Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

methodology

Where my advisory clients come from (and that quiet inner voice)

Hey—happy Friday.

Here’s the latest for you…

I recorded and published two audio recordings yesterday.

Episode 190: Analyzing where my advisory clients come from (a general vs. niche business comparison)

Do you analyze where your clients come from? It might surprise you when you do.

In this episode, I break down where my advisory clients came from.

I also compare my where niche consulting clients (Everspaces) vs. my general consulting clients came from to see if there was a difference.

And let me tell you, it was enlightening.

Listen here or subscribe via your podcast player.

Episode 191: Noticing your quiet inner voice—and what to do about it

What is your quiet inner voice telling you?

The one that whispers. You barely notice it at first. But when you do hear it, you’re inspired.

Should you explore it?

Maybe you don’t take it seriously at first. Maybe it feels like a pipe dream. It’s not always rational. Sometimes it’s idealistic. Regardless, when you pay attention to it, it feels directionally interesting.

Where does it come from?

I’ve noticed that it shows up when I take time away from my business. It shows up on vacations, bike rides, long walks, or while reading a good book. I’m not sure if it’s the truth or just a passing random idea, but it feels worth exploring.

So what do you do when that voice says something? Do you jump to action or think about it until it no longer inspires you? Is it valuable or random? That’s what I cover today.

It may just be the very thing that helps you create unique, valuable, and lasting work.

Or maybe not. Who knows.

Listen here or subscribe via your podcast player.

What’s new in Mindshareland:

  • We had our Mindshare Community coffee meetup—thanks to Danilo, Luke, and Sean for attending. Hit reply if you want access to the free community.
  • We had a Mindtrust strategy call focused on designing and modeling our product and service ladders.
  • Mindtrust members got a special Content Bonus—more of those coming.
  • A few people were looking for analytics help for their clients—especially with Google Analytics 4 coming next year. If learning about analytics interests you, hit reply with the word “yes” so I can see how prevalent this need for training might be.

That’s all for now – have a great weekend.

—k

What to watch for (and manage) in a new engagement

When you start a new engagement, two things are usually true:

  1. The client is excited about the future and you represent the key to their success. Hopes are at their highest.
  2. The client is equally nervous it won’t work, and are looking for any signs they made the wrong choice in hiring you.

The better you are aware of these two contradictory but normal emotions, the better you can manage expectations both ways.

And it’s so important that you do.

Tough love

To be a trusted advisor, you need to be willing to give tough love.

I mean that in two parts: tough and love.

Sometimes, your feedback will be tough.

Your clients may even resent you for a minute. It’s not easy to hear tough feedback, but your job is to speak the truth in service of their goals.

More often, though, you need to dole out the love.

Provide encouragement, build confidence, and lift up your clients. Sprinkle that stuff on liberally—we all need to build on our successes.

Most of us get very little positive feedback as it is, so we’re not even aware of the things we do well.

It’s your job to be their champion and advocate—just be sure to do it with kindness and tact.

You can’t help your clients without giving both the tough and the love.

The relationship between hourly and commodity work

Listen to this post (in more detail) or subscribe to Mindshare Radio.

On a long drive today, I re-listened to some of the book, The Passion Economy, by Adam Davidson.

It spoke to me the first time I read it. It’s about craftsmanship in your business and working on something you’re passionate about.

It’s about the power of building small-scale, high-quality work instead of mass-produced commodity work that can be scaled infinitely.

The book has a lot of great rules, quotes, and stories. I’ll share one quote that came up because it fits so well into how we price our work.

Here’s the quote:

“I recently hired a lawyer who told me that he would not charge me by the hour but would, instead, agree to a fixed fee for the work we were going to do together. He explained that charging by the hour contradicted his core values of serving his clients; it would create an incentive for him to spend more time even if it wasn’t strictly necessary. Or, on the other hand, he might choose to rush some work to save me some money. He preferred not to think about time at all but, instead, to focus on providing me with the greatest service. I found this comforting.”

— The Passion Economy: Nine Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century by Adam Davidson

Selling by the hour often doesn’t feel good for either party, nor is it always aligned with the best interests of your clients.

The incentive structure is broken.

I’ve noticed hourly is most often the best option when you’re doing commodity work, like website support or odd design tasks, for example.

I’m not bashing hourly work or these kinds of support roles. They may be necessary to grow and/or sustain your business. They can be profitable.

But I am pointing to the fact that hourly work—when it is required—is closest to commodity work and therefore should come with an orange flag.

The longer you do commodity work, the harder it will be to do great work.

Listen to this post (in more detail) or subscribe to Mindshare Radio.

The right amount of work

How much work should you take on?

When does the quality of your work suffer?

What are the ethical implications of it all?

I talk about this and more in today’s episode.

Listen and subscribe.

The story of the auto detailer

A while back, I had my car detailed at a new shop around the corner.

When I called to book, the new business owner asked how dirty it was.

I said it was decent but it had some dog fur in parts of the back seat.

He grumbled and told me (reluctantly) to come in.

They were closed a few months later.

In this episode, I get into a few lessons we can all learn, including the importance of:

  • Doing work that you’re intrinsically motivated by
  • For people you enjoy working with
  • At prices that excite you to bring your best
  • So you can build a sustainable business
  • Which allows you to become great at what you do
  • Which becomes a continued flywheel for your business

Give this a listen if it feels timely for you.

