Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

All Audiences

Your thing isn’t for everyone

Whatever you’re selling… know that it’s not for everyone.

It’s not for most people, either. And if you get disappointed when someone doesn’t buy or like it, you’re looking at it the wrong way.

Instead, create something for someone specific. A single, ideal person, not an “avatar”.

If it turns out someone else enjoys it more, consider making them your ideal customer instead.

It’s a lot easier to over-deliver for an already satisfied customer than it is to figure out what someone who isn’t satisfied will want.

Make what you sell as good as it can possibly be then continually improve it for those who actually value (and pay) for it.

This is the definition of customer-centric.

Lest We Forget

When I was seventeen years old, I tore three ligaments in my knee playing hockey.

It took six months to get a surgery and several more afterwards before I could walk without crutches again.

I recall vividly watching people walk around, unaware of how lucky they were to be able to move without crutches. To jump, run, and play sports.

We don’t really realize how lucky we are until we lose things in life.

And today is my birthday, so I’m in a particularly reflective mood.

It’s also Remembrance Day here in Canada. A time to think back and remember those who fought during WWI (and many wars since) so that we could enjoy our safety and freedom today.

May we use this day to remember our fallen soldiers, but also how lucky we are to have love, health, people who care about us, and people we care for.

It’s easy to forget how lucky we really are.

Lest We Forget.

Slow is fast and fast is slow

This morning, I was cooking two eggs for breakfast. I dropped them into a pan that was not fully heated yet, which meant the eggs were taking a while to start cooking.

My instinct was to crank up the heat all the way, but that would have overheated the cast iron pan, causing the eggs to burn before the sunny-side-up yolks were sufficiently cooked.

And it got me thinking about marketing. I’m always thinking about marketing.

It reminded me that while yes, you can speed up results in the short term with tactics like advertising, the true and best way to do marketing is to take things one step at a time.

Making good eggs means letting the pan heat up to the right temperature, adding the oil when the pan is hot (not before), letting the oil heat slightly without burning it, and then finally, dropping in the eggs and waiting until they have reached the perfect level of doneness.

Doing good marketing means deeply understanding your ideal client or customer, delivering unique and distinct value in your business, doubling down on your strengths, making trade-offs with your resources, and building out the foundational systems that will support sustained results over time.

You can make fast eggs or you can make eggs the right way. To me, the fast way is to do things the slow way.

Do things in the right order, at a speed you can handle, and you’ll get magnificent, repeatable results you can enjoy over time.

Sometimes you will need to crank up the temperature to get an egg cooked quickly. But we can’t pretend that’s the right way to do it.

Slow is fast and fast is slow.

To be a thought leader, you must be prepared to be wrong sometimes

There’s a reason there are so few thought leaders in the world.

To lead in any capacity means putting yourself out there, making decisions, and then being responsible for the outcomes of those decisions.

Of course, thought leadership is not the same as having an opinion. Everyone has an opinion.

But few people are willing to make regular professional assertions and lead the conversation in their work or industry. It takes guts to do that.

Why? Because it’s one thing to be wrong with your own private opinions, where only few people care and the stakes are low. Anyone can do that.

It’s another thing entirely to publish original thoughts that may be imperfectly formed or could end up being wrong later on. Not to mention, your professional reputation is on the line every time.

Having this skin in the game and showing up regularly is what separates the opinionists from the thought leaders. This process forces you to continually refine and test your ideas. To make them better over time.

Which means accepting you’ll be wrong sometimes. But continuing to show up with new, more refined perspectives and ideas each time.

That’s what it means to be a thought leader.

The weekly newspaper

There’s a weekly newspaper that gets thrown onto my doorstep once a week.

I have lived in my current home for over a year and may have opened it once to see if it has any valuable content. It didn’t.

It’s essentially a bunch of flyers wrapped around some local “news”.

It’s not that I don’t care about my community. I do. But this is essentially unsolicited garbage (recycling) that I need to pick up and throw away every month.

The worst part is, I can’t opt-out. So, for all intents and purposes, it’s spam.

Does anyone ever look at spam closely enough to see if they get value?

Nope. And it’s the same with most marketing.

If you depend on interrupting people with unsolicited garbage (recycling) on a regular basis, you can expect people to treat it for what it is: rubbish.

Flyers can work when done properly. But there are better ways to do marketing than this newspaper’s approach.

The better way to do marketing is to focus on creating enough value that people want to consume your messages.

Going your fastest

I was driving three hours out of town to visit family today. I realized something interesting.

When I tried to maximize my speed to say, 120km/h, the ETA on my Waze app only improved by a minute or two.

So I decided to relax and take my speed slow and steady. I got there within a couple minutes of my “fast” ETA.

It might be tempting to try to move as fast as possible with your business.

But as they say, slow is steady and steady is fast.

Not only is the experience better, you also get similar results and you’re far less prone to error or burnout.

Just don’t stop, whatever you do.

The value in taking a stance

No matter what you create, most people won’t like it. Luckily, it’s never your job to convince the unconvinced.

Instead, your job is to take a stance on things. To make something for someone specific—whether that be a blog post, business idea, or anything in between.

By doing that, the thing you make will inherently not be for everyone. And not only is that fine, it’s what you want!

Strong values bring together people who share them and repel those who don’t. In some contexts, that can and does create division, but it also creates extreme unity when those values are held closely enough.

It’s the same thing in business. Your goal is not to please everyone. Your goal is to take a firm stance on what you believe in and stand by it.

And that’s a trade-off; one that is inherent in all businesses whether we accept it or not.

It means doubling down on something at the expense of something else. It means investing resources and time doing one thing instead of another.

If your bets (trade-offs) are smart, you have a winning idea. If not, you don’t.

You don’t need to be controversial or political in order to take a stance. You can, but that’s not usually required. As long as your trade-offs benefit your customers, you’re on the right path.

It can be something as simple as believing that short-form content dripped slowly over time is what make transformative changes possible. Or, that the best way to sell advice is when you don’t also profit from implementing that advice.

Here’s the thing. No matter how hard you try, your idea will not be for everyone. It just can’t. With that in mind, your focus should be on going to the edges of what you believe in to create something rare or one-of-a-kind. To double down your efforts on the best ideas you have.

And then, as good marketing dictates, go out and talk about your trade-off.

Talk about how specific, rare, and valuable it is. Talk about how it’s “this”, not “that”. It’s for this kind of person, not that kind of person.

It’s in these trade-offs that true value is created. It takes guts. You will resist. You will want to water down your ideas to make them palatable to everyone.

And that would be a mistake.

Takeaway: Good marketing (and business) happens when you take a stance, make conscious trade-offs, then talk about it until it reaches the people who get it.

Be the fiduciary

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

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