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 Daniel James who asks, say we're working a part-time job and building your business with a view to eventually going it alone full-time. One month, you have a small marketing budget to invest in your business, say $1,000. Would you A, use the money to attend an industry conference in another city where you'll be able to meet with several ideal buyers of your services? B, use the money on paid digital marketing campaigns such as LinkedIn or Facebook ads, Google AdWords, et cetera? C, use the money to buy a camera and microphone and start a podcast or YouTube channel? D, something else? Definitely C, no doubt about it. Maybe, I mean, I would say definitely start an email list, but that wouldn't cost you $1,000. So what I would do is definitely set myself up with a publishing platform, whether it's podcasting or YouTube, and honing. The problem with those two things, I mean, YouTube, you get some interaction in the comments. Podcasting, you don't get a lot of feedback from a podcast. So there are a couple of things that are, the thing that I would want you to do is start to polish your message. And the best way to do that is through conversation, which you could do asynchronously with an email list, or you could do it synchronously by interviewing people on your podcast or interviewing people on YouTube or engaging with YouTube comments. But you need to have some kind of a focus to start. Otherwise, you just end up with like, whatever interests me today, I'm going to talk about, and it turns into this kind of flea market of different ideas that don't kind of hold together. So before I spent that $1,000, I'd want to have a pretty good idea of what it was that was my big idea or my mission or my unique worldview or my purpose. Like, why am I doing this at all? Who do I want to help with this? And come at it with a very service-oriented mindset because you're attempting to be in the service business. So you're trying to help people. Who do you want to serve? There are probably plenty of people you wouldn't want to serve. And there's probably some people who you'd especially like to serve. So who are they? Who are the people you'd especially like to help? Focus in on them. And where's the intersection of their interests and needs and big opportunities that they want to capture? Where does that intersect with your superpower, your skillset, your area of expertise? Where's the overlap? And if that's like, I don't know, React Native for soccer moms or something like that, something that's focused or there's some kind of gravitational pull at the center of your solar system. You want to have a sun in the center of your content solar system. So where the sun is like your core thing. With me, it's like ditching hourly. Stop trading time for money. That's the central theme. And all of the different subjects that I talk about, whether it's writing proposals or how to land a speaking gig or how to run a podcast or all these different things, pricing, anything, those are all I see them as individual planets that are all circling around the center of gravity, which is stop trading time for money. And if you have that already, you might have that already, in which case I'd be like, yeah, blow the grand on like a Simplecast account, a microphone, and maybe Zoom or something so that you can interview people really easily. And publish, publish, publish, share, share, share, share, share like crazy. Create a mailing list attached to it and try and get people on the mailing list because it's really easy to have a pretty good conversation with people on your mailing list, especially when it's small. If you're attracting the right kinds of people, the people you want to serve, then you can be like, well, did this land with you? Did you understand what I meant with this? Did this turn on a light bulb for you? And if it didn't, go back and forth in an email thread until the light bulb goes on for them. And then, oh, okay, now I've got a new podcast episode or a new video for my channel or a new email for my list because now I'm coming at this same topic from a slightly different, more nuanced direction based on empathy with this person who didn't understand but then did understand. So yeah, 100%, that's what I would do. I would start sharing my expertise as far and wide as I possibly could. Well, I would be publishing it publicly somewhere with the intention of a minimum viable audience. Who can I connect with to start a little fire, to feel like I'm getting some traction, to feel like, oh, I'm getting word of mouth? Like, oh, wow, people are forwarding my, you know, whatever. Maybe you have a lead magnet or you've got something to attract people to

But yeah, I would definitely do that, no question. It'd be so easy. I mean, the other two options that you gave are okay, but you're still gonna end up having to do C. So I would just start with C because it's the safest and I think it's where your message will get forged, so to speak. So you'll learn how to, like you have these ideas and you have this knowledge and you have this expertise, but that doesn't mean you know how to communicate it to someone else. You might communicate it in a way that they just don't get it. So you need to learn how to communicate with an audience in a way that they're gonna say, ah, oh, aha, that they have an aha moment because you've connected the dots for them. So yeah, no question, I would definitely go with C with the addition of an email list. Cool, I hope that helped. I'm Jonathan Stark and if you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Twitter and we'll find it and add it to the queue. Bye. 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.