My name is Jonathan Stark and I’m on a mission to rid the earth of hourly billing. I hope that Ditching Hourly will help achieve this, one listener at a time 🙂
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Productized Services with guest Jason Resnick
Jason Resnick (aka @rezzz) shares how he went from burnt out jack-of-all-trades to in-demand specialist. Related Links Jason's Twitter Jason's website Transcript Jonathan Stark Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly, I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I'm joined by guest Jason Resnick. Jason, welcome to the show. Jason Resnick Thanks for having me Jonathan. Jonathan Stark Can you tell folks who haven't heard of you before who you are and what you do? Jason Resnick Sure, as I said my name's Jason Resnick, Rezzz online as most people know who I am there. Yeah, I'm a web developer, I've been since the late 90's so showing my age a little bit. And yeah, and I've worked the full gamut from Fortune 50 companies to small agencies, largee agencies, consulting firms. And then I struck out on my own doing my own thing twice, the second time is in 2010 and I've been doing that full time every since. Jonathan Stark Excellent. So, the main reason, the impetus of this phone call is that ... I don't want to air too much dirty laundry but I was considering a platform migration from Drip to Convert Kit. So, anyone lisetening to this show I'm sure knows I sent out daily emails from a very heavy user of email automation, email marketing software, and it's one of my daily tools. So, small things really matter to me because it really adds up over time if there's small things that are annoying or not the way I'd like 'em or whatever the case may be. Jonathan Stark So, I was kind of, to be honest I was kind of ranting about this in a slack room that we're both in and as many times as we've talked in the past you were not pigeon holed in my mind as an email marketing platform guru the way that you are now. So, it was like we started talking and I was like, "Wow, Jason's got amazing answers to these questions. What's going on here?" So, tell me a little bit about ... And then, I came to realize oh this is your deal. So, could you tell people a little bit about your, I don't know I'll use the wrong word but sort of convert kit trusted partner or whatever it is and I think you're also a Drip one and that whole. Jason Resnick Yes. Jonathan Stark Talk a little bit about how that piece of it happened, the sort of partner thing. Jason Resnick Yeah. So, like I said I am a web developer. I focused ever since I started on my own I focused with e-commerce companies whether they were selling digital, physical products, membership websites, subscriptions, even non profits, basically anybody that was taking some sort of a transaction online. And as that grew and I really started to work, sort of fall into a specialty there where I was helping them decrease the time from the first interaction to their first purchase as well as creating repeat buyers and rating fans out of the customers. That was around I guess 2013, 2014 ish, I really started to look into email marketing. Because that was kind of, I mean obviously at that point in time it was out there, it was doing it, but it wasn't doing it at the level that it is now. But I was a web developer so when Drip came along I was taking a look at their API and to be able to do some of the things that Drip was able to do through the API meaning leveraging that subscriber data on the website making the experience on the website a little bit more personal based around whether you opened up the last email or not and these kind of things. And I mean you can do down the rabbit hole of personalization there but that was the genesis of where I am today because what I was doing with my clients as far as the development end of it people wanted more of the other stuff. They wanted the on site personalization. They wanted the beahavioral marketing that I was implementing more so than the custom development work that I was doing. 'Cause at the time and I still do this to this day is I sort of put that final 20% into their website. So, out of the box they install orld wcommerce or whatever. They get 80% of the way there, they see that it's working and getting traction and now they want to put the rest of their business into it whether that's inventory control or anything like that. So, I ... Jonathan Stark Can you sort of drill into that a little bit more? I want to make sure it's clear. So, when you say, "Put 80% into it", and you mentioned WooCommerce. I'm not a 100% sure I'm following so. Jason Resnick Sure. Yeah. So, I focus in on WooCommerce based customers and a lot of times the companies would install world commerce and find out that it was working for them just out of the box. They would be able to sell products, they would be able to do these things but then other areas of the business whether it was a brick and mortar business like I had one customer that was an ice cream shop that only could deliver to local areas because otherwise it would melt or whatever it is right? Jonathan Stark Yeah. Jason Resnick So, things like that right? Jonathan Stark So, that's what you meant when you said put the rest of the business into it? Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark Okay I've gotcha. Jason Resnick So, but then I noticed a trend towards the behavioral marketing stuff, the email marketing, and automation, and things. And I decided that I could essentially do a lot of that stuff with Java Script code. I didn't need to be in the WooCommerce space, or Magento space, or any of that kind of stuff. So, I just gave it a shot and I basically said, "Okay I'll give this six months. I'm going to essentially slice that part of the business out and offer that as a service." And at that time it was just Drip and I wound up getting a couple of Shopify customers, a couple of Magento customers, and it worked out well. It was nice and easy for me to be able to implement that stuff over and over again. It was a platform that was working well. Jason Resnick Support was great too in the growing API there and all that other stuff. So, I was like, "Okay this is great". When they offered the consulting, I think they called it a certified consultant program or something like that, they knew who I was. 'Cause just in and around the community around Twitter and things like that I would jump into these conversations where Drip was mentioned and not to totally get into the weeds over there but I would just basically set up Zapya recipe to look for those mentions and then ping me in my own private Slack. So, I kind of jumped ahead of drip a lot of times in the conversations and I was just offer suggestions, or answers, or things like that because I was well versed in the platform. So ... Jonathan Stark Now is that ... Sorry to interrupt. Is that where these clients came from because they saw you and you put them ... Jason Resnick A lot of times. Jonathan Stark Okay. Jason Resnick Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times. Jonathan Stark So, basically you being helpful online in public brought you to the attention of Drip but also a bunch of clients who were evidently wrestling with these problems and then you just basically act like third party support in a way. Jason Resnick Exactly, exactly right. Jonathan Stark Awesome. Jason Resnick And they said, "Well we're opening up this consultancy platform, or certification program, or whatever you want to call it", which was really just a [inaudible] had to use Drip in the best way that they wanted you to use it. And so, I dove in. I was in the first co hort of those. I don't really think they have two of them. I'm not really sure how many co horts they had of that but it put me into the directory there. It put me into the cycle, the cog over there as well for custom requests that their customers were getting. So, they would feed leads over that they weren't going to handle but I could. So, that was the genesis of cover that service of my business and now that, over six months time became half of the revenue into my business. Jonathan Stark Yeah, it's like ... I mean it's not, I almost said it's crazy but it's not crazy. I see that all the time. So, people pick a platform, it could be ... I talked to Ben on an earlier episode from KnapSack about the same exact thing with [inaudible] space. I've talked to Kurt Elster with Shopify. And now you talking about this with Drip and I will point out that the one thing that's in common with all three stories is that you guys were all really early. Jason Resnick Yeah. I mean I think that was the biggest thing because me being able to just jump ahead of Drip in a lot of the conversations on the social web so to speak allowed Drip to see who I was. And so, and people had one off questions,, or they would complain, or whatever it could be. I'd answer it either with a screen shot, or a link, or a knowledge based article, or whatever, or my own blog posts 'cause I would write about these things as well. But it was really that Drip would then say, "Hey look I think Jason can handle this for you here's his Twitter handle or here is his emailand you can have a [inaudible] conversation with him to do that. So, I've always looked at platforms as a tool. I mean even WooCommerce and WordPress same thing. I grew up doing Java development and Ruby development. I moved to Ruby on Rails and I just looked at it as a tool for providing a solution to my clients. So, with that being said similarly I did the same thing with ConvertKit. Jonathan Stark So, before we got there. Yeah. So, I'm dying to hear this too, but before we go there I want to ... And maybe you can't answer this, maybe you don't know the answer to this question. But what gave you the confidence to make that leap? So, you had to decide at some point to set up that Zap and to jump onto Twitter and jump in front of Drip support. What ... And do you remember? Was there a thing that you said ... Once there a moment when you were like, "I think this is going to be big", or was it more like you were really into the platform at the time, it was fun and you just liked answering the questions or maybe some other third option? Or do you just have natural business instincts and you were just following the interest of the prospects that you had been talking to? Jason Resnick I think a mixture to be honest. I'd like to say that I had the foresight to see that this was going to work but I just knew how I ran my business in the past and how I was able to jump into the conversations and solve problems even in the WordPress space world. I made relationships with tools that I use on a daily basis. So, I just thought okay well I can do the same thing with Drip and whether or not they see me or not I'm still helping other people solve problems. And I was getting clients in that way too. So, for me it was semi intentional and not so much. I mean I loved the platform, I loved what it was able to do, and just being able to geek out and be able to tie two things together in a nice way that created a more human experience online for the visitors, or the customers, or whoever they are that was, I was all for that. Jonathan Stark Yeah that's fun. Alright cool. So, the transition to convert kit, what went down there? Jason Resnick Yeah so, what was funny was that when I decided for myself to use Drip I, it was real, that was a complete timing thing because I literally decided to go to put all my email contacts and everything into Drip then about a week later I saw a ConvertKit. It was really just a timing thing and I was like, "Oh that's interesting they're kind of the same thing almost", and from my point of view at that point. But then so I kind of had an ear to the ground with ConvertKit and I always watched it and all that. And I guess it was just the engineering behind Drip and what Rob and Derek were doing. Jason Resnick For me Drip made more sense for what I needed it for, for my clients in my own business, but I never ignored ConvertKit. I love with Nathan's all about, and his culture, and everything he does over there. But there would be leads that would come to me that would say all the right things but then say one thing that they didn't need that Drip was very good at but ConvertKit wasn't or vice versa. I would just direct them to one or the other. So when, the thing that I took a step back was from Drip was when Leadpages entered the picture. Because that was at the time where I had already made, half m business now was Drip related. I hadn't posted anything online but my website or anything that was Drip certified, this is a service that I offer, anything like that. In fact, I was like, "Okay I'm stepping back from this because I don't know what Drip's going to even look like. I just don't know." Jonathan Stark Well, let's pause there 'cause you just said that you never put the Drip thing on your website? Jason Resnick No. Jonathan Stark So, all of your leads were from social media? Jason Resnick Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yeah, either social media or through the directory. Jonathan Stark Right okay. Good. Good. Alright. Good, I think that's a very important point for people listening. They're like, "Wow he didn't even update his website". Jason Resnick Yeah, I mean for me what's funny is I get less than 20% of my clients, my services clients through my website. I mean that's just the way that, I don't know, the nature of my business and how I've structured my referral engine and all these other things. I'm a one man show so I don't need a 100 clients either. So, I have my eight and I'm good so. Jonathan Stark Yeah, and what you do is so specific it's incredibly easy to recommend you. Somebody says, "Oh I'm thinking about migrating from ConvertKit to Drip or Drip to ConvertKit", immediately you're the only name that's going to pop into my head from now until infinity. So, right? So, it's like so easy. It's like ... Anyway, it's amazing. So, and I do want to call out one other thing that you alluded to which is that ... What you're talking about is a platform, especially what I refer to as a platform specialization and it has a lot of advantages and like all things it has pros and cons. And the, one of the cons is your fortunes are tied to the platform, hello flash developers. So, yeah so I just wanted to call that out explicitly. So, now you saw it. Lead page has acquired Drip. Rob and ... I'm sorry I don't know the other guys name. Jason Resnick Derek Rymer. Jonathan Stark Okay Rob and Derek, they're golden handcuffs, they're going to be out of the picture all of the sort of plates are in the air, what's going to happen? And if your whole business is built on top of Drip then of course that's going to give you pause, you're going to wonder what's going to happen. You're going to wonder what Lead Page is going to do with it. The guy that founded Lead Page has left so what is even going to happen here? How long until Sales Force buys them or whatever? Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark So ... Jason Resnick I know all of those thoughts came into my head. I'm like okay does Google swoop in? I mean who's coming in right? So, yeah I literally took a step back and I even said to my wife I said, "Look this whole thing that I've been doing over the summer, carving out a part of my business now is falling apart, it could fall apart I don't know". So, I was just like, "Oh I want to take a step back". Still kind of just put it on cruise control, right? I still did what I did. I didn't really ramp up anything. Like I said I didn't put anything on the web on my site to talk about it. I kind of just wanted to see what would unfold there. And ... Jonathan Stark Now were you still doing this sort of answering bombing on Twitter or would you kind of? Jason Resnick Yeah. Yeah. I mean I still do. I do it today even. It's just, it's become a part of the process I guess. Jonathan Stark I've got to pause again 'cause that is a great point. That feeling, I can't think of ... I don't think ... I might of never met anybody who didn't enjoy helping someone else. I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't enjoy helping someone out whether it's introducing them to someone or giving them an answer to a question that they ... You know what kind of person wants to hold that kind of information back when they have it? I have expertise that can help this person who's in pain. It's just a natural human thing you want to do it but it acts as marketing. I almost don't want to call it marketing because that can turn people off but imagine if all day long "marketing your business" involved you helping people online? It's fun. Jason Resnick Right, yeah a 100%. I mean I come from, yeah I worked for the consulting firm where we worked for start ups and I literally ran the gamut of every tech coding standard of everything from Java, to PHP, to Com Objects, to .net, whatever language the company hired us for that's what we had to write. And so, I learned within a two year period I learned exactly what languages I liked and which languages I didn't and why I didn't and all that stuff. And I gravitated towards the open source sort of thing, that whole community and being able to help people and learn from other pieces of code, and all of that. Jason Resnick And so, I mean like I said I mean today one person had a problem with the faults in Drip and I'm like, "Okay just go to this screen under your account", and they're yellow and they can override them [inaudible 00:19:07]. It's part of the process. I saw it coming through my Slack channel and boom I had went and answered it and so on and so on. Who knows right? And so, for me it was just the way that ... I don't know. I've built my business on the back of being helped so why can't I help somebody else? Jonathan Stark Yeah, it's fun. It's like that's the thing it's fun. It is its on reward and oh by the way it ends up getting you money later. It's the best thing ever. Going out and helping people, I mean it almost gets cheezy like Tony Robbins level of, it's not karma it's more predictable than Karma. If you just help people all the time be better people are going to want to be around you and eventually someone's going to want to give you money and you can just fund this mission of helping people it's super kumbaya but I see it work over, and over, and over. Anyway. So, here you are, you've put all this work into this platform. You feel like you've built something. You're building some ... You've got some traction you're building repeat business then things are sort of thrown into uncertainty by the acquisition and what next? Jason Resnick Yeah, I mean the people that I worked closely with over at Drip specifically in and around the certification program, they were still there at that time. They were still saying all the right things and it still sort of felt comfortable but there was always this, it could be the New Yorker in me or whatever, but there's this thing in the back of my head where it's just like I don't know something's going to happen here. You know? Jonathan Stark Yeah. Jason Resnick But so I was just like alright I'll just do, I'm going to run my business the way I run my business. The same thing is always if WordPress went away, I chose WooComemrce. I mean in and around the WordPress space when I decided to niche down on WooCommerce that was before Automatic bought them. So, it was like I could have easily went with another plug in and been ground zero right? Jonathan Stark Yeah. Jason Resnick So ... Jonathan Stark Yeah, 'cause WooCommerce would have been the only game in town. Jason Resnick Right. So, I just thought back to that. I said, "Hey look it's not that LeadPages absorbs Drip and does nothing with it, and archives it in some [inaudible] backup somewhere. I mean you have MailChimp, you have other platforms, you have Infusionsoft, you have the knowledge, the process of what you do is there it's just a different tool to use it so. Jonathan Stark Yeah, the outcome that the client wants is still achievable with one of these other platforms. So, you understand the problem, you understand the motivation, you understand the value of it to the clients, and if the tool goes away, whatever. If your table saw goes away okay I'll use a chop saw. Jason Resnick Yeah right. Yup, a 100%. And so, I was just like okay I can't sit back. I put the page up on my site. I did what I do, right? And then, knowing that Rob and Derek they ... Rob had to hang around for a couple of years, for me that was like okay once Rob's gone from Drip I guarantee you this whole things going to change and you can see it over the course of the two years that he was there. As it got closer, and closer, and closer it was almost like ... I don't know. Like somebody pushing somebody off of the end of the high dive or something. It was just one of those things and there was certain people, certain key connections that I had, relationships that I had built they were left, they went on other ventures and things. So, I didn't really even have too many contacts over there anymore. Jonathan Stark Yeah, connections are starting to go away and I don't want it to turn into a bashing thing but Drip is definitely going, they've got a different strategy now they're going in a different direction. It's become quite obvious in the past week or two that they're focusing on e-commerce somehow and the language of the interface and everything is changing away from what I went to it for so whatever. They're making a decision ... Jason Resnick And that's fine. Yeah, and I had no problems with that. And but, for me and my business and my supporting my family and all that that's when I said, "Okay well let me go check out ConvertKit, let me se what they're all about". Nathan had reached out to me. I had corresponded with him through Twitter a few times. Jonathan Stark How'd that happen? Jason Resnick Just in the matter of the cocktail party that is Twitter rather. Jonathan Stark Yeah. Jason Resnick But he knew what I was doing with Drip he understood that and he was just kind of pinging me because I was doing the same thing with ConvertKit customers that I was doing with Drip where I would just set up that little notification system. And so, he was just curious and he reached out and he asked me a few questions just I guess just gauging really more along the lines of just research. What problems do you hear people talking about and things like that. So, just doing due diligence and all, and for me it was just like okay well there's no reason. I offer, I tell leads and clients that ConvertKit exists. Let me go through their certification program because [crosstalk] Jonathan Stark Yeah. I was going to say did it exist already or is he sort of feeling you out? Jason Resnick Yeah I mean I think it existed in part there and I guess what he was looking for was because he saw that I towed the line between business and engineering. Whereas most of the ConvertKit customers at the time, a couple of years back and it's still very much the same they're bloggers, they're creators, they're not necessarily hard core power API developers or anything like that that are trying to boost the business in that regard. So, whether or not he was doing that, but I looked at their directory and I felt that okay I could help in some way. I would be different than some of the other experts 'cause that's who they call them, experts because all of my knowledge, my developer background, my knowledge of API's and things like that. Jason Resnick So, I went through their program and met some nice people and similarly it just basically became another service that I ... It's the same, like I said, it's the same service it's just the different tools.So, now I offer the same thing it's just when a lead comes to me depending on, if they don't have either than I just do an evaluation and we find the best fit. Or if they come to me like some of the conversations that we had where you were thinking about switching. I've had those conversations with leads too. It's just the way I do business now. It's like I would say 75 to 80% of my revenue is driven by that part of my business. Jonathan Stark So, here's what's really cool about this is that of the folks that I've talked to on the podcast and elsewhere I can't think of another example that has, of another person who's such a clear example of multiple platforms of specializations at the same time. Usually they are either, I don't want to say overwhelming but it's fascinating that you're sort of dove tailing them and covering all of the bases in maintaining. I mean it's not, I'm not shocked by it but sort of kudos to you for keeping your eyes on the prize so to speak in that. You're not, yeah you're a Drip expert or you're a partner and a ConvertKit expert but that's not the point. All of the eggs that you put all in the same basket if there is one is delivering customer success to your clients in this particular way, these sorts of outcomes. And along the way yeah you're going to learn how to use the chop saw and the table saw and they don't really ... Jonathan Stark Well, here's a good question. Usually with the platform specialization the client does care. A lot of times they've already made the decision that they're going, that they either have decided or they're heavily favoring going with particular platform for particular thing. And then, they decide that oh we just need somebody to help us do it more quickly and efficiently, accurately, without stepping on land mines, that kind of thing. Is that the case, is that your experience or is it different in your case? Do people come to you and be like, "Hey we need a ConvertKit expert because we're definitely going to use ConvertKit or we're thinking about using ConvertKit." Or, do they come to you and say, "We're thinking about doing email marketing and integrating that with our website. What tools would you recommend?" Jason Resnick Yeah I think it's a mixture. I would say when I first started down this road it was more of the, "Hey we're thinking of email marketing what do you suggest?" Because they hadn't really doe it yet. Maybe they trialed one or the other or neither but they haven't really dove in. Now, that it's a little bit more mature I guess they already have an account with one or the other and they, either the accounts a mess or they're trying to do things that they haven't done before. Maybe they're just using it like an email blast and they have some lead [inaudible] and some forms but they want to integrate webinar selling. They want to integrate other tools into it. So, they haven't really gotten down that road and they're not really sure how to do all of that and that stuff scares them. So, I think that's, I mean it's a great question because I would definitely say that it's probably more of that now because of just the time that we live in. Jonathan Stark Yeah, that's wild. It's interesting. I'm sort of, I'm still chewing on this idea. I haven't got, I usually have an opinion on everything immediately. I'm still chewing on this one of multiple simultaneous platform specializations. And the pivot that Drip's doing, the timing is wild because there's going to be a window of opportunity that reminds me of GDPR or a thing like that where there's this window of opportunity where they're going to be a whole bunch of people who want an even more specific service. Which is, "I've been using this thing that they're not going to do anymore how do I get onto ConvertKit?" And that's even more specific and I don't know if ... You've probably got checklists of here's what you do, and here are the things to consider, and different size clients. So, I don't know if we've talked ... We haven't really, we've kind of been dancing around the idea of productize services. We've talked about it kind of obliquely but when we were chatting in Slack earlier ... Refresh my memory. As I recall you have a specific productized service for migrating from one platform to the other right? Jason Resnick Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yup. Jonathan Stark And how do you ... So, in the context of this show the listeners are used to me talking about productized services and I have a, I think I have a overly specific definition of it so let me just float that to you in case that's different than yours and then you can tell me how much you match up to it if at all. Jason Resnick Sure. Jonathan Stark So, to me a productized service is a relatively fixed scope service that you offer at a published price usually typically on your website. So, people would be able to come to your website and be like in your case be like, "Drip to ConvertKit migration 10 thousand dollars click here for more information, or click here to buy, or click here to apply, or whatever the call to action is". And that's just a generic sort of catch all definition. You haven't even put tons of stuff on your website if I remember correctly. You don't even have navigation to this product on your website. You're much more of a word of mouth/social media linking kind of guy it sounds like. Jason Resnick Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Yup. Jonathan Stark So, how does it work for you? What's your experience? Well, a whole bunch of questions. I suppose it would be interesting to give people a brief idea of process just so they can kind of wrap their heads around it. 'Cause you're a web developer, tons of developers are listening to this show and what's different way back in your experience of doing custom projects and client work? Just high touch one off custom projects where you're learning a new language to do the thing where you're just constantly on a learning curve you're never off the learning curve. Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark How does that compare to doing "the same thing" over, and over, and over for clients? Jason Resnick Yeah, it's very different except for the fact that when I productized my web development services when I was doing, just I was a custom WooCommerce developer. I productized everything else around it. So, in other words we had weekly scrum calls which it's not the agile scrum I just called them scrum calls. They were just 15 minute catch up calls at the end of the week. Basically client communication, what the deliverables were, all of those things. I basically productized every piece of the puzzle other than the middle part. And then, the middle part was completely custom. So, similarly ... Jonathan Stark Meaning you created systems for all of the communications and all of the process and all of that stuff. Jason Resnick Right, how to buy from me, how to pay, all of that stuff was there and it was just really that middle piece of who you are and what you do is different right? So, similarly I did the same thing, I do the same thing with for example the migration service. The thing that is the custom part is everybody's business is different, everybody's set up is completely different. Some people have a naming convention for tags some people don't, most people don't. Jonathan Stark Yup guilty. Jason Resnick Most people ... I can't even tell you. Basically there's three kinds of users that I've found for any platform whether it's ConvertKit, Drip, or whatever. It's usually a power user like somebody that writes liquid code in their emails and basically understands the underpinnings of the platform and uses it to the best of it's ability which is a rare, they're rare. Then there's the middle ground folks who blast emails to segments, they have tagging around things, they have lead magnets, they use rules in amongst the rules to be if this that and that. They have some basic work flows. Those are usually the messiest type of accounts and they're often the accounts that like you were saying before the checklist comes in handy because they don't know, they can't remember all of the corners of the business until they switch. They're like, "Well this thing isn't working. I don't know about this thing." Jonathan Stark Yeah, it's brutal. Jason Resnick And then, the third one is people that are just the beginners. They're just like, "I signed up for Drip based off of some promotion or ConvertKit off of some promotion and I just blast my entire list every Thursday". And they have some tagging whatever, it's just really basic. So, I can usually get that picture just by logging in and then I could kind of go down that road. I basically have this discovery. Jonathan Stark Is this before they have paid or after? Jason Resnick This is after. Jonathan Stark Okay. Jason Resnick Alright. So, the service in of itself is that they send me an application of their account and I see if it's a good fit. There's different data points that I look for like subscriber count, and how well do they know the business, who am I talking to, those kind of things. I've heard you talk about this [inaudible] audience before as far as the project, I call it a project brief. And then, if it's a good fit then I say, "Okay this is great we can move forward basically here is, you pay we have a kick off call and we dive in". Jonathan Stark So, let me just call something out there. You understand this already but I just want to call it out which is that someone could fail that test yes? Jason Resnick Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Jonathan Stark Yeah. So, that is the thing that is not obvious to lots of people when I'm standing on my soap box and telling the world what to do. The thing that a lot of people will scratch their heads because they're like, "But it'll blow up in my face because of these reasons". And the thing that they'll often miss is that you can say no to the ones that you can tell are going to blow up in your face. 'Cause most people are so, they don't get a lot of leads and they're sort of like not living hand to mouth but they just don't have a lot of leads so when a lead comes in they'll do whatever they have to do to try to close it which is a very different mindset to what you're describing and living. Which is that, look I do this thing, it's a relatively fixed scope, that's the key and if the person's scope isn't going to fit into what I offer here I'm going to say no. So, when people are like, "Well I can't charge only two thousand dollars for that". Because some clients will have a massive rats nest of problems and those are the clients you filter out. Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark Sorry to interrupt I just had to ... Jason Resnick No, I would say no is a powerful word. I talk to a lot of freelancers and when they tell me that they're afraid to either put their price online or put a filter online that they're leads will dry up. I say, "That's a good thing, then you're only getting tire kickers". I mean who want tire kickers that they haven't really thought about their project? And part of my project brief is I want them to have stopped and think about what you want for five minutes. I don't want to just have a conversation, get on the phone with somebody because you had a conversation at a barbecue over the weekend. Think about what this does for your business. And so ... Jonathan Stark A client with no goals is unsatisfiable. Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark So, that's [crosstalk] Jason Resnick Well unrealisticals. Jonathan Stark Sure that's bad too. Jason Resnick I mean just a case in point, some of the leads that leads that I say no immediately to are some of the folks that come in and they say, "I have 300 subscribers and I want to make a half a million dollars in six months". I say, "Okay, how's that happening?" Jonathan Stark I want that too. Jason Resnick Right. Like what are you selling a hundred thousand dollar service? I mean I don't know but. So, yeah and I say, "Well those goals are unrealistic". So, it's just that project brief for me is definitely my profit saver. I don't want to get a phone call if somebody hasn't thought about it. I don't want to hash out their problems. I want them to know what their problems are and that they're coming to me for a solution. So, what I do on the back of that kick off call and it's really a quick call. It's really just to get access if they haven't given it to me already. I usually put them through an onboarding process, an email that just goes out and says, "Here this is what I need from you". And then, the kick off call is really just, "Hey what are you struggling? Why are we doing this thing? I want to hear it in their voice. I want to see it on their face." Jonathan Stark Critical. Critical. Yup. Jason Resnick To understand really what they're struggling with so that I know whether to just stay away from certain things or gravitate towards other things. So, that's what that kick off call is critical for. So, then once I dive in and I kind of basically spend a half an hour in their account to see if I can get the majority or understand the majority of what they're doing in their account so that I could put the process in place to migrate them. Jonathan Stark Yeah, and it also gives you that convo, that real time. And you do video usually? Jason Resnick Yes. Jonathan Stark Yeah, so that conversation. You getting a lot of ... You're marinating yourself in their situation, in their goals, their wants, their needs, their dreams, their fears, their nightmares, and you're like, "Okay I'm going to feel for this". See, here's how I look at it. I'm putting words in your mouth. Here's how I look at it. When I do that what I'm doing is I'm learning as much about them as I can as quickly as I can so that I can make what I believe are good recommendations. Because there's a million ways to skin the cat and I'm not talking ... I'm talking about things maybe a little bit more broad than migration but still I mean they've got to be complicated. And you get to a point ... Jason Resnick Some are yeah. Jonathan Stark Yeah, and sometimes there's a fork in the road and you as the expert there's pros and cons to both choices. But if you know the person, I don't know, something about the person ... If you know something about the person, or the business, or the goals, or something, you'd be like, "Oh option A is definitely, for these guys option A is the no brainer". Jason Resnick Right yeah. And that's the thing too is even on the socials, you hear Drip and ConvertKit in the same breath all the time. And I tell people this all of the time it's not apples to apples they are two different platforms, they're two different applications. It's more like an apple to an orange. One can do 80%o of what the other does. So how important is that other 20% to you and if it is that important is it that important that we either move, or do we find another solution to it, or what? Jonathan Stark Yup. Is there a work around? Is the switching cost worth it? Yeah. Yeah. Jason Resnick So, and that's really what that piece of that discovery is all about is to figure out exactly what are we moving, how are we moving it, and that fixed scope that I have really comes in and around the implementation side of things. So, if they, most people have three main forms, three or four main forms. If they have tons, like I've run into people that have 30 different lead magnets. I'm like, "Okay well we can either have one form and dictate the lead magnet that shoots out of that form or some streamline". If they're really insistent on having this big thing, of multiple forms or whatever, and I said, "ook that's not in this scope. I'll do this within the scope and this is an added cost. This could be a phase two kind of thing whatever." Jonathan Stark So, again I'm going to put words in your mouth. You would find this out early right very early? Jason Resnick Yes. Jonathan Stark So, they've paid you. You've had a kick off meeting, you've spent a half an hour on a phone call with them. Or actually you didn't say. How long is the phone call usually? Jason Resnick The phone call is usually about a half hour. Jonathan Stark Okay. And then a half an hour poking around in their account and you could find at this point that they've got 300 forms set up. Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark And you email them or you call them or whatever. So, you make a recommendation, "We should probably pair this down. There's probably better ways to handle this and to be more efficient for you." "No, no, no, we need 300 forms." You're like, "I'm going to refund your money because this is not going to work". Jason Resnick Yeah, I've had the difficult conversations. I've never had to refund anybody but it's just it's more often than that this is how they knew how to do it and they didn't know how to do it the other way, or a better way, or a more efficient way, or a more manageable way. So, they appreciate the fact that I'm coming at them to try to make their life easier and they're like, "Oh I didn't know I could do it that way that's great". Jonathan Stark Yeah, usually they'll agree with you yes. Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark Yes. Jason Resnick So, which makes my life easier and that's a part of that ... I'll be honest over the years I've been doing this almost a decade now full time for myself. That project brief has evolved where I have questions in there that are questions that could tell me if they are more receptive to suggestions or not. So, and that's part of that failure test is if they don't answer those questions in an appropriate way then I'm like, "Okay that's a red flag". So yeah, and that's really how it works and once we decide on some strategy then I just get to work and implement their migration and move forward. Jason Resnick I mean I have other productized services around that, things like evergreen newsletters or webinar implementations, things like that that are more really just that's the repeatable thing where it's the same thing. Maybe the integration's different but a webinar is a webinar. You have the primary to show up and then you have the follow up after it and that's the same sort of sequence and you're just directing people to a certain CTA, Call To Action. So, other than that otherwise the services that are offered are more on a recurring monthly basis where I'm helping them. I'm being their marketing engine so to speak I call it. Is because I help them build that foundation for their marketing and I help them with their strategy for their business. I don't do Facebook ads or any of that front facing stuff but I basically ... You feed your top of the funnel into it and this thing handles it. Jonathan Stark Yup. Okay. So, man we could two more episodes. We could do an entire episode on the project brief. We could do an entire episode on how you cross sell the services later. I'm super curious about that. But I think the point of this episode the thing I really want to get across to people is the sort of nuances and the day to day of doing productized services instead of one off constantly different custom projects for different kinds of people all the time using different tools. And you're such a great example of both extremes 'cause you are learning new languages to death. I haven't come across a lot of people who can say that they would learn .net to take a project on and then later in their career they're like, "I do Drip to ConvertKit migrations". [inaudible] You know what I mean? Jason Resnick Yeah. Jonathan Stark It's like the two polar ... Jason Resnick Yeah, I haven't run into [inaudible] either. Jonathan Stark Yeah, these are the two opposite ends of the spectrum. So ... Jason Resnick For me it's ... I'll be honest the, I got burned out basically in 2011, 2012 bit time burned out. Where it was essentially a month after I proposed to my now wife. I said I was going back to work at a full time job because I felt like I was chasing my tail. I was doing a lot of Ruby on Rails projects, I was doing a lot of custom PHP projects, and it was like every three to six months I was going back to a technology and relearning what I missed because I wasn't on that kind of a project. And that's when I mean she showed support in me that I took completely unexpected and she said to me that, "Well that's now what you want to do". "I know that. So, and you know that so we'll figure it out one way or the other." I'm like, "Wait a second what?" She's the non gambler, the rock, I want to know what's going on kind of thing, and she's telling me this. Jason Resnick So, I was like alright I've got to figure this out. And that's when I first pivoted my business the first time to really focus in on one technology so I wasn't chasing my tail. I could become that expert in there. And so, now I just I niched down a couple of more times obviously but yeah I mean learning different platforms it's a tool. And yeah sure I know Drip a lot better than I know ConvertKit. I know ConvertKit very well by using it for the past couple of years but at the same time it's just, it's those little subtle nuances that at the beginning can get you into trouble. If you don't know that one platform can do something that the other doesn't and you suggest that other one that doesn't do that thing and then you find out that you can't do that that's where you get into problems. Jonathan Stark Yeah, painting yourself into a corner that's the ... Jason Resnick It's the relationships with support teams and internal people on those platforms that really make a huge huge difference. Jonathan Stark Yeah, that's sort of a surprise that's come out of this conversation for me. I wasn't expecting to get so much information about platform specialization but you are really really calling out all of the highlights, sort of the pros and cons of how to do it, what the important parts are. So, and honestly for developers a platform specialization is I mean I can't bring myself to say the word easy but it's less scary let's put it like that. It tends to be less scary for people than a vertical specialization where somebody says, "So I'm just going to build [inaudible] for dentists or I'm just going to build websites for dentists and I'm going to get amazing at servicing the dental industry. 