The "Anchor Pricing" Trick That Manipulates Your Clients' Choice

Sean Weisbrot: Jared LoPiccolo is the founder and CEO of Noble Studios, a web design agency that's been going for over 20 years. In this conversation, we talked about his experience as an architect and how it helps him to be a great leader now and in building the foundation of a company and in project management for developing websites and many other things. We. Also talked about his experience as a founder, how he's evolved as a founder, where he's taking the business, what he's learned from all of this, and so much more. We know you're going to love episode 205 with Jared LoPiccolo. Let's get to it now. He started out wanting to be an architect, and somewhere along the way you decided that you wanted to. Not do that anymore. Yes. What was the catalyst that made you realize you wanted to change your focus?

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Well, this was back in, uh, 2000 and, and three, and you know, to your point, yeah, I, I actually had this aspirational dream of being one of the youngest architects. I. In 39 of the US states and, and I, at the time I was working as an intern and then slowly, you know, kind of moved my way up into this architecture firm and I really got exposed to this concept that's called user-centric design. And if you, and I always use Disney as an example 'cause they, they just do such a great job of creating all the touch points. But have you ever been on a Disney cruise? Isn't a good example 'cause you're an isolated kind of, you know, moment. Um, you look down on the carpet and there's Disney prints in the carpet. You look in the walls, you see Disney wallpaper. You look, you hear in the background of the music and you hear your favorite Disney soundtrack from one of the movies. And that touch point was something I just kind of fell in love with. And I was working on a project at this architecture firm and they, it was a, it was a restaurant. And they wanted to not only design the restaurant, the layout where the booths go, but all the way down to the silverware, to the art on the walls, to the logo, to the brand, to even building a website. Right? And this is back in 2003, where an architecture firm is building websites for their projects and, and even plating the food, right? Like using the s and the logo with the sauce on the food to plate it, to show the chefs that we wanted to own every single. Touchpoint so that you have really that, that fully immersed user-centric design. And I was placed on the digital stuff 'cause I was young at the time, so they're like, we need you to help do the digital fly-throughs. And, and then also by the way, uh, build this thing called a website. And, and so all of a sudden I just fell in love with this idea of building the internet. At the time, my wife, who's a partner at the, the company, we started the company together. She was a copywriter and she was working in Vegas as, uh, on, on this project, which is, everyone knows it, it's what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. So she was working on that team, creating that tagline, and we just thought to ourselves, wow, you know, this is a whole new world to get into this idea of building the internet, you know, connecting other humans and people from one location to the next. And we just fell in love with this concept of virtual architecture. Uh, as opposed to this physical architecture and that, that was sort of the fork in the road that, that we both decided to take.

Sean Weisbrot: Was it as easy as you thought it would be? Trying to quote, build the internet?

Jarrod Lopiccolo: You know, it's, it's, there's something really healthy about being naive and, you know, 'cause you go through, you do things that you don't expect you would've done. And the confidence you have when, especially starting a business, you know, if, even if you're gonna. Start a pizza restaurant. You, you know, you're, you think that you make the best pizzas in the world and you've got it down and everyone compliments you on them, and then you just dive into it. And then you realize using that same pizza restaurant analogy, you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do inventory management. I don't know how to do specials. Oh, there's a competitor that opened three blocks down that says they offer the best pizza in the world. And so the answer is no. It was definitely not easy. Um, but what's so nice is you're going in with. This sort of like rose colored glasses, that everything's gonna be okay and everything's gonna work out, and you just sort of take one punch on the chin at a time, and then finally you wake up and you realize, oh wow. I'm a, I'm a professional business athlete. You know, who, who's been in the ring for a very long time. But, uh, no, it wasn't easy, but it was very, very rewarding. And, and typically those that, those things that are super hard that you put all your energy and your whole life into are the things that, uh, that give you the most amount of gratification and joy.

Sean Weisbrot: Are you sure? It's not more like you wake up one day and you realize that you're really freaking bruised on your face

Jarrod Lopiccolo: that, and you realize shit, I only know how to be a boxer. You know? And so that's the other thing. You wake up five, six years into it and you're like. Well, now I'm sort of got these, you know, golden handcuffs. I've created this business that I can't get away from. Uh, to your point, I'm in the ring all the time. Um, but you just, that's where I think it's like, you know, that one advice I always give to anyone, anyone even listening right now, it's like, it's really about following your passion. And because you do wake up and you realize, yeah, I'm bruised, I'm beaten, I'm, you know, and, and, and, and I could probably have chosen a different path. But if you follow your passion naturally money is going to follow. Relationships are gonna follow. Uh, and you're gonna feel that fulfilled part of your life.

