245. The Power of Branding and Productivity with Pia Silva

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the never-ending hustle yet not seeing the results you desire? This episode delves into the actionable insights from Pia Silva on how to dramatically shift your productivity paradigm by focusing on value, rather than effort. With her backdrop of experience in navigating the treacherous waters of small business ownership, Pia has developed unique strategies that allow entrepreneurs to do less while achieving more.

The conversation begins by addressing common misconceptions around productivity and the culture of continuous hustle. Instead of pursuing extensive projects that bog you down, Pia advocates for working smarter through focused efforts. By reimagining how you structure your work and communicate with clients, you can increase efficiency without losing the quality of your deliverables.

Pia’s journey reveals that personal branding is crucial. She emphasizes that branding goes beyond logos and visuals; it’s about creating a distinctive presence and ensuring that your message resonates clearly with your target audience. Her approach not only enhances business visibility but also fosters a sense of trust and authority among clients.

Finally, we explore the power of saying no—an essential skill often underestimated. By recognizing when a client or project is not the right fit, you free up your time to invest in opportunities that align better with your expertise, leading to enhanced creativity and job satisfaction.

Join us as we unpack these game-changing insights that can revolutionize your work life and lead to greater success! Don't forget to subscribe, share your thoughts, and join our community as we learn and grow together.

Don't miss out on Pia's free stream of her book via https://nobsagencies.com/leadershipproject for more strategies on sharpening your brand and boosting your business efficiency. 

🌐 Connect with Pia:
• Website: https://www.worstofalldesign.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piapiasilva/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pialovesyourbiz/

📚 You can purchase Pia's book on Amazon:
• Badass Your Brand: https://www.amazon.com/dp/09987143

Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
Learn the why, what and how of fostering a mentally healthy workplace with Dr Bill Howatt

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Productivity Challenges
• 6:15 The Secret to Success: Doing Less, Better
• 19:30 Value Over Time: A Plumber's Perspective
• 32:44 [Ad] Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
• 33:34 (Cont.) Value Over Time: A Plumber's Perspective
• 33:59 Pia Silva’s Business Transformation Journey
• 44:24 The Importance of Personal Branding
• 49:55 Learning to Say No for Better Productivity
• 1:00:49 Client Relationships and Trust Building
• 1:13:19 Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned
• 1:20:49 Conclusion and Resources

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:00

Do you ever feel like you're working harder than ever but not making the progress you deserve? What if the secret to success isn't doing more but doing less better? Imagine this. You hire a plumber. One says that they'll take six hours to fix the issue, the other solves it in six minutes. Who do you value more? The one who took longer or the one who got the job done? Now think about your own work. Are you trading time for money, or are you trading value for money? Today's guest Pia Silva transformed her business by cutting six month projects down to just two days without losing quality or income. Instead, she stripped away everything that wasted time and didn't add value. In today's episode, she'll reveal how to stop trading time for money and position yourself as an expert. Why setting boundaries makes you a better leader, not a harder worker, and how your personal brand is the key to getting paid for what you know, not just what you do. Are you ready to work smarter, not harder? Let's dive in. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Pia Silva. Pia, founded an organization called the no BS Agency Mastery, which helps small businesses to scale their businesses whilst reducing their workload. So an element here of working smarter, not harder. And she's also the best selling author of a book called badass brand, or bad ass your brand, and it's about converting your expertise into profit. So there's going to be two chapters of our conversation today. We're going to talk a lot about productivity. How do you scale your business while doing less? That's a really interesting lesson for all of us as leaders. And then we're going to get into this concept of personal brand, and for budding entrepreneurs out there, how you might be able to convert all of that expertise that you've built over your career into a business. So Pia, without any further ado, I'd love to hear from you. How did you land in this like tell us a bit about your backstory and what inspired you to do the work that you do today?

Pia Silva: 2:23

Thanks so much for having me, Mick. Yeah, where did it start? I think it started way before this business was even an idea for me back in college, I was very interested in social entrepreneurship, and I wanted to help women in developing countries help themselves by I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of micro loans, but I was very interested in micro loans, and how could we get money into these women's hands? Because they were proven to be the people who took that money, invested it in small businesses, paid back the loans and were able to thrive and support their families. That's really where my heart was in the beginning, and I took a very lengthy, windy road around trying to figure out how to get into that space when I had no experience. And I ended up taking a lot of gig work and eventually meeting my now husband, who was a an artist and a graphic designer, and saying, You know what, I'm going to build a business around you, you have a talent, I'm going to help you make money off of that talent. So that's where it really began. It began with me looking for ways to help other people make money off of their crafts, and ending up doing it for my own, eventually, my own husband and we started because he was a graphic designer, and I was just looking for ways to help him find clients. But through the process of trying to find clients myself, I learned how important branding was. I learned all about marketing at the school of hard knocks on the job, and as I did that, we developed into a branding agency. I then wrote this book about our experience going from debt to very, very profitable in a very short amount of time. And then I had all of these people who ran agencies just like ours asking me to teach them our very productive way of operating that I'm going to share with you today. And so that's how I ended up doing what I'm doing today, which is teaching how we implemented that business model.

