Kevin C. Whelan

I’m a huge believer in offering fixed-fee, value-aligned services.

That means offering a fixed scope of work for a set price that is aligned with the value it creates for my clients.

Fixed-free pricing can get some people. Especially if they’re still thinking in terms of effective hourly rates.

The nature of most consulting gigs is that stuff comes up. Things change. Sometimes, you need to do more than you thought you would.

And if you price your fixed-fee engagements too low, you have no wiggle room for scope changes when they inevitably occur.

One of the reasons I have such good retention rate in my advisory services is that I’m willing to go above and beyond when required.

Like Apple, I rarely if ever pull out the “no” card unless it’s absolutely required, or when the scope changes for a consistent enough period of time.

The reason I can do that is because I price my services with some buffer. If things are a little trickier than usual, my fees can handle it without it becoming “unprofitable” for me.

Sure, that means my effective hourly rate decreases slightly for the projects that need a little extra attention from me. But I don’t care about that.

I care more about creating and sustaining client satisfaction, which results in longer, happier relationships, and therefore more profitable engagements.

Business is an emotional game. Saying no to clients or generally being a stickler for scope might win you the battle in the short term, but it damages the foundation of the relationship, which hurts you in the long run.

That’s why I always price my services with a bit of buffer while still ensuring the value is aligned with the upside for the client.

Value alignment and price buffer that makes for mutually successful engagements more times than not.

Running a membership is hard. It’s not a “set it and forget it” business model by any stretch of the imagination.

Someone who does it well is Craig Mod. He’s an author and photographer who walks through Japan taking photos and putting them into gorgeous books with immaculate attention to detail.

I’m not a member (yet), but I am a subscriber to his newsletters and admire the work he does.

For the past two years, he’s written a review on his experience running a membership program.

There’s a ton of detail and a lot to be learned from by anyone who runs—or is thinking of running—a membership program.

Here are the last two articles he wrote on the subject. Definitely worth a read if memberships are your jam.

• Running a Successful Membership / Subscription Program (2021)
• Running a Paid Membership Program (2020)

 

For a lot of consultants, picking a niche is hard. Good positioning hurts.

On the one hand, you can see the benefits of being a sought-after specialist.

But the other hand, it feels like you’re saying no to so much opportunity. It feels like being a generalist will broaden your appeal, but it doesn’t.

I do believe you can specialize and generalize at the same time. You don’t have to choose if you don’t want to.

At least for a while.

But by far, the most opportunity for growth and leverage for consultants is through specialization.

Nobody wants more information. They want more specific information. More easily applied to their unique situation.

They want to hire people who have seen their problems before and can bring solutions that will just work.

Makes sense, right?

If they can’t find such a person, they will then settle for a generalist. But you’ll never be their first choice when given the option to work with you or a specialist.

If you’re a newer consultant, I recommend working with as many people as you can until you start to see patterns around who you can best serve and how.

You can then begin tightening your focus as you build specialization.

But if you want to grow your consultancy past trading time for money, you’ll want to start refining your niche eventually.

Your knowledge and expertise will become rarer. You’ll become less interchangeable as as consultant. You’ll charge higher rates.

And the best part is, you’ll be able to package and sell your expertise more easily at scale. You can sell courses, books, membership programs, group coaching, subscriptions, and other forms of leverage.

People will go out of their way to work with and buy from people who specialize in their unique situation. That’s leverage.

You’ll also be able to refine your ideas down to a specific methodology that people will want to buy at a lower cost in the form of info products and one to many offerings.

Without leverage, you don’t have a business, you have a job.

Niche to find leverage.

If you weren’t healthy, would you go with the cheapest nutritionist you could find?

If you had complicated taxes, would you hire the cheapest accountant?

If you needed to hire a lawyer to defend you in court, how price sensitive would you be?

Being the low-cost option is fine in some industries. But as a consultant, it’s a recipe for failure.

Instead, you want to work with people who have a high need for—and therefore value—what you offer.

When you charge commensurately for the value you create, you can invest the appropriate time, resources, and energy into doing a great job.

When you don’t, you don’t.

Nobody wants to hire the cheapest consultant. Price yourself right and do the best job possible.

