On July 31st, I went to a John Mayer concert at Scotiabank Arena (floor seats!) with my good buddy, Guitar Andrew (he’s a big John Mayer fan… for obvious reasons). At the end of the night, as I sang out Slow Dancing in a Burning Room as loud as I could… I was on top of the world.
July 2019 had been a fantastic month. In late June, I set myself a goal that I wanted to earn over $2,000/month with my resume writing side hustle at least once in the next year. Only 5 weeks later, I had achieved that goal.
I made $2,208 in that July. It was awesome and it gave me hope that I could do this full-time one day…
Then August came.
It’s My Own Fault
As you can imagine, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I even posted this picture of me flexing in my elevator (no regrets here, but I wanted to give you a little insight into my mindset).
And with my heart set on expanding this business, I decided to reach out to some colleagues of mine with the Career Professionals of Canada. This group is full of really great, impressive people who have been doing what I do for much longer than I have and many of them write resumes as their full-time job.
So I set up a phone call with one of the leaders of the Career Professionals of Canada just to pick her brain.
It was this phone call that derailed my seemingly unstoppable revenue train… and it was all my fault.
The “Bad” Advice
First off, I want to say, the call was extremely well intentioned and very encouraging. I left feeling great. I had ideas, dreams, and an action plan. The problem was, my colleague had a very different approach to her business, and I didn’t consider how her advice would translate into my own circumstances.
There was a lot of great advice about networking and website design and business development… all super useful, but the overarching message was…
You need to charge more… like… way more.
While I generally charge about $149 for a resume (with common upsells for cover letters and LinkedIn Profile optimization), my colleague was charging about 10x that. She even scawffed at the idea of working with someone who was only willing to pay $350 for a resume.
I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard this information. Then I started to see the dollar signs flashing before my eyes… maybe that’s why I wasn’t thinking straight.
When I Tried Following Her Advice
A few days later, I raised my prices, as advised, by a lot. I put together packages ranging from $395 all the way to $995. I altered my entire website to make it look more “professional”. And I took a course on writing sales copy so I could try to entice my audience to buy.
Through one month, guess how many sales I got at these new prices… zero. None. Not a single person.
The only money I made in August was from add-on sales with past clients at previously agreed upon pricing, and one single mom who happened to reach out before I changed the prices on my website.
My total income was less than $250.
However, we do not collapse and give up when we fail. We learn from our experience and come back stronger. Upon reflection, here are the major reasons that the advice of raising my prices just wasn’t right for me.
1. The Clientel
My colleague has built up a business working with executives. Her clients have lots of money to spend and their ROI on landing a new job is huge so ~$1,500 isn’t as big of a deal.
While I’ve worked with the odd CEO or VP of Sales here and there, but many of my clients are early in their careers, or unemployeed, or just generally in life circumstances where they don’t have 4-figures to spend on a resume.
2. The Turn Around Time
She also told me that she had a turnaround time of 3 weeks and that she spent no less than 40 hours writing each resume.
I… I don’t do that. My operations are a lot more quick and effective. I have one 60-minute phone call with my clients… then I get all their documents and things back to them in a week. It takes me 4-5 hours of work.
I wish I had done this earlier, but after some quick math, I realized that her business model of $1495 for a 40-hour resume was earning her $37.38/hour and my $219 sale rate for a resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile that takes 5 hours earns me $43.80/hour.
Bro… what was I thinking? Should have left it alone, man.
Snapping Out of It
I wasn’t ready to paint the experiment as a failure yet; however, a heated conversation with my sister, Michelle, about not being able to work with her friend because my prices had gotten “scary” made me realize that the new pricing structure didn’t align with the values of my business or who I was trying to serve.
Thank god for Michelle. Always yelling at me at just the right times :)
It Wasn’t a Total Failure
Even though I lost out on a lot of clients and revenue during that experiment, I learned a valuable lesson about what my business is and who I am working for. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to upgrade my website and learn more about sales copy (which is a super fun skill in my opinion).
And you know what? I tried something. And I’m never going to regret trying something because I obviously learned a ton and I’m excited for my next big, dumb failure and the lessons that follow.