Inner Circle

This week:

1. Should you buy social media followers? 💰
2. How to retain 90% of everything you learn 🤔
3. Why you should sell your secret sauce to competitors 👩‍🍳
4. Turning your expertise into an online course 💻
5. Reading list for freelancers and consultants 📖

My focus lately has been on learning (and teaching) ways to scale my service-based business so that I’m not limited by hours in a day, location, or energy.

When you sell services, you eventually reach a limit. You can raise your prices, hire more people, or work longer hours, but sooner or later you will reach a ceiling. More money means more resources and infrastructure. And that’s not a simple thing to compound when your business grows.

We live in a time that makes it so accessible for service providers to sell their expertise at scale. And on the internet, there’s almost always a need and demand to learn pretty much anything that can be sold as a service.

It’s like the old saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” People will buy the fishing rod and instructions if you sell it to them. Or you can keep going out fishing yourself, selling what you catch in perpetuity.

Much of what you’ll read in this edition of my Insider Weekly is about adding scale and leverage to your services business by selling information in the form of a course or digital training product.

It’s not just for consultants either – this is intended for entrepreneurs of all stripes – especially those who sell services. Read on to learn more.

1. Should you buy social media followers?

Buying social media followers is a controversial topic. I wrote an article about the subject, including some pros, cons, as well as the more ethical ways of paying to grow your following.

Read Article: Should You Buy Social Media Followers?

2. How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn

The author of this article, Sean D’Souza, has a way of making ideas sound so simple and intuitive that whenever I read his work or listen to his podcasts, things just ‘click’.

I was actually trying to find a different podcast by him when I stumbled across this article. It was just what I needed to read.

The article is about how people retain information. It’s fairly intuitive. He cites a paradigm developed in the 1960s but the NTL Institute in Bethel, Maine called The Learning Pyramid.

A quick summary of The Learning Pyramid is the following (which sometimes get cited differently):

• 90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.
• 75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.
• 50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.
• 30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.
• 20% of what they learn from audio-visual.
• 10% of what they learn when they’ve learned from reading.
• 5% of what they learn when they’ve learned from lecture.

I’m not sure how accurate these numbers are—and I think I learn a lot from pure audio—but what I found most interesting was the 90% retention rate held by people who teach or use what they learn immediately.

Interestingly, Sean says he uses and applies information he learns right away. This might be why is articles and insights feel so relevant. Here’s a quote from Sean about that:

I learn something. I write it down in a mindmap. I talk to my wife or clients about the concept. I write an article about it. I do an audio. And so it goes. A simple concept is never just learned. It needs to be discussed, talked, written, felt etc. (I wrote this article, ten minutes after reading these statistics online).

I highly recommend giving this one a read to see how you can teach and apply what you learn to retain more information and become smarter in the process.

Link: How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn

 

3. Why Selling Strategies to Competition Is A Smart Idea

This was the podcast I was looking for when I stumbled on the article above instead.

I listened to this a while ago and found it counter-intuitively brilliant. It involves expanding your business by selling your strategies to your competition.

For example, are you a dentist, landscaper, web designer, something else? Sell your secret sauce as a digital product or training package.

Big companies can thrive on muscle power alone and sell solely to their customers. A smaller business, on the other hand, needs to learn to share; to teach the competition what they already know.

The author goes on to tell a story about a lumber company and how they applied this strategy. I get it, it’s entirely counter-intuitive, but it’s an intriguing idea that I’ll bet more than a few subscribers reading this would benefit from.

Podcast w/ Transcript: Why Selling Strategies to Competition Is A Smart Idea

4. Why You Should Turn Your Process into a Course

If you haven’t noticed a theme by now, I’m talking a lot about teaching what you know and selling your expertise as a product.

Chances are, you are like me in that you sell your expertise as a service. But as any service provider knows, it’s limiting. There are only so many hours in a day.

So you could continue to raise your rates, you could expand and grow your team, or you can do what scales: sell a digital information product.

What I like about this article from Janelle Allen of Zen Courses is that she keeps things super practical. Here are two takeaways that demonstrate what I mean, then go read the rest if you find it interesting:

1. Sell the process

As a service provider, you have a process for doing the work. Even if it’s not recorded anywhere but in your head, and even if it’s different each time, there is—at the very least—a thought process that goes into it.

