Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing Consultants

Thinking in “units”

Imagine you only had ten units of client time per month.

Every 1:1 client you worked with was one unit, every group coaching cohort was another, your memberships were another, and maybe even the products you sell were another.

Once they were sold out, you could not take on any more work.

How would your business look in terms of focus and profitability?

Would you feel more or less organized? More financially secure or less? Limited or empowered?

I view my advisory business this way and it has many benefits:

  1. No single client leaving could dramatically impact my revenue, and that gives me peace of mind.
  2. I structure my offers to be delivered evenly and consistently each month to reduce difficult spikes in effort.
  3. My cognitive load is limited to a fixed number of engagements, which allows me to remember details, do good work, and not feel overwhelmed.
  4. I ensure every new client fits the profile of the type of person I want to help, allowing me to learn and re-invest my knowledge back into a similar group of people.
  5. I ensure every new unit I sell is as or more profitable than the average AND/OR is more aligned with the type of work I want to do.
  6. The fixed (albeit slightly flexible) nature of it builds in constraints, which makes me more creative about how I design, deliver, and price my offers.

When you think of your business as having limited units of available inventory, it forces you to get clear on how the parts work together.

It allows you to design a business you want and an experience clients love.

When you think of it as “I’ll sell as much as I can until I can’t sell anymore”, your business will tend to lack focus and may end up running you.

That’s what works for me as a solo advisor.

What works for you?

Fish at your feet first

“Fish at your feet first.”

I quote this sentence a lot, yet I can’t find a reference for it.

I think I spun it off in my head from the original quote, “fish where the fish are”.

Why fish at your feet first? Because that’s where you’re standing.

There’s no point in casting deep into the ocean looking for new opportunities if you haven’t looked immediately around you first.

There’s a good chance you’ll find plenty of fish nearby if you look.

Would you let people audit your work?

How confident are you in the quality of work you deliver for your clients?

Would you be willing to let other marketing professionals audit your work? Would it stand up to a reasonable degree of scrutiny if you did?

Which parts would you be inclined to try to brush under the rug? What parts feel vague to you?

As an advisor, you don’t need to know everything. Nobody does. But you do need to be a voracious learner and curious about all areas of marketing.

You’re paid for your expertise, after all. You need to have a wide range of knowledge and skills to do your job well at the strategic level.

There are two things I do constantly to help compensate for areas I’m less skilled at:

  1. I buy courses on the subject and/or work with coaches
  2. I hire specialists I trust to execute in those areas

Nobody’s marketing is perfect. But you should feel confident letting anybody audit your client work.

Find your blind spots and compensate them in one or both of the ways above.

You’ll be glad you did.

Write to capture the value of your ideas

If I didn’t write every day, I’d probably write a LOT less frequently. The deadline keeps me going—even when I don’t feel like writing.

And if I wrote less frequently, I’d probably come up with fewer interesting ideas. Not that all my posts are hits. They’re not. That’s not the point.

The point of writing daily is to force yourself to think about and clarify your ideas. You then use those ideas in your education and advisory work, which is where you capture their value.

It also lets people see how you think—which is the very thing you get paid for. In some ways, it’s a sample of what it’s like to work with you.

You don’t need to write daily, but the more you write and publish, the clearer your thinking will be and the more ideas you’ll have.

As an advisor, those ideas are where your value comes from.

Write to capture that value.

Creativity takes iteration

Your first idea is rarely the one that endures.

When starting something new, whether it is a project, business, or offering, expect things to evolve.

Give your idea the room it needs to adapt to feedback. Expect to find dead ends along the way. Learn as you go.

If you stick with it long enough and evolve with customer demand, you will succeed.

Remember that all new things start small and a little bit crappy. And they usually take more time and iteration than you may expect.

Think longterm.

162. Three ways to get clients to take your advice

This is a preview episode of the private podcast that comes with a free Mindshare Community membership. Join today for more members-only content and community.

In order to be successful as an advisor, you need to be able to:
  1. Prove you’re worth hiring for your knowledge in the first place
  2. Reinforce why you’re worth listening to after they hire you

If you have difficulty selling advisory services, or if clients stop listening to your advice during your engagements, it might be due to one of the three things I talk about in this episode.

Give it a listen and share with a friend who might benefit!

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Growing by referrals

Imagine your business could only grow by word of mouth.

Every new client had to be referred by someone who worked with you.

What would you do? Would you ask your current and past clients for referrals? Would you offer an incentive?

I don’t know the answer here, but I’d probably start by asking my clients if they knew 1-3 people who might benefit from my services, and if so, whether they would be make warm introductions.

Naturally, I’d also try to over-deliver on my services, but I already try to do that anyway.

What else would you try? What works for you already?

Hit reply if you have any good ideas. I’ll share them with the readers.

161. Why you should have (and stick to) a core process

This is a preview episode of the private podcast that comes with a free Mindshare Community membership. Join today for more members-only content and community.

It can be tempting to ignore all or parts of your core process with a new client. I call this your Methodology.

You might find yourself jumping into an engagement head first, reacting to demands and/or responding to tactical projects already in motion.

Things may be under tight timelines and the client feels like they know what they need to do, they just need a little guidance.

But the problem is, when you skip some or all of your core process, things quickly begin to fall apart.

Instead of deciding what to do, you’re reacting to things the client wants you to do.

Instead of diagnosing the real problems and developing a strategic plan, you’re working within the parameters of their thinking, not yours.

But you’re hired to be the expert and you’ve been doing this a long time. Which means you need to be true to the process that has gotten results time and time again.

In this episode, I talk about the three big reasons why you should have a formal process and stick to it during all of your client engagements.

Every time I skip some or all of it, I always regret it. At very least, I prefer to check the boxes so I know no stone is unturned.

If you’re reading this via email, click here to listen to this episode on the web or join Mindshare to listen to more episodes of the private podcast.

Most people won’t buy today

Most people won’t buy from you today.

It doesn’t matter if you have perfect a message, offer, and audience. If they’re not ready now, they won’t buy today.

But they might buy someday.

Which means to win the business of most people, you have to have two things:

  1. A clear and compelling value proposition for a specific target market
  2. A way to stay in front of the right people until they’re ready to buy

Getting clear on your target market and offering things they actually want is your first and most important job.

You have to know what problem you’re solving and they need to know that’s what you do.

As for the second part, that’s where content marketing excels. The value you share over time gives you permission to stay in front of them.

No value, no attention.

So if you want to grow your advisory business, there’s almost no better way to do it than content marketing done consistently for a long, long time.

Build relationships and keep showing up.

Who are you writing to?

A lot of content is ignored because it wasn’t written with anyone in particular in mind.

And because of that, it feels general. It lacks “crunch”. So nobody even notices it.

The more clear and specific your intended recipient, the better your content will be.

Pick somebody in your mind and write to them. Pretend your post is intended just for them.

The specificity of your focus will bring out the topic, structure, and nuance needed to make it interesting.