'Cause my parents are both dentists. I know everything about being dentists and I love building websites so I'm just going to just specialize on dentists." People have a really really ... From experience I can tell you that people have a really hard time settling on a vertical specialization because they feel like they're throwing a dart, they're not committed to it, if it doesn't work immediately they switch to a different one. Jonathan Stark And the other thing people consider generally as a horizontal specialization like, "I'm going to be awesome at PHP or I'm going to be awesome at Rails". Rails is almost a platform, it depends on your buyer. But let's say PHP, I'm going to be amazing at Amazon Aurora or Lambda, or something really under the hood. And they just love the technology and they want to go deep on it. Platform specialization kind of like splits the difference and for people who are not savvy marketers but still want to focus, and still want to focus on a technology end goal. Jonathan Stark Platform specialization can be really good if you get in early like we talked about, if you develop relationships with the people inside of the platform which you just mentioned, and if the ... And your eyes are open to changes in the platform that can negatively affect your business. I think if you keep all of those things in mind a platform specialization might be, for a non trivial percentage of people listening to the show I think a platform specialization is a very interesting way to go when you're trying to get off of that hamster wheel and stop learning a new language every three to six months. Jason Resnick Yeah, I mean for me the productized services that I can, for lack of a better term it's basically the buying a box off a shelf. I don't have to worry about the vertical it is what it is, a migration. I don't care whether you're an e-commerce company, you're a coach, you're who knows, you sell physical products somewhere. That's irrelevant. Jonathan Stark It doesn't change the scope. Jason Resnick Right. Right. But the recurring services that I do for Monthly is vertical. I only stick to established online businesses that have, whether they're e-commerce membership sites, sales subscriptions, those kind of things. Because that's the business that I understand the most. I've been doing that, I've been working in and around that business for 15 plus years so I undertand that the most. If somebody came to me and said they were a speaker or a ... Jonathan Stark University. Jason Resnick Right. And they wanted that sort of recurring service. I couldn't help them as much in the marketing aspect because I wouldn't know what to expect. I'd have to do a lot of research around their market and it would be less profitable. So, not saying that I couldn't do that, those things but at the price point that I'm at this is what I understand and this is who I can serve and help the best. Jonathan Stark Right. So, to the dear listener. You know that sort of eye rolling commiseration that happens on places like Clients From Hell or just whatever at a meet up when you're having coffee with friends and you say, "Oh well there's always surprises on projects", that could be your fault. Because you're constantly doing something completely new. Jason Resnick Right. Right. Jonathan Stark And of course there are going to be way more surprises if you're essentially almost changing profession every client. "I'm going to be a plumber this week, and then I'm going to be a garbage man this week, and then I'm going to be a roofer the week after that, and then I'm going to work for Uber." Jason Resnick You're always a beginner. Jonathan Stark You're always a beginner. Jason Resnick Right yeah. Jonathan Stark It's like this sugar high of learning at first because you're like you. I love learning and maybe you're tapped into a client in a new industry or you're learning a new language and I always wanted to learn React. These guys want React. I've never done it before but I know JavaScript. I can hit the ground running. I can get up to speed over the weekend. Well, what that leads to is these horrible surprises that turn into scope creep. And yeah, so it's sort of a, not a self fulfilling prophecy but it's depressingly predictable from the outside. Jason Resnick Yeah, and it's hard for me. If I had to keep switching like that I think it would be harder for me to sell a recurring service because then I can' tell them when certain things would happen or be expecting. What are they going to get at the end of month one versus month six, those kind of things. I know what that looks like now. I mean what I do for my customers I can say, "Okay this is all a low hanging fruit. As we ramp up and we kind of clean you up a little bit and we get that foundation built over the first couple of weeks these are some of these other things we could chop off and you could start to see a return pretty easily." Jason Resnick So, as a beginner I don't know that I had that knowledge. I don't know that I would have been able to do that stuff. So, I think the vertical is for me anyway, it's crucial to specialization. Like I said, the smaller migrations in webinar implementations and those lead magnets, and all of those kind of boxes that you pull off the shelf for me makes it easier for somebody to work with me first without the commitment of their recurring. And then I sell them, whether the relationship works or not on that first go, it's easier to sell them on the recurring later. Jonathan Stark Yeah, if you hit a home run it's, "How do we give this guy more money?" Jason Resnick Right. Jonathan Stark Yeah, of course. So cool. We should probably wrap and get into our weekends. I know we're both free for the weekend here. But thank you so much for ... That was ... I knew this was going to be good but this is even better than I expected so thanks a ton for sharing all of that experience with us. Jason Resnick Yeah no, thanks for having me. I appreciate it for sure. Jonathan Stark So, where should people go to find out more about you online? Jason Resnick Sure. You can find me Rezzz.com, that's with three Z's, R-E-Z-Z-Z.com or @Rezzz on Twitter. Jonathan Stark Three Z's also? Jason Resnick Yup. Jonathan Stark Alright folks, that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark and I hope you join us again next time for Ditching Hourly. Bye. Jonathan Stark Would you like to learn how to get paid what you're worth? How about selling your expertise and not your labor? We work through all of this together in the pricing seminar. Pre registration starts soon and you can sign up to be on the first to know when early bird pricing is announced at ThePricingSeminar.com that URL again is ThePricingSeminar.com, hope to see you there.
Setting Expectations with guest Ben Manley
The benefits of offering a productized service. In this episode of Ditching Hourly I'm joined by guest Ben Manley. Ben is the founder of Knapsack, a web design firm that offers an laser focused productized service that allows his team to deliver beautiful websites to their clients in one day. Ben shares his background and explains in detail how he went from a generalist design freelancer who would do anything from Photoshop comps to theater sets, to running a highly specialized web design firm that generates incredible word-of-mouth referrals. As a past client of Ben's, I can tell you from experience that his process is stellar and delivers a huge amount of value in a very short time. Talking Points Transitioning from hourly billing to project based prices The benefits of specializing The importance of having a healthy margin Designing with the client over your shoulder How to ask for good design feedback Capitalizing on a platform specialization Preventing scope creep on fixed price services Related Links Knapsack The site Ben build for Jonathan (password is 'mobile') StoryBrand Breaking the Time Barrier by Mike McDerment and Donald Cowper
Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You with guest John Warrillow
Business valuation expert John Warrillow explains the benefits of making your business more valuable as an acquisition target, even if you have no intention of selling it. Talking Points The two most common reasons business owners consider selling their business Why it makes sense to build your business to sell even if you don't want to sell The difference between growing value and growing revenue Why productizing makes it easier to charge upfront for services Quotable Quotes "I see a lot of freelancers 'start a company', but they really just created a job."—JW "There's a difference between 'specialization' and 'productization'."—JW "Focus on a very small niche and become dominant in that space."—JW "People say 'Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity,' but neither is the value of your company."—JW "If you're just a hodgepodge of a bunch of undifferentiated services, an acquirer could easily go after your revenue without buying you."—JW "The very same things that make your business valuable and sellable, are also the things that will make your business fun to run forever."—JW "Can the business succeed without you?"—JW "Employees thrive on repetition."—JW "Every service offering you add grows the complexity of your business exponentially."—JW "Take a half-day and think about the one thing you do better than anybody else."—JW "Billing after services are rendered creates a 90-day negative cashflow cycle."—JW Related Links Built to Sell (the book) Built to Sell (the podcast) Value Builder eMyth Revisited John's Bio John Warrilow is an entrepreneur, podcast host, and best-selling author with over 20 years of research experience into the small and medium business market. He has started and exited four companies, including a quantitative market research business that was acquired by the Corporate Executive Board in 2008. His best-selling book, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, was rewarded by both Fortune and Inc. Magazine as one of the best business books of 2011. He is also founder and host of the successful podcast, Built to Sell Radio. Recently, John has founded The Value Builder System, which helps business owners and advisors assess the value of their company. With over 35,000 business owners and advisors having taken the Value Builder Questionnaire, this system has helped reassess and raise the company’s value by up to 71%.
The Language of Business with guest Norman Lieberman
Veteran recruiter Norman Lieberman shares hard won war stories from 37 years of cold calling. Talking Points You have to take control of the conversation in the first 20 seconds The importance of finding out the client's problem before you even think about selling anything to them Why talking about your company, product, or process is worse than useless Why to lead with a question and then shut up What you can learn from a cold-calling master, even if you'll never do them yourself How to bring prospects back to what they want accomplished if they start talking about price too early in the conversation How to pull a relationship together out of thin air How to anchor your high price against the much higher cost of doing nothing How to respond to a client who asks if you guarantee your work How to make buyer's eye glaze over (and what to do instead) Links Norman's site Norman's email Learn Your Lines Jill Konrath on TBOA The Secret of Selling Anything The Red Balloon
The Shape of Engagement with guest Scott Gould
You know you want your customers, employees, and communities to be engaged, but what exactly does ‘engagement’ mean? Scott Gould, author of The Shape of Engagement joins me to talk about how independent software developers can sow the seeds engagement. Talking Points Why engagement matters What engagement is The three levels of engagement The three processes that make up the cycle of engagement Real-world examples of how typical marketing activities fit in the cycle of engagement Simple steps software professionals can take to understand why their work matters to their clients Guest Bio Scott Gould is an author and popular speaker who champions the cause of real engagement in a world where so much is only skin-deep. As a management advisor he has helped some of the world’s biggest brands and oldest organisations get their customers, employees and communities highly engaged around their mission. Related Links Scott’s website Scott’s book "The Shape of Engagement" Trainer Weekly by Reuven Lerner How to Fascinate by Sally Hogshead TED Talk by Joe Pine Social Proof Derek Sivers Kai Davis
Breaking The Time Barrier with guest Mike McDerment
Freshbooks CEO Mike McDerment joins me to discuss his book Breaking the Time Barrier. Talking Points The importance to talking to your clients Looking for ways to help your audience How to push yourself out of your comfort zone Why hourly billing is a bad idea Quotable Quotes “In one year, I worked 19 days and brought in $200,000.”—MM “I think the constant paranoia of not knowing something is healthy.”—MM “Your peers are great for support but you should look for an advisor who is a reach for you.”—MM “If you think your clients are the enemy, you’re so far off ”—MM “Sitting around and saying ‘It’s hard!’ is not going to get you anywhere. Figure it out.”—MM “Hourly billing pits you against your clients.”—MM “When your billing by the hour, everyone is staring at their shoes instead of where they want to go.”—JS “You have to choose your clients.”—MM “It’s a flag for me if my client going to tell me how I charge for my work.”—MM “Let’s stop talking about hours. What is it you want when I’m done?”—MM “I want to know that I can be successful when I'm done.”—MM Related Links Breaking The Time Barrier Freshbooks Bureau of Digital Give it five minutes Mike’s Bio Mike McDerment is co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s #1 accounting software in the cloud for self-employed professionals and their employees. Prior to FreshBooks, Mike ran his own design firm where he accidentally saved over an invoice and realized an unmet need in the market. In 2003, he started FreshBooks from his parents’ basement in Toronto. Since then, over 10 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, look professional, and collect billions of dollars. Mike and his team dedicate themselves to executing extraordinary experiences everyday for customers who want to focus on what they love, not their paperwork. Mike has also authored “Breaking The Time Barrier,” a guide to using value-based pricing to unlock your true earning potential which has been downloaded more than 250,000 times.