Teach that thing. Sell it. It’s valuable. Even if it’s only a small part of what you do.

You don’t need to sell your entire library of processes, it can be as simple as one area or segment of your job. The main thing is it delivers an outcome people are looking for. You can sell many different outcomes, each as their own product.

Which brings me to the second point.

2. Focus on teaching the outcome

People buy outcomes, not “courses” or “information”. Instead of focusing on what you’re selling, focus on the result a person will have by purchasing your course.

If you sell landscaping services, teach people hot to cut a grass so that it looks as professional as a golf course or football field. Teach people some low-tech ways to keep it green all year round or to keep weeds at bay with minimal intervention. People are buying that outcome more than anything, so focus on that entirely.

Janelle explains these concepts much better than I do, so go check out her article.

Link: Why You Should Turn Your Process into a Course

 

5. Reading list for freelancers and consultants

As a member of Jonathan Stark’s group coaching program, I get to see first hand the quality of his advice. Recently, he shared is recommended reading list for freelancers and consultants. If you sell your skills or expertise in general, I’m sure you’ll find something in there interesting to read.

As an aside, if you are not a consultant or freelancer, and you run a more traditional business, I highly suggest you read the E-Myth Revisited. It’s a game changer, and it’s also on his list.

Here’s his list: Reading list for freelancers and consultants

Welcome to another edition of my Inner Circle Weekly!

Here’s what I have for you this week:

1. Why you should sell to power users who already pay for a solution 🧐
2. How to know where to prioritize your SEO efforts 🎯
3. 4 kinds of side businesses you can start ✍
4. A guide to “productize” your consulting services 💼

1. Why you should sell to power users who already pay for a solution

Last week, I featured an article by Justin Jackson on why you should never aim to sell your product or service to beginners. He made some great points, and if you haven’t read it, I recommend going back now before jumping into this next idea by Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine and A Smart Bear.

In this article, Jason discusses how you should go about developing and selling your product or service based on a few factors.

Ideal target customer

Number one, of course, is knowing who your ideal target customer is. He approaches it by asking, “Who already buys products/services like these?”. In particular, he talks about the “power users”.

Notice that he didn’t say, “focus on beginners who could use your product or service”. No – he said focus on power users and people who already pay to have your particular problem solved or benefit received.

Understanding what they already pay for

Number two is understanding what your target customer currently uses to solve the problem you’re trying to solve with your product.

So, you know you’re focused on the power users of whatever target market group you’re focusing on. Now, what are they currently using? How much are they paying for it? How are they using it? How can your product or service do one better for them?

Concluding quote from the article

I’ll leave you with a quote that he finishes the article with, and then I encourage you to go back and read the whole article to fully digest the message using his examples:

It’s tempting to launch your startup with the widest marketing messages addressing the largest segment of the market. After all, you don’t know exactly what message, product, and customer profile will end up being best, so you can’t close any doors. Better to try lots of things and test, test, test!

But a wide net catches few fish. Wide nets contain generic statements which thrill no one.

I say if you can’t identify and sell someone who is already experiencing the pain you address and already paying money to do something about it — your perfect customer — how in the world do you expect to sell anyone else?

If you can’t convince them your product is better, maybe your product isn’t better.

> Article: What did they do before you came along? – @ASmartBear – WP Engine

2. How to know where to prioritize your SEO efforts

A big part of what clients hire me to do is to help decipher the important from the unimportant; the essential from the non-essential.

And to do that, it means prioritization and trade-offs, along with enough knowledge to help you make those value judgments.

This resource by Cyrus Shepard at Zyppy.com is a great tool to keep at your fingertips if you don’t have the luxury of hiring a digital strategy consultant like me to help you decipher what’s important and what isn’t.

It ranks 100 SEO factors in order of priority and impact of each factor. He breaks each down into:

• Critical
• Important
• Influential
• Myth
• Negative

You can use this for yourself or use it to help gauge whether your SEO specialist is indeed working on the highest priority items for your business. Or, you can use it to ensure that they’re not doing anything that could harm your website, and ask them the right questions that will help you better judge whether they’re doing the right things.