Mick Spiers: 4:20

Outstanding, Pia. I'm going to share three things there for my recollections of what you're saying, and then also for the audience to bring it home. The concept of micro loans is amazing. In terms of economic empowerment, what I see in that world is then a lot of resourcefulness, people realizing that they don't have a lot of resources. How can I be very efficient with those resources, as opposed to someone who might start a business with a huge amount of capital and be a bit complacent and a bit wasteful? So I think there's an element of learning there as well. For those that the second part, for those that are watching the video podcast, there is one. Full art behind Po. So if you're not what, if you're listening to this audio, go and jump on YouTube and have a look at the art behind peers that your your husband's very talented. Is the second part. And then the third part is the branding. If people don't know who you are, what you do, who you serve, what problem you solve, and why you do it, well, there's no way that you're going to scale a business if people can't find you, which is where the branding comes in. So I want to get into the number one topic, head on, productivity. And we spoke about that with the micro loans. We're talking about, people that are going to get very efficient and scale a business with very little resources. You speak in your pitch about the idea about a small business scaling whilst reducing their workload, that sounds counterproductive. Tell us how it works, Pia?

Pia Silva: 5:52

Yeah. I mean, I'm very motivated by the idea of creating value by being very smart about it. So when we first started the business, and anybody out there who has ever done a branding or website project has probably experienced how very inefficient this process tends to be. So we were working with clients like everybody else was working on projects for 369, months at a time, and as we grew, we thought that the way to scale up was to hire employees increase our price point, and we did both of those things. The problem was, three years into our business, we ended up in $40,000 of debt, even though we had generated almost a quarter a million dollars in sales, and we were really backed into a corner at that moment because we didn't have any more capital to spend, and we were completely out of money. And that's when I realized, you know, the way we're doing this is not working for us. I didn't have the word profitability at my fingertips at the time, but I knew it wasn't working because we were working so hard and making money, but we didn't have any money left over. That's when we transitioned to the model that I would say is incredibly efficient today, which is that we took these six month projects and shrunk them down to just a couple of days. And the results is that instead of charging at first, instead of charging$30,000 for a six month project, we charged $5,000 for a two day project, we delivered essentially the same deliverables, but the client essentially agreed to let us lead the way. They agreed to take what we made. They agreed to trust us, and therefore we could cut out all the BS that usually accompanies projects like that. So the end result was, first of all, we ended up closing a bunch of projects that we had outstanding. At that point, we immediately started generating cash, and we loved working like this so much more, because we got to deliver the value. And the end result that we wanted, the clients were super happy. They got their work much, much faster, and none of us had to deal with that back and forth headache of communication through the project. So it was really a win win on all sides.

Mick Spiers: 8:08

Really interesting. I'm curious to know how you did it. We'll get to that in the moment. But I want to share two things that I was I was picking up as you're going along there, Pia. The first thing that jumped at me is it feels like laser precision of like a Pareto analysis of, what are the 20% of the things that we're doing that are bringing 80% of the results to be focused on, what are the things that we're doing that actually bring the profitability, if that was the target, if the target was impact, if the target was profitability, of All the things that we're doing in that six month project, what are the things that really bring the profitability into the door? Was the first thing, then the second, I'm going to put a limiting belief out there. This is almost like a placeholder question, because I feel like I know where this is going to go, but the limiting belief about value, right? So if I'm going to pay you 50k to do a project and it takes you six months to do it, it feels like an exchange of time for money, whereas what you're talking about doing is bringing me the same result in two days, still charging me 50k for it, but now it's got not about the time, it's about the value that you bring. I think this is a limiting belief that some people will struggle with. They'll go, if I'm a business owner, going to pay your peer and I'm going to go, Well, yeah, but it only took it two days. Why am I paying 50k for two days work? How do we get past that limiting belief?

Pia Silva: 9:36

Yeah. And believe me, I coach on this every single day, because everybody comes in with that limiting belief. I think it's good to look at it from a different perspective. When you're very new at, let's say, designing a logo. Okay, you're you're brand new. It's probably going to take you a long time to come up with a good logo. You probably will have to make a lot of them, and even then, the end result might be just, Okay. So. Fast forward 10 years, and you've been doing logos every day, all day. You've been sharpening your skills. You've been sharpening your taste. You have a discerning taste now, and you're able to see when the logo is right or not. Should that take you more or less time?

