Do you know the value you provide to your agency clients? Is your agency getting paid what you're worth? Do you always ask for the budget before presenting a proposal? Stephen Brown used to think that just doing good work would get clients to pay the right value, but his position at Cookerly PR, a public relations agency based in Atlanta, helped him understand a lot about charging what you're worth and how to ask the hard questions to determine if you are budgeting the right way. Today he sat down with Jason to discuss how to charge what you're worth by understanding the value your agency provides, how to get your first big clients, how being rich in process will help you keep your deliverables consistent, and much more. 3 Golden Nuggets Charging what you're worth. Stephen used to think that just doing good work will get clients to pay what he’s worth, but eventually he learned that he needed to have a sense of that worth first. You should always have a pulse on your industry and an estimate of what others in your sector are charging. Also, one of the most important things he learned with experience is that you should always ask for a budget or at least a minimum amount of what the client is expecting to spend. In Jason’s experience, less than half of agency owners do this. Getting the bigger clients. A lot of small agency owners want to know how they can get their first big client. It depends. Some of our guests did so through connections in the business, others target a couple until they get a big brand. Stephen believes that doing great and consistent work will lead you to the bigger brands you want to be working with. “Start small,” he advises,  “and it will start laddering up”. Start with something you can handle. People will start seeing what you did for a smaller brand and start and ask if you could you pilot that for our bigger brand. Keeping deliverables consistent. According to Stephen, his agency is very rich in processes, which is a big part of how they can keep their deliverables consistent. Things don’t change depending on who is in charge of a certain department. Instead, everyone is kept accountable and communicates new developments in their weekly meetings. Also, at the end of the month they send each client an account summary that contains details about each campaign being put together so that no client will ever have to ask what is their agency doing for them.      Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Are You Charging What You're Worth? {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] All right. What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here and I have another amazing show for you and an amazing guest where we're going to talk about how do you know what to charge? And charging what you're worth and budgeting and making sure that you're extremely profitable. I have a great person on that's going to get into this so let's jump into the show. Hey, welcome to the show. Stephen: [00:00:27] Jason, it’s a pleasure. Wonderful to see you. Jason: [00:00:30] Yeah. Awesome to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? Stephen: [00:00:34] Absolutely. So I'm Stephen Brown and I am the President of Cookerly PR. We're based in Atlanta, so we're a one-city agency that represents national campaign. So we do a lot of national and global work, but we are strictly based in one city and have our staff of about 22 here that do crisis work and creative work, depending on which client you've got. Jason: [00:00:57] Awesome. Well, let's get into it because, you know, we were talking kind in the pr