Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing strategist, advisor, coach, and mentor.

Articles

The better way to sell advice

I’m a big believer in selling advice and implementation separately.

That doesn’t mean selling both at the same time is bad. That’s how most expert businesses are run.

But selling advice AND getting paid for execution is different than offering advice for a fixed fee.

In this article, I’ll give you two examples that demonstrate why one kind of advice provides a better experience for everyone.

The veterinarian

I bring my dog to the vet for a checkup a few times a year. But every time I do, they consistently try to sell me on premium food, insurance, or multiple inoculations against various potential diseases.

Recently, I went to the vet to look at a rash on my dog’s chin. They correctly guessed that it might be ringworm, but he couldn’t be sure without testing.

He then asked me if I’d like to test first or try the medication and see if it works.

But before I could answer, he then said some people in similar situations simply decide to cut off the patch of skin just in case its cancer. He paused for my reply.

…that escalated quickly.

Now, I’m left with the choice to give my dog a test, some pills, or cut off a chunk of her chin.

How should I know what to do?

After experiences at multiple vets where they try to up-sell me on various things, I admit I was a little bit wary. It felt like another case of up-selling, even though I knew he was probably just tying to help.

And that’s the heart of the problem when the person advising you is also financially incentivized by the implementation of that advice. Especially when you have no idea what the right choice is.

Your guard is up.

The financial “advisor”

Another example is a time when I purchased a mutual fund from my bank. I was in my early 20’s and knew nothing about investing.

Several years later, I opened a self-directed investment account so I could manage my own money.

At that point (and no time prior) they said I could keep the same mutual fund and pay 1% less in management fees since I was no longer “under their advisement”.

But here’s the thing.

In the many years I owned and contributed to their mutual fund, not once did they give me additional guidance outside of the original consultation.

In fact, it wasn’t even a consultation to begin with. They simply asked some risk assessment questions and sold me something “suitable” for my needs. Of course, it was one of their products that earn them a management fee.

They didn’t once suggest the option of going self-directed and saving a percent on their fees (which was in the range of 30-50% of their management fees).

I’d hardly call this financial advice, but that’s what I thought I was getting. It certainly wasn’t neutral advice looking out for my best interest.

Suitability vs. fiduciary standards of advice

The reason for this experience at the bank was because they were selling a “suitability” standard of advice instead of a “fiduciary” standard.

In the financial world, a fiduciary advisor is legally bound to put their clients’ interest ahead of their own.

If they sell products to their clients, they cannot have a conflict of interest (such as a back-end commission or ongoing benefit). Or, if they do, they must disclose it.

A fiduciary must offer you the best possible advice with abundant due diligence. They take a fixed-fee, not a percent or commission for selling some financial product that pays the best.

If they do their job well, you keep working with them. If not, you go elsewhere.

But the main thing is they have no financial incentive to pick one security, fund, or any other investment. They simply must select what they believe will work best for their clients’ interest, and they have an entire world of options to choose from.

A suitability advisor, in contrast, is legally allowed to suggest investments that are simply suitable for a person’s needs. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the best solution for their objectives or profile.

They’re allowed to exclusively offer their own products, even if obviously better options are available elsewhere. Even if it means they make more in commissions from choosing one product or another. As long as they pick a suitable option for you, it’s perfectly legal.

That’s the detail that makes the two kinds of advisory experiences distinct.

To be perfectly clear

There’s nothing wrong with selling advice and implementation. It’s perfectly fine, especially if you’re genuinely acting in your clients’ best interest. I know you are.

But when you make money by implementing the advice you give—distinct from simply overseeing the implementation—it automatically puts you across the table from your clients.

You become a consultative salesperson instead of a confidante. It’s not an advocate relationship in the same way as hiring an expert friend would be.

Again, nothing wrong with that. It’s just different.

Multiply this by month-over-month strategic and technical decisions, the experience begins to matter.

I personally strive to sell advice at the fiduciary standard. I take a fixed-fee, bring in specialists to execute, and don’t mark up their time nor take a commission.