Building Signature Systems with guest Maggie Patterson
Guest Maggie Patterson describes how she more than doubled her income by ditching hourly billing. Talking Points How hourly billing decreases your income The value of creating clearly defined service packages The benefits of systematizing your service delivery The magic of naming process steps How taking control of the client engagement increases your fees The importance of saying no to clients who are a bad fit How productized services make the sales process easier Quotable Quotes "If you're saying yes to everyone, that's a bad thing."—MP "If your close rate is off, you're either talking to the wrong person or your proposals are off."—MP "We're always going to make more money with a flat rate. Always."—MP Maggie's Bio Maggie Patterson is a communications strategist, business growth consultant, and the principal consultant at Scoop Studios. With two decades of experience, Maggie has spent her entire career in client services and has been a successful entrepreneur for over 10 years. Today, she works with online and small business owners to help them implement smart strategies for business growth and to maximize the impact of their digital marketing. She’s the host of the Small Business Boss podcast, has been on stage at events such as New Media Expo, Podcast Movement, and the Conquer Summit, and her work has been featured in leading publications such as Entrepreneur.com, Fast Company and Virgin.com. Related Links Scoop Studios Website Small Business Boss Website Instagram Scoop Studios Business Facebook Page Small Business Boss Facebook Page
Fishing Where The Fish Are with guest David A. Fields
Guest David A. Fields shares a gold mine of practical advice on outreach, positioning, building authority, trust building, and more. Talking Points How to maximize your impact as a consultant How to "fish where the fish are" How to identify ugent problems that your clients are dying to pay you to fix for them How to win business even when you're up against giant competitors How to build trust in a five minute conversation Quotable Quotes "It's about the finding the right people, right problem, right solution, right time."—DAF "Winning business is easy when you're fishing where the fish are."—DAF "If you don't hear back from clients, you're operating where there's a lack of urgency."—DAF "If you're not winning as many clients as you'd like to, you have to make some changes."—DAF "You have to make your practice about the client, not about you."—DAF "Every time I have a conversation with someone who looks like my prospective clients, I learn something."—DAF "If you're smart and your willing to pick up something new, the sky's the limit."—DAF "Asking your client about hypotheticals will give you bad data. You have to ask them about the past."—DAF "What you differentiate yourself on are reliability and credibility."—DAF "Your whiz bang super unique process is likely to scare off clients."—DAF "Fees are the trickiest part of consulting."—DAF "There's more money to be had if you're solving a bigger problem for a bigger company."—DAF "You don't have to work with big companies to win big business."—DAF "You can build trust fairly quickly by living up to small promises."—DAF "Targeting aspirations is a longer sale than targeting problems."—DAF Related Links David's website David's book Guide To Winning Clients Dale Carnegie quote about fishing with strawberries and cream Oren Klaff's power frame concept from his book Pitch Anything Gartner Hype Cycle Transcript Jonathan S: 00:00 Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I am joined by David A. Fields. David is the co-founder of Ascendant Consulting, is a true consultants' consultant who works with selling boutique consulting firms worldwide, a best selling author, speaker, consultant and mentor. David also heads the Ascendant Consortium whose clients are who's who of the business world. David, welcome to the show. David F: 00:22 Thank you so much, Jonathan. It is fabulous to be here. Jonathan S: 00:25 It's really my pleasure. So for folks who maybe haven't come across you before, could you just give people a crash course and who you are and what you do? David F: 00:33 Sure, and imagine that, there are people who are not aware of me. It happens every day. 95% of my business right now, Jonathan, is actually working with other consulting firms. So whether they are solo practitioners, or small boutiques up to, call it $25 million, I work with a few folks that are larger, but mostly 25 million and under, down to the folks that maybe have just started a practice and are just sort of cracking six figures. And so while I have corporate clients, most of my work now is with the consulting firms that are trying to win those corporate clients. And that's what I spend my days doing, is helping them accomplish that goal. Jonathan S: 01:12 Excellent. So I've got your new book, it's called the Irresistible Consultant's Guide to Winning Clients. Thank you very much for that. And in it, it's broken into six sections, six steps to unlimited clients and financial freedom. And there's a section that I'm particularly interested in, so I think it would be a great place to start, and that is this section on, I think it's maximizing your impact. Am I- David F: 01:37 Sure. Jonathan S: 01:38 Okay. Cool. So can you sort of give ... There's a bunch of sort of sub-sections here. Could you give us a kind of overview and then we'll drill into individual questions? David F: 01:48 Sure. The one thing I would ... Let me preface this with, because this section, which on maximizing impact which is sort of step two, but it's important to understand that this comes before you start building visibility. A lot of consultants, a lot of freelancers want to get out there and just get known by everyone they can. David F: 02:09 And before you run out and try to spread the word about yourself, you need to make sure that the word will be listened to, that you're not just out there talking, you're saying words that people want to hear. And that's impact, that's maximizing your impact. So that's where this fits in. It's very early in the process, making sure your message is going to resonate. David F: 02:29 And basically, maximizing impact just comes down to a few pieces. You need to talk with the right people, about the right problem, offer the right solution in a way that's compellingly articulated at the right time. So right people, right problem, right solution and right time. Of those four, time is darn hard to figure out. David F: 02:50 And so I tend to say you know what, put that one aside because if you talk to enough of the right people, about the right problem, and offer the right solution, then you don't need to worry about the timing. Some of them will be ready to move and want your services. So that's it. That's really the core of maximizing impact. Jonathan S: 03:10 Excellent. So you have a great graph, it got six quadrants in it where you talk about the awareness of ... your sort of the clients' awareness, or the prospects' awareness of a problem- David F: 03:25 Sure. Jonathan S: 03:26 ... or opportunity, and their urgency around that. And this is a different way to describe something that I talked about here a lot. So I wonder if ... It is kind of visual, but I wonder if you can break it down. David F: 03:40 Yeah, sure. I can describe it. As a matter of fact, all your listeners can sort of build it for themselves very quickly and easily if they want. This is useful, so it's interesting you pulled this out. This is one piece I didn't mention inside maximizing impact, which is this idea that I call fishing where the fish are, and business is so much easier if you're fishing where the fish are. David F: 03:59 So here's how you figure out where the fish are. I would say regular consultants, they do two by two charts, but we're super sexy here, so we do a sextant chart. You're going to draw a horizontal line, and then instead of bisecting it with one line, you're going to trisect it with two vertical lines. David F: 04:18 So now what you have is sort of six boxes, three on the top, three on the bottom. So that vertical axis is really is the client aware of the problem that you solve? So at the top, you might say yes, all those three boxes at the top are yes. And the three boxes at the bottom are no, they're not aware of the problem that you ... they have the problem. David F: 04:38 They may have the problem, but they're not aware that they have the problem. So yes or no. And then across the top is the urgency that they have, how urgent is their desire to solve the problem that you can solve for them. So all the way on the left might be no urgency. They have no urgency at all to solve it. In the middle is some or maybe tomorrow, or maybe in the future, and then all the way to the right is now, they want to solve that problem right away. David F: 05:09 So now what you have, if you've drawn this out, is you've got a box in the top right where your prospects are aware of the problem that they have that you solve, and they urgently want to solve that problem. That spot, that box is what I call fishing where the fish are. And when you play in that box, this business is actually very easy. David F: 05:31 Winning business is easy because you're not trying to convince someone to work with you, you're not trying to tell them to work on the problem, you're not trying to say, “Hey, you really need me even though you don't realize it,” both of which are quite difficult. You work with people who know they've got the problem and they're saying, “Yeah, I need help.” And boy, isn't it easy to sell a consulting gig when someone's saying, “Hey, I got a problem and I need help.” So were you able to sketch that out? Did that work for you, Jonathan? Jonathan S: 05:58 Yes, that does, mentally. That's a perfect picture. Can you describe for a second what it might feel like to someone who is not fishing where the fish are? So let's say someone has a ... Let's say someone is aware of a problem that's just epidemic proportions. So, for me, just to instantiate it a little bit, for me, I was doing consulting in the mobile web space for a long time. Jonathan S: 06:23 And you could just go ... almost any site you went to on iPhone was just garbage for the first couple of years, so I could see this as a problem like there is no way this is good for the conversion, this has to be hurting their traffic. This has to be causing a really bad bounce rate on mobile so on and so forth. Jonathan S: 06:41 But it was surprising to me at the time this going to about like 2010 that so many people, prospective clients with these terrible experiences didn't really see it as a problem or they want aware there was a problem, because unlike their audience, or their customer, or their users, they weren't on their own website on their phone all the time trying to get things done. Jonathan S: 07:05 So it's just wasn't ... it just didn't raise the level of consciousness. So I could run around beating the drum all day long saying, "If your business isn't mobile friendly, you're going out of business," sort of Chicken Little Approach. David F: 07:16 Yeah, how'd that work for you? Jonathan S: 07:17 Not that great. Early on, I magically got clients because there were early adopters who saw the problem. And my estimation of the situation is that over time, all of the early adopters, and then the sort of cutting edge people, and then the late adopters solved ... they got someone to fix it for them. And we started to get down to the late adopters, and then laggards. And it became a really hard sell, because they just didn't see it as a problem and still don't. Jonathan S: 07:48 So it's really hard. And there's a line in the book that made me laugh out loud, because I've heard it so many times where a student of mine, or someone on my mailing list, we'll be inside of a client organization, and maybe have done one project. And while they were in there, they were just appalled by the inefficiency of a laundry list of other things that they could easily automate, or at least, you know, not that it wouldn't be a lot of work, but they knew exactly how to automate it. Jonathan S: 08:16 Like, “Hey, I could automate this whole system, and you wouldn't need this entire department,” And still find themselves extremely frustrated, sort of ... it is kind of this Chicken Little thing, where you're almost saying ... it's kind of like walking up to someone in a Starbucks and saying ... as a personal trainer, walking up to someone in Starbucks and being like, "Hey, you're super fat, you want me to help you with that?" It's the wrong timing. It's just terrible. Obviously, it's terrible. David F: 08:45 It is. But now, I have got to ask, what was the line that made you laugh, if you remember it? Jonathan S: 08:50 It was not verbatim, but it was basically like, all these clients have the same problem, but no one sees it. But really to me that's not what's actually happening, to me it's that maybe they see it, maybe they don't, but they just don't ... they might be aware of the situation that you're pointing out. But to them, it's not a problem. David F: 09:10 Right, so that would shift them from the bottom right, which is, they're not aware of the problem. But if they were aware of it, boy, they'd want to solve it. Right? The hidden cancer if you will, right? Jonathan S: 09:21 Exactly. David F: 09:22 Or the hidden pot of gold, even if they're aware of it, they don't have an urgent desire to solve the problem. And that's different. Now, you're in that middle box at the top. And those folks are, you have to deal with them differently. There's a lack of urgency. It's not a lack of awareness. It's a lack of urgency. So you need to create desire, and frankly, that's hard to do. David F: 09:49 