Congratulations! You’ve been putting in work and figuring out how to get people coming to you looking for your services, as opposed to hitting the streets and knocking on doors to get clients (many have started here to be sure, and kudos to you if you put in the work to do it. Most won’t.). […]
I’m frustrated.
Why?
Because I’ve been building a business in the marketing consulting industry for the last 18 months and I think that most businesses think about growth and investing in growth in completely the wrong way. And that is hurting these businesses.
This post is primarily addressed to marketing agencies and consultants. I’ve worked with over 100 in the last 18 months and helped many get new clients and make more money for their agencies or individual consultancy.
Read more about Quit Making Emotional Decisions About Business Growth …
This post was originally meant to go directly on the Entrepreneur subreddit because it is a question I get asked over there all the time, but I figured it should probably live here in perpetuity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hi everyone.
Long time lurker, semi-often commenter, first time posting a fresh thread here (as far as I can remember).
Whenever I comment on a post and mention that I’m a marketer and have consulting clients, I *always* get asked “how did you get/do you get clients?” I see this here, on /r/financialindependence, on forums, and different sites. It’s always the same question.
My tips to get new consulting clients are:
So I’ve been thinking recently about what it means to grow up as an entrepreneur and a professional. Last week, I published what snorkeling in Costa Rica taught me about productivity. I’m 32 years old now and have been out of university for almost 10 years. During that time I’ve worked seven different jobs, including […]
I am currently in Costa Rica with my family for the holidays. Every day my wife and I (and sometimes a family member) do something active – stand up paddle boarding, surfing, hiking to a waterfall. It was a very active yet very relaxing vacation.
One day this trip taught me more than the others, though. That was yesterday – the day we went snorkeling.
As I floated in the Pacific, looking downwards to coral reefs to watch fish (parrot fish! clown fish! small yellow fish!) I felt myself drifting. I was headed in a general direction of “with the group” and “away from the rocks” and “toward the fish”, but I was still drifting, with only a life preserver tied around my wrist in case I wanted or needed it.
As I floated, I found myself wanting to go in a specific direction and to a specific place to see a specific fish. But when I started to swim, I felt myself staying in place because the tide decided it was going out right then. As hard as I kicked (with fins) and swam with my arms, I simply didn’t make progress.
Read more about What Snorkeling in Costa Rica Taught Me About Productivity …
My business specialty is marketplaces. I’ve worked with close to a dozen marketplaces over the last few years, including founding my own and building and running marketing/growth teams for two. The others I have worked with specifically on acquiring more customers on the demand (buying) side through SEO, content marketing, and outreach. One of my […]
Are you an entrepreneur looking to grow your business fast? Or maybe you are a Director/VP of Marketing and struggling to get to that next level of growth, as you’ve reached a current plateau (that we all hit, by the way). I contributed to a roundup post on E-Myth blog all about this: My tip? […]
Last week, I had the immense privilege to be a guest of Jason Calacanis‘s on This Week in Startups. For those of you who don’t know, Jason is the founder of LAUNCH, which helps startups grow through education and financing. Jason is an angel investor, and LAUNCH hosts a few conferences throughout the year as […]
Do you experiment with your schedule to optimize your time and productivity? I do, and I recently ran a test that failed miserably and left me anxious and feeling awful. I don’t love writing about productivity, but I am endlessly fascinated by human physiology and psychology. True fact – I was almost a psychology major […]
One year ago today, I embarked into the land of entrepreneurship. A year in, my software business just recently reached the $100k ARR ($8,333.33 monthly) mark, actually right over $10k/mo recurring. I’ve also worked with 9 consulting clients over the last year that have generated over six figures in revenue for me as well. So […]
Dollar Shave Club, the disruptive direct-to-consumer shaving blades and products company, just sold to Unilever for 1 billion dollars cash. One billion dollars for a four year old company that sells razors! I am a happy Dollar Shave Club user myself. I was previously a Gillette Mach 3 user but was tired of the exorbitant […]
When I wrote my story of getting laid off and why I’m an entrepreneur now, I mentioned something in the section about figuring out your financial runway. What I mentioned there was Finance Night, which is something my wife and I do monthly. It’s been surprising to me how many people liked this idea. I‘ve […]
Recently I saw Jason Lemkin tweet his answer to “What Has Been Your Biggest Career Mistake?“, and it got me thinking about my own. I’m not quite a decade into my own professional experience, but after seven jobs and numerous positions, promotions, and a layoff I’ve made my share of mistakes. And what’s more fun […]
Too many of us live our lives in fear of failing. While some have a fear of flying, I think that once you’ve been through some great successes you no longer fear doing too well. The goal becomes to also be okay with the opposite – failure.
