Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator
Kevin C. Whelan
There’s a lot of questions swirling among marketers (and knowledge workers in general) about how AI will impact their professional futures.
So, I decided to record a quick video on how I see things going.
The short answer is, you’ll probably be fine. But things will definitely be different.
As marketers, our goal is to have more inbound leads than we can handle.
Ideally, we don’t want to rely on outbound or word-of-mouth to find new clients.
Those things can work, but you ideally want to drive people to you, letting you maintain your posture as a credible expert and peer, not just a marketing “supplier” looking for work.
So how do you do that using organic content as the primary means of inbound lead generation?
In this video, I explain the one small mindset that can be the difference between content that attracts customers vs. content that collects (or doesn’t collect) likes.
It’s subtle, but it’s important.
Give it a watch here and be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to the channel if you’re into that kind of thing!
—k
There are two kinds of buyers:
With the first kind of buyer, you have no negotiating leverage.
They just need someone to do a function that, to them, is relatively low stakes. In their eyes, the function can be easily solved by many people.
You want to work with the second kind of buyer.
They have real business problems and are looking to do things the right way. They can’t afford not to.
These buyers tend to:
You want this type of buyer to think of you first (or only).
Ideally, you want to be positioned in a way that got them to notice you a long time ago.
You want to have shared your expertise consistently and showed up in enough places that they already know, like, and trust you.
You want them to not be shopping around when they talk to you.
You want to be the “only” real option in mind.
So much of our work comes down to the way we position ourselves. When we pick a tight focus, we become better at our jobs—and word spreads about it.
It not only makes it easier to attract the right people—they’ll often pay more, try harder to work with you, and get better results in the process.
When you do it right, you have most—if not all—of the negotiating leverage in a sales conversation.
Sure, they could go to a general alternative, but if they want their specific problem solved—you’re the person. There’s nobody else you can think of who does it better.
This is what allows you to maintain a price premium. This is what gets word of mouth going. This is what gets people to pay attention to your every word.
That’s because you don’t solve all problems, you solve sub-specific ones.
Problems precisely like the ones they need solving. And that means you can’t be easily interchanged when the stakes are high.
And because you’ve done it so many times, you’re actually good at it. You’re a master of the nuances.
Your expertise is therefore rare, scarce, and valuable.
—kevin
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.
“A consultant is an entrepreneur without a business.”
I heard someone say this once on a podcast. It irked me for a second, probably because there is a grain of truth in it.
But then I realized, it’s just not necessarily true. It describes a poorly functioning consulting business.
If you’re a consultant, you do have a business. But the extent to which that is true depends on one thing: leverage.
Allow me to explain.
Your knowledge is a form of leverage. It’s your knowledge that creates value, some of which you can capture in your fees.
Your marketing skills and relationships are a form of leverage. These people and skills help attract opportunities to you.
Your systems and technology are a form of leverage. These things let you run more efficiently and operate parts of your business without your direct intervention—allowing you to do more.
Your hires are a form of leverage. When hiring people—whether to do design, admin, or anything else—you create leverage by doing more, winning back your time to do other things, and tapping into their expertise to drive you forward faster.
Your intellectual property is a form of leverage. When you package your expertise into digital products and rely on the other forms of leverage to help sell them, you can create scale in your business that is akin to, or greater than, any other business model out there.
As a consultant, you have a choice. You can trade time for money, or you can create leverage through the use of any of these levers above (and others).
Do you run a business or do you own a job?
Business is full of complexity. At times, we get overwhelmed, we compromise, we try to do too much, or we simply stop making decisions at all.
To take control of our business, we need to be able to fight this complexity and make clear-headed decisions. We need to be able to simplify and reduce things down to their core essence.
One of the ways I do this is with what I call singular thinking.
Singular thinking is my way of reducing complex questions down to a single best answer. It forces me to find the best possible scenario instead of trying to do too much.
Singular thinking questions might look like one of the following:
Questions like these that let me cut through the clutter and find the single best answer to any given problem. It tells me what’s important so I can focus relentlessly on executing instead of hesitating.
I may never reduce my business down to a single target market, product, or service, but this process does force me to cut out the non-essential. It helps me cut complexity and focus my efforts where they will have the most impact.
When you use singular thinking, complexity falls away.