Sean Weisbrot: I just interviewed someone who said to me, I was told this idea of Follow your passion, he said, and decades later, I realized that if you just follow your passion, you're probably gonna fail. But if you follow your passion and you tie it into purpose, then your chances of success are much higher.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: I love that. There's actually a book that the, the founder of Whole Foods, uh, John Mackey, he, it's a book called, um, purpose and Passion, or Passion and Purpose, and it's exactly what you just talked about. It's like, follow your passion, but with a guided purpose. And then that allows you to rally everyone around you. It gives you, you know, a way point or a filter to make decisions. If you fall off your path a little bit, you know, you get right back on it. 'cause purpose drives you back to the path. But you can't, I think you can't. Start on a purpose without the passion. I think passion is like the spark that ignites the flame, if you will. And then the purpose is about kind of managing that fire and stoking it and adding wood to it and giving it what it needs. So it, so it stays alive.

Sean Weisbrot: And then those punches determine how much you're actually passionate about that thing.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yes. Yeah. How hard take a, a, a hit to the chin. Uh, it is gonna be, is gonna show you how deep you are in your, in your line of passion. Sometimes people right away just the, the simplest of, you know, misstep or, oh, we lost this client and they fold up because, you know, it's easy to be a, a fair weather sailor. It's, it's much harder right? To do it in really choppy, bad weather and, and to sort of get through that storm. You, you really have to have that. That passion, that vision, that mission, and, and do it at all costs. Even when you're bruised and you're broken and you're tired, uh, it's pick yourself up and dust yourself off and, and keep charging towards the mission.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm in a Discord server of about 5,000 people that are running like e-commerce brands and marketing agencies, or wanting to start. And I was invited to join the server as an expert because they don't really get access to people like me who have more experience and can talk about a wider range of topics. And so they, they want me to talk about these things, so they asked me to answer a question, which was. You know, how did you handle kind of these little defeats here and there, or, or how do you feel, uh, when like you lose a client or something bad goes, you know, goes wrong? And I said, it doesn't matter where you are in your business. Even when you're successful, that stuff still gets you. I go, you're gonna have fear and anxiety no matter if you're making $0 or $20 million a day. The fear and anxiety you have just changes the things you are afraid of. Change. Right when you're starting, your fear is I'm not gonna be successful. When you're successful, your fear is you're gonna lose it all.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yes.

Sean Weisbrot: And, and people are like, huh, you know, they're, they're young. A lot of them are Gen Z, so they haven't really had a chance to think about this stuff. And I'm like, I'm like, the happiest times I've had was when I was 22 years old and I was an English teacher in China and I was broke.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yes, yes.

Sean Weisbrot: Having a business and being successful, I've am, I have anxiety, I have panic attacks. I go, if you want that, welcome to the club. But if you don't want that, do not start a business.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yeah, it, it's interesting, I, you know, not that I ever wanted this on anyone, but when the pandemic hit, right, everyone felt. As if they were an entrepreneur. And what, what I mean by that is they brought their work into their personal life, right? They usually, they could have this sort of umbilical cord cut where, you know, when I'm at home, I'm only at home. And when I'm at work, I'm at work and I leave the two separate, you know, that church and state, if you will. And, and so there was an element of like, okay, now you know what it feels like to be an entrepreneur where you are literally working in your living room and or your small office or bedroom or hiding phone calls because there's kids in the background and such, and. And I think this journey, right, as an entrepreneur, you are going to feel the pain. You are going to, you know, have missteps and stuff, and I think you have to subscribe to the idea that. That what you're doing is important and, and that you know it's okay to fail. We oftentimes ask ourselves and our, and the teams that are, that are with us and people that are coming on board, do you love to win or do you hate to lose? And that distinction really helps separate a line. And I, I freaking hate to lose. Because what it means is I didn't do something right. I didn't plan, I didn't for, I didn't anticipate what was going to happen. And so if you subscribe to this curiosity in this, I'm gonna be a life learner, which ultimately established our tagline of Let's be better. Every day it's a subscription that we all sort of, you know, sign up for that every day we could do something a little bit better. So when you, when you do fail or when something goes wrong or a project doesn't go well, or the client fires you, or a team member quits, you as a man, you know, you're the manager, they quit you. You just gotta look at yourself. Say, you know what, this is where I learn change is where I actually learn. And if I subscribe to this idea that I can be better, I. Then, then I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna be better tomorrow. But if you're winning all the time and everything's a breezy easy, super smooth, then likely you're not actually pushing yourself hard enough to be a better person and to contribute, you know, to the, to the, to the world in a different way. And so, so, yeah. So naturally, if you're gonna be in entrepreneurship, you're gonna, you're gonna fall down a lot. Um, but it's okay. It's like that's when you learn how to, that's how you learn how to walk is when you fall, right?

