Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I've got an audio excerpt from an answer I provided on my YouTube channel. You can check it out at thejonathanstarkshow.com and it'll redirect you to YouTube if you're into watching videos. Otherwise, you can just listen to the audio here on the podcast. Enjoy.

Hey, Jonathan here. Got a question from Daniel DeBoer. I hope that's right. And the question is, when starting out, would it be better to present yourself as a person who specializes in multiple aspects, strategy into branding into web design and dev, or be a semi-personal small agency with you as the driver but capable of more hiring network, etc.? All right, I'm not sure I understand this question, but even if I do, I definitely don't have enough information to answer it because of the word better. I don't know what better is if I don't know what your goals are and more specifics. Better is a very dangerous word. It's like, are brown shoes or blue shoes better? Brown shoes or black shoes better? Well, it depends. I don't know. Are you going to the gym or a wedding? It's not enough information to know what would be better. So I'll talk about a couple of things in the question though that I find interesting. So presenting yourself as a person who specializes in multiple aspects, and then he lists everything from architecture to general contracting to carpentry to maintenance and janitorial work. I mean, that's not specializing in multiple. You can't specialize in multiple aspects. It's a common kind of oxymoron or paradox that people will bring up. Well, I specialize in these 50 things. It's like, no, you don't. That's the opposite of specializing. But I think what he means to ask is, not to get too semantic, what he means to ask is, should I be a full service agency or should I focus on, or should I be, I don't know what the other thing is. I think the other thing is more like the semi-personal small agency with you as the driver but capable of hiring from my network. So that's kind of like a virtual agency model. So maybe the question is, should I present myself to the world in my marketing as a full service firm that is actually a virtual agency, or should I make it obvious that I'm a virtual agency? And I think the answer to that is like, whatever is the most true, like what, I would just be transparent about it. The thing that's stuck in my head about this question is that I wouldn't present myself as turnkey. I mean, it doesn't sound like this person has a firm. So I would present myself as an expert at a particular thing or for a particular type of buyer. Or at solving a particular problem is another way to put it. While I built out products and services that would perhaps solve different problems for these particular kinds of people, however you might segment them. But when you're starting out, because it says when starting out, you're probably only gonna have one product. And the product is probably like ad hoc consulting or freelance, like contract work. So I would start off by being like, trying to appear different from everybody else who does essentially the same thing or what would look like the same thing to potential buyers. And you can do that by specializing and positioning yourself as a specialist at either broad range of things for a very specific type of buyer or who has a very specific kind of pain or problem. Or you can specialize in having a very specific skill set that hopefully is implicitly valued by the marketplace. But yeah, I don't have enough information to answer this well. So maybe the question asker will follow up in the comments later and I could readdress it or send in another question. But the reason why I wanted to pull this up and record a video anyway is because this idea of specializing in multiple aspects is not specializing. You're like using this word, but you're misusing the word. If you do everything, then you're not really specializing. Oh, let me add a caveat there because there is a counter argument to this. Let's say what you do activity-wise involves first a strategy session, then branding, and then web design, and then development of a thing. Let's say you have those capabilities and you do want to continue to engage in those activities. The way to specialize is to focus on the outcome or business outcome in general or for a specific type of business. So you could say digital transformation for martial arts studios or digital transformation for chain restaurants.

Like that. And like, wow, if that's interesting to them, to this audience, then they might talk to you and yeah, you'll end up doing some strategy and some branding and some web development and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. But you wouldn't pitch yourself as somebody who does all of these individual activities. You'd pitch yourself as someone who achieves this business outcome. Happen to use these tools and these activities and these processes, but that's not the important part. Like if you want to know, we can tell you how we're gonna do it, but that's not the important part. The important part is we're gonna double your revenue or we're gonna make you the disruptor in your industry or we're gonna allow you to disrupt this new industry that you want to go into or we're gonna allow you to expand internationally. Like those are really big desirable business outcomes that business owners are looking for. And if you happen to achieve that by doing strategy, branding, web design and web development, then who cares? That's not really, it may be interesting, but that's not the pitch. So if you specialize in digital transformation or expanding into international markets or something like that, and you use these skills that are very across the board, turnkey service type of skills, then okay, that's a way to specialize, but the website, your website, your marketing, other marketing materials would focus on the digital transformation or the thing that the buyer wants and not the stuff you're gonna do to get there. All right, hope that helped. My name's Jonathan Stark, and if you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn or Twitter, and we'll add it to the queue and I'll answer it as quick as I can. See ya. Hey, Jonathan again. The next time someone asks for your hourly rate, I want you to stop what you're doing and go to valuepricingbootcamp.com to sign up for my free value pricing email course. That URL again is valuepricingbootcamp.com. Hope to see you there. Hey, Jonathan again. Do you have questions about how to improve your business? Things like value pricing your work instead of billing for your time, or positioning yourself as the go-to person in your space, or maybe productizing your services so you never have to have another awkward sales call or spend hours writing another custom proposal. Book a one-on-one coaching call with me and get answers to these questions and others in the time it takes you to get ready for work in the morning. Best of all, you're covered by my 100% satisfaction guarantee. If at the end of the call you don't feel like it was worth it, just say the word and I'll refund your purchase in full. To book your one-on-one coaching call, go to jonathanstark.com slash call, C-A-L-L. That URL again is jonathanstark.com slash call. Hope to see you there.