Mick Spiers: 10:15

Yeah, it should take less time. Yeah.

Pia Silva: 10:17

Is it worth more or less?

Mick Spiers: 10:19

It' worth more.

Pia Silva: 10:21

That's it.

Mick Spiers: 10:22

Yeah, all right, so I'm going to share a story. I hope you don't mind, because,

Pia Silva: 10:26

Oh, please,

Mick Spiers: 10:27

Before you and I started recording, you and your husband had a potential disaster behind you. Where? Where the business above you started to have some water leak through into your studio. It made me instantly think of a plumber. When a plumber comes to your house to fix a plumbing problem. Do you want the person that fix it in two seconds, or do you want the person that takes three days and charges you the same? You want it done straight away? So there's a there's a value in that expertise and that speed and that efficiency to get the same result in a shorter time. Time is money. We know that we all work. We always talk about that. So why do we get hung up on this idea of paying someone what they're worth, even if they do the job in a quarter of the time? That's why I was where my thinking was going. Your thoughts?

Pia Silva: 11:18

I have an idea. I think it is true in a lot of industries, but I'll speak specifically to Creative Industries. I think that we're just not taught to understand that value. And I'll use a doctor as an example. If you go to the doctor and you tell them, you have a pain, do you want? Them to give you a bunch of different potential diagnoses and then ask you, Well, which one do you want, or what do you think you have? Or do you want them to look at your arm, evaluate it, and say, I know what the problem is, and this is how we solve it. That is what we also can offer in the creative space. And that's essentially what I teach people how to how to deliver their creative services much like a doctor. Let me take more time up front to truly understand my clients problem, truly understand what their goals are, and then use my expertise to make a straight, clear line between the two, execute on it, and do that with clients in such a from such a position of confidence and leadership that they go great, doctor, yes, I will wear that splint. I will do what you said, because you've made a very good case, and that's why I hired you. And I pay you more to tell me what to do, as opposed to, you know, paying less to have you ask me to direct you when I'm not really a designer or have any real background in this. So I think that creativity, for some reason, in the world, maybe doesn't have the story of having that potential expertise, maybe because there's a taste aspect involved, right? You may either you do or you don't have the flu, but maybe you don't either do or don't have the right logo, but I would argue that there are there is discerning taste, and there are people who are more expert at not just the execution of creative work, but also the strategic thinking behind it. And I will just note that it's not just about being very good at it. It's about being very good at communicating that to the clients. So these are the aspects that you need to bring into your process. If you want to take a six month project, shrink it to sick, you know, two days, and charge the same amount of money and get it.

Mick Spiers: 13:31

Yeah, really interesting. I like the analogy, and I'm going to share back to you my own thoughts, which would be, yeah, if I go to the doctor, I don't want the doctor to give me seven options. I want the doctor to tell me what to do. I want to have the trust and the credibility that he knows he or she knows what they're talking about. But once, once I get past that hurdle, bang, if you tell me to this is the treatment. I'm going to do that treatment now I'm going to flip it now. I've been on the corporate side of branding exercises, developing a new brand, doing product launches, etc. Yeah, I can also tell you that if you give me seven options for a brand narrative, I'm now going to go into analysis paralysis, and the project is going to take more than six months, because I'm part of the decision making now, which actually does feel good, by the way, we might test that in a second. It feels good to be included in the decision making, but the whole thing grinds to a whole whereas you're the expert, I'm not a branding or a creative expert, and somehow I start becoming one, because I start sharing my opinion on everything. So how do you the challenge? I can now start seeing how a six month project becomes two days. By the way, we'll come back to that in a second. But how do you come over that hurdle, which is what I said, where I do like to feel included, but I don't have the expertise you have, Pia, So how do you balance that with the client?