It’s not a scientific resource. Everything is contextual, and nobody has the answers – especially when it comes to Google’s proprietary algorithm. In most cases, your SEO will have good reasons for what they do.

But it is a start in the process of educating yourself and having available information to reference in the future. Save this one to your bookmarks.

> Resource: 100+ Google SEO Success Factors, Ranked | Zyppy

 

3. 4 kinds of side businesses you can start

Most of you reading this are busy entrepreneurs who aren’t looking to start side businesses. But then again, you’re an entrepreneur after all, and chances are your own business started off as a side project, or you started one at some point in your career.

This article is deceptively insightful. Justin Mares, author of Traction and serial entrepreneur, breaks down the 4 ways to start a side business. And who knows, it could one day turn into your full business — you just never know!

i. Buy an existing asset

This one is obvious. Buy something that generates cash and turn it into ongoing revenue and profits.

A risk to this one is you may not know how to manage it properly, especially if it’s in an industry you’re unfamiliar with, or a technology you’re not savvy in. But that can be solved with due diligence and availability to as questions from the previous owner. Also, you need the most cash up front compared to the other options. The benefit is there is already a proven product/market fit, and if you have insight and expertise, you could even improve things to produce better results than the previous owner.

His examples include real estate and software purchases, but it could also include other brick and mortar businesses too.

ii. Launch a product on a marketplace with existing demand

I actually really liked this one. He uses examples of publishing a course on Udemy (passive income anyone?) and Airbnb.

The Airbnb insight alone is worth reading if you have a listing. I’ll bet his strategy for top ranking still works well. Every platform has a utilization algorithm: i.e. use every feature fully and aim to get the best interactions possible from the consumers. You can game that.

What I like about this concept is you’re selling something to a built-in audience. And as I mentioned, the success can often be in part due to your ability to play the system. Yes, you need a good product, but that’s a given in any business.

Normally I don’t recommend building a business on another’s platform, so I’d generally suggest having an equivalent offering on your own website. But just like brick and mortar real estate, it’s all about location, location, location (go where your customers are).

iii. Launch a unique product in an area where you can buy customers via paid acquisition (adwords, facebook, etc.)

A few key points for this one, quoted directly:

1. you want to focus strictly on small niches. not because you don’t want to make money, but because you don’t want to face a ton of competition. the smaller the space, the less likely it is that a larger company launches a similar product, or a VC-backed startup raises $5mm to come after you. not fun.

2. you must be able to acquire customers via paid acquisition: ads on facebook, instagram and google.

3. your product must be unique, or uniquely solve a niche problem that several thousand people have.

This is not for the newbies, and you’ll want to have a good ad specialist on hand to save you from wasting a lot of money.

iv. Arbitrages

His wording summarizes this the best: “it involves finding an arbitrage between two assets and exploiting that for profit.”

This is good if you have some spare time on your hands and want to pick up a product (or service) from a market where it’s cheap and bring it to a place where that product will sell for much more.

You can do this at garage sales, flip motorcycles, or be a garbage digger for example. The downside is it tends to be a crowded market and you need to know what you’re doing.

> Article: the 4 kinds of side businesses you can start

4. A guide to “productize” your consulting services

I’m a big fan of productized consulting. That’s why I’ve used it in my business.

Productized consulting essentially means creating a fixed-scope service that you can sell at a defined price, much like a physical product. Doing this not only shortens your sales cycle considerably, it eliminates proposals and has the added benefit of being a better buying experience for your potential customers.

Speaking first hand, productized consulting is a great way to package your services, and saves a lot of headaches for all parties. Watch the video by Jane Portman and Brennan Dunn below.

> Video: Productized Consulting 101 with Jane Portman & Brennan Dunn (June 14, 2018)

> Video: Productized Consulting 101 with Jane Portman & Brennan Dunn (June 14, 2018)

This Week:

• Should you sell to beginners? 🤓
• Turning new subscribers into warm leads 🔥
• Should you use commas in your pricing? 🤔
• Do this before you invest in creating that online course 📚
• When and how to use video on Facebook 📹

Lately, I’ve been looking at ways to add more leverage to my business through scalable products and services.

I’ve reached the point where consulting takes up a large chunk of my time, and if I want to create additional income, I can’t keep trading more time for more money. There are only 24 hours in a day, after all!