Sean Weisbrot: But the days where I was winning all the time were the days that I didn't have anxiety.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Right.

Sean Weisbrot: Those,

Jarrod Lopiccolo: those are, well, then I, I was just at a wedding over the weekend and I asked my buddies the first time, I've been at a wedding in a while, and I said, so, are you nervous? Do you have anxiety? He goes, oh my gosh, do I ever? I said, well, that means it's important.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. Well, I mean, what I was doing. Yeah, it wasn't really that important. I didn't really care. It was just really good money, really easily.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yep. That's the point. It's like usually when you make good money quick and and such, it just doesn't, it doesn't do what you really need it to do. Which at the end of the day, yes, we all chase the money in, in a way. 'cause we want, we know what money equals, which is freedom and you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, you really, you'll get there, you'll likely get there, but you don't wanna get there by only chasing the money. 'cause you'll wake up and you'll say, you know, I didn't really learn much. You know, and I'm not. I'm not this old sage, or I didn't, you know, I don't have all these lessons that I can teach others, right. That pay it forward model. And so you've gotta, you, you gotta make, you gotta, if it was hard, everyone, if it was hard, no one would do it. Right? If it, it was easy. Everyone would, and, and you wanna separate, separate yourself from the pack a bit.

Sean Weisbrot: I've learned a lot more in the last four and a half years, five years of not having as much success as I used to have. Yep. And figure working towards how I can get back to that success and, yep. It's been extremely painful, but it's been very, I feel like gratifying is an unfairly positive word to use in this regard. Yeah. Because of just how stressful and, and difficult it's been. But, um, but it's, it's been gratifying to learn so much. I. In the process of going, well, I'm gonna try affiliate marketing didn't work, but I learned a little bit more about how ads function. Yep. You know, uh, I tried consulting again in, in e-commerce. Uh, in the beginning I wanted to specifically, I. Consult eCommerce brands. And I learned that they're not a great target for that and why. Right? Um, but I learned some more of their pain points, which helped me to figure out some other services that they were stupidly happy to pay for. So, you know, you, uh, it, but it takes you months, oh, I'm gonna build a website. I'm gonna promote this thing. And then you, and, and then you talk to people and you, you know, learn that like, no, it's not actually a thing you should be doing. And then you go and you. Fix the website and you start promoting again, and you start talking to people again, and then you go, oh, okay, yeah, it's working now. But it doesn't always work like that. Sometimes you hit on the first thing, the right, the right, uh, you know, the right thing the first time and all that. Um, but I, I want to get to this tie in between architecture and entrepreneurship that we had kind of teased, uh, previously, because when you're building the foundation of a company, you need to have a structure. If you don't have a structure, you're building a house of cards and you're not gonna be able to scale. You're lucky if it doesn't fall apart just in its daily existence. And architecture requires a tremendous amount of planning before you can go build the thing. Because if you plan incorrectly, the building's gonna fall down and people may die. So did you find that having experience as an architect helped you in starting this business? Did it hinder you because you had professional skills, but maybe not, you know, you had planning skills, but maybe not execution skills, like how did it help and, and did it, or did it hinder you at all?