Pia Silva: 14:53

Yeah, that's such a great question. And I think it really starts with it starts with the first. Conversation. First of all, and even before a client has hired you, it's really about how you handle the relationship and how you lead the client to the answers that they need to get to. So for example, big mistake that a lot of people make in sales conversations is that, especially if they want to be seen as an authority and an expert, they talk a lot, they explain a lot, they educate a lot. In the creative space that tends to look like let me explain why branding is important and why you need it, and why you shouldn't just jump to marketing. And from the client's perspective, who doesn't understand this, all they're hearing is, I don't really need that, and you're trying to sell me something. Try a different approach, which is asking a lot of thoughtful questions with thoughtful follow up answer questions where the client is realizing, on their own, in their own brain, the holes that are missing in how they present their services, on how they market their services. You can ask it a question as simple as, oh, how do you get leads right now? And somebody says, Oh, from referrals. And you say, Okay, so, so what do you actively do to make sure that your pipeline is full? And they they go, Oh, I don't do anything. It's like, Okay, that's interesting, right? So asking a thoughtful question will help somebody realize, Oh my gosh, I don't do anything to get clients. No wonder I'm not. I don't have any control over my clients. Just an example that's really just in the in the first pre project step, but it continues throughout the first step, before we actually do the branding projects, is we, we sell something I call a lead product. It's a easy to buy, no brainer price project. It's a short term project. We interview them, and then after we understand everything about their business, we write them a brief that outlines exactly what the plan is, and this process, when done properly, will make the client feel so heard, so understood. The magic to this interview is actually to say almost nothing but to ask really thoughtful questions. And I have had so many clients literally cry at the end of these meetings, saying, oh my gosh, you just get me. I feel so much clearer now, and this is after me saying very little. So this needs to happen up front to build that trust and make sure that the client feels understood and heard because that sets the stage for what we're going to show them on the back end. That is how we get that, that trusted relationship where they go. You understand what I'm trying to achieve and have the vision even better than I do. So you're the only person who can do this. That's the kind of trust we need to go into the next step, which is the intensive.

Mick Spiers: 17:42

Yeah. Really good, Pia. So I'm loving this, and I think the lesson that Pierre has just shared with us, so everyone listening to the show right now, you can apply this in any role or any industry. The technique that she's talking to, which is the power of curiosity, we do have a tendency that if we're trying to persuade or influence someone or to build our credibility, we get this tendency to feel like we have to prove that we're the smartest in the room, and that's not the right way. You're just going to get a defensive posturing from the other person, whereas if we turn it into curiosity, two things are going to happen, Pia the first one, when you're asking a lot of those questions. And I like the way that you did it, because you were taking the person on a journey of their own discovery. So by the end of the meeting, whatever the next step is, becomes their idea, not your idea. They become invested in it because they discovered it, not because you told them, but because you asked them the right questions. I went, Oh, yeah, we do need to do something different. That's more powerful than you saying you need to do this differently, right? So the journey of discovery the second, by asking those questions and being very curious and paying attention, you're learning so much about them, them individually, them as a person, and you're learning about their business to the point where, when you come back to them at the end of the meeting for a summary, or that the next meeting, you can so personalize that message, where you get to that point of, ah, that Pia, she just gets me, which is the words that you used. Now, I trust you. I trust you, because I believe that you've got my back. So Teddy Roosevelt quote, which is one of my favorite quotes. Pia, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. By using that technique, you're showing that you care about them, I now feel like you care about me and you've got my back. You have my trust. Let's get on with it. How does that sit with you as a summary?

Pia Silva: 19:42

Yeah, I love that beautifully summarized. And I'll just add that one of the most powerful techniques after this interview is actually to take the words that they use and put them into this brief it's important that you are giving them the strategies. You're absolutely giving them new. Your ideas or your sometimes, actually, sometimes, I don't think anything in the brief itself is actually new, but I picked out the most important pieces and I put them concisely into a linear plan, and it blows people's minds, because a lot of times, especially business owners, they do have the answers. It's just cluttered about with all these other non answers, and they don't have the ability to see what they should and shouldn't focus on. So it's a combination of being able to curate what they need to do and what they need to not do, and also to use their language to describe where they are and where they want to go. It's really important not to change it and summarize it, because that's how they feel understood.

Mick Spiers: 20:44

Yeah, really good, and then they will feel seen, heard and valued, like you were saying before. I'm going to share another little story now yesterday I was I was looking at a lot of YouTube videos that were talking about first impressions, and what I'm picking up here is the power of the second impression the second time that you meet someone. Here's a tip for anyone. It doesn't have to be in this marketing creative world. This can be someone that you're meeting for the first time and then the second time, and you really want to build a great relationship with them. The most powerful thing you can do at the start of that second meeting is to say to them, pia, been thinking about our last conversation and about when you said XYZ, I was thinking about ABC. I feel so hurt if someone has only met me once, and then the second time they meet me, they share with me something that I I mentioned in the first meeting. That's a powerful connection, right there. How does that sit with you?

Pia Silva: 21:45

Oh, that's really good. I haven't heard that specifically laid out like that, but that's brilliant. Yeah, I love that.

Mick Spiers: 21:51

Yeah. All right, great. Now let's get into what you called intensive. I'm still curious about I can see some of the the threads coming together, but how do we get a six month project into two days, Pia?