I even pay those same specialists to do work for me if I ever need something done. No back-end freebies. Strictly conflict-free.

So, whatever stage you’re at, whether freelancer or advisor, my advice is this: be a true advocate for your clients.

You’ll enjoy your work more and the money will follow, too.

And if you want to be a trusted advisor, try out the fiduciary standard.

Yours,

—k

Three ideas to be enthusiastic about

If you want people to read your writing, it helps to be enthusiastic about your topic. That’s where the magic is.

So, instead of picking from a list of topic ideas, I thought I’d share a few ideas with you that I’m enthusiastic about right now.

I hope to transfer some of that enthusiasm to you.

The first idea is to work in public.

I did not invent the idea of working in public, of course. It’s fairly “common” wisdom.

But if you’re like me, it never really sunk in. Or, like me, you didn’t really pay too much attention to the idea.

My marketing has typically been designed to convey authority. I’m paid to be an expert, after all.

But lately, I’ve been trying to turn that around as I create a side project called The Mentorship.

It’s a group hosted on Patreon to help independent marketing professionals sharpen their skills, level up their work, and create a more enjoyable business.

Anyway, the beauty of working on this project is two-fold:

  1. I get to help people who are on a similar path
  2. I get to explore and share my work as they are developed

Which brings me to my next idea: be a guide.

The benefit of the second part is I get to shift roles from being an authority to being a guide.

Frankly, I have nothing to prove to anyone. The proof is in the pudding in my own work. I certainly do well enough as a marketing advisor and educator.

And because of that, I feel like I have nothing to prove. I actually feel confident enough to let down the facade of authority and truly be a leader and a guide.

It’s much more fun this way. And we can all do this, even if we aren’t quite so confident yet.

To keep this short, I have three main ideas for you today:

  1. Write about topics you’re enthusiastic about. It shows.
  2. It’s okay to not have all the answers. Be a guide, not a wizard.
  3. Show your work. In public. Your thought process. Even just a little bit.

Nobody expects you to have all the answers. They just want someone they can trust.

And there’s no better way to show people you’re trustworthy than by showing your work in progress and transferring enthusiasm for what you do.

Even if your target market isn’t people “like you”.

So I hope this encourages you to let down the expert facade just a little bit and pick up the torch as a leader and a guide.

Show your work in progress. Think out loud. Give people a preview of the work behind the scenes.

At first, it’s scary, but then it just feels right.

Yours,

—k

Choosing between independence, experience, and speed for my new mentorship group

I’ve been mentoring independent marketers and creatives lately who are earlier in their careers than me and looking to level up.

Whether that means going from employee to freelancer, or freelancer to agency, or becoming a strategic advisor and educator, which is what I do.

They are somewhere along the Success Path of the Independent Professional. Like all of us, they’re hungry to learn and grow their independent businesses and careers.

After doing this for a few weeks, I’ve decided I want to scale it up and help more people on a similar path. But here’s the thing: I have been getting myself hung up on the technology.

I envision it being a mix of short posts, tools, templates, videos, a private podcast, and direct access to me for questions. It’s like having a mentor your pocket.

Choosing a platform for delivering your client experience

I’m a big believer in building on land you own and not relying on platforms for your income.

However, platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Google, Medium, Substack, and others can be a big advantage in growing an audience and a business. Especially when you’re starting out.

You can build audiences quicker on platforms where people already exist and drive them to an email list where you can actually own the relationship directly.

So here are some options I’ve been comparing: 

  • A paid newsletter + private podcast subscription (independent)
  • A private community built on something like Circle (platform)
  • A Patreon group with bite-sized posts in various formats (platform)
  • A Slack community with private content on the side (independent + platform)
  • Or a hybrid of many of these ideas (independent + platform)

Whether you go independent, platform, or both, there’s always a trade-off.

Going fully independent (i.e. custom build using WordPress, membership plugin, podcast hosting, email tool, etc.) is harder to build and grow from scratch.

But you can fully customize it, you make the rules, and you completely own the experience.

