Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

business model

Choices and trade-offs

One of my absolute favourite books on business strategy is Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t by Kevin Maney and Jim Collins.

I was re-reading it yesterday and this quote from the intro struck me:

If business leaders fail to make choices—fanatical, obsessive, focused, disciplined choices—to build for the long term, and succumb instead to grasping as much as they can in the short term, they will build mediocre companies.

The reality is, we make trade-offs in our businesses whether we’re intentional about them or not. If we don’t make them, they happen to us.

There’s no right answer for everyone—it just depends on what you want to build and whether you’re willing to make the necessary trade-offs to get there.

Build your wings before you jump

It’s scary leaving a full-time job to start freelancing or consulting.

Someone asked me recently how I overcame my fear when I made the leap.

My answer? I did freelancing on nights and weekends, saved as much as possible, and designed my business for recurring revenue.

It’s hard to survive as a new freelancer or consultant without cash in the bank and some predictable revenue.

Hell, it’s hard to run even a mature freelance or consulting business without recurring revenue.

You need money to give you peace of mind and time to build the business properly. And it does take time.

Nobody hires a desperate consultant.

No matter what, it’s going to be scary to go all-in on self-employment. And it won’t be easy to juggle a full-time job while doing freelance/consulting work on the side.

But this approach is a lot less risky than building your wings after you jump.

Build your wings before you jump

Using focus to your advantage

Over time, your business will accrue “things”.

Projects, products, services, clients, team members, domains, subscriptions, commitments, promised deliverables—all kinds of things.

Each “thing” represents some degree of resources and/or mental overhead. And there’s only so much to go around.

Remember to keep stripping out the things in your business that no longer serve you.

Use focus to your advantage.

The smallest possible step

We all get stuck sometimes. We want to do something but for some reason we don’t act on it.

So instead, we dance around it. We procrastinate. We ponder. We ask a few people what they think.

Their positive assurances gives us some relief from the tension. It feels like progress has been made.

But then nothing happens. The idea fades away. We lose interest, and tomorrow it’s something else.

Repeat the process all over again.

What’s really happening?

Fear is happening. Whether you call it that or not, that’s what it is.

And we all experience it—especially with the ideas most dear to our hearts. Which is all the more reason we shouldn’t give into it.

If you want to see if an idea will work, take the smallest possible step.

You don’t know if something will work—or even if you’ll like it—unless you try. Take the smallest possible step.

Fall in love with the process—not your products

It’s okay to fall in love with your products and services.

The details of what you do, how you package and price it, your business model or the delivery mechanism you use, the craftsmanship… everything.

That’s all fine and well.

But if you want to be in business a long time, it’s a lot better to fall in love with the process of finding solutions to the challenges your ideal clients care about solving.

So yes, fall in love with your craft. But stay flexible about how you solve problems until you find what works—and then keep innovating forever.

170. Building around your super-consumers

Super-consumers are the 10% of your customers who account for upwards of 50% of your profit.

All industries have them. All of us are super-consumers of at least something. It’s true. And for very logical reasons.

In this episode, I break down the concept as coined by Eddie Yoon in his book, Superconsumers—and why it matters to your both business and the clients you serve at a strategic level.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Finding your thing

About five years ago, I met Gary Vaynerchuk briefly after a conference.

I asked him whether he thought it was possible to build a business doing pure strategy/advisory work.

I told him it was what I liked and was best at, but I wasn’t sure if it was a sustainable idea in the marketing field.

Gary has a several-hundred-person marketing agency. Love him or hate him, he knows a few things.

He told me I should do it if that was my thing. He made it sound obvious, as in, “if it’s your thing, you have to do it”.

While that’s typical Gary advice, it gave me a nudge to keep pursing this line of work.

As the years go by, his advice was not only good, it really was the obvious thing for me to do. I’m glad I listened.

Now I ask you, what is your “thing”? Are you doing it yet?

This is your nudge to lean into it.

—kevin

P.S. Just for fun, here’s photo evidence of the encounter:

Kevin x Gary Vaynerchuk

Where is the line?

We’re all tempted to chase revenue.

No matter how much you have, you will usually accept more opportunities that come your way if they present themselves.

At least for a while.

The problem with chasing revenue is that it has opportunity costs. Most importantly, it often limits your ability to build the business you really want.

Maybe you accept clients that require a lot of your time to deliver a result. Or you have to reinvent your entire process to get a result.

Or, maybe you offer a service that isn’t even profitable! But it’s revenue, right?

We all do this for a while. And it’s good to take on whatever work you need to survive.

But once your essentials are covered, maybe it’s time to stay a little hungry to allow you to build a business that you and your ideal clients love.

Where’s the line for you?

Everything is feedback

Paying attention to feedback from your target market is critical to your growth.

If you’re not getting any feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting positive feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting critical feedback, that’s a form of feedback.

If you’re getting lukewarm feedback, that’s also a form of feedback.

You can either fight against what you’re seeing or you can keep shifting what you do until most of the feedback you see is positive.

You’ll never get perfect feedback on everything, but you can remain detached so you can see the feedback you’re getting for what it is.

Keep your eyes wide open so you can shape and grow your business.

Productized services are not permanent

Productized services are not designed to be set in stone forever.

They should be treated as fluid offers, adapting to the needs and requests of your best clients and ideal prospects.

Double emphasis on best and ideal, respectively.

They can and should change with you over time—phasing out work you no longer wish to do and becoming more valuable in other ways.

Create productized services if you wish, but be ready to change, eliminate, or/or add new offers whenever you see fit.

Follow the value, not just your ideal vision of what your services should entail.