Pia Silva: 22:02

Well, I have found that so much of the project, when it was taking our team, 3, 4, 5, 6 months, was the the revision process, the feedback process, and the scope creep and clients disappearing. So what does that mean? Usually, the way these projects are laid out is, you present work, maybe you send work, and then you wait for a reply when you get the feedback, then you say, Okay, I'll send you the revisions in a week. Then you make the revisions, and then it's again, and then you do it again. And you know, ideally, you move on from that. But sometimes that revision process for a step may go on another four or five times, and that happens at every step of the process. Throughout that time, life happens. So I have seen clients get bogged down by other things happening in their businesses. I've seen clients have personal things happen. I remember somebody their basement flooded and they just disappeared for a while, but I, as the service provider, am left trying to find them, wondering when this is going to restart, trying to figure out my own schedule, because a project has been stalled and I'm not sure when it's going to restart. And then, on top of that, layer on something you alluded to earlier, which is when a project drags on for a while, there's a lot of time for the client to second guess, ask their friend, oh, my cousin's a designer, so maybe I should see what they think. Oh, they have an opinion. Now, could we see this in five other directions? It's not always so extreme in all these different areas, but you only need a little bit of this to make a project go on forever. So what do we do instead? We do everything I just explained before, which is starting going really deep, flushing everything out and making a super clear plan while building trust and rapport, making sure the client feels heard and understood and that we truly understand them, right? It's not just about them feeling understood. We want to truly understand what their situation is, so that we can feel confident putting our expert hat on and saying, I got you, you know, I see the whole picture. I see where you want to go. And I am really good at this, because I've done this many times. So let me tell you exactly what we need to do. And when they buy into that vision, and we see that vision very clearly, we agree on the intensive. The way we work is we say, okay, great. So in order to execute this project, this is the list of things we're going to do for you. We're going to pick two days on the calendar in a few weeks, we're going to sign the contract. You're going to pay up front, and then we're going to get to work. We do the entire project before we even see the client. So for us, it's usually the design and build of the brand, the design of the logo, the design and build of the website, the copy and any identity materials. That's a classic project for us. We do it in full, and then we meet with the client at the beginning of day one, and we take them through this very specific process. I call it the magic hour process, where we first remind them of the. Why we're doing this project. We remind them of where they are and where they're looking to go, kind of get their head in the right space, and then we show them why we made every decision we made. So we actually take them on a journey and a story of the thought process behind what we're doing all of the influences. We kind of breadcrumb it so that by the time we show them the brand with the homepage of the website. It's like it couldn't be anything else. And I have done this, I mean, hundreds of times, it is flawless. If you truly understand the client, and you truly take them on that journey, by the time they see it, they go, Wow, it's exactly what it needs to be and what I wanted. And somehow not quite, and better. And that's always the mark that I'm hitting. And then after that, we have a process of kind of slowly unveiling it over the couple of days. You know, we might have a tweak here and there. I actually funny enough say that every client needs to put their thumbprint on it, and that's totally cool. We expect it, but that's usually what it is. It's a little tweak here and there, and we make sure that they feel great about it, such that it kind of develops in front of their eyes. And at 6pm on day two, the website is launched, the brand is done. We hand over the keys, we give them the zip file, and that's it.

Mick Spiers: 26:12

That's really impressive, and it still feels very tailored to the person. So it's not cookie cutter, that's for sure. No, not at all. And then the speed I would I'd feel very impressed at the end of that process. Let me play back what I'm taking back that some lessons there that we can apply to any business, any team. So what I was hearing you do there, Pia, is you were thinking through, what are all the things in this process that are either resource intensive, costing me a lot of money because it takes up a lot of people's time or materials. But the other one was, what's costing us elapsed time? And for you, you're breaking it down to Okay, so clients get indecisive. They have scope creep, where they start drifting off and bringing in new ideas, and the energy that they had at that very first meeting has somehow drifted into other ideas. Or third they just disappear, right? And then you've come up with solutions. Well, how do I how do I do it differently, not keep on doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, the definition of insanity from Einstein, but how do I do it differently. So I'm ticking off those three things. So think about audience. Think about what Pia is saying. Think about on your projects or in your business. What are the three things that if you could wave a magic wand and go, I wish this, this and this didn't happen, instead of wishing it didn't happen, what could you do to cure those, those symptoms or cure those problems, so that you can speed up for you might be in an engineering organization completely different to creative but the same things keep on happening. Clients disappear, or it takes a long time for them to send comments back on my design. Or the things that pier are talking about are not unique to creatives. Think about what's costing you time. Think about what's costing you resources and money, and what could you do differently to accelerate how does that sit with your peer?

Pia Silva: 28:10

Yeah, you're not wrong. This is really applicable in any service business, and the concepts probably in any business. For me, it really starts with, are we doing it this way just because everyone else is and I think that's how it's done. Like I said in the beginning, my story is that I had no background in design. When I first started finding clients for my husband, I just went out and started networking and out in the world, I saw other people running similar businesses, and I just copied what they did because I had no reference point. I believe they started their businesses after working at large agencies, and they just made a smaller version of those large agencies. I think that the process that we've really separated ourselves from, that most small agencies are using, is the process that large agencies use applied to a small business, and I just don't think it's applicable. So in any service business, if you're a small business, I would consider, how is this just trying to replicate a large business, and does it actually apply? Or do I need to do things differently because I'm a one person business or a two person business, and I have different kinds of resources. I don't have resources of a team. I have my time resources, so I have to be very smart about how I use that time.

