Hey guys, welcome back. So today I want to talk about VIP Days. I want to warn anyone listening, this is not going to be a sales pitch. Like this is an educational podcast episode, I swear. But I am going to be talking about my own Dubsado VIP day. Like how I created it, how it's evolved, how it's changed all of this good stuff.

And the reason that I'm doing it this week is because the Done in a Day Virtual Conference, um, is up next week. And I have always found immense value in attending the conference. So back in March for the first one of 2022, I actually gave a keynote, um, called Selling Your VIP Days to Your Existing Audience.

This morning, I went looking for my presentation slides so I could refresh my memory and I can't find them. My Canva is a hot mess, like seriously, but that's another conversation for a different episode.  Today I want to talk about what VIP days are,  whether or not, you should care about them, and then if your VIP Day curious, I will have the Done in a Date Virtual Conference that starts next week linked inside of the show notes.

So let's get started. 

First thing is what is a VIP day? First of all, VIP kind of sounds pretentious to me. I am using the term VIP day, because it is the most well-known. But bottom line. Uh, VIP day is a day in which you hire someone for a service and you get your entire transformation at the end of the day.

Now this does of course limit what someone is able to do for you, but that is part of the beauty of a VIP Day. I know as people, as business owners who offer services, um, on our end, it's good because we can set boundaries inside our business. We know that we have a repeatable process where at the end of the day, we're going to be able to deliver X, Y, and Z to our client.

It also helps to curtail the never ending scope creep, which if you've never experienced this, bravo to you, someone has contracted you to do a certain thing. And as the service progresses, they have more and more things that they want to add on to their project.

Now, this is not always a bad thing. Like sometimes during a project you do need to refine, but what I'm talking about is like they come up with, you know, three different services that they didn't tell you that they needed the beginning and had, you known, you would have given them an extended timeline, you would have charged them a different amount of money.

I mean, all of the things that go into when you're doing services and you're creating a custom proposal, you want to avoid.  I want to talk a little bit about why I love them. So as my business has grown and as I have worked with more and more clients, I find myself struggling to focus on one client at a time.

And so doing a VIP day, where I'm basically dedicating the week to that one client and I'm doing, you know, all of their prep work and then I'm doing their VIP day, and then I'm sending them the deliverables. It really helps me be a better business person because I can give all of my attention to that client on that VIP day.

I am not distracted by Chloe's virtual schooling or by answering questions from other clients. Like you get me for a dedicated day. And it's amazing what I can do in a day when I put my mind to it guys. So it's not only good for me, but it's also good for the client. Speaking of clients, I have also approached VIP days from the other side. As a client I absolutely love hiring people for VIP days, because when I'm shopping online and I'm presented with the option of getting free shipping in five to seven business days, or paying some nominal amount to get it in one to two, I always buy it for one to two days of shipping, even if I don't need the thing immediately. That is just my personality. When I am committed to something, when I want to buy something, I want it just as fast as humanly possible. So as a client, I love hiring people for VIP days, because nothing is worse than hiring someone to do a service for you and the project drags on and on with like no set boundaries of when it's going to end. I know we don't like that as the business owner, but I definitely don't like it as the client. 

So let's get down to it. Maybe you're thinking about VIP days and you want to know, but how do I create one inside of my business? So this is why I wanted to look at my slides from my talk for March, because the bulk of my talk was telling people how to create a VIP day using the services that they were already offering their clients.

So in other words, I was already doing a minimal amount of helping people set up their Dubsado accounts. Which is why that was a natural progression to be my first VIP day in my business. What I did, was I took what I was doing over, you know, a week. I don't think I ever went over a week, but what I was doing in a week and I made it to where that entire process could be done in a day.

Now, my VIP day has grown quite a bit in the 18 months that I've had it. So when I started offering VIP days in January of 2021, the price tag was $1250 and I would set up your entire Dubsado account on that day. You had some pre-work that I always say takes about four to five hours to complete. And then we had a strategy call, which initially was one hour.

And then if you were like a wedding photographer, I was telling, you no let's do 90 minutes. And then what I was finding is that as I got better at asking people like different questions to kind of flesh out their business strategy, to really customize the systems process for them, I was like, I need longer than that.

