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. I've got a question from Andri Haydash who asks, just curious, what platforms do you use for marketing for your consulting business to attract other business clients rather than other developers? Saw you do some podcasts, anything else? Yep. I mean, the bottom line is you need to be sharing your ideas publicly, but in a way that your ideal buyers are going to see them or come across them. You need to get on the radar of the right people. There's like 4 billion, 6 billion people connected to the internet now. You want to know who your ideal buyer is and get on their radar. And depending on who the ideal buyer is, getting on their radar is going to look like different things. So you were talking about my consulting business. So at the time, my buyer was like somebody way up at usually a Fortune 500 company. It could be someone in a marketing department. It could be a CIO, could be a CMO, sometimes a CEO at a smaller, you know, like it's still a billion dollar company, but maybe not Fortune 500. And the way that I would market, so the important thing with those folks is you need to be perceived as the safe option or as the authority or like the go-to person for the thing. And the way you're going to do that is by sharing your ideas a lot in public and you need to build a lot of trust with them. I think blogging is not the greatest unless you're an amazing writer. Well, I guess, I mean, all of these, all of the suggestions I'm going to make sort of depend on your skill sets. But I think when you see and hear someone talking on video, it's a really strong trust builder. Well, the strongest is if you're meeting them in person or you're on stage at a conference and they can see you in real time, you're in the same space. And people for whom you are a good fit are going to click with you immediately in person. So going around and speaking at conferences is a great way to attract your ideal buyers, assuming you're going to conferences attended by buyers and not your peers. That's the tricky part. So, you know, I certainly spoke at tons of web development conferences. Those weren't really my buyers, but the bigger ones, the ones that were more, you know, like Adobe Max, for example, or Nokia World, those are getting attended by suits. You know, people that are in management, far up in management at companies that are looking at cutting edge technologies, at least at the time that was the case. And I'm sure it's true. It's just a different technology now, be like blockchain or machine learning or something like that. So you want to go to these conferences where, you know, air quotes suits are showing up because these are people who are probably buyers of high price consulting services and they need to trust you. They need to believe that you know what you're talking about, that you are the go to person. They're like, we're going to hire the most expensive person we can find, you know. So who's that person? Who's the person we trust? So number one thing to do is speak at conferences and be great. Obviously, you have to be great. You have to know your topic. You have to be a good communicator. You need to be professional, all of that. Second best is probably video like this. It scales a lot more easily. You don't have to fly around, which is really nice. But there's just a lot of you're sending a lot of information to the viewer. So there's a lot of opportunity to build trust. They get a sense of what it would be like to work with you, what it would be like. You know, they would get a sense of whether or not you're going to embarrass them in front of their boss if you do ever eventually come on site, things like that. I'd say the next level down from that is probably podcasting because it's a very intimate type of broadcast medium. You know, your voice is it's a very personal thing and it's going to be again, it's going to click with people for whom you're a good match and it's going to repel people who are probably not a good match. So it's sort of a natural way to go. Writing a book, you know, if we switch into away from speaking to writing, because speaking and writing are the two things you have to do. I mean, you have to do both of them to some degree. Then writing a traditionally published book, it's a lot of work, but it's like a 300 page business card that just keeps on attracting clients for as long as the technology is interesting. Blogging is okay. I would prefer like emailing. I think, you know, you can do a combination of both, but kind of like everybody's doing that. You need to be an amazing blogger. You need to have like a really amazing viewpoint, which would be helpful along the whole food chain of ideas that I'm giving you here. But I think blogging is kind of, I don't know, it's fine. It's fine. I don't think it's like super.

No. So I'm not sure if this... So the question was, what platforms do you use for marketing your consulting business to attract... So I don't know if I'm answering it right. I thought you were going to ask, do you use Simplecast or Zoom? I use all sorts of tools. I don't think that's super important. But in terms of connecting with an audience, it's like you've got to figure out who your ideal buyer is, figure out where they hang out, and then go where they hang out. Hopefully it's a conference because if you can start speaking at conferences where your ideal buyers hang out, it's going to be like magic. If you go up there and crush it, you're going to have business cards at the end. And then on down the line, do your buyers go on YouTube? Do your buyers go to meetups? Do they read a particular blog? Oh, guest blogging. I left that out. Guest blogging and guest podcasting is... If they listen to a particular podcast or if they read a particular blog, then showing up in those places, that can be very interesting too. So if they read Harvard Business Review online, then getting an article placed there would be very, very, probably very good. Okay, so I'll stop there. It's basically, it's about building trust, positioning yourself as the go-to person for whatever your area of expertise is, for whatever your specialty is, whether it's a horizontal or vertical, a psychographic, a platform, whatever. And then showing up and helping people there so that they're like, wow, this person is so helpful. We want to get more of this help. Maybe we're going to have to write a check to do that. Okay, thanks for listening. I'm Jonathan Stark. And if you have a question for me, just hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and we'll add it to the queue. See ya. 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 the first to know when early bird pricing is announced at thepricingseminar.com. That URL again is thepricingseminar.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.