Mick Spiers: 29:27

I think the powerful message there is, if you do that, if you just try to scale down what someone else is doing, you're actually destroying what is unique about your business. So let's, let's go into technology for a moment and go. The difference between a startup and a multinational? Well, a startup is nimble, and they can be very agile, and they can move faster than a multinational can do. So why cookie cutter what a multinational is doing and scale it down to your to your startup? I see the the analogy working across once. Any type of business, I agree. One thing I want to touch on, one more productivity tip before we pivot towards brand, I'll pick this up from your Instagram account, the power of saying no. Tell us about the power of Saying No.

Pia Silva: 30:15

Yeah. I mean, as a small business, you must get good at saying no, saying no to people that are or potential clients that are not a perfect fit. And the reason is, when you say yes to a client that is outside of your, you know, unique wheelhouse, your your special sauce, you end up having to reinvent the wheel. You end up having to do a lot of extra work just to accommodate whatever their needs are, because it's not the thing you do every single day. And so what I always recommend is you want to work with a niche, and we can talk about that if you want, but like some sort of space where your clients all have a lot of the same problems with similar solutions, does it mean that the work that you do is not going to be custom. We do very custom spoke brands, but they still fit within a framework, because we work with one to three person service businesses, and they largely need all the same things, and they largely need the same kind of project. So I had to get really good at saying you're an E commerce business. I'm sorry you're not a fit. You know, you are a larger business. I'm sorry you're not a fit. I don't work with clients that have more than three decision makers, and three is the max, and I really prefer two. So this, these are ways that I have protected my time and my energy, because every time I say no to a client that was frankly going to be unprofitable and take up a lot more energy, I am reinvesting that time back into finding the people that are a perfect fit and that I know I can deliver for at a very profitable rate. And that's how I protect my time, make more money in less time and have more freedom, which you know that is kind of my whole thing is trying to help people find the profit and freedom that works for them.

Mick Spiers: 31:59

Yeah. Brilliant, Pia. So by saying no to the people that aren't a perfect fit, if you said yes to them, you'd be actually losing that efficiency. So looking for people that fit the model, and then by saying no to the ones that don't fit, you can spend more time finding the ones that do and do a better job of serving the ones that do fit. Yeah, really good. So you do a better job of what you say yes to every time you say no to something else. Okay, really good. All right now, bad ass, your brand converting your expertise into profitability. Oh yeah, and she's hot for people watching the video podcast. She's holding it up with a wonderful she even mimics the image that was very cool. Tell us what inspired that book, and what would you like to share with our audience about?

Pia Silva: 33:24

So, I wrote the book after we made this pivot, and the purpose of the book was to help small service businesses find the shortest path to success. I say the inpatient entrepreneurs guide to turning expertise into profit, because it really is for people who are generating value out of their own knowledge and their own skills, which I love, because we each have control over developing that as much as we want to. So what I wanted people to understand is that actually simplifying and being more extreme in what you do go after, and how you present yourself and how you present your brand will make your life so much easier. And I think it's very counterintuitive to small business owners. Most small business owners want to keep everything pretty general. They want to work with a lot of different clients, because they think they're leaving money on the table if they say no to anybody. They want to be liked by everyone because they think that's how they're going to get clients, and my book makes think a pretty solid argument for why all of that is going to make your life much, much harder, and how it's important for you to repel people so that you can magnetically attract people. It's important to say no to the wrong people so you can have this systemized way of working that is more profitable and easier on you. There's just a lot of different tweaks I recommend, no matter what service you're in, packaging your services and having flat prices and having those prices on your website, all of these things are cutting out inefficiencies that I think a lot of small businesses are dealing with, and frankly, takes a lot of their energy to deal with because, for example, when you don't have flat rate pricing and you don't have your prices on your site, you spend a lot of time Kissing Frogs, you know, you spend a lot of time talking to people who whose budgets were nowhere close to what you are charging. You spend a lot of time talking to people and they are curious about your budget, and you don't about your prices, and you don't have a price to say. So you say, Well, what's your budget? And you go back and forth, and you say, Okay, I'm gonna go think about it. And you're wasting all this time when it would be so much more efficient to just have a clear, flat rate price that they already know that will move them through the pipeline faster. And when you free up that time, that time. Is so much better invested. Developing your own authority, developing your skill set that makes you more valuable in the world. So I think those are a better use of your time, and all the strategies I teach in the book are meant to free up your time so you can do those things instead.