Like I want a whole day dedicated to strategy. So at the very end of 2021, so this was December of 2021, I started playing around with the idea of not selling people on one VIP day, I wanted to sell them two VIP days together. I wanted them to get one day of strategy and then one day of implementation.

So I've actually been doing this and my business for all of 2022 and it has been amazing. So in a given week, like let's take this week because this is actually a VIP day week for me. So on Monday I met with my client for four hours on a Zoom call. We talked about everything in her pre-work, I asked her all kinds of questions about her business, because she is a family and wedding photographer.

Um, and so she has family clients, she has newborn clients, she has wedding clients, she has the occasional mini sessions. Um, so I asked her, you know, everything about her for four hours. And when I was sure that I had all of the information that I needed, the second half of her day, I sat down in my workflow builder and basically mapped out all of her systems.

So every single workflow that I was going to do for her, every email that needed to be sent every form that needed to be created. 

And so on the implementation day, they get eight hours of me doing stuff for them. You know, cleaning up their Dubsado account, if they're a current user, creating all of their forms, writing their emails. And then in the very end, I automate all of their workflows and test them to make sure that they are working.

Now, the reason that I just told you guys all of that though, is that I didn't set out in January of 2021 with the same ideas that I have now. Every single client that I have offered a Dubsado VIP day to has helped me refine my process. 

The biggest aha moment that I think I've had in the 18 months that I've been doing this and that is on implementation day, I only want to do your main offer. Like whatever you sell, the most of whatever you enjoy doing most, I want to completely do that offer for you, then I want to have a call with you where I walk you through all the process. You get to see all of the forms. And after you give me the feedback on that and you approve your main offer, I am now promising to duplicate and customize that offer for your other offers within seven business days. 

I'm giving my clients the opportunity to make sure, that now that they've seen the entire thing done, that this is what they want. Because I have played around with telling people that they could only hire me for one offer at a time.

But it just, that never made sense to me because if you know that you have three offers, you don't want me to make one offer really amazing, and then your other two or three offers just sit. I mean, that's just never made sense to me. This is the last thing that I've done recently, and I'm really excited about implementing it.

Um, not only for my clients going forward, but I've also told the clients that are already on my books for September, that, you know, we're going to slightly modify, this is how we're going to end up doing your VIP days that you've already booked. Um, you know, and if you have an objection, let me know. But so I've told you about that.

Uh, I've told you about my price. So it started at $1250 and then let's see, in September, by the time September rolled around, I was at $2,500. So September of 2021, and then in February of 2022, actually doubled the price to $5k when I ended up offering the Strategy Day and the Implementation Day together.

So that is kind of how my VIP day has evolved. If you are considering doing a VIP day, I want to give you a few tips because I think that everyone has a VIP day in them. It might not be eight hours. It might not be where you're actually on the phone with your client. But I do feel like everybody has a service or a process that they could find a way to deliver in a single day.

So, first of all, Yeah, everybody should be doing a consultation call. I really hate to say everybody, but like, I really think that VIP days are something that you should pre-qualify people for. And I'm not talking about the money guys, because you can pre-qualify them with the money off of your website or off of your intake form your inquiry form.

You can do that there, but like, I feel like you need to have a conversation with the person to make sure that they understand that this is a fast-paced process and you make sure that they are in a place to actually reap the benefits of the VIP day. Because if you're working with someone who's unsure about a lot of things, they're not able to make decisions in a timely manner, a VIP day is probably not a good fit for. So my first thing is you should actually talk to the clients before you let them hire you. 

My second tip is pre-work. This is the one thing that, besides my structure and my price, has changed the most over the last 18 months. Because initially I had one form that I was having everybody fill out.

And now, depending on the number of offers, you are filling out between three to five forms for me. My pre-work is very detailed. And when I recently did some customer research, um, a lot of my clients were saying, I mean, you know, I didn't realize the pre-work was going to be that in-depth and I'm like, well, isn't that I mean, cause I told you it was going to take four to five hours. And they were like, yeah, but I just, I didn't believe you. And I'm like, well, I don't know how much clearer I can make it. My pre-work consists of a brand questionnaire where they are giving me, you know, all of their brand elements, their colors, their logo, um, how they want their emails to start and end, what they want to be in their email signature.