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yeah, well, like many entrepreneurial journeys that people go on, typically the foundation that you've sort of invested into, right? Mine happen in the architecture, but typically they lend themselves. In that journey. Um, and, and so yes, I think there's, there's probably two angles that I would think about the architecture side, and to your point, this planning and this de dependencies. If you think about the services we started in providing, which was building internet, you know, website experiences, you know, um, uh, digital experiences, mobile applications, they actually all follow a very similar process. They, they, uh, usually they're waterfall. Based. So there's one thing has to happen for the next thing to happen, for the next thing to happen. Um, if you think about building a building, it's the same concept, right? You gotta start with the foundation, then you start laying in all the, you know, the walls and you can't start putting carpet in until the very end, right? So if you think about building services like websites, I. You don't get to start adding content to the website until all the infrastructure is built. The taxonomy, um, you know, the site architecture and plan who's coming to the website. Same thing for a building. If you're building a school, you know that there's faculty, there's students, and then there's administration and, and then, you know, whatever else. Janitorial services, whatnot. Same thing for a website. It's like, well, who's coming there? What are your audiences? What are their needs are? How do we get them through the rooms? AKA through the different, you know, pages. So, so from a service standpoint, it lend itself like. Pretty analogous from a running a business standpoint too. If you think about dependencies, you think about anticipating needs, right? As an architect, you always have to think months, months, months in advance. And those original architects had to kind of keep everything into consideration. Like, you know, 2000 years ago they had to understand sociology, they had to understand astronomy, they understand real religion and local politics and you know, and then of course. Actually mathematics and, and everything else to build the, and where, you know, shipping and logistics for materials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Same concept for a business, right? You have to understand where the geography, the industries that you're working in, uh, you know, the future, right? This year we're in election year, right? Anticipating what that's gonna do to consumer behavior and buyer. Personas and, you know, and, and, and, and confidence, right? In actually purchasing or traveling or whatever the case is. And so you have to constantly really kind of survey everything. You've gotta be this, you know, to a certain degree this nomadic new, new sociologist and psychologist all at once, you know, to understand the marketing side. So, yeah, so that. And then of course, the structure of running a business itself. Uh, you know, making sure we're using a structure, a framework, and we're measuring the things that are important for us. And all those pieces, uh, you know, are built off of the foundation that, that, that I had went through. And then with season I. My partner and, you know, having copywriting as a background, understanding again, what the emotional, uh, triggers are for people to absorb a brand. Uh, what things will motivate people to purchase, um, you know, culture of a brand, right? So you start thinking about all those things and it's natural that she works on the inside of the business. We oftentimes refer to her as our, like va vast. Uh, like, um, like the, the, oh, I'm not lost for the words, but Ular system. Um, yes, thank you. Uh, and you know, this is like how the heart pumps and the, the muscles work and just all those pieces have dependencies as well. And so, so, yeah. So long story short, you know, most entrepreneurs what, and think about whoever, whatever you're going after, that foundation is likely gonna land into that entrepreneurial journey.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm glad you said the word psychology or the psychological aspects of the business. Yeah. Because you said typically people will, you know, invest their energy in learning some core skill when they're, when they're young and my dad's generation went into their career thinking this would be the only career they have. Right. I, I went into my psychology degree not knowing what the hell I was gonna use it for. I. Right, but with the assumption that it would probably help me figure something out if I knew myself.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yes.