Mick Spiers: 35:55

Yeah, really good. I'll share a couple of things there. One is the wanting to be liked by everyone. The question I'm going to ask the audience, do you like everyone? Do you like everyone you've ever met? No one likes everyone. So help what Pia is saying, find your tribe. Find your tribe that are your target audience, and they're going to fit what you want to do and how you the problems that you solve, and how you can serve them and the ones that are going to fit the way that you want to work. The bit that you said about the price is interesting. A good friend of mine runs a small business where he decided many years ago that the one thing he wasn't going to negotiate on was price. And if people come to him and say, oh, yeah, but I want to do something different. This is my price. This is my price. And he saved so much time and energy in contract negotiations because that's the one non negotiable. I think there's a there's a power in that as well. The word brand gets thrown around a lot, PIA. What for you are the most common either misconceptions or limiting beliefs about having a brand, whether it's a personal brand or a brand or a brand of a small business?

Pia Silva: 37:04

Let's see misconceptions. I think a lot of people think a brand is just a design. I think people don't truly understand the power of the positioning of the business, the messaging, how important your pricing is to the positioning of your brand. So how all of that plays a role in how people perceive you and think about you? So a lot of people think I need a brand, so I need a logo and some colors. And to me, the logo and the colors, they come at the end, right? And they should be obvious by the time you've really figured out the positioning of the brand. So that's one misconception. Another one is, I mean, just most people just don't really understand what it is or how to find one. I think a lot of people think that they do or don't have a brand. I say everybody has a brand. Your Brand may just be forgettable, bland, something that nobody could share with anybody else. So it's important not that you have a brand, but that you have a memorable, shareable, noticeable brand. So those are, those are two things I'll hang my hand on.

Mick Spiers: 38:08

Yeah, really good as a so one of the things I'm going to say there is that your brand is not what you say it is. It's what other people say it is, and it's how they experience you. And the decision process here is to work out well, how do you want other people to experience you? What? What do you want them to say about you when you're not in the room, or if they're talking to a person that might be a potential referral client, what words do you want them to be saying and then living those values is what's going to make that happen? How does that sit with you?

Pia Silva: 38:37

I agree. I think. I think Jeff Bezos see the one who coined like whatever they say when you're not in the room. I love that, I think so I actually have a definition to put on top of that, because I always like define what a badass brand is by what it does. So I define a badass brand as having two critical characteristics. One, it must repel people as much as it magnetically attracts others. Something I was mentioning earlier, it must repel. If it doesn't repel, it's not a badass brand. And two, it must be able to charge more than the competition and still win the business. And I like this definition because I think it feels more tangible and applicable than this kind of amorphous concept of a brand is what people say and they feel and they think about, if you hit those two points, you've got a badass brand.

Mick Spiers: 39:34

I really like this rappel one and the person that jumped into my head when you're talking for whatever reason, was Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan has a brand, and he repels many people, and he attracts many loyal fans, like super fans. He's repelled the ones that he doesn't care. It's like, Well, I wasn't talking to you anyway, so he has that set with you to think about like a Joe Rogan example. And by the way, I actually don't like him, but he repels people, or he attracts people. I love this.

Pia Silva: 40:07

Yeah. I mean, he's a great example of that highest, highest listen to podcast ever, I think. And he's, yeah, very unlikeable in many ways. So it's a great example of how being likable is not the key to success.

Mick Spiers: 40:21

All right, now, what about limiting beliefs? So you talk about people who've got lots of experience and converting it into profits. A lot of them are going to go brand new. They're going to almost have a visual reaction to the thought of having a personal brand. How do you get past limiting beliefs about the need for it?

Pia Silva: 40:44

My gosh, I think a personal brand is needed more than ever. My experience, I'll tell you my experience because I started our company, worst of all, design in 2011 and I didn't ever actually show my face or have any social media until I published my book in 2017 so all that success we had with this intensives model, I did it without being online at all. I wanted to. I stayed faceless. I actually hated putting my face out there back then. And I had to overcome a lot of limiting beliefs to publish my book with my face on it, no less. And I did that because the main reason I wrote the book was because I just wanted, I wanted people to really trust me, and I wanted them to believe in what I said, so that they would trust me to do the work the way I thought it should be done for their own benefit. And I said, if I want that kind of trust, I need something that's going to build trust, like a book. And I said, and if I want them to trust me, I gotta put my face on that book so that they that book sits there in front of them, and they see my face, and they connect the words to me. And I mean, I had a hunch, but I could not have anticipated how much faster the trust and audience was built once I opened an account online with my face. So it wasn't the worst of all design with the logo. It was piazz Instagram. I mean, I I had 10,000 followers within a couple of months, all of a sudden, I was getting asked to be on all of these things. Why? Because people can trust a person way faster than they will trust a faceless company. So even if you want to grow a company, I think it is imperative these days, especially with AI and so much content and all of this fake stuff, I think it's even more important that you put a face and an authority behind a brand. Because what ended up happening was I just started marketing under my name, and then just saying, yeah, if you want to hire us, you hire my company. Worst of all, design, and it worked so much better that I recommend it to everybody, even if they want to grow a business brand.