And so if you had been working in an environment where you're chasing folks. You're trying to create this desire, you go, look, there's a huge problem. I'm looking at how you people at Starbucks, who I can help because I'm a personal trainer, and you're not as fit as you could be, I could help you, right? And you're trying to create demand, and you're submitting proposals and nobody assigning, you might not even hear from anyone. Right? David F: 10:11 That problem, if you have a lot of proposals that are languishing, if you don't hear back from prospects, it's because you're operating where there's a lack of urgency, and it's extremely frustrating. And the answer actually, isn't later in the process. It's not that you're doing something wrong in the selling process, is you're doing something wrong in the prospects' selection process. Jonathan S: 10:35 Right. Right. So to use your metaphor, and to use myself as an example, because I know examples help people, when I ... you talk in the book about you can move your boat ... you can sort of paddle around in your boat and find where the fish are or you can just randomly moor yourself somewhere and assume that just by throwing the line in the water, you're going to be pulling fishing. Jonathan S: 10:59 And you're like, I can't believe, this industry is dead, there's no fish coming out of the water. This pond is dead. Well, maybe you're just in the wrong spot in the pond. And with me, it was a similar sort of feeling where it wasn't that I was in ... To use the fishing metaphor, when it first started the whole industry was basically invented by the iPhone in 2007, 2008. Jonathan S: 11:21 So there was no pond and I was the first boat in it, or one of the very first boats in it. So we were pulling ... fish were jumping into the boat, because the pond was incredibly small. So there was some competition, but not enough to support the demand. But then the pond got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you didn't move your boat, you're still sitting in that same spot and the fish went somewhere else. David F: 11:45 Right. Right. So we weren't totally butcher the metaphor. Then we say, even where you are, if you're somewhere in your pond, or whatever and you're not catching any fish, you could move your boat, right? So that's one way at it. There's another way at it, which is to basically talk to the fish, become the Dr. Doolittle of fish, or whatever it is and- Jonathan S: 12:05 The Incredible Mr. Limpet. David F: 12:06 ... Or SpongeBob or something like that and find out what it is, because you're not solving the right problem for them. You don't have the right bait in some ways. So you don't always have to move your boat, though in all likelihood, you're going to have to make some changes. The one thing you know is if you're not winning as many clients as you'd like to, you have to make some changes. David F: 12:29 And you have to make your practice not about you. You have to make it about the clients. You have to make it about the fish, so that you're going after fish with what they're looking for. Jonathan S: 12:39 Yeah, what's the line, don't fish using strawberries and cream as bait. Use worms as bait, just because you like strawberries and cream. So- David F: 12:50 I have not heard that, but it's an interesting image. Jonathan S: 12:54 I completely destroyed it. It's a great quote that I destroyed and it's a classic. I think it's a Jeez, it's a classic. I think it's How to Make Friends and Influence People. David F: 13:07 Dale Carnegie. Jonathan S: 13:07 Yeah, I think it's a Carnegie quote. David F: 13:07 Yeah. Oh, that's great. Jonathan S: 13:11 Yeah. Anyway, I'll link to in the show notes, with Google under my fingertips to actually get it right. So there's something I want to point out here that we're not making explicit. I mean, we're saying it, but we haven't made it explicit. We're not talking about solutions. We're talking about problems, the problems that the clients have that you solve, and you just talked about, it's about the fish, It's not about the fisherman. Jonathan S: 13:35 So let's talk a little bit about ... this all sounds logical and straightforward. But how do you talk to the fish? How do you find those problems? How do you find your way to that top right square? David F: 13:49 Wow, what a great question. Not enough people ask that question. The answer to that is, it's actually extremely simple, not easy, like most of this stuff, it's not easy, but it's simple. And the answer you ask, you flat out ask. So I'm heading up to Toronto tomorrow as we record this, and please, I have an all day session with a consulting firm up there on Thursday. So what do I do tomorrow before I get there? David F: 14:18 Well, what I do is I reach out to other boutique firms, the leaders of boutique firms, some of whom I know, some of whom I don't know. And basically say, "look could I meet, not for any kind of sales call just to learn from you, just to hear what's going on in your world." Now, this isn't easy, especially if you're introverted, and I'm actually introverted. David F: 14:41 But it's critical, because every time I have a conversation with someone who looks like my prospective clients, I learned something, I learn about what's going on, what their problems are, what their problems aren't, which is just as important, because I don't want to waste my time talking about things that they don't need to solve. David F: 14:58 So the way you learn about this, the way you figure this out is actually by talking to people and asking them. And you might ask them, what problems have you had in the past year, two years that were so pressing, so urgent, so expensive to leave unsolved, that you actually hired someone to help you solve them? That's the right question. David F: 15:20 The wrong question is, "Hey, here's my fishing line. Or here's what I want to do. This is what I'm thinking about building my consulting practice on what do you think? Or would you maybe buy this, those are the wrong questions, anything hypothetical, like that will give you bad data, it would just give you very bad information. David F: 15:37 You need to find out what they are actually experiencing right now, or what they paid for in the past. That's what's going to tell you what the problems are in the marketplace. Jonathan S: 15:47 Absolutely. And you already said it. But I'm going to say it again, the answers to these questions might not be solvable with your current solutions or your current activities. But could be well within your skill set, your broader skill set, or that could be some skill that you could easily acquire. David F: 16:07 Sure. Jonathan S: 16:08 So- David F: 16:09 You can learn things. As matter of fact, the firm I'm working with tomorrow is a great example of it. Now, they're a small boutique. They're under $10 million. And the two owners, I want to be careful, because some people know who I work with. They're working in an industry and they're now extremely well regarded in the industry. Yet, neither one of them has a background in that industry. David F: 16:33 They have a background in a completely different world. And that's true of a number of my clients, quite a few of them that are very successful. They didn't define themselves by what they had done in the past. They define themselves by what their clients want. And as long as you're willing to do that, and you're smart, which I'm sure your listeners are smart and you're willing to pick up something new, sky's the limit. David F: 16:56 It's easy. I mean, that's one of the great things about consulting, there's no iron in the ground that you're paying for. There's no capital or equipment you've invested in. David F: 17:00 In the ground that you're paying for. There's no capital equipment you've invested in, in a massive assembly line. You can pick up just about anything. So find it and pick it up. Jonathan S: 17:10 Exactly. A lot of people might have heard you say the question, "What if you've hired someone from the outside to come in and help you with the past year or two?" You did not say, "What copywriters have you hired in the past year?" Or, "What software developers have you hired in the past year." Or, "What kind of software have you had outside [inaudible 00:17:31]?" You didn't say that at all. Jonathan S: 17:34 It's much broader than that. I tell people to do this exact same thing, optimize for conversations. If you aren't getting enough leads, you're not talking to enough people. Go out and have this exact conversation. Jonathan S: 17:47 This is sort of aspirational, if you could wave a magic wand, even if it was impossible, what would you change about your business, or your industry? Or, what keeps you up at night? The classic one is what's keeping you up nights. What's been on your to-do list forever that you haven't done? Jonathan S: 18:03 Yours is even more practical. Yours is actually a question that I use when I'm thinking about helping people choose which software features to develop. You say, "Don't ask people what features they wish something had because they're not software developers, they're probably not optimized to think of the answers to those questions. Ask them where they're having a hard time with their existing software solution." If you've got some competitor, go talk to their clients and say, "Hey, the last time you had to do X, last time you had to do a mail merge", or, "Last time you had to do some sort of marketing automation, what are your pet peeves about that? What blew up in your face? What was the biggest problem you had?" Jonathan S: 18:49 Because they can tell you and they're right. It's their history that they're telling to you. It's not this, "Oh well maybe I would like that feature." It's like no, find the pain, or the opportunity. But we usually just like pain. Go back and say, "Huh, I wonder if there's something I can do about that." Jonathan S: 19:10 To reiterate, this could very well mean, shock of shocks, you might have to change what you do. A little bit or a lot, I don't know. But it's really, if your goal is to go out and go where the fish are, as you put it, you need to be open to solving the problems the fish have, and not just having this hammer and going around looking for nails. David F: 19:32 Absolutely right, and it's a great mix of metaphors. There's just all sorts of awful images there. I love that, you're absolutely right. David F: 19:43 Jonathan, you and I and all the listeners, everybody who's listening to your podcast, are future focused. We're all entrepreneurs. We're all looking with optimism toward tomorrow and next month and next year and five years from now. But our clients are not entrepreneurs for the most part. Our clients are not as future focused. David F: 20:05 Asking them about the hypothetical, asking them about tomorrow and what do they need, not only is it not a good use of time, it will steer you in the wrong direction. You will literally get bad answers that will cost you time and money. Our clients, we need to focus them in the past. It can be difficult for us because we're future focused. It's an absolutely critical step. David F: 20:30 Keep those conversations past focused. And focused on symptoms. Like you said, problems or sometimes symptoms is a good way to think about it. What is that pain that they're experiencing? Jonathan S: 20:42 Yeah, that's a good segue into, I read something, I'm not sure if I misinterpreted it. It's a phony question but there's a ... Before I jump into that, can you give people a background on what you mean when you say, "Fishing line"? David F: 20:57 Fishing line is a very short encapsulation of your target and the problem you solve. I work with small consulting firms that are not achieving the revenue they think they could. Someone here, they either work with a consulting firm, or they run a consulting firm or they don't. If they don't, they say, "That's not me", and that's perfect. David F: 21:18 They either have the problem that I help solve, or they don't. If they don't, that's fine also because now I don't waste my time with them. What it does is your fishing line very quickly selects people, allows them to self select, to ask more. They say, "Oh, that is interesting. I run a consulting firm. Tell me a little bit more." David F: 21:36 That's all you're looking for. It's a conversation starter. You throw that line out and you see if someone nibbles and tries to get into conversation with you. From there on, you're good. You move into relationship building and nurturing and conversation. David F: 21:50 That's all a fishing line is, a very succinct encapsulation of your target, which is extremely narrow, and the problem you solve, which is very precise. And it's meant to start conversation. David F: 22:03 That's it. Does that make sense? Jonathan S: 22:05 Not only does it make sense, but it's like brother from another mother because listeners have heard me beating this drum endlessly. I have a different name for it, that doesn't matter, it's the same concept. Jonathan S: 22:16 Notice, dear listener, what is not in it. What's not in it is how you solve that problem. There's no "how" in there. There's no explanation, because you want them to ask how. It's exactly what you said, it's a conversation starter. Jonathan S: 22:33 Very focused, target market our audience or demographic or psychographic, this is very clear. I help people who believe this", or, "I help people who have this job title", or "I help people you work in this industry with this problem they have." Which is different than saying, "Oh I build software for businesses." David F: 22:51 Right. Or even, "I support a software platform." If it's a narrow platform. I work with a number of firms that do that. They're working with clients that use a certain platform and then they'll code