Sean Weisbrot: And so one of the first things that psychology taught me was how to understand myself. And if I can assess myself and I can reflect on myself, I can understand who I am and what I want, then I can understand others. And. From that, you know, from the last 16, 17 years after finishing my degree, I've applied psychology to everything I've done, and so for me, I feel like everyone should have one or two years of psychology in college. Yeah. Whether you wanna be a doctor or a lawyer or a mechanic, I think everybody should be forced to learn a year or two of psychology instead of, we, we take these elective classes that are, like, I, I took a class about like frogs and a class about cooking. Like, I don't need that. But the psychology classes were helpful because, yeah, I learned about romantic relationship building and, and ingroup and outgroup think and, and observation and early childhood development and neuro neurological psychology. So I learned so many different things about different aspects of psychology. That I'm well enough informed and well-rounded and well traveled now through my, my personal interest in travel, that I can look at most people's businesses and instantly find the problems that they're facing or that they may face in the future. Right? So psychology helps me to analyze, right? So you have this, this, uh, planning through architecture where I have this strategy. I can, I can see a holistic picture and I can understand who are you? Who are you? Is this business right for you? Are you targeting the right people? Are you. Finding them the right way. You know, are you giving them what they actually need? Right. So I, I can see things from a different point of view. Now I don't have the architecture side. Sure. I had to learn, like, I literally had to learn what are the different pieces of a business and, you know, how do you organize? My brother is a finance person, his background is in finance, and, and he taught me about spreadsheets when I was young. He taught me, he taught me about money. He taught me about how to understand the simple maths. You need to understand, are you gonna be profitable in your venture? It it, that's not what it was at the time, but that's how it's kind of expanded because of, of that. That's right. I feel very fortunate that him and I are so different because he doesn't really understand psychology and I don't really understand finance. But together we help each other to understand our areas of expertise so that we can understand ourselves better and we can understand, you know, what we need to do and, and who we need to work with and, and all of that. So it works quite well, even though we don't run a business together. It's just a, Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. If you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your. Subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like, if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now. Curiosity Exchange in a way. So, so, uh, I think that. More people should not be afraid of going to school and learning something that they may not use. Because if they're interested in entrepreneurship, which at the time I had no desire for entrepreneurship, it just kind of came to me. Yeah. After college. Uh, but if they invest in something that they're interested in, then they should be able to use that as a core skill to be able to build a business from hopefully.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yeah. I think about, I, it's interesting that you talk about psychology. I think that is probably one of the most important. If you're not gonna make that your primary, you know, sort of study or a field of expertise, you know, actually having that as like a minor or just even leaning it, leaning into it closely. Like behind me, you see all these self-help books. Um, that's all effectively psychology, right? Is, is really kind of understanding human motivation, human behavior, um, anticipating their needs, right? And this, this allows us to be the most successful. And I remember in architecture. There was this one time we were designing a park and, and you know, un understanding human behavior when, where to place benches, right? You would think that, oh, maybe it's a huge open park. Let's throw some benches in the middle. But now everyone's gonna relate and they're gonna remember, think about the park that you were in last, and there's a bench and the behind the bench there's a tree. I. Or there's a wall. And what ha what that means is people don't wanna have their backs exposed, right? 'cause it makes them feel vulnerable. They want to be able to be in a position, a perching position, to actually stare and watch and sort of watch other humans. So this idea of like, what do people anticipate? Where does anxiety, you know, come from? Um, all those things. We've been able to translate those ideas into marketing and being more effective. So like when we create a, a marketing ad and we throw it out in the wild. When someone clicks on that ad and it comes to a landing page, you wanna make sure you have the same messaging, the same imagery, you know, all the same stuff. If all of a sudden they land on your homepage, for instance, which was what was done 10 years ago, I. There's this disjointed trust, there's a break in trust and, and ultimately from a psychological standpoint, they don't feel comfortable any longer. They're, they're disjointed. They have to reacclimate themselves to like the landing page and Is this the right company? Did I come there? They look for things like the logo to help bind that trust signal together. So, so yeah, to your point about psychology, it's so important that, you know, we really weave it into every single, you know, kind of interaction and touch point. And, and, and that's, you know, us working behind the scenes. And that's what a lot of marketers do, is they work behind the scenes to influence behavior, to drive people to their wants, needs, experiences, services, dreams. You know, you name it.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you ever use psychology to influence your clients to accept that what you want to present to them is, is what they need?

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Interestingly, we like to use data and, but at the end of the day, it is a hundred percent a psychological move because what happens is, especially in brand, right, a lot of times. Brand is, is sold through emotion. And what's your first expression and what's your first, you know, what is this, what is this invoking? Is it causing you to leave or want to this? So we love to use data. So we'll run focus groups. We run user studies we'll, we have, we have partnerships with research firms where we do qua, qualitative, quantitative research or of those pieces allow us to approach our clients with, uh, like that sort of data, you know, data wins if you will. But, um, but yeah, there's a lot of psychology in that because sometimes you get to a point where like, Nope, the client wants this. They don't, they, they realize it's an emotional ask and we're like, that's not a good use of budget. Or, you know what, we just need to educate your board because your board's asking for these things because there's an emotional reason for it. And, and we love to break that down. But most of the time you're dealing with, with different psychology, um, you know, different outcomes, different um, agendas. And, and what's nice is data really binds that together, uh, and allows us to tell, you know, a story that's objective as opposed to staying in that subjective space.

Sean Weisbrot: Are there any tools that you use in the business that

Jarrod Lopiccolo: are lifesavers for you? There's quite a few, uh, because of the performance marketing side of things we'll use, um, one, like one of them for instance is called BrightEdge. Uh, they're a enterprise level SEO company. So it allows us to get an idea of what organic terms people are using to find things. Well, organic happens to be one of the highest performing channels, so we wanna make sure we're aligning ourselves with a premier. You know, uh, SaaS company that we can borrow off of, which again, right now in the movement of ai, they're able to predict what's happening or they're able to, you know, put new signals out there for how the search engine results page are showing up with conversational results. So that's one as an example. Then we have another one that's like. What's called Resonate, and that's what allows us to understand audience behavior and motivation. And so now we can target down from 34 to 37-year-old females that live in this particular geography. And these are their habits and their spending behavior. And so that gives us like an understanding of who they are that we could then target, you know, and not to say we're gonna target them specifically, but from. From an aggregated data standpoint, we can target, you know, people that, that fit that persona. So that's another one. And then of course, Google Analytics, which really shows us all the different, you know, behaviors on the website and, and what, you know, how, how traffic and people are moving through and, you know, what are their points of interest and are they converting based on the metrics and KPIs we've set. So yeah, there's probably, I would say a, a set of about 20 different pieces of software. And tools that we use that allow, allows us to inform our skillset and ultimately change, um, our mindset.