Mick Spiers: 42:54

Yeah, really powerful people do business with people. That people do business with people. There's the first hint that they know, like and trust, and that's what you're building with that. And I also you hit on something with the AI, I think people are now craving a bit of authenticity, that there's so much out there that they want to know that the person that they're talking to is a real human being and has emotions and understands that you get me concept that you said before an AI or a corporate brand is going to be very difficult to get to that. Ah, that, Pia, she just gets me stage, whereas an individual is going to get there. All right, really, really powerful. I think there's been a wonderful conversation. I think there's been some great hints for everyone about productivity, about efficiency, about how do you remove all of the interference in your business so that you can do bring the same value in in shorter time, to delight your customers with the speed and accuracy and quality of your work, whilst also Increasing the profitability by removing the interference and removing the waste, and then here capturing people with a personal brand. I think it's been a wonderful conversation. Pia, I'd like to take us now to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So what's the one thing you know now, Pia Silva, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Pia Silva: 44:21

That literally every thing that I tried and failed at actually helped me later in life, building my business. So just embrace them.

Mick Spiers: 44:33

We learn so much through failure, and sometimes you gotta scrape your knees. That's how you learn. Yeah, really good. What's your favorite book, as an author?

Pia Silva: 44:41

I love the big leap by Gay Hendricks, which has a lot of content about limiting beliefs. It's how we all limit ourselves in different ways. And that just book. I revisit that book at least once a year just to remind myself of how they'll always be an upper limit that I can push through.

Mick Spiers: 44:59

Yeah, nice suggestion. Love it. What's your favorite quote?

Pia Silva: 45:02

My favorite quote, I hope I don't butcher it, is, I believe it's Ben Franklin, and he says, because it's been attributed to a lot of people, if I'd had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. And I love this quote. I feel like it's very me, because the concept is it's actually harder and more work to make things clearer and concise. And it's kind of the whole concept behind everything that I do is to make things more efficient. And you know what? It takes more work, but it's worth it.

Mick Spiers: 45:31

Yeah, very critical. I think it's Mark Twain, by the way. But,

Pia Silva: 45:34

Oh,nMark Twain, it might be Mark Twain.

Mick Spiers: 45:36

It could be Ben. Oh, well, I'm going to checkmnow later as well. But I love it. I. I wanted to write you a short letter, but I didn't have time, so here's a long one, right? So the conciseness of message really, really powerful, all right? And it screams to what you're doing as a business, by the way. Finally, Pia, there's going to be people that are really intrigued by you and the work that you do. How do people

Pia Silva: 45:57

Immostly hang out on Instagram and LinkedIn on find you? Instagram, I'm at Pia loves your biz, B, I, Z, because I really, truly do. And I'm Pia Silva on LinkedIn, and I brought a little gift for your audience. that, okay?

Mick Spiers: 46:15

Yeah, brilliant.

Pia Silva: 46:16

I just recently put my book back on I took the exclusive rights back from Audible, so you can totally buy my book on Audible, if you'd like. But you could also, because you're listening to this podcast, get a free stream of it. I put it up at no bsagencies.com, backslash leadership project, so you can go grab that, and you can hear, like the the nitty gritty details of how we actually implemented this.

Mick Spiers: 46:41

Oh, that's amazing, Pia, thank you so much for that gift for our audience. So it's greatly appreciated. I encourage everyone to go and do that. Also want to thank you for your time and your wisdom today. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and you've given me a lot to think about, particularly in this productivity and focusing in on on solving the problems that soak up time, energy resources to become more efficient at what I do, and also giving me a lot to think about with this brand around, what do I repulse versus what do I attract? Really love it. Thank you so much, Pia.

Pia Silva: 47:17

Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.

Mick Spiers: 47:20

What an amazing conversation with Pia Silva. So what's the real secret to getting more done while working less? Focus on value, not effort. Stop trading time for money. Say no more often, and do better work, not just more work. Own your expertise and your unique way that you solve problems. In the next episode, I'll be sharing my own tips on productivity, building on what we've learned from peer today and things that I've learned over my career. If you haven't yet voted for your favorite guest on The Leadership Project podcast guest awards, please make sure that you go to mickspiers.com and cast your vote which guest has had the biggest impact on your life. Voting closes soon, so please make sure you follow the link and get your vote in today. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do, take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.