within that in order to make it fit a particular client. David F: 23:12 But it has to be beyond just the platform. It's supposed to challenge the platform. Ideally, it's industry focused and on a certain platform, because the number one things clients look for is industry experience. Jonathan S: 23:24 Yeah, that's good. I have a lot of people who do platform specializations too. Things like Sales Force or File Maker, Shopify, that kind of thing. Jonathan S: 23:32 I do agree with you that it would be more powerful instead of saying, "I'm a Shopify plus expert", to say, "I help people who use Shopify", or "I help store owners who use Shopify, with this particular problem that is common to the platform." Jonathan S: 23:47 Or maybe it's not widespread, maybe it's very specific, but expensive problem for a small, small segment of Shopify users. David F: 23:54 Right. Actually if you say, "I'm a Shopify expert", you start devaluing yourself. Jonathan S: 24:00 Interesting. David F: 24:00 I'm not smart enough to know what a Shopify problem is, but if I could say, "I solved the problem with Shopify duplicate" or "basket abandonment", that adds value. And therefore you're able to charge a higher fee, because you're adding value. David F: 24:25 Focusing on the problem, especially a high value problem, is how you create the opportunity to win a high margin, high fee project. Whereas, if all you do is you say you're an expert, you're setting yourself up like a commodity, as someone who will unfortunately end up in a fee structure that's commoditized. Jonathan S: 24:43 Oh that's really interesting. That's funny that the notion of saying if you call yourself a Shopify expert now, you're in competition with every other Shopify expert. I wouldn't actually recommend someone call themselves a Shopify expert, but Shopify consultant, or advisor, I could see that on a business card. Jonathan S: 25:06 I do believe that you're right. I agree with that, that it would be even more powerful as a conversation starter. I don't know if you like the word "differentiator", but certainly you're differentiating yourself when you are decommoditizing yourself. I see that synonymously, but tell me if you disagree. David F: 25:29 I don't see them quite the same, but that's okay. In part because one of the lines you may not have seen in the book is that, I don't think consultants should differentiate. I don't think they should worry about differentiation. Jonathan S: 25:42 That's why I'm stammering, because I did read it. I feel like it's a distinction without a difference because in the book you say something along the lines of, if the client says why shouldn't we go with cheap-o ink and you say, "Well because I'm more reliable." That's a differentiator though. David F: 26:02 It is. Ultimately you do differentiate. What you differentiate on is reliability and credibility. Can you credibly solve the problem and are you gonna solve it without screwing up, without making your client look back. David F: 26:14 That's very different from how most people perceive differentiation. Most folks who approach their website for instance, or they approach their conversation with clients and they're thinking, "How do I make myself different? How do I make myself look different from everyone else?" That's the wrong question. David F: 26:34 There is a difference because our clients are choosing us for a reason, not just because they flipped a coin or threw a dart and hit our name. So there is a difference, it's just that difference is not what people typically associate with differentiation, which in marketing often means finding the subtle or unique points of difference. That's not what we're after. Jonathan S: 26:57 Like product or solution focused differences. Like different features. David F: 27:02 Right. And that's just not what we're after. It's not about your whiz bang, super unique process. As a matter of fact, your whiz bang, super unique process is more likely to scare off a prospective client than it is to attract them, because it doesn't look as reliable. David F: 27:19 If you're the only person in the world who's done this, if you say, "I've got something so new and so innovative", they're actually less likely to use you. Most clients aren't looking for innovation, they're simply looking for a solution to their problem. They want their pain to go away, no fuss, no muss, no issues, cause no harm. Jonathan S: 27:39 Yeah, and they've been burned so many times. David F: 27:41 Absolutely. Jonathan S: 27:41 Yeah exactly. They want something reliable, something that they can trust. They want risk mitigation, they want to feel like it's not risky. David F: 27:49 Absolutely right. Hiring any kind of freelancer or consultant, whether it's a programmer or a coder, someone helping with marketing strategy, you name it, it is fraught with anxiety for the purchaser. Because they've all been burned before, because there's very little that's concrete. David F: 28:07 We're selling what's inside our head, we're selling what's between our ears. That's difficult for them to get their hands around. And there's a big purchase they have to be able to justify to other people why it is not being done internally, or why they're not doing it themselves, and why they're spending so much money. There's a lot of head wind that you need to calm down. This whole idea of liability or credibility is lessening or dampening those winds to make it easy for our prospect to say, "Yeah, come on in. Come on board." Jonathan S: 28:42 I completely agree. You mentioned fees a little bit there, a little while back. Is there a big picture you can draw for me around pricing? David F: 28:52 First of all, fees are the trickiest part of consulting. The figuring out fee structures is without a doubt the most complex. There is as much art to it as there is science. David F: 29:04 There are a couple aspects to this. The one is fee structures. There are different fee structures. Some will create more value and create more margin for you. David F: 29:16 But there are other pieces. To the extent that you are working on a higher value problem, you can charge more. There's more value to be tapped. To the extent you are creating more value, you can charge more because there's more value to be tapped. Which means if you can solve the problem faster, if you can solve it with less interference, with less risk of failure, any of these kinds of things, those all allow you to increase your fees, to charge more. David F: 29:45 If you have more credibility, if you have renown, if you have a reputation in the marketplace, that allows you to charge more because it implies a certain level of reliability and credibility. Jonathan S: 29:57 You appear less risky. David F: 29:59 Yeah, you appear less risky. Exactly right. Contracts and pricing is actually all about risk, it's all about risk allocation. I don't talk a ton about that because that goes off into the really nerdy world of risk allocation pretty quickly. But ultimately that's what it's about. That's what they're paying you for. David F: 30:19 The more confident you can make your prospect, that you can solve their problem, that you are thinking about them, that you will not in any circumstances make them look bad, if you can hit those three, and the better you hit those three, the higher fees you can charge. Straight out. David F: 30:36 Now of course, there's a cap. The cap is set by the value of the problem you're solving. Solving a problem for one individual is likely to have less value than solving a problem for General Motors, or Microsoft. There's more money to be had if you're solving a problem for a bigger company. David F: 30:54 But you don't have to work for global giants to bring in very good consulting gigs, or contracts. This is a new learning for me. This is something I've learned over the past five years or so, is that I can work with firms, or companies, that only bring in seven figures, or maybe low eight figures, and win six figure contracts. David F: 31:19 I used to think because my corporate business was all with big companies. But you don't have to work with big companies to win big business. What you need to do is solve valuable problems and that will push your pricing up. David F: 31:30 That's all a little bit vague, so do you want to drive it to a level that's more concrete? Or what would work best do you think for your listeners, Jonathan? Jonathan S: 31:39 There's a specific thing I'd like to drill into, which is this. You referred to increasing your authority in the space, becoming a recognized expert if you will, or if you want to use another term, but basically looking like the low risk option. What are the strategies and tactics that someone can use to go from what looks like a risky option to what looks like a safe bet? David F: 32:07 Yeah, and again, really insightful question. Because how do you compete with Accenture? How do you compete with Deloitte? They've got big brand names. The consultant who walk in with a card that's stamped with Deloitte, or Accenture, or PWC or E&Y, they have the brand behind them, and that brand's worth a lot. David F: 32:29 What do you do if you don't have that brand? One thing of course is, over time you establish the brand. That's a long term, multiple years, if not decades, endeavor. But you can establish a brand. David F: 32:45 What could you do in the short term? There are quite a few things you can do in the short term. I'll give you just a handful of them. One of course is, you do good work. You can bring in case studies, you can bring in testimonials, you can bring in references from other people. David F: 32:59 I'm gonna tell you something that you can do. I'll give you and your listeners a tactical tip. I don't know if it's in the book or not. It's something I call Loop Backs. Basically, when you are in conversation with a prospect they might ask you something. Rather than answering it right away ... Maybe they ask you, "Do you know how to solve this certain type of problem in JavaScript?" And excuse me, because I'm not a coder, even though both my sons are, I have no idea what they're talking about either. Jonathan S: 33:27 That was good. Yeah, you nailed it. You had me convinced and then you blew it. I was like, "Whoa, he knows what JavaScript is." David F: 33:33 Yeah, there you go. Try selling something to JavaScript. Rather than saying, "Yeah, I can do that", what you might say is, "You know what, that's a good question. If you don't mind, let's put that one to the side for just a moment and I'll get back to it in about five minutes." Because you were also talking about this other thing, and you continue the conversation. David F: 33:50 Then five minutes later you go back and you say, "You asked about this question, about JavaScript. Let me address that, let me give you the answer to that now." David F: 33:58 Or, they say, "Can you send me some materials?" And you say. David F: 34:00 "... and can you send me some materials?" You say, "Absolutely. I will get those to you tomorrow," and then, you get the material to them tomorrow. David F: 34:09 What you are doing in this case is you are fulfilling a small promise. Because your prospects don't have any experience with you fulfilling large promises, no direct experience, unless they've been a client of yours before- Jonathan S: 34:22 Yeah, [crosstalk 00:34:23]. David F: 34:22 ... they have to rely on your ability and willingness and consistency in fulfilling small promises, and then, they extrapolate from that. So you can build trust fairly quickly by living up to small promises, and you can create the opportunity to live up to those promises with these loopbacks by saying, "Hey, you know what, let me go back to that," and then, getting back to it." Jonathan S: 34:45 That is great. I often talk about the small promises thing and do things just even on follow-ups. You've got a long sales cycle happening, you say, "Hey, if I don't hear from you by blah, I'll email you on date." Then on date, you say, "Hey, as promised, following up about this thing you wanted me to check back and see the status of the project," so on and so forth. Jonathan S: 35:10 This is sort of in the nurture phase, so you got one of these long sales cycles where the problem is not urgent, but the client knows you're a good fit for something like when they do pull the trigger, you're definitely going to be in the running, but you just want to keep in touch with them. Jonathan S: 35:26 I do with email all the time, and I tell people to do it. Put a follow-up date in the email, and then, when you follow up say, "As promised, following up," and- David F: 35:37 You're absolutely right. And, of course, well, I know you do and I do and hopefully many listeners do, is if you are in conversation with a prospect, you do not hang up the phone, if you've been on a phone conversation, without actually setting that date in the calendar so that the email is more of a confirmation. David F: 35:54 They receive many calendar invite anyway because you agreed ... "We'll talk in six months. It's July right now. What do you say we talk ... Oh, no, how about December? Should we start to talk at the beginning of the year? Great. Pull out your calendar. How does the second week in January look?" Jonathan S: 36:09 Exactly. Yup. But, no, see the new tip, though, the tip that I love that you gave, was their opportunities create these, what did you call them, loopbacks? David F: 36:19 Right, loopbacks. These small promises. So you're going to create something, then you're going to loopback to it later and fulfill that promise. Jonathan S: 36:27 I never thought about looking for them. I definitely, like when they show up, jump on them, but you proactively doing it is a really good idea. Because you'll see quickly that most people don't do this, so you suddenly, in