Sean Weisbrot: Since you love data, have you figured out how much these software pieces cost altogether and how many humans you would've hired if you didn't use them, and what the difference in cost is?

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Well, so we actually have quite a complex, uh. Uh, spreadsheet that we've put together that shows every single piece of software. What are our terms, you know, how much we spend per month based on traffic load. Sometimes they go up or they fluctuate. Um, and. Then which clients we actually are using them on. And then we actually, um, build that into our sows and it's a, and we call it a technology fee. And we expose that hard cost to our clients in saying, look, in order for us to produce the best work we, we have, we can, we have these tools that are very specific to the work that we're gonna do for you couldn't do this work without them. Therefore they're part of our cost of goods. And then we pass those, those costs onto the client. We're, we, we're very radically transparent about 'em. Sometimes clients will say, Hey, we wanna carry paper with those softwares on our own because we have a big internal team and they, we wanna use 'em on other projects. And so we'll then say, great, just grant us access to those softwares and we'll. They'll turn you over to our reps and they can get you signed up. And then of course, we build affiliate, uh, programs with all the reps, like HubSpot and stuff. So when we Yep. Set those up. So, yeah, no, it's a whole ecosystem, uh, that we've built around our technology and, and how we use it, how we communicate it, how we pass those costs onto our clients and, and how we build partnerships around it.

Sean Weisbrot: I love affiliate marketing. I've, I've been trying to figure out how to, maybe automate's not the right word, but how to scale. It. Yeah. Um, because my specialty is human relationships, so I can go to the people that own that brand and then I can go and I'll find people. But if I had a way to run paid ads. In a way that I could get, you know, a hundred leads or 200 leads or 300 leads and it would just work, then I, I would love to do that. I just haven't figured it out because I'm not great at that. No, that's,

Jarrod Lopiccolo: that's a whole, that to your point, the affiliate marketing actually, like, um, getting it to not only cover your cost and then actually, you know, grow a business off of that is just so difficult because you have so many other costs that you have to build that following. Right. I'm, I'm a photographer, uh, in my personal time and I go and I read, you know. FS stoppers and you know, all these other different, you know, websites. And then of course naturally there, there's affiliate links in there for the products they talked about. But there's so much built up sort of embedded energy and momentum and effort to get me to be at that blog and to have to click on that link to get over there and then pay for that thing, and they get a little shimmy of it. So for us, we don't think of it so much as, we just think more of it as. Can we get our costs covered? Because otherwise it's a sunk cost, and that then eats into our margins. And then we have to ultimately charge more on the service side in terms of hours or whatnot. Uh, which sometimes you can't do, right? Sometimes you're hitting that ceiling of what the market will, will bear in terms of price. And so the best thing you, I, for us, at least in our business model, is to get our, our, some of those, those cogs covered.

Sean Weisbrot: So I had heard that if you try to put your price down low, people will not trust you because, oh, why is your price so low? Do you not have confidence in yourself? So the higher your price goes, at some point people will start to go, Ugh, your price is too high. And if you understand what the value is that you bring and you switch your pricing over to a value-based model, you can go, Hey, look, I'm gonna build you something. I'm gonna charge you a hundred thousand and I know everyone else is charging you 10, but. What I'm doing is I'm enabling you to build a hundred million dollars business. So what's 1% or what's 0.1%, right, based on value. Or I can charge you, you know, 5,000 now, but then I want 20% of the revenue I bring in over the next two years as a result of the value I'm bringing. Right? So some companies will be happy to go, yeah, I'll pay you value based. Sure, I'll, I'll, I'll give you revenue share. No problem. And then you could potentially make $5 million over the next two years off a $10,000 website or you know, they could pay you the a hundred thousand and so, so yeah, there, what I had learned really early on was, you know, if I start and I say a hundred dollars for this thing to you, and you say yes, well the next person, I'm gonna say 200. You say, yes, all right. The next person will say 400, you say Yes, fine. The next person will say 800, you say Yes. Next is eight 16. So you basically do price discovery and you figure out what the market will tolerate, and then you figure out how to scale that through value based. Instead of hourly or project based or whatever. And, and, uh,