Using a platform, on the other hand, is easier to get started with. But there’s more risk they could change the rules, and there is much less control over the experience.

You’re buying a turn-key experience that is fast to get started and good enough at the expense of control and customization.

There are three competing values at play in the decision: speed, independence, and experience.

On the one hand, I want to fully own the experience and control the rules. Independence is the only way to do things over the long-term.

But to do that, I’d need to work hard to create the level of experience I’d want. And the idea isn’t really fleshed out yet, let alone validated.

The experience of platforms like Circle, Patreon, and Slack are great. I could have them up and running tomorrow. Those tools make it turn-key to get started.

Patreon, for example, allows you to post content easily, they offer self-hosted private podcasts, an app that pushes out new content to members, and a whole lot more. As a consumer, the experience is great.

But they could all change their rules at any time.

So what is the right thing to do?

I’ve decided that speed and experience are the two factors most important factors in getting validation and momentum.

Once I have a proven idea and some momentum, I can worry about bringing things back “in-house” and investing into a custom experience that I own completely.

Here’s the plan:

  1. I’m going to use Patreon to deliver member content and a private podcast
  2. I’m going to use Slack to build community and have direct interactions
  3. I’m going to eventually phase the business into something more permanent and independent on my own site once I have enough traction

Success is an interactive process. I could spend weeks and months building out an idea that may not even fly. That’s not smart.

The key with all new ideas is to validate, learn, adapt, and evolve as you go. You’ll never get it right the first time.

I hope this helps you if you’re in a similar predicament. There’s always a balance of speed, experience, and control that we need to figure out when choosing platforms for our work.

If you’d like to be an early member of the group, join here.

How to build familiarity with your audience

My son is seven months old. He can’t talk yet but he loves it when you sing familiar songs.

Whether it’s Twinkle Twinkle or or Patty Cake, he can go from crying to laughing in a matter of seconds.

That’s the power of familiarity.

As humans, we are naturally drawn to things we are familiar with. There’s a certain comfort in knowing something enough to become familiar with it.

As an independent marketer, your goal is to build that familiarity into your brand.

So how do we build familiarity with our audience?

The best way to build familiarity with your audience or target market is to be consistent.

There’s a few ways to do this:

  • Communicate the same things consistently (i.e. sing the same songs)
  • Show up regularly (sing the songs at least once a day)
  • Show up often (i.e. sing the songs multiple times a day, every day)

The power in all of this is consistency, repetition, and frequency—which is easier said than done!

That’s why consistency is such a big pillar in any marketing strategy. Without it, you don’t build the familiarity required to keep a figurative smile on the face of your audience.

There’s a certain comfort in knowing what to expect. Our minds can’t handle too much uncertainty. We like closure.

What things should you communicate consistently?

The best way to communicate consistently is to maintain a stance on specific things. Something you feel strongly about.

Having a distinct point of view and talking about it from many different angles becomes your form of familiarity. Your flavour.

Those who agree with and relate to your point of view will keep following you. They will look forward to your deep exploration on a few topics they agree with, too.

So what do you feel strongly enough about that you can turn into your “themes”?

If you think back to your favourite bands, what did you like about them? What made you keep buying their albums over time?

I’d guess, it was their style. You liked their lyrics, instrumentals, and/or their unique persona.

And what about those bands that lost you along the way? Chances are, at least one of two things happened:

  1. You outgrew their style
  2. They changed their style

When we like something, we want as much of it as we can get.

When we feel strongly about something, such as a life goal or belief system, we kind of tie our identities to it. It becomes part of how we see ourselves. It says something about us.

So, we seek to validate our worldview. We want to reinforce our beliefs and we do that through repetition.

The repetition brings comfort. Like your favourite song or album from your teenage years, it feels good to know every nook and cranny of it.

We can’t get enough.

The thing about frequency and recency

We naturally trust things or people we see most recently or most frequently. That’s why politicians try to drown out the airwaves with their messaging.

That’s why they pick one or two phrases and say them until they are blue in the face.

The more often we see things, people, ideas, and brands, the more likely we are to trust them. It’s a bias we all have.