a really short amount of time, you look way more professional than your clients do because they're busy, and I know we're all busy, too. But if you do this one thing, you will come across like you're significantly more put together than most of the people than you're in contact with. Jonathan S: 36:59 And it shifts the power frame a little bit, if you're familiar with- David F: 37:02 Sure. Jonathan S: 37:03 ... what's his name, Oren Klaff, and his ... Geez, I can't remember the name of the book. But he's got this concept about power frames and he's kind of an aggressive alpha dog type of guy. It's not my favorite approach, but I do- David F: 37:17 I've got to say that's not really my approach. Jonathan S: 37:18 It's not my favorite, but I don't think he's wrong, where the sort of social weight or the social ball quickly comes into your court in a good way. They're starting to feel scattered, you're just doing what you said you were going to do and you do it when you say you're going to do it, and it becomes an attractive force. David F: 37:45 You bet. Jonathan S: 37:46 On top of the trust-building aspect, I think there's another kind of attraction that happens there. It's almost like a- David F: 37:53 Oh, I think you're absolutely right. Setting dates in particular which some people feel like, " Oh, but isn't that being pushy?" or "I'm not imposing on them?" No, actually the exact opposite. What you're doing is you are offering your prospects some clarity on their calendar and their calendar their future is as murky, messy, ugly, scary thing hanging out there. So when you offer clarity, you say, "Let's talk the second week of January. Let's talk that Tuesday at 10 AM." It's locked in. It's clarity for them. They feel relief by having it on their calendar. The worst thing is not knowing when you're going to talk again. That's anxiety. People don't deal very well with ambiguity. Ambiguity causes stress, it causes anxiety. So putting something on the calendar, you're absolutely right. It actually creates a lessening of the anxiety, it creates some clarity, and then, makes you more attractive. Jonathan S: 38:47 Absolutely. I wanted to drill into something that I know a lot of listeners to sort of rationally understand and perhaps even recognize in the brands or vendors or products and services that they use, but they have the worst time ever identifying when they're doing it wrong. It's just so hard to see the forest for the trees, can't read the label from inside the bottle. Jonathan S: 39:17 It was in the section about common mistakes with your fishing line, or whatever you normally call your positioning statement. There was one where you said, "We get rid of bugs" is a solution versus "We help homeowners whose kitchens are infested with roaches." Do you mean in that sentence or that phrase, do you mean that like the entire fishing line would be "We get rid of bugs," and that's- David F: 39:45 No, and I don't recall that way exactly. Jonathan S: 39:49 Fair enough. David F: 39:50 That's right. But often what happens is, and I may be heading in the wrong direction here, but it's more common to say, to talk about the bugs as opposed to the homeowner and their situation. So the issue actually isn't ... No one says "I want an exterminator," or they'll say it eventually, but how they get there is, "Oh, my God. This is so disgusting. I have roaches all over my kitchen," right? [crosstalk 00:40:23] feel- Jonathan S: 40:23 Yes. Well, that's the fishing where the fish are. That's the urgent. David F: 40:26 Right. And it's the emotional challenge also, so you want to deal with that emotional challenge also. Jonathan S: 40:36 The thing that I'm getting at is the difference between using the desired future state versus the current state in the fishing line. It sounds like you prefer to say it's not that ... "We help homeowners have a bug-free house." That's very different than ... I mean to your listener I'm sure that when you heard "Kitchen infested with roaches," you might have even recoiled. It's a powerful visual versus "We help homeowners live a bug-free life," or whatever. David F: 41:18 See, you're talking a little bit about aspirations versus problems and should we target aspirations or should be target problems? The answer is you can do either one. You can do either one and succeed. The aspirational version is "We give you a clean house. We give you a bug-free house." That's the aspiration. The problem version is "We kill those disgusting roaches in your house." We solve the problem versus we give you an aspiration. They're very close, they're subtly different. David F: 41:50 There's some interesting connections between that frame, whether it's a positive or a negative frame and pricing. There's an interesting research I wrote about a couple of years ago, I think. There's an article on my website about that. But you can go either way. Consultants tend to want to be aspirational because it sounds better, it sounds nicer. What they didn't tell you is it's a longer sale to target aspirations. Targeting a problem is a faster sale because people want to solve their problems usually fairly desperately, fairly urgently. Whereas, aspirations have less urgency and they're more discretionary. David F: 42:34 Now, on the other hand, aspirations, when you win them, can sometimes be the larger projects. So from the coding world, if there's a bug in the software, well, let's go back to Y2K for any of you who were alive back then. Jonathan S: 42:47 Probably not. Probably not as many as I wish. David F: 42:49 Yeah, I know. I'm dating myself here. But Y2K was a clue that there was a problem. We have to fix the problem or a software will break. That was not aspirational. It was a problem and there was huge urgency on that. There was desperation in some cases, and so, back in those days, there was business galore for folks to solve those problems and you were familiar with legacy systems. David F: 43:13 The aspiration at the time may have been, you know what I'd love is a ... I don't know. We're talking about the early '90s. I would love a graphical interface. I know [inaudible 00:43:26] thing for back then with the aspiration [inaudible 00:43:28] but getting that graphical interface, if that was an aspiration, was not nearly as important and urgent as getting the problem solved. So the graphical interface might ultimately be a bigger win, but it's the Y2K problem at that time that got the money more immediately. Jonathan S: 43:55 That's funny because that just happened with GDPR and- David F: 43:58 Right. That would be a better example. Jonathan S: 44:02 But the thing about that is, those two specific examples and there are other ones, and it is also similar to the Gartner Hype Curve and blockchain and augmented reality kind of churning at the very peak of inflated expectations. They are all this sort of globally ebbs and flows. I mean like in 2001, if your whole business was around solving Y2K bugs, see you later, that's, I don't know. David F: 44:02 Exactly. Jonathan S: 44:34 That's a very different kind of problem than, say, we help people who manage apartment complexes get rid of roach infestations. That's the kind of problem that's, unfortunately, almost fairly recurrent. Or it's not globally happens once, and then, it's done. David F: 44:54 Yeah, but I'll tell you what. Some of the most successful firms jump on those one-and-done problems, and then, pivot off of them. Jonathan S: 45:02 Interesting. David F: 45:02 They create momentum and they pivot off of them. It is important, especially for your listeners because your listeners aren't focused on certain software platforms or software in general. It is very important to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the area you specialize, and then, don't hang on too long because it evolves. Jonathan S: 45:26 Yeah, [crosstalk 00:45:26] David F: 45:26 One of my clients is actually a nice size firm. They are around $20 million, but almost all of their business was built on a certain call center software platform and doing implementation and that type of stuff. David F: 45:43 Unfortunately, the market has moved on from that particular platform to another platform and they've been hanging on desperately. Now what I've been doing is just beating them into submission to let go and move on to someplace else, so we're finding what their someplace else is. So your listeners do need to be very careful of hanging on to one spot. David F: 46:04 But if there's an urgent problem, there's nothing wrong with jumping on that, creating the connections, creating the relationships, and then, nurturing those relationships and letting those people know that you got broader capabilities. So narrow is your way in, narrow gets you in the door. But once you're in there, you can spread out. Jonathan S: 46:22 That is a really important point to emphasize because I know a lot of people miss it. I see it all the time, too. These sorts of things, this is the sign outside your Irish pub. You don't have a list of all 200 beers on tap out on the sidewalk. You say "Cold Corona inside" because it's 150 degrees. It's how hot it feels in Providence right now, and you want to get them in the door. Jonathan S: 46:48 Once you get them in the door, aka they become a customer, they become a client, then you don't need to carefully adhere to your positioning statement, this extremely narrow focus because you're having conversations, you've built trust, you've delivered wins, people think you're smart, they know you, they like you. It's a completely different ballgame. Well, not completely different, but it's a very different ballgame. Once you're inside and you have contacts and you know the politics, you know, all of the intricacies of working inside of a company, it's just completely different. David F: 47:23 Absolutely right. But plus- Jonathan S: 47:24 So this is ... Yup? David F: 47:25 Plus you know they must be really accepting because they went into an Irish pub looking for a Corona. Now, I get it. Jonathan S: 47:32 Wow. Nice. [inaudible 00:47:34] David F: 47:34 So would you [inaudible 00:47:36] to a client. They will come to you and be open to you doing more once you've proven you can deliver the basic goods. Jonathan S: 47:45 Yes. Excellent. Excellent point. Okay. We could probably go all day and I would love to, but I know we've both got other things coming up. Where can people find out more about what you're doing and connect with you online? David F: 48:02 The easiest place is just jump on my website, which is davidafields.com, so just [inaudible 00:48:09] middle initial, davidafields.com. Or you can always go on to Amazon or wherever you buy books and look up Guide to Winning Clients. It's often in the airport bookstores, too. I've been very fortunate the book has done well, and so Google that and grab it, or jump onto my website. I'm also pretty easy to grab. Jonathan S: 48:30 Yes, I second that motion. The guide, it's really good. It's a fun writing style, the illustrations are very engaging, and it's not dry at all. Very practical and I highly recommend it. David F: 48:44 Well, thank you. Jonathan S: 48:46 All right. Well, thanks very much, David. Maybe we could do this again sometime? David F: 48:51 That would be awesome. It really has been a delight. Jonathan S: 48:53 All right. That's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark and I hope to see you again on Ditching Hourly. Bye. If you'd like to learn more about how to ditch hourly billing, please go to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free email course. Again, that URL is valuepricingbootcamp.com. Thanks.
All Late Projects Are The Same with guest Tom DeMarco
Tom DeMarco - a former software litigation consultant - explains what all late software projects have in common. Guest Bio Tom DeMarco is a Principal of The Atlantic Systems Guild, a technology think tank with offices in the United States, Great Britain and Germany. He is the author of ten books on organizational dynamics and the role of technology, plus five novels. His most recent work —just published this month — is a romance, entitled The One-Way Time Traveler. Talking Points Why clients get angry when a project is late Who is to blame when a project is late The real reason for tight deadlines How to respond when a project has an unrealistic deadline How the value of a project affects deadline expectations Why clients initiate projects that offer marginal returns How managers use bad estimates to manipulate employees Why software is so inexpensive these days What distinguishes prosperous software developers from those who are struggling What buyers are actually concerned about other than price Quotable Quotes "I thought all late projects were the same in that they were really estimation failures, not performance failures. I still believe that all late projects are the same, but for an entirely different reason. All projects that finish late have this one thing in common: they started late."—TD "By the 1990s, a significant part of my practice was litigation support, which was a natural consequence of raising my rates to the level that only legal departments could afford."—TD "Being blindsided by the competition—is not software developer failure but that of some marketing arm that got one upped by superior marketers in another company."—TD "If a project offered a value of 10 times its estimated cost, no one would care if the actual cost to get it done were double the estimate."—TD Related Links Tom's Late Projects article Tom's Personal Site The Atlantic Systems Guild Procreate App
You Can’t Buy An Hour
You know you can't literally buy an hour from someone... so why do you think you can sell an hour to someone? Here's the tweet that inspired this episode: Matt's Tweet Thanks to Matt Olpinski for asking! —J