So I’m starting to create a scenario where part of my income comes from the sale of digital products (like an ebook, training videos, or courses) as well as scalable one-to-many services like group coaching/mentorship programs.

With this direction being a focus for me lately, below are the links to a few resources that spoke to me and may help you as well.

Target Market: Should you sell to beginners? 🤓

Justin Jackson makes a case about not targeting beginners, especially in a B2B scenario. His thinking that when people are just starting out in their professional path, they are likely focused on free resources and trying to “bootstrap” their way to success. They tend not to be earning as much money, so they don’t invest as much as they would into their business as a more seasoned professional. Lastly, they tend to go out of business faster, as most businesses do, so the lifetime of the customer is not as high as a more established person.

I realized a long time ago in my business that I couldn’t do agency-style consulting work for companies smaller than $1million. They needed too much, the budget was too low, and the results would not be nearly as dramatic and valuable as a company who was more established and had figured themselves out.

The article goes on to explain this point in better detail using a few examples, but I recommend checking it out if you’re looking to sell anything B2B.

> Link: Don’t sell to beginners 

Subscriber Onboarding: Turning new subscribers into warm leads 🔥

A big part of successful marketing in the digital era is through what I call “Lifecycle Marketing”. I’m sure other people have names for this idea too, but I don’t know what people call it, so we’ll use my name for it. 🙃

What I mean by Lifecycle Marketing is thinking about your marketing and planning around the various stages of the buyer journey: from pre-problem awareness, to problem and solution awareness, to product/service consideration, to purchase, to onboarding, to customer satisfaction and retention, to cancellation, and all the way through to the reengagement phase.  It simply means having a plan for how you’ll talk to your prospective, current, and former customers at every step in the phase.

If you take one small sliver of this lifecycle marketing experience, the subscriber onboarding step, and investigate how 50 copywriters onboard new subscribers and warm them into a sale, the result is this article.

It’s quite in-depth and might be too much information for the average business owner. But if you have some time and want to digest some tried-and-true subscriber welcome/onboarding emails, definitely check this out. I downloaded it to my Kindle so I could read it more fully.

Link: How do you turn a cold new subscriber into a warm lead? I analyzed the emails of over 50 copywriters to find out.

Pricing Tactic: Should you use commas in your pricing? 🤔

Another value bomb from Derek Halpern.

The short answer, according to this article, is don’t put a comma in your pricing. The reason? In a group of people studied, the majority read the price out loud using more syllables with the comma than without, therefore making the number seem subconsciously bigger.

So, $1,499 read as, “one thousand four hundred and ninety-nine”, whereas people read $1499 as, “fourteen ninety-nine”.

Here’s a quote explaining it some more:

With the comma, people frame it as a “thousand-something” price. Without the comma they think of the price in “hundreds.” And they SAY it differently…

This is important, because WITH the comma, it takes more syllables to say the price. And, as the researchers found, this makes the price seem higher!

Plus, the price with the comma looks bigger on paper or on the screen, simply because it’s takes up more visual space, too.

> Link:  What Converts Better: $1,499 or $1499? Or in other words, COMMA or NO COMMA? Science says…

Selling Courses: Do this before you invest in creating that online course 📚

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I have one more Derek Halpern link for you. It just so happens I have been looking at his content more lately as I consider ways of creating more leverage through digital products. Last one this week, I promise.

This is a fairly short video. It’s really a sales video for his product, Zippy Courses, but there’s a good idea inside that makes it valuable in and of itself.

The premise? If you want to create a course, create a free mini-course instead. Test the waters. See what reaction you get. Is it hard to sell or easy? Does it solve a problem people care about? Great, expand it into a bigger course. Proof of concept is made.

> Link to video:  How to Create (and Sell) Online Courses

When and how to use video on Facebook 📹

Getting on video can be scary. Rationally, it shouldn’t be. It’s no different than talking to people in real life.

Except it is different. It lives longer “on the internet”. Strangers (and even friends) can see it and judge it.

But it’s also extremely powerful in business, especially if you’re the face of your brand.

This video by a fellow consultant gives you some great insight into how and when you should post videos (live or otherwise) on Facebook.

Link:  When and how should you use video on Facebook