So, in order to build in familiarity and create trust with your audience or target market, you have to be consistent and show up frequently. We need to do it in a way that aligns with their beliefs and identity, too.

This is key.

Yes, it helps to be authentic and transparent. It also helps to blend in your story and unique personality.

But the thing that drives the most familiarity is repetition, consistency, and frequency.

So what do you stand for? What ideas can you own? What aspirations do you share with your audience/target market? What can you repeat consistently until you’re blue in the face?

Try it out. Go deep on a few big topics. See what resonates.

Once you find your unique flavour, stick to it. Evolve it if you need to, but do so conservatively. It’s repetition that matters. People stick to a unique flavour they like.

Be everyone’s favourite nostalgic rock band. Keep singing your songs.

—k

P.S. I asked Twitter what their best writing tips were yesterday. There were lots of great replies. Check it out and say hi to me while you’re there!

How to write like the great entrepreneurs

A marketer’s most useful skill is writing.

I have said many times, “give me a writer who’s willing to learn and work hard, and I’ll give you a good marketer.”

I found this article today via Jack Butcher and thought it was worth sharing.

Here are the highlights:

1. Writing is a customer service problem.
2. Pretend you’re sending an email.
3. Sum it up in a tweet.
4. Read it on your phone.
5. Don’t write your thought process.
6. Start with a summary.
7. Writing is rewriting.
8. Delete half the words.
9. Avoid adjectives.
10. Scrutinize every word for bias.
11. Kill your darlings.
12. Use persuasion checklists.
13. Skim Strunk & White.
14. Break the rules once you learn the rules.
15. Writing is a design problem

If you read the original post, you will get the author’s commentary on each idea.

I won’t copy the author’s full commentary here, but I will share a couple that I especially like to give you a taste. The link to the full post is at the end.

1. Business writing is a customer service problem. You’re not the star—the reader is. Help them get what they want, as quickly and effectively as possible. They might want to solve a problem. They might want to be persuaded. Give ’em the goods.

2. Pretend you’re sending an email. Or a Slack message. It will calm your mind and yield better writing. 

4. Email it to yourself and read it on your phone. You’ll see the words with fresh eyes, as if someone else wrote them. This will force you to keep it short and simple.

5. Don’t write your thought process. The final draft shouldn’t mimic the path you took to come up with the idea. Instead, start the piece with a conclusion and make your best case.

6. Start with a summary. A good summary absolves the reader from reading further. But they will still want to.

8. Delete half the words. Say more with less. That’s good customer service. “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

9. Avoid adjectives. Use numbers instead. An adjective is an admission that you don’t know the number.

— Read on venturehacks.com/writing

Paper, twigs, branches, then logs

This evening, my brother-in-law started building a fire so we could cook some s’mores after dinner. It’s one of the little things I look forward to most at a cottage.

By the time I got outside, the “fire” was in trouble. It was mostly smoke. My brother-in-law humbly asked for my assistance in getting it going.

It turns out, he skipped a step or two. He didn’t start with paper, twigs and bark as the kindling. Instead, he started it with small branches and logs.

He jumped ahead a few steps.

I could give you the analogy about how building a marketing strategy is like building a fire—that good marketing starts with strategy then builds sequentially from there.

And while that’s correct, it’s too obvious.

The real lesson here is more personal.

I’m in the process of building something new: a marketing mentorship.

I’m not yet sure who it’s for—I think it will be for junior marketers. But I might also make it for self-employed marketers who, like me, are fiercely independent and have an insatiable appetite for new ideas.

Regardless of who it ends up being for, or what it ends up looking like, the lesson here is this: all business ideas start with one customer.

Then a second one. Then a third. And eventually, many more, if it’s good.

I want to build a fire with enough heat to cook some s’mores and cast a bright light in the night. But I can’t start with a roaring fire. I need to build it incrementally.

As much as we all want to build an immediate fire, it’s important to remember that everything big starts small. We have to go in order.

One client. Then two. Then three.

Kindling before logs.