Um, whether or not they want to automatically archive projects. Like I ask a lot of like business Dubsado account questions inside of that brand questionnaire. And then for every offer that I am going to be automating for you, I need you to fill out a proposal template and I need you to fill out a customer journey template.

And this is new, because those two things will actually, those three things were kind of combined in the beginning and it went from one form of two forms and now it's three base forms. And then you get an additional proposal and customer journey form for every offer that I will be automating for you.

And these asks a lot of really detailed questions guys. Like I want to know every piece of information that you have to communicate to your clients. I want to know, um, what kind of language you use to describe your offer, who your offer is for? So it's a lot of in-depth questions. I mean, it's kind of similar to what copywriters would get for you in a way.

But then it just goes much further because you know, I have to write all of these emails and I have to make sure that, you know, I know what you want your process to be so that I can get it as close as I can inside of Dubsado, or I can actually make a lot of suggestions to you on how to improve that client experience.

Um, so once again, there's the consultation call. There's the pre-work. And then I guess before I talked about the pre-work, you should get really clear on your offer. You should get really clear on what it is that you think that you are going to be able to deliver for every single client at the end of the VIP day. It can change guys, but you shouldn't be like creating custom VIP days for every single client, because that defeats the purpose.

Unless you're doing something like a punch list. I know a lot of people that want to offer punch list VIP days. So in other words, you know, whatever problem you solve, like tell me all the things that you need done, and I'll just get to them as many as I can within a 5, 6, 8 hour timeframe. 

If you want to do that, that's fine. But you should still have an idea of how many emails you can write, how many sequences you can do, how many things you can automate, whatever your process is, you should be able to communicate accurately to the client, okay, well, you've got this 20 things. I think I'm only going to be able to do 14 of them in a single VIP day. So let's prioritize these or let's go ahead and book you a second VIP day, um, so that we make sure that we knock out your whole list. So, those are my three tips. If you are deciding that you want to create a VIP day for yourself. And of course there is always the question of, but Colie, what do I charge for my VIP day?

Um, that's going to vary. Let's talk about Jordan Gill from the Done in a Day program who insists that everybody charged a four-figure investment for your VIP day, as she says, no, $997 no $999. We're talking about $1,000 and higher. Um, and I wholeheartedly agree because depending on what you're charging for your other services, like dedicating an entire day to a client really should be a four-figure investment.

I started at $1250 and now I'm at $5k and what I did between $1250 and $2,500 was I raised the price $250 every three clients.

I actually stayed at 2,500 for is that five months, five months at $2,500. And then with coaching from Britney Jeanine and Jordan Gill, I just doubled it. And that's where I've been since then, I am thinking of another price increase, but we'll talk about that on another podcast episode.

Figure out a price that you feel comfortable with, figure out how many hours you think it's going to take you on the VIP day, how many hours it's going to take you to prepare, how many hours it's going to take you to give them their deliverables. If you are doing something else to give them at the end of the day, and then also account for anything that you're going to include in that support period after you're done. Because I will say, one of the best things about a VIP day is I don't give my clients a VIP day and then say, holla, see you later. I mean, I give them 30 solid days of every single question that you have about your business. Sometimes whether it's related to Dubsado or not, I want to be your first call. I want to be your first email.

And so when you are creating your VIP day and when you are figuring out your price point, make sure that you are determining what your support period will be.

It doesn't have to be 30 days. It can be something really short like seven days, or, you know, you have 48 hours to review it and respond to in case you need a revision. I mean, you know, different services are going to need different things. So guys, I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that hearing about how my VIP day has evolved over the last 18 months has given you some ideas.

Again, if you are feeling VIP Day curious, and you are listening to this podcast the week that it aired, um, the Done in a Day Virtual Conference is going to be next week and they have an amazing lineup. And I always think that it's really great just to be in the room and ask questions. And I mean, guys, I'm not even talking about it as a provider, as someone who buys people's VIP days.

I think I've bought three VIP days. Um, after hearing people speak at Done in a Day, or just being in the discussion groups with them. If you're interested, check it out, it will be in the show notes and that's it for today. See you next time.