Anyone who is driven and wants to succeed must come up against this. It’s easy to stay in the known and optimize towards a 3-4% better conversion rate, but what happens when you want to 10x your business in the next few months? You won’t get there by doing tiny changes that get you .25% better (unless you are building off a huge base already). You have to change your mindset. Read more about On Being Willing To Fail …
There are many perks to running your own business, and mine specifically lets me work with amazing marketers and entrepreneurs who can run their businesses from anywhere in the world. I’ve read so many books about remote working and how to set up a business that allows this. Books like The Four Hour Workweek and Vagabonding have inspired me while websites like NomadList.com keep me constantly dreaming. Even Facebook marketers are targeting me about traveling the world and working. Read more about CredoCamp – Lessons Learned Working Remotely …
I love architecture. Part of the reason why I worked in rentals/real estate for a while was so that I could look at photos of beautiful apartments and houses all day while pretending to do work. I’m kidding about the pretending to do work part (mostly).
Houses mystify and excite me. My wife and I are thinking about building a house in the next couple of years, yet we have absolutely no idea where to start. Do we find an architect first? Should we buy land now or later? What about plumbing and electricity – how do we know how to set that up if we’re not in a development? We know where we want to end up – with a beautiful mid-century modern home in a beautiful setting – but how do we get there?
Bootstrapping a business is the same way.
Read more about Bootstrapped vs VC – Building Houses Before Skyscrapers …
The Internet is littered with side projects that never received the attention they could have and thus never took off like they might have. I love side hustle post-mortems and stories of serendipitous things that happen because of them. Others have written on this topic, so now it’s my turn.
I would bet that every entrepreneur’s journey is full of these, and mine is no different. I’ve set out with big intentions to launch communities in a couple different areas I’m interested in (outdoors gear and cycling), bought a site to use as my home base as a nomadic marketing consultant (which never materialized), started writing an ebook about marketing that I never finished (but built a big email list for), and more. Each of these “failed projects” taught me something different that was valuable. In fact, I’ve come to think of each of mine as failed startups and now count them as part of my journey to finally having a business that could succeed.
Here are the lessons I learned. Read more about Why I Create Side Projects I Never Finish …
Update: thanks for all the amazing reactions to this post! I have loved reading all of your emails/tweets/direct messages and hearing so many stories about people who have been laid off and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If you want to check out my company Credo, it’s right here.
I got laid off in September of this past year, somewhat unexpectedly. Things had been rough for a while as I moved to a new team internally after an acquisition and we tried to figure out how we supported my new role. Right after I moved over to the new team the GM in charge of that team left, which at the time felt like an omen and I came to realize later it was. When you lose the person who advocated to bring you to a new position, who has the vision for how that role will look, you’re going to be in for some hard challenges that you might not be able to win.
Today I want to talk about exactly the steps I have taken over the last few months that have led me to double my salary short term, which is how I am currently financing my software marketplace which is also growing substantially month over month. Read more about How Getting Laid Off Led Me To Double My Salary and Follow My Entrepreneurial Dream …
I’ve been working on the Internet for what feels like a long time now – 6 years. In that time, I have worked inhouse for 4 different brands and consulted with more than I can reliably count. That number is probably in the 35-50ish range.
Over time, as I have gained more business experience and expanded my skillset outside of just SEO or even digital marketing, and am now running HireGun both as a consultant and a software solopreneur, I have increasingly become convinced of one thing:
Those who win are those who do
Many companies will say that they get things done. But the truth comes out when the rubber hits the road. When I worked at Distilled, we always prided ourselves on working with our clients to help them get things done. After all, if we were going to be successful as consultants, our clients had to see a return on their investment. If they moved slow, then it would take a long time for them to see that positive return and at that point it was up to the consultant to keep the client happy (and still a client!).
Here are some of the traits I have seen of successful companies and individuals. Read more about Want To Be Successful? Become A Doer …
Today I launched HireGun (now known as Credo) to the world via Medium and Product Hunt. It has been quite the road to get to this point, most of which I wrote about over on Medium, so I recommend you go there to read the full story. I’m excited to have it out to the […]