The next time you start something new, I hope this story comes to mind and gives you the patience to build it slowly and intentionally.

The best things are made this way, anyway.

How to find the balance between *working* and producing content for yourself

When you get busy, the easiest thing to drop off your schedule is self-promotion.

And yet, self-promotion is the only way you have a business.

It’s like watering a plant; you can forget to do it for a while, but eventually, the plant will die. When you stop self-promoting, your business starts dying, too.

Everything you do means you have decided NOT to do something else. Whether you realize it or not.

You don’t have unlimited time, resources, and energy. You can’t be all things to all people. You have to make choices and trade-offs.

And one of the choices you need to make as an independent professional is to show up every single day.

That’s right, every day. Not every-so-often. Every day.

I heard Dan Kennedy say that you’re not in the business of whatever it is you do. You’re in the business of getting clients.

I’m paraphrasing, but that stuck with me.

I realized that delivering good work was table stakes (still important). But it wouldn’t be possible if you weren’t able to keep getting new clients.

So, what if you’re too busy to keep marketing yourself?

  • It might be time to raise your rates
  • It might be time to redesign your services
  • It might be time to start productizing your expertise

Business is an iterative game.

I spoke last week about how I went from hobbyist to employee to freelancer, to consultant, advisor, educator, and so on over the course of nearly 20 years.

When I got too busy as a freelancer, I hired sub-contractors. Leverage.

When I got busy as an agency owner, I stopped marking up other people’s time and starting selling marketing strategy, management, and oversight as a fractional chief marketing officer. 100% margins.

When I got busy as a fractional CMO, I removed project management from my scope and started selling purely consulting and advisory services. More time back.

Now I also sell info products and a membership program for my niche consultancy, which is further helping me stop trading time for money. I’m creating an asset I can sell repeatedly.

Bringing it home

Whenever you do—don’t stop marketing yourself. ​​It will be tempting. You will be tired. You won’t feel like showing up. But do it anyway. Every day.

Your job is to create opportunity for yourself. You must keep showing up. Again and again and again.

I recently invested in a Buffer account to help me schedule some posts and keep my content going.

I also write two newsletters, do group coaching, and run a membership in addition to private consulting and workshops. I’m busy.

But I make no excuses. I keep showing up.

So if your goal is to remain independent, you have to keep iterating your business model, freeing up more time, and investing everything you can BACK into your marketing to ALLOW you to keep levelling up.

Otherwise, you’ll stay at the level you’re at—trading time for money. Never fully realizing the upside that you could have.

Make the trade-off to invest in your marketing, even if it comes at short-term cost.

​Otherwise, the trade-off will be made for you in the form of fewer opportunities.

Don’t ignore your dreams

Here’s an article I found published by Paul Graham in 2012.

It’s short, but sweet. I particularly like the “Don’t ignore your dreams” part.

Quote:

A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the biggest regrets of the dying. Her list seems plausible. I could see myself — can see myself — making at least 4 of these 5 mistakes.

If you had to compress them into a single piece of advice, it might be: don’t be a cog. The 5 regrets paint a portrait of post-industrial man, who shrinks himself into a shape that fits his circumstances, then turns dutifully till he stops.

The alarming thing is, the mistakes that produce these regrets are all errors of omission. You forget your dreams, ignore your family, suppress your feelings, neglect your friends, and forget to be happy. Errors of omission are a particularly dangerous type of mistake, because you make them by default.

I would like to avoid making these mistakes. But how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? Ideally you transform your life so it has other defaults. But it may not be possible to do that completely. As long as these mistakes happen by default, you probably have to be reminded not to make them. So I inverted the 5 regrets, yielding a list of 5 commands

Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.

which I then put at the top of the file I use as a todo list.

— Read on www.paulgraham.com/todo.html

The Success Path of the Independent Professional—from Employee to Equity

As an independent professional, you want to make a great income, control your schedule, enjoy the work you do, and eventually, free yourself from trading time for money.

In other words, you want to be truly independent.

For many, this seems like a far-off dream that is more fantasy than reality. But in reality, it’s just a series of steps you can climb.