Jarrod Lopiccolo: yeah, we, yeah. So we, so it's interesting. In early in my early years, uh, I had an advisor who once said, you need to, um. Basically be, be losing 75% of your deals, uh, based on pricing. And what that meant was a, a good measurement to show that you're hitting the threshold, right? But if you're, to your point, if you put something in front of someone and they sign right away, or there's no price negotiation, I. Uh, you're not there yet, right? You haven't hit the top, the top yet. You haven't gotten to the, your point of value-based pricing. Uh, what I find when we do price really high in terms of above the average and norm, we have to bring something very unique to the table, right? We can't, we have to, what they call disrupt the pitch, right? You can't just otherwise we're, they're gonna compare apples to apples and they're just gonna see that you're the most expensive one. But when they're comparing apples to oranges, it's gonna turn their head. They're gonna say, you know what? This one is telling me something I've never heard of before. They're looking at it in a new way. Um. They've got past success because of the awards they won. Or the client testimonials. Or the client's referrals, and then the ones that I spoke to. And so I think you can't really charge really, really, really beyond what the market will bear unless you're providing something very unique and different than anyone else. And so there's this great, there's this great, um, consultant, uh, author and, and even friend of mine, his name's Blair Ends and he writes a, a book that's called, um, win Without Pitching was his first sort of success. Then he wrote this book called Pricing Creativity, and it talks just exactly about this. And one of the things that's, that he talks a lot about is what they call anchor pricing. And so, you know, if you think of, I'm gonna use, I love using like, uh, restaurants and art and stuff as an example, or museums or whatnot. But think of, let's think of an art gallery for a second. You walk into an art gallery, you look on the wall and you see this, you know, five foot tall by eight foot wide, massive picture, and it just draws you in. You're like, that is one of the most beautiful pictures ever. And then you look and you're like, whoa. That price tag is 5,000. You know, you're like, wow. Then you turn around, you swivel to your left, and there's a smaller one. There's a two foot tall by three foot, and that one's only priced at 7 95. And you're like, wow, that one's even, oh, that one I, I might be able to afford and I might be able to find somewhere in my house that I can put that one. And then there's a little tiny one that's like one foot tall by two foot wide and it's only 200 bucks. And you're like, yeah, that's just too small and it's not too, I don't know if I'm gonna like it, da, da, da. So it naturally happens. Is that people pick the middle one. And so the anchor one sets the price really high and it allows you to say, I'm not interested in, in paying that much, and I don't want the lowest one because most people will have the lowest one. And I don't wanna be in that sort of commodity space. Instead I'm gonna choose the middle one. And so whenever we do pricing, we do anchor pricing, we always throw up like, look, we could do everything out of this. The, the, you know, outta the sky. You know, or we could do the very bare minimum. And oftentimes the client wants the middle choice, not because we fooled them or anything, but it's usually the one that they need the most. And they don't want, they wanna test you out, they wanna try out your services, and naturally we'll move them into that upper category over time. So to your point, we're gonna get 'em in in the middle. Then we'll grow them to the top end after you've built trust. After they see their ROI from the effort that they put together, that a hundred thousand dollars website, maybe you got 'em. Instead of a hundred thousand, you did 75,000. Maybe instead of a hundred million in sales, they made 50 million in sales. But either way, you've proven the model that success can happen and then you start driving, driving you up the value chain.

Sean Weisbrot: I've always liked this is the price. There's no other opportunity. You like it, fine. You don't like it. No problem. I, I just had someone come to me. I have a very standard, uh, I, I have an affiliate offer right now. Well, not right now. It's something that I would, I wanna work on long term. Uh, but it's not my service. It's my partner's service and I'm just bringing clients to him and he gives me 50% of the revenue. And so it's a, uh, monthly subscription and, uh, percentage of your ad spend as well. But then there's another one where you can just buy accounts from us and, and that's it. It's a one-off. If the account dies, it's not our problem. So we tell people, you know, thi this is the price, $250 for this account. And two of the people that came to us in the last day were like, oh, can I do it for like 200? And I was like, no, the price is two 50. You don't want it Too bad. I don't care. I don't need your business.