I read on Twitter today from someone I respect that daily newsletters are exhausting for both the creator and the reader.

While I can see how it might seem like the case, I’m not so sure it’s true for everyone.

So, in meta fashion, I thought I’d spill some thoughts in today’s daily post.

As a reader, I’ve personally bought from every single daily blogger I’ve subscribed to. I can count at least 5 or 6 people.

That doesn’t mean it’s the best strategy for everyone, but it makes a compelling case for me personally.

It’s the showing up consistently that matters most. 

Plus, I personally like jumping in and out of people’s daily blog/newsletters whenever something catches my eye. I think you should write content you would want to read.

This is my 108th consecutive post, and I don’t feel exhausted yet. Some days are harder than others, but for the most part, I like it.

My newsletter has a 63% open rate as we speak, albeit my list is small. So I’m not sure if you’re exhausted just yet.

There are a lot of advantages (and downsides) to writing and publishing daily. I wrote about them long before my streak started.

To me, the key to daily writing is to keep it short, fun, and light. To make it sustainable for the long haul.

People will open it when they want, ignore when they don’t. That’s fine.

Ideally, if you write daily, you should make it easy on yourself.  Don’t overthink it, just get your ideas out.

The topics should not too heady most of the time. A mix of opinions, interesting ideas, fun finds, random thoughts, whatever.

As long as it’s interesting to your target market and ties into what you’re selling at least some of the time, it doesn’t really matter what you write.

Writing daily isn’t for everyone. If it’s exhausting for you, try keeping it easy or pick a better cadence for you.

And if people get exhausted reading it, they probably weren’t your ideal clients anyway. Either that, or you’re still figuring out how to connect on a level they care about. Writing daily will help fix that.

Or, you might be better off changing strategies. What do I know. 🙂

But these are my experiences.

As a consultant, you might know a few things. 

You might be the expert in the room most of the time. You might have a lot of experience in the issues at hand.

But sometimes, it’s better to take the learner’s approach. To bring an open-minded approach and not be so certain of your way of doing things. 

There are many ways to get a result. Sometimes, you should go with your tried-and-true method. Other times, you should yield to your client’s intuition.

After all, your clients bring a depth of knowledge about their business and their customers that you may not have. They also bring unarticulated goals and desires along with them.

It’s important to be receptive to those goals and desires, even if they’re not explicitly said. Otherwise, they’ll resent you for not seeing the value in their ideas (because you’ll be blind to the reasons behind them).

The key is knowing when yield and when to stand firm on your approach. You can do that by referring back to the goals often to see if they’re still the same.

Bring your expertise to every engagement, yes. But also bring an open mind and a learner’s mindset.

Goals change and there’s many ways to get to a destination. 

Below is a great Tim Ferris podcast episode from 2015.

He speaks in great detail about the entire topic of audience building—from how to pick an audience to how he would build one again from scratch if he had to, plus much more.

I took a ton of notes on this episode a year ago when I first listened to it. It’s part of what inspired me to focus my efforts on helping marketing consultants level up their businesses with Mindshare.

One of the interesting things he says is that your target market is not your entire addressable market. It’s simply the tip of the spear.

And you should aim to be ubiquitous to them.

If you’re looking to build an audience, I highly recommend giving this a listen from 5:14 onward.

If you’re watching this on my website, the video below will start you there. If you’re catching this via my email list, click here to watch it.

Consulting is an intimate game.

Your job is to make change in other businesses—often difficult ones.

But in order to do that, you need to work with people.

Most companies have a wide range of stakeholders. Each with varying beliefs, goals, needs, experiences, and motivations.

Your job, first and foremost, is to be a positive collaborator. To act with respect, empathy, and integrity.

In some cases, mistakes have been made before you got there. It’s nobody’s fault, but you need to help correct them tactfully.

Sometimes, new ones get made along the way. Obstacles arise. Stress waxes and wanes. It’s all normal.

And of course, money on the line. There are real stakes. The work means something.

Your job is to perform your responsibilities, yes. But in order for things to work, you need to have trust.

You need to trust your clients and they need to trust you.

Don’t start working with people you don’t trust.

And when you do start working with someone, do everything you can to maintain that trust over time.

Without it, nothing works.