Yes, it will take time. No, you can’t skip to the end without putting in the work. But you can build a roadmap and you can work the process until you get there.

So, without further ado, here is the path of the Independent Professional, as I see it and have experienced.

​​My hope is that it inspires you to find the path that’s right for you.

1. Employee

When you first start your career, chances are you still have a job. Maybe it’s not anything to do with your core skill.

It’s just something to pay the bills while you figure out what skills you have that are even marketable.

For many years, I thought my skills as a web developer weren’t really super valuable. I started building static HTML websites in about 2001. I started treating it like a “business” in about 2006. Every job I worked in, I ended up designing a brochure or building a website for them.

But it wasn’t until much later did I realize it was an actual marketable skill. My career was largely in the hospitality industry after university until I suddenly found myself in a corporate job as a web administrator.

Then it clicked—not only did I have extremely valuable skills, but I could also sell them to people and make even more money than my corporate job.

Enter, freelancing.

2. Freelancer

I started taking my freelance web design skills seriously when I got my corporate job in marketing. I had just finished a post-grad certificate program in Entrepreneurship and I knew I wanted to be doing something of my own, but I wasn’t able to support myself with it full time yet.

So, I did what I advise most people to do: freelance on the side.

I probably broke a few rules by not disclosing the fact that I had a side hustle, but the way I saw it, it was after hours, on my own time, and I was sharpening my skills which I immediately used to improve my work.

I wasn’t competing with the firm I worked for (different industries) and frankly what I did on my own time for my own personal contacts was up to me.

Anyway, the side gig eventually started paying what my corporate gig was paying, but I was getting exhausted doing both.

I worked… a LOT.

So, I saved all my money from freelancing, had a few clients and some momentum behind me, and eventually went out on my own.

I charged by the hour ($50, then $75, then $100+). Way better than my corporate job, right?

Well, I eventually ran out of time in the day, and frankly, my skills were being pushed to their limits. So, I hired a sub-contractor. A web developer in the Philippines, with whom I still work today.

And so, life as a “contractor” began.

3. Contractor

Sure, I was always a contractor in the eyes of the client. A freelancer and a contractor are interchangeable terms. But now I had a sub-contractor working beneath me.

This was my first taste of leverage.

I would find the clients, scope the work, get an agreement, then hand off the instructions to my developer who would work opposite hours from me at ~$15/hour.

He was—and still is—amazing at his work. This helped enormously.

Now, I would hand off the work, it would be done by the next day without my involvement, I’d pay him a fraction of my hourly rate, and suddenly it felt like I had a business!

I was “making money while I slept”! Or, at least kinda.

My margins would get eroded over time if I did a lot of fixed-work projects and under-scoped.

Eventually, I was doing a range of digital marketing work and had an entire remote team of sub-contractors working for me.

Money was a bit better, but boy did I have to do a LOT of work. I was making about 30% “profit” at the end of the day (aka income).

I wasn’t confident enough to raise my rates (another issue entirely), which meant I needed to do a fair amount of volume to make a good living.

But revenue was recurring, so I had a relatively stable base amount of income to work from each month, which helped.

I managed to end my first year with a similar income to my corporate salary (~$60k), and it went up from there.

4. Consultant

For me, a consultant works on projects, produces deliverables, and generally implements complex solutions with a combination of their hands and their strategic expertise.

It’s like a freelancer mixed with an advisor. A higher level engagement than a typical freelancer but still using “hands” and not just the “head”.

In about 2017, I was doing ~$250/year in revenue but working way too hard for the money I made at the end of the day.

I read a book called Profit First by Mike Michalowicz and it changed everything.

Actually, the book itself didn’t have much of the info that changed my perspective. But the idea of building guaranteed profit into your business from day one was what changed things for me.

I had a wave of inspiration based on two factors:

  1. I only wanted to do what I was best at—which I felt would lead me to success.
  2. I wanted to build my profit into every engagement UPFRONT instead of hoping it shakes out in the end.

