Everyone advises to bill by the project (not by the hour) when you run a consulting business. In the 4 years that I’ve been doing it, I’ve found that the opposite is true. But it requires a few important principles to make sure that the exchange of value works – for both sides.
When to Ask for the Sale: Not Early and Often
Conventional wisdom is to ask for the sale early and often. With today’s consumers, it turns out that the opposite is true. Exhibiting a little patience and providing a lot of upfront value gets you away from the icky parts of self-promotion – and it’s more effective too.
Non-Disclosure Agreements: Mistrust Is Not a Good Starting Point
It may seem counterintuitive, but the NDA request is always a red flag to me. Mistrust is not a good starting point for any relationship – plus it betrays a lack of self-confidence in your ability to execute. Is this really the message you wish to convey? Let’s take a deeper look at Non-Disclosure Agreements: Pros and Cons.
Execution Is Everything In Business
We tend to overvalue our own ideas – I do it too. But it’s always the execution that counts. This week’s episode is about how to pick the right idea to bank on, how to develop it with continuous customer input, and how to assess whether or not the idea is actually succeeding.
Creating Content as a Business Asset
In short, running a good content strategy is a huge time investment. It takes a lot of effort, and let’s face it – it takes a long time to start seeing results. The only way to make it worth it is to treat everything you produce as if it’s a renewable asset.
Tweeting Is Believing, Tweeting Out Is Not
Twitter is the best social platform for connecting with people you DON’T know already, making it a critical tool for finding new potential customers. So, why is it still not taken seriously? Episode 106 is about making a shift in mindset so that you can up your game and get more out of Twitter.
Social Media Cannot Exist in a Vacuum
If your plan is just to start “getting the word out there” by posting to Facebook or Twitter – stop now. The outcomes will never be worth the time you put into it. You need a complete content strategy in order to make social media worthwhile. Here’s a simple way to adjust your approach – and the three advantages to doing so.
Marketing and the Experimental Mindset
One of my favorite quotes is, “If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing.” This has never been more true than it is today. What worked yesterday is not guaranteed to work tomorrow. Learn, measure, and iterate so that you can continue to optimize your marketing efforts.
Soft-Touch Marketing Is More Respectful – and More Effective
Marketing often feels “icky” to small business owners, solo entrepreneurs, authors, and other creatives. When you ARE your brand, you don’t want to be a self-promoter. Soft-touch marketing is the answer – not only does it feel better, but in light of today’s consumer behavior, it’s also more effective too.
Stop Looking for Shortcuts
Forging real connections with real customers take real effort. Every business owner knows this. So why do we behave differently when we get online? Why do we take social connections less seriously, and look for the SEO tricks and other quick fixes?
Marketing Is an Investment, Not a Cost
Marketing should not be a one-time spend to get a one-time result. If you think of it as an investment instead, today’s “spend” can continue to pay off years from now. Here’s how to focus on the two most important investments you can make in your business.
Episode 100: I Am Not Special
When you set out to create something, do it to create a resource. Then it doesn’t matter if organic growth is slow. You’ll be creating a reusable business asset: That’s content strategy in a nutshell. Episode 100 of this podcast is dedicated to you and your next big milestone. I am not special: You can do it too!
I Am Tired of Seeing Creatives Fail
It’s a shame when you see great art go unnoticed. I got sick of seeing creatives fail, so I wanted to do something about it. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how and why I created a comprehensive online course to help writers, musicians, and visual artists.
Marketing Automation: A Case Example
Marketing automation sounds robotic and impersonal. In fact, it can be a more welcoming and personal way to nurture a lead into a customer, by focusing on THEIR specific needs and interests. You have a much better chance at making a connection, while lightening your workload as well.
Consistency in Content Strategy
Consistency is one of the best ways to earn trust. So in your content strategy, a “toe in the water” approach isn’t going to cut it. You simply have to commit to being consistent. That means that you’re going to have to love the process – not just the results. Are you up for that?
Be In It for the Long Game
If your business depends on having an audience, you have to stand back a little and let it evolve naturally. You have fight your own impatience, get comfortable with not having control, learn to relish the indirect benefits, and ultimately, play the long game.
How Do You Measure Trust?
Rather than looking solely at traditional business metrics, what if we made decisions based on earning trust instead? Episode 95 is about the limitations of ROI in trying to measure your content marketing efforts, and how to focus instead on getting to the Threshold of Trust.
The Service Disposition
Generosity works. When you serve, you earn the right to serve again. Over time, you earn enough trust to ask for the sale. This used to be hard to scale, but not anymore. It starts with a genuine desire to help, and as I’ve learned – what you get in return might surprise you.
Business Isn’t “Just Business”
Movies often portray success in business as a cut-throat, relentless climb to the top. Someone has to lose in order for you to win. That’s just not the case anymore, if it was ever true at all. Here’s what the principles of content marketing taught me about today’s business world.
What Content Strategy Teaches You About Business
Introducing a new 16-part series about counterintuitive business lessons that I’ve learned from my mentors and the mistakes I’ve made. It turns out that the same nuances that work in running a good content strategy also work in running a business as well.