You email me.

At the end of this pitch, you will come to a contact tab that has my email information. You email me with a paragraph about your idea and a contact number.

We talk.

I’ll call you at an agreed upon time, and we have a little picture 25-minute conversation about your project.

You talk for 20 minutes. I ask odd questions for five minutes.

At the end of our conversation, we hang up.

While I think about it and you wonder what I’m thinking about, the world still quietly spins without your idea. But should it spin so quietly? Shouldn’t we hatch an evil plan so masterful that it rattles the very foundation of our planet! Possibly.

So if it’s a go, I send you my lip-lock legal stuff, and if you sign off, we talk again.

But this conversation is hard. It’s the BIG picture. We’re face-to-face. It’s the up and down of your idea. It’s always a long morning or late afternoon meeting. We talk about your message, the creation of your idea, basic concepts, possible creative aspects, and what your idea will look like at the end.

I have found people take comments and criticism on their ideas very personal. If it’s a stupid idea, I’ll tell you. But if we’re having a BIG picture conversation, there has to be a nugget of gold somewhere in your idea. And we’ll find it.

So after the BIG picture talk, I do research. I do an outline. We meet again to make sure this outline is going in the direction you feel it needs to go. If it is, we form a project timeline.

Remember, you haven’t paid me anything, yet. Yes, I’ve made you buy me coffee or a couple of pieces of pie, but that’s it.

I write.

You’ll see three drafts:

1. The first draft sucks. It will be nasty and comes with lots of questions. You’ll wonder if you’ve made the right decision in hiring me, because your idea is beautiful and majestic. You’ll call and yell at me, “You hack, what have you done to MY story!” Plus, it stings a bit more because you just paid me my first payment, which is always the largest, and in return, I handed you a stack of crap.

2. Second draft is a little better. First edits are done. In the pages, you see your idea. It’s not exactly how you pictured it, but you see it. So you don’t feel too weird about having to pay me my second payment.

3. The third draft rocks. We go over the edits to be certain I’m on point about your message.  The third draft is that really odd point in this process where you realize what you’re about to do. You’re about to let complete strangers read your words and judge your idea. You want to make sure my words support your idea. Remember, my name isn’t on the project. It’s yours.

After the third draft edits, you pay me my final payment.

Suddenly, I’m stoked because I just got paid. You’re freaked out, because you don’t know how this bundle of words is going to go over with the rest of the world.

Our business is done. Have a nice day.

Still sound good?

You might change your mind after you read the next section on hiring me.