I knew what I did best (and love doing) is matching business goals with marketing strategies. I’m a natural strategist. Some people love to code, I love to solve business problems with marketing.

So, I started selling just that. I sold a “fractional CMO” service to my first client in 2016 or 2017 and that began a path away from “implementation” to “advisory/oversight/management”.

The clients would pay me a fixed fee, I would basically bring in and manage the other suppliers, and they would charge the client directly for their work without my markup.

I’d win because I built a sizeable margin into the engagement for me ($4k/month with no sub-contractors).

The client would win because a) they didn’t need to hire a marketing manager yet and b) they could benefit from direct supplier pricing (like my web developer who was under $20/hour).

I ended up taking on a second client like this and suddenly it became too much. I realized that “managing” the implementation was not scalable.

Managing the marketing of two big clients was like having two jobs. I had no more room to do work for others.

Which brings me to the next part…

5. Advisor

Advisory is where I live and spend most of my time today.

I basically removed the “managed” part from my scope of work, putting the task on the client to push projects forward and handle the back-and-forth (which is hard but low-value work).

They still got my advice and oversight. I still made intro’s to freelancers and specialist consultants to implement the work we did (avoiding the need to get stuck on “who’s going to actually implement this?”).

I became a trusted advisor. Neutral about who we chose to work with or how we got the results. Similar to a fiduciary financial advisor, for a fixed fee I would help the client get results and was not incentivized to “do the work” for more money.

It’s a bit like comparing a butcher to a nutritionist. If I ask a butcher what to eat, they will say meat. If I ask a nutritionist (who doesn’t sell the food and therefore has no financial interest in the answer) they will suggest a wide range of options to keep me healthy.

Or, like when you go to a car mechanic and they tell you you need a new “Johnson Rod” (Seinfeld reference).

You have no idea whether you can trust them or not. They’re financially incentivized to “do more stuff”. It doesn’t make them unethical, it just puts the responsibility to make a good decision back on you, the buyer, who is not an expert at cars.

It works the same in marketing.

And this has worked quite well for me. Pre-pandemic I was able to generate about CAD$30k/month (USD$~20k) consistently in pure advisory retainers.

Ongoing, month over month revenue. Stable and consistent.

I was (and still am) able to work on client work mostly after 12pm and be done by 5pm each day, even with up to 10 clients.

I work on my business in the morning and with clients in the afternoon. It just works.

I’ll get into this more in future articles, but a big help in achieving this success was having a two-pronged strategy: specializing in an industry while maintaining a more general position here on this (separate) website.

Specializing allowed me to guest on podcasts, speak at conferences, build a niche audience on my email list, sell workshops, coaching, membership program, you name it.

Specializing is a life hack.

But having a general site (this one) to bring people to at the same time helped me buy the time needed to build up my specialization and client base in the process.

I didn’t market it, but I did have a place to point people to who came from word of mouth/referrals and were not in the coworking industry (my specialization).

I was still specialized “horizontally” as a marketing strategy advisor but also vertically by industry. It worked well for me, even if it’s against conventional logic to have two positions in the market. I still do this.

Onto the next phase.

6. Educator (leveraged info products, paid subscriptions, memberships, workshops, and group coaching models)

Specializing helped me become a known industry expert where very few exist.

As a result, it helped me begin to sell info products and membership subscriptions. This is an area I’m still learning, but it’s the most exciting to me so far.

Having a membership (with about 30 members) forces me to create webinars and a “system” I can produce once and leverage many times. It’s scalable.

It allows me to take some of that content and package it up into smaller chunks, such as a mini-course on web design for coworking spaces. More leverage and scale.

I’m now in the process of creating additional small products to see if that sells better than my membership program. My hope is that bite-sized products are more convenient for people to buy than bigger products, so that’s my plan. We’ll soon see!

I also had some success running a group coaching cohort of five coworking spaces, which is where my focus has been since the pandemic. It’s a lower-cost option for clients and I can design a curriculum that is easy to repeat next time. It also sold right away, which is a good sign.

I’ve also started to sell workshops to groups of coworking spaces, which has been another interesting way to use the content I’ve produced before. I can sell it in 4 one-hour segments, and create a high return on my time.

