The BS in your delivery

Everything in your process right now that isn't directly adding value to your client's desired outcome is BS to eliminate. Start with the obvious stuff: scheduling and rescheduling meetings, following up on messages that have gone unanswered, chasing clients for the information and feedback you need, and rearranging your schedule every time their deadlines move.

This is not because your clients suck; it's just the world we live in. We're all juggling a million inputs.

Then there's the less obvious BS. Revisions driven by personal taste or impulse. And scope creep, which usually shows up as the classic "can we just add this one small thing?" (The thing is never actually small.)

What an Intensive is, and isn't

The Intensives Model is not a faster version of the old way of doing things. It's not a "VIP day" or "day rate" approach either. A VIP day sells access to an expert for a day. You're still selling your time, which puts a ceiling on what you can charge. An Intensive sells a defined outcome, with the work concentrated into a short period.

At our agency, the Intensive is a 1-3 day session with clients to deliver and finalize an entire custom brand and website. That's our version, not a rule. For other businesses, the structure can vary. It might be a few Intensives spread out over a week or two. It might be Intensives that deliver phases of a project, with a month or more in between. It can even be applied to a retainer, with monthly or quarterly Intensives to deliver ongoing work.

The quality of the output should be the same or better than what you would do in a traditional process. The time you spend on it shrinks because you eliminate some, if not all, of the BS.

What makes Intensives different

They start with value-based package pricing, not deliverables. We connect the package to the result, and what the client will ultimately achieve because of it.

The first step is always the Lead Product. It establishes the diagnosis, the scope, the desired outcome and the trust an Intensive needs to succeed. The brief becomes the north star, so personal opinions and last-minute changes don't derail anything.

There's only one deadline for the client. It's the date they must submit everything we need. If the client doesn't meet it, the project gets rescheduled.

One client at a time. And then when it's over, it's over. No dangling tasks, no open loops, no "quick little updates." If the client wants more, that's a new offer.

Where it started

This is the story of our first one, at our agency, as I tell it in Scale Solo. We had pitched Stash Wealth our $30,000 brand and website package, and they wanted it, but it was a hefty price tag for a new business. That $30,000 accounted for all the project management, scheduling, back-and-forth and other work it takes to deliver a traditional project stretched over months. Take that unnecessary work out, and we could deliver the same core project in two days for $5,000, if they were willing to basically trust us and make decisions on the spot. They gave us an emphatic yes.

I wrote all the website copy ahead of time, and Steve followed his full process. By 6pm on day two, they were amazed that the entire project was done. And we were so excited that we had just proved we could do a full branding and website project with the client in only two days by eliminating all the BS.

That $5,000 was where we started, not where we stayed. By the time I wrote Scale Solo, instead of dragging out projects for months until clients are "happy," we were selling $30,000 to $60,000 Brandup Intensives that take place in 48 hours. Those are our agency's numbers, not a price list for your business.

Chunk and Stack

One reason Intensives can make you so efficient (and free!) is something I call Chunk and Stack. The idea is simple: schedule projects consecutively, not concurrently. You chunk your projects so you only work on one at a time. Then you stack them, so you work on a project to completion before starting the next.

Back in May of 2017, we chunked and stacked five $20,000 projects in a row, banked $100,000, and then went to Europe for seven weeks.

What an Intensive needs from you

The Trust Bank. Every client relationship has one, and withdrawals count more heavily than deposits. When you say you'll send the work Tuesday, you send it Tuesday.

Captain Your Ship. Clients think they want control, but they don't. They relax when the captain knows the destination.

Be The Guardrails. Decide in advance what you'll put in place so that clients can't accidentally undermine or derail the project.

"That won't work in my business"

I hear this a lot. Your business is special. Your clients are different.

Sara Chambers, the strategic brain behind Elly & Nora Creative, runs larger, more complex projects with a team of contractors. She front-loads nearly all of her own client work into the first two weeks and schedules only two projects per month. Similar projects used to take her six months or longer, with much more back-and-forth.

Not everyone will have an Intensive as intense as two days. But we can always apply this principle, whatever the business, to trim away the BS that eats up time, energy, and profit.

Where it fits

Intensives are how you deliver in the No BS Business Model. The Lead Product Method is how you sell, and it always comes first.

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