Ditching Hourly

Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly, I'm Jonathan Stark. I sent out an email recently with the subject line, The Only Business Strategy You'll Ever Need. Pretty grandiose, I admit, especially because the body of the message was basically one line of text, which was this, help people you like get what they want. There's a lot packed into that one line, and if you change almost any of the words, it doesn't really work anymore. I specifically didn't mean give people what they want or give people what they need or help companies prepare for what they need or prepare for what they want. Just about every word in that one sentence, help people you like get what they want, is very carefully chosen. So I wanted to kind of unpack it on this episode real quick. So let's start with the first word, help. Help people you like get what they want. I specifically didn't use the word give, help not give. In a service business, which is probably what everyone listening to this does, you know, run a service business, you really can't give anyone anything. You're almost always, not always, but almost always upstream from some, you know, downstream, potentially far downstream, big business benefit. But you can help them get what they want. It's usually a collaborative thing. It's not something you can just wave a magic wand and hand over. So I specifically use the word help, not give. The second word in the sentence, help people you like get what they want, is people. And I specifically used that word instead of companies. You don't help companies, you help people. You connect with people. Your clients are humans who trust you. The entity of the company or the business doesn't trust you. The person trusts you. So I specifically use the word people, not companies, even though you're almost surely doing a B2B, business to business type of service. Help people you like get what they want. So let's talk about you like. I could have said help people get what they want, but you really want to only work with people you like. Would you want to help people you don't like get what they want? I don't think so. I think it's important to articulate that you only work with people who you like. Sometimes when you maybe don't know where your next rent payment is coming from, you might be tempted to work with people you don't really like or you don't click with or who run a kind of business or have some kind of mission that you don't particularly care for. And it's tempting to just take their money and do it anyway. And maybe you have to do that based on your circumstances, but that is not a goal. I think your goal should be to help people you like get what they want. The next word to focus on is get. Help people you like get what they want. Not prepare for what they want or think about what they want. The thing that you're going to give them, even though it's probably upstream or perhaps way upstream, like branding, you're going to actually give them something at that point or you're going to help them achieve something instantly at the end of your engagement, even though their long term big picture business goal that you're contributing to might be downstream. So let's say you're a branding person and you are going to redo their voice for the business. You're going to clarify the voice of the business and you're going to make it consistent across all of their lines of business and all of their channels. That's not going to immediately translate into a downstream outcome like increased sales or increased profits or decreased customer churn. It's not going to. It's not going to. It might lead to that, but that's not the thing that they're going to get from your engagement. They're going to get, through collaboration with your help, they're going to get something upstream. And they need to care about that. It needs to be something that they care about and they personally connect with the downstream outcome. So if they come to you and they say, we need you to help us increase sales, and you're a branding person, you would say, why would you hire a branding person to help you increase sales? Why don't you just throw money into Facebook ads and pour traffic on your website and increase sales like that? And a good client, if they're going to be a good client, they're going to say, no, we can't do that. We tried that or that doesn't align with our strategy. We need to get our brand voice consistent across all of our channels. We know that's our problem and we believe, we believe that if we fix that, then downstream, that's going to lead to more sales. Can you help us clarify our voice or make our voice consistent?

across all of our lines of business. And if you're a branding person who's great at that, you can say, yes, I can work with you. I can help you get that. I can help you get that thing that you want. So it's important to realize that even if you're way upstream, you're going to give them something that to them is extremely tangible because they picked it. Even though it might not be, you know, dollars in their bank account, they believe that the thing that you do, the thing that you're an expert at, is going to translate into dollars downstream. And the last thing is want. The line could have been, help people you like get what they need or help companies get what they need. The problem with the word need is that there's a lot of projection in it. Not necessarily, but there can be a lot of projection in it where you as the expert in, let's say, branding, you believe that you know what your customer needs, but they might not agree with it. So I often picture this as sort of a medical analogy where someone with a terrible cough comes in to see the doctor and the patient says, look, doc, I need you to do something about this cough. And the doctor's like, well, do you smoke? And the patient's like, yeah, three packs a day. And the doctor's like, well, what you need to do is quit smoking. And the patient's like, yeah, but I don't want to do that. I just want you to get rid of this cough. And the doctor in this scenario, they can decide to reject the patient because the patient doesn't want what the doctor believes the patient needs to do, which is to quit smoking. The patient just wants to get rid of the cough. And maybe that's a short-term goal. Maybe it's short-term thinking, but that is what they want. The doctor can decide to accommodate them or not, but that's what the patient wants, even though the doctor thinks they need something else. So if the doctor decides to not kick the patient out or not turn the patient away, the doctor could prescribe some sort of medication to help with the cough or some sort of therapy to help with the cough, which, you know, it would be better if they quit smoking, but the therapy or the medication might help with the cough, at least in the near term or at least with the symptom. This is a really important distinction to make in a consulting arrangement because consultants are professionals in a similar way to doctors. And if you're going to be in the business of running around pointing at people saying what you need, what you need, what you need, you don't understand what you need, I'll tell you what you need, then you're going to have a hard time closing deals because typically you are going to be much more of an expert at your area of focus than your clients are. Maybe you're an expert at branding or web design or video production and your client makes pizza. So your client is probably going to come to you and not know exactly the best way to apply your skills to their business. And so there's a tension here where they're asking for something that they want and you maybe believe almost in a parochial parental kind of way, well, that's what you want but what you really need is this. That's a big gap and you need to be careful about traversing that gap and look for a way where you feel like you are being ethical and helpful to the client in a way that doesn't sort of violate the ethics of whatever your craft is. So, you know, you almost certainly aren't a doctor, you probably aren't a lawyer, you probably don't have a bar association or the AMA who could potentially revoke your certification, but there's still this kind of balance that you want to strike between just doing whatever the client asks, the thing that they want, and the thing that you feel like they really should be asking for. So this is just something you have to navigate, but at the end of the day, you're either going to not work with them or you're going to do what they want or the thing in the middle is you're going to, through consultation, you're going to change what it is that they want. So really those are the three options, but I think there's a pretty important semantic difference between helping people you like get what they want versus helping people you like get the thing that you think they need. It's a very important distinction. You either need to give them what they want or you need to change what they want or you need to not work with them. All right, so hopefully that was helpful. It's eight words with a lot of thought and meaning packed into them. I kind of wanted to unpack that for you on this episode here. And that's it for this time. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time for Ditching Hourly. Bye. 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.

...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.