The problem with generalist positioning

There are a lot of problems with having purely generalist positioning.

The main one, though, is that potential clients don’t know what you’re actually good at.

So they’re left to figure that out for themselves—and there’s no way to tell what you’re actually good at until they work with you.

But by then it’s too late.

The best prospects will go to someone who looks the most qualified on paper. They will spend top-dollar with them to do things right.

And that means you’ll be left with the less-than-ideal clients.

The ones who don’t understand just how nuanced the work is to do right—which means they won’t value your work enough to pay you well.

They’ll be price shopping and have unrealistic expectations based on naive perceptions that things are easy.

Yes, I believe you can be a generalist and specialist at the same time. You can build around your best skills and ideal niche until you don’t need to take on other clients.

But that’s largely out of necessity and to hedge your bets while you build a more specialized business.

Having purely generalist positioning is a recipe for running a business you won’t enjoy running. And that means something.

Listen to this 15-minute episode of Mindshare Radio for a more detailed perspective or subscribe via your favourite podcast player

What to do when a client wants to cancel before the term ends

What do you do when a client wants to cancel before their minimum term ends?

You let them go.

Sure, you could hold them to a contract. Or make them pay you a break fee. Or guilt them into staying until they end.

But in most cases, it’s better for everyone if you part ways.

In fact, go above and beyond in letting them go.

Make sure they are transitioned out properly. Tie off loose ends. Hand over everything they need.

It may not be fun or easy to make or easy to exit your engagements early, but it’s usually the right thing to do.

Keep the long-term view and decisions like this become obvious.

The benefit of being solution-agnostic

One of those reasons I believe advice and execution are best sold separately is that advisors get to remain solution-agnostic.

As an outsider, you’re not limited to any one way to do things. You’re only interested in the result.

Sure, you bring your worldviews and biases like everyone else. But whether your clients pick one way of executing or another, it doesn’t matter.

You’re agnostic to everything as long as it works.

That doesn’t mean you bend with the wind. Your job is to take a stance and advocate for your ideas on behalf of the client.

But regardless of what happens, you get to be perfectly flexible to all options because you’re not limited by what you or your agency can execute. You’re only limited by the results you’re able to facilitate.

Strategic advisors are solution-agnostic, and that’s good for everybody.

What does a marketing strategist do?

Marketing strategists have an interesting job.

We need to bridge the gaps between the business and the market—helping both sides get precisely what they want. Or, at least as close to it as possible.

Meanwhile, we aren’t usually the ones doing the execution. We’re guiding it. Overseeing it. Remaining impartial to anything but the results.

And that presents some interesting challenges.

Below are some of the questions I consider within the three core stages of the strategic process: strategy, planning, execution.

1. Strategy

During the strategy phase, our job is to get clarity on questions like:

  1. What are our goals?
  2. Who is this for?
  3. Who are the other stakeholders?
  4. What do they want, feel and believe?
  5. Where can we find our ideal clients?
  6. What do we observe about them in our research?
  7. What are their motivations and challenges?
  8. Who are our competitors?
  9. What makes us unique?
  10. What single thing do we want to be known for?
  11. What are our strengths and weaknesses?
  12. What unique advantages do we have?
  13. What are our opportunities and constraints?
  14. What resources do we have available?
  15. What observations can we make about the market and our place in it?
  16. What is our key insight that drives all decision?

These are just a few of the questions we consider at the strategic level. They put the “market” in “marketing”.

The better we answer them, the better we can do on the next parts.

2. Planning

Strategy and planning are not the same thing.

Now that we know what we’re working on and have a good idea of the landscape, we can begin to plan the tactics that will fulfill our strategy. In other words, we create a plan.

A marketing strategist asks seeks to define answers to questions like:

  1. What are our goals for each channel or activity?
  2. What is the timeline to achieve them?
  3. What measurable metrics can be assign to each goal?
  4. What can we systemize?
  5. Who will do the work?
  6. Who will manage the work?
  7. When will it happen?
  8. What channels will we use?
  9. How will we use them?
  10. Are the tactics aligned with the strategy?
  11. Who is responsible for the results of this work?
  12. What do we do in-house vs. outsource?
  13. Do we have the capacity to actually execute this plan?

3. Execution

A plan is only as good as the execution. At this point, the strategist’s job is to ask questions like:

  1. Are we executing this plan correctly?
  2. Are we measuring everything properly?
  3. Are we getting the results we expected?
  4. What is working and what isn’t?
  5. How can we adapt our plan for better results?
  6. Do we need additional resources?
  7. Do we need to do more research/find more examples?
  8. Was our core strategic insight correct?
  9. Are we helping or hurting the brand long-term?
  10. Are we documenting our learnings along the way?

There are probably a long line of other considerations, but these are the main ones I think about.

Strategists have a difficult job. It’s typically a leadership, not a management role. Usually, we’re responsible for the results—even though we’re not doing the tactical execution.

The better questions we ask, the better the answers we’ll get. Clear questions prompt clear thinking.

Good strategists write down answers to these questions to the extent it helps. But don’t write a book that never gets read. Keep it simple.

And remember: document the key insights about the market.

Insights drive strategy which drives everything else.