for us and the you know what the company? Awesome.

Jason Resnick 49:20
That’s, first of all, congrats on the plugin congrats on the journey. I’m definitely gonna go check out the music. Beta, where can people reach out and say thanks.

Vito Peleg 49:32
So we have a Facebook group. It’s called WP feedback community. And that’s a great way to to start. And you can also go to the website WP feedback dot CEO. And I believe there’s going to be a link here below. Absolutely. And yeah, as you know, but but I’m also kind of super active on on Twitter, and we have our Instagram channel on LinkedIn, I have like 4000 day, a connection built on WordPress professionals. A lot of time reach out to me and ask me questions and I’m always happy to help. So I think that’s Yeah, I would say that if you want to reach me directly and LinkedIn is the best channel and but to check out the plugin that will be feedback dot CEO.

Jason Resnick 50:14
Awesome. And I’ll certainly link up all of those in the show notes. And as well as the coupon that Vito has graciously shared with us as well. Thanks for you know, for your time. I appreciate it.

Vito Peleg 50:26
My pleasure. Definitely.

Jason Resnick 50:28
And for you listening. Until next time, it’s your time to live in the feast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, I could speak for both Vito and myself by saying that we’d love to hear the one takeaway you got from today’s episode. It’s super simple in the podcast app of your choice, presumably, it’s the one you are listening to right now.

drop that in a comment or review or go ahead and share it in a tweet and tag at rezzz that’s with three Z’s and I’ll be happy to pass that along to Vito. Don’t forget to also hit that subscribe button so that you’ll be the first to listen next week when we’ll be back with Hillary Weiss, a consultant and copywriter talking about how to make a statement with who you are and how your personality can affect your pricing. Till then it’s your time to live in the feast.