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Yeah, there's definitely an element of like exclusivity that you can assign to, to exactly what you're saying, where you're like, no, I'm sorry. This is our minimums. And I do believe that minimums are important to uphold and maintain because as soon as you start dropping below those minimums, what ends up happening is you'll naturally, um, provide less service for them. When, and that'll then all of a sudden tarnish your brand. It'll tarnish your reputation. And you know, and then ultimately, like we, they always say like, you know, you have a bad experience. You're gonna tell 12 people, you have a good experience. You're gonna tell two people. And so the reality is you gotta be careful not to accept below your minimums, uh, in those moments to hold your ground. You know? But I also think you need to have, you've gotta have the proven model, right? You can't just come out and be confident or cocky with it. You've gotta say, no, these are our minimums and this is why. We've got 20 years of experience. You know, we've got, you know, we're an award-winning agency. We've got da, da, da, da, and you name it. Um, you've gotta be able to have the backing to, to have the confidence in that and to, and to hold firm with your pricing. I, I think otherwise, in those early days, I hate to say it, but you do say yes to 'em and you don't have minimums. And that allows you to like, test everything out, learn what you're good at, learn how to actually price things. Um, those are those early days where you, where you get punched on the chin a lot. You know,

Sean Weisbrot: I, I don't like those days. That, that

Jarrod Lopiccolo: No, I'm glad I don't have those anymore. Now, now, now they're just, yeah, it's not no more punching, you know, if anything, but I will say the team below does, right? They take those because they're at the front end of the company, right? They're the ones producing the services. So they're getting hit with algorithmic changes with Google, or they're getting hit with an unperforming campaign because, you know, we missed targeted an ad or, or whatnot, and. And it doesn't happen often, but they definitely get the punches on the chin a little bit more. But again, that goes back to like, if there's pain, it means you're growing. Right. So after

Sean Weisbrot: all this time, how have you changed yourself in order to stay relevant within the company?

Jarrod Lopiccolo: Well, I would say most entrepreneurs, they start out with a trade. They're a trades person, right? You're a trades person. You do, you have this skillset, you're really good at it, and you sell it, and you fill in that demand. Um. I think I've survived because I've let go of that skillset and I've adopted new skill sets, and so I always think about like these walls that you break through and sometimes you call 'em chapters in your company. I would say we're on our third chapter right now, and that the first chapter was really establishing ourselves, being that good trades person, right? Selling all my own personal services and. And fulfilling, you know, on the duty or the task or the promise myself with a small team. Then I elevate it out of being a trades person into a business person, right? Then it's all about like learning how to run a business and what are the mechanics and what makes a healthy business, and how do we go for sales, things like that. Now we've emerged out of the pandemic. We we're in chapter three. Now it's about sort of, if you will, world expansion. I'm moving into different markets with our business. We've created carbon copies. We have a Vegas office, we have a UK office. Um, I'm interested in, you know, doing another office maybe somewhere in Singapore or in New Zealand. So we could ultimately become a 24 hour service agency. So we're bringing our brand, we're bringing our services, we're employing people. Um, you know, we're building partnerships all around the world. Uh, and, and, and I, so that's really the next, the next stage is like, but I think if you continue to do the same thing over and over again for 20 years, yeah, you're probably gonna get burnt out. Probably not gonna love it any longer. Um, but I could, yeah, I can s honestly say I love my job. I love the role that I'm currently in right now. I.

Sean Weisbrot: So what's the most important thing you've learned in, in this entire journey beyond what can ha what you needed to do to change yourself? I,

Jarrod Lopiccolo: I think it comes down to building meaningful connections with other people. Um, at the end of the day, people are the variable, right? You can have the best product, you can have the best pizza restaurant, you can have the best agency, you can work for the best Fortune 500 company. Um, but at the end of the day, it's really about the people. People are, you know, you're inspired by people. You build relationships with people. Um, you follow people, right? I, I always like, refer back to Martin Luther King. He didn't, you know, he didn't say, I have a plan. He said, I have a dream. And that really rallied people to get, to get them together. So, for me, I think over the years, it's, it's been the most important lesson slash you know, takeaway is that I've built some of the most meaningful connective. Connections, uh, in my life and I love them. And, and that's gonna be the hardest part as we all get towards the end of our lives, is knowing how many people we've affected and how many relationships we've built, and that we have to let all those go, you know? And, um, and so that to me is the, yeah, most important lesson. I would recommend that to anyone listening that's in a business, starting a business, or. Deep into their businesses, lean into the people. That's where the magic happens. That's where the joy exists. That's where you know, you know, the, the love is built and, um, and that's that at the end of the day, if your business isn't successful, you still have those connections. You still have those memories. You still have that love that, that bond that's been, that's been built. So yeah, meaningful connections.