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The most I’ve ever charged for a website is $689,032.
I worked on it for 499 hours.
No, I didn’t bill the client $1,380.83/hour (even though that’s what it turned out to be).
I figured out how much I could help them, and then my team and I delivered it.
I walk you through exactly how to do that for your clients in my brand new YouTube video, live now.
danmall.com/papabearpricing
The best Philly branding shop works with one of my favorite Philly events?
Pairing beautiful flowers with beautiful typography?
Be still, my beating heart!
🌸 NEW WORK FOR THE PHS PHILADELPHIA FLOWER SHOW 🌸
Earlier this year Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) approached us to help come up with the identity and key visuals for their 2027 flower show. It was called ICONIC so we knew we wanted the flowers to feel monumental. We tapped local photographer Bre Furlong (breannefurlong.com) to shoot 18 beautifully unique florals in stunning detail. These beauties are gonna look incredible on banners and billboards all over Philadelphia this winter.
Marc’s agency ranks top three on Google for their niche and still can’t get clients.
I spent an hour with him on camera finding out why. It came down to one question.
Full episode is live now: danmall.com/go/yt-marc-rust
“Is your niche all companies?”
“Sure, but I don’t want to say that.”
That’s Marc, about twenty minutes into a conversation I recorded with him. He runs a branding agency for private equity firms and ranks top three on Google for the term.
They’re good at the work. They have testimonials most agencies would envy. One client is 80% of his revenue, and they’re running at only a fifth of the capacity that the team can handle. Like many agencies right now, getting clients is a struggle.
Tomorrow I’m publishing the whole hour. Marc let me open his numbers on camera, find what’s in the way, and make a detailed plan to get on track.
It’s a new format for my channel. I coach an agency owner live and you watch all of it, including the parts where I’m not sure I’m right.
Here are the first thirty seconds.
It drops tomorrow at 12pm Eastern. Subscribe to my YouTube channel “danmallteaches” so you don’t miss it: youtube.com/danmallteaches
What I did on my flight, ranked from most time spent to least time spent:
→ Watched first 2 episodes of @MarvelStudios #VisionQuest
→ Worked on script for my next YouTube video
→ Nap
→ Read a bit of @DanielPriestley’s Scorecard Marketing
→ Ate a fruit and cheese platter
→ Sudoku on easy mode
I contain multitudes.
7 years ago this week, I published an article about a radical workflow for building software. In my book, I later boiled it down to one simple idea:
Use your words more than your hands.
It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when designers painted pictures of an interface so an engineer could rebuild it. I was running my agency then, helping enterprises set up design system practices. My job was coaching designers to work in new ways.
I had a hunch the old workflow wouldn’t last. Designers spent days or weeks in a static tool, just so someone else could recreate the result somewhere else. Their beautiful work mattered, but their judgment and opinions were worth even more. They just weren’t good at putting those into words.
So I told them to practice. Start with the person you work with most: an engineer.
The article was called “The Hot Potato Process.” (Link below if you wanna relive the glory days.) I went deeper in my book, Design That Scales.
My thinking was simple: designers who can explain their instincts tend to move up. It’s one of the big differences between a designer and an art director or creative director.
Little did I know that large language models were just a few years away.
Today I see two groups of designers:
The first group can explain what they want. We now call it “prompting.” They’re guiding machines that can make almost anything, if you know what to ask for. Some have even put down the keyboard and started talking to their computers. The result is a boom of new tools and toys, built by designers who now make software themselves. Many tell me they’ve never felt more energized. I heard the same thing years ago from designers who had just learned the Hot Potato Process.
The second group is holding on to the old way. Maybe it’s habit, belief, or fear. Many are struggling and worried about their careers.
(And lots of designers are somewhere in the middle.)
ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022 isn’t what’s pushing designers out. It just sped up something that was already happening. When responsive web design took off in 2009, I moved my own workflow to “deciding in the browser” and tried to get as many designers as I could to do the same. Design has been moving away from static tools for a long time. They still have a place. But dynamic environments need dynamic tools and rules.
What keeps designers stuck isn’t a love of Photoshop or Figma. It’s the belief that what they make matters more than what they think.
If you haven’t made this shift, make it now. Yes, better late than never, but it soon might be too late.
Learn more about how you can make a love letter here: danmall.com/go/yt-love-lette…
The fastest way to make money is to offer help to someone who already trusts you.
But it’s hard to send the message, because a good warm email has 4 components:
1️⃣ (Re-)Establish familiarity and camaraderie
2️⃣ Tell them what you have that they want
3️⃣ Show them they don’t have to give up much
4️⃣ Ask directly if they agree to your terms
Especially if you’re new at it, your messages won’t be very good at first.
To practice, start small with #2. Here are some examples.
To the friend who needs a laugh: “Hey Kelly! I saw this reel that made me cackle: { LINK }. Hope you get a good laugh out of it too!”
To the relative who loves hidden gems: “Hey Bob! Have you been to { HOT NEW RESTAURANT IN TOWN } yet? I know soup dumplings are your jam, and they have the best ones I’ve had in a while. Look out for another email with a gift certificate I’m sending you so you can enjoy it too.”
To the neighbor who can’t catch a break: “Hey Gene, I made a few batches of cupcakes today. Can I drop a few off at your house this afternoon?”
If you don’t get good at this part, the rest won’t matter. Start here.
Started off hot but cooled down immediately, then slowly heated up again to finish the night strong.
When I tell people I’m building the most trusted brand in the world for design agency owners, they almost always say the same thing:
“Oh, you’d be great at that. You’re the second person I always think of for that stuff.”
I ask them who the first is.
“@theChrisDo,” they answer.
I told Chris I was coming for him, and he said, “Bring it.”
Then I asked him if he would help me, and he said, “Absolutely.”
Three months ago, I sat with Chris for two days and he shared everything he could with me in the time we had together. He gave generously and didn’t hold back. That’s the kind of person he is. He’ll look someone in the face who wants to take his spot and he’ll help them get there.
It took me three months to finish the assignments he gave me over one intense hour. Now I’m ready for more, so I’m going back.
I’ve hired many coaches to help me with my business in the past, and Chris has been better than all of them by far. If you need to get unstuck in your business, you should come to the October Futur Club Haus Casa Dojo. This is the last one for the year, and he might even change the format in 2027. You’ll hang with other amazing business owners, there’s always special guests, and we eat delicious food too.
Don’t miss it!
Coach agency owners long enough and you start seeing them everywhere.
I took a few days off to chase birds on their fall migration.
5,000 photos later, I realized I’d documented every type of agency owner I’ve ever worked with:
🧵