My goal is to eventually live off information products and membership subscriptions so that my time is highly removed from my income. At this stage, so far it’s mostly been about removing mental blocks around what is possible and getting out of my own way.

7. Advisor Equity

This step is what I imagine will come at some point in the future, especially if I continue specializing in the coworking industry.

The idea that your skills are rare and strong enough to get paid in advisor equity shares is something that is totally realistic, but I have not yet tried to do it.

This would allow me to remain at the advisor level—to be a trusted and valuable guide—but without being in the trenches every day dealing with the minutia of marketing (which is something that drains me).

The strategy piece is what I am good at and gives me energy. That’s all I want to do.

True wealth comes from equity, so I imagine this level being fun and challenging when the opportunity eventually arises.

If you figure this out, let me know!

In closing

There are many steps and nuances to this that I did not cover. Things like selling mostly recurring revenue engagements (which was important for me), productizing your services, and various other details along the way that helped in this process.

I’ll cover that another time.

In the meantime, I’d like to know what stage of the journey you’re at.

Leave a reply and/or tell me what you are up to on Twitter.

The four ingredients of an indepedent platform

Platforms come and go. Algorithms control what we consume. The rules are always changing. We need to “pay to play”.

Does this sound familiar?

The Internet was founded on a belief in an open exchange of information.

And in many ways, that’s exactly what it is.

But as tech matures, big players have amassed major audiences on the back of your content. Companies like Google, Facebook, Medium, Shopify, and more.

Now, they throttle attention, decide what people see, and/or constantly change the rules without notice.

If you rely too much on any of these platforms for your business, you’re putting yourself at some degree of risk.

Some examples:

Copyblogger popularized a term for this called digital sharecropping (originally coined by Nicolas Carr). It stems from the feudalistic farming days when people would grow crops on land owned by the landlord—becoming subject to their rules.

There are endless examples of companies changing the rules and putting businesses in jeopardy.

As an independent professional, you need to decide what you’re going to “own” and what you’re going to “borrow”.

My advice is to own your core platform and not build it on borrowed land.

The four ingredients of an independent platform

There are at least four things you can “own” as part of your marketing stack/platform.

  1. A domain such as yourname.com. This is the foundation for everything.
  2. A self-hosted, open-source website with your domain pointed to it.
  3. An email newsletter and mailing list.
  4. A podcast/blog RSS feed.

Building your business with these four ingredients will make your business less vulnerable to disruption.

Why? Because they are mostly open. As long as the internet exists, they are free to use with limited disruption.

Much like a ham radio, they’re in the hands of independent people.

But aren’t you still beholden to third parties?

Yes, it’s possible for your domain registrar to shut down (pick a good one). But I’ve never heard of that happening and there would be upstream ways to reclaim your domain if it did.

Yes, it’s possible for your website host to shut down your site. But you can always move it, or at worst, host it from your own computer.

Yes, it’s possible for companies like Gmail to mark your domain as spam across their platform. But if you own your list, you can always switch sending addresses.

Yes, it’s possible for Apple to hide your podcast from their app. But anyone with your self-hosted RSS feed can add it manually.

As much as a person can have a truly independent platform, this is what it looks like.

Closing thoughts

There’s something romantic about an independent platform. Your voice, your message, your rules.

And while that idea might seem idealistic, it’s closer to the truth than not (assuming you’re not doing illegal things).

As an independent professional with a voice, I plan to be around a long, long time. Platforms will come and go. Social media sites will die off and change.

But your domain, website, email address, mailing list, and podcast feed are all yours to keep. You can transport them anywhere you want.

So, those are where I will invest most of my time, resources, and content.

From there, I’ll supplement my presence with social media, advertising, and other things that rely on third-parties. They’re still valuable.

But I’ll never build my house in those places. I’ll never rely on a single platform for anything.

My house is an open-source, self-hosted website built on a domain I own, with an email list I own, and perhaps a podcast coming in the future.

Got something to add? Leave a comment below!