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 Ashwin. I'm going to go for it. Vijay Raghavan. I hope that was right. What are some ways that one can pick a central idea to focus a daily mailing list around? Ooh, I love this idea. So I work with students on this, but it's a very collaborative process. And so I'm trying sort of... I think you need to kind of get outside feedback on it in order to uncover what your central theme is. So here's what I would do if I was going to start a daily mailing list. First, it's got to be around something that you really love talking about. It's got to be something that you are excited by. Otherwise, it's just gonna be a massive drag and you probably won't stick with it. So first, start with something you're really into. So for me, it's pricing. That's like I'm just obsessed with pricing. I have a student who does a daily list that's about vanilla JS. That's all he writes about. Others, you know, Rochelle, my co-host on The Business of Authority, she writes every day about being unforgettable and branding and those sorts of things. So you want to pick something that's really core to what you do and you just love it. It's like this driving force in your life and it probably will be for five or ten years. You can't imagine not doing this. So you've got this sort of... you've got this thing that excites you, but that's still not a central idea. You need to answer the question, what's in it for the reader? So once you have this central idea... No, sorry. Once you have this sort of... let's call it your area of expertise or your area of excitement even, then I would say take 30 minutes and just write as many sort of like subject lines as you can or just like topics for like 30 messages. So take 30 minutes and try and come up with topics for 30 emails. See if you can bang that out. If you can come up with 30 in that short amount of time, you've probably picked a really good area of excitement or area of expertise for yourself. And then normally what I would do is kind of work with a student like to look through this list and look for the common thread and then I would talk to them and I would try to uncover the reason for their excitement. And it's usually not the obvious reason. There's usually some underlying reason that's very... it's almost philosophical. So you know for the vanilla JS list or for my pricing list, I can... you know there's this underlying mission where so for me I just want to rid the world of hourly billing. I think it's like a tumor on professional services. It's a disease that should be removed and I can't stand it. So that is a driving force for like for whatever weird reason that is a real strong driving force for me. That's the underlying mission is to ditch hourly billing. I want it buried. I want people to be working on value because that makes their customers happier. It's going to increase wealth creation all over. So I've got this mission. My friend Chris Ferdinand with the vanilla JS list, he's just obsessed. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he's fairly anti-framework. Let's put it like that when it comes to JavaScript. And he's got this burning passion for, you know, keeping things simple, using what's there in the browser. Anyway, so look for something... I share those examples because I want you to look for that in your own mind. Once you've got that list, talk about it with some people who understand what's going on with that space, whatever that space is, whatever your expertise is. So if it's like vanilla JS, find some other JavaScript developers and kind of see if... because it might be obvious to them. They might say, oh, well, you're anti-framework or you're pro responsiveness or there's something, there's some theme that... or there might even be multiple themes, but there probably will be at least one theme to it that has some sort of philosophical mission to it, like good versus evil. Look for that. And that will be the sun in what I call your content solar system. So like you can talk about a lot of different topics that rotate around this central theme, the sun at the center. So, you know, for me, it's ditching hourly billing, like rid the world of hourly billing, can't stand it, don't want it, it's bad for everybody. But I don't always talk about that. Sometimes I talk about pricing, sometimes I talk about writing proposals, sometimes I talk about positioning, sometimes I talk about other general marketing concepts, sometimes I talk about podcasting or... There's a million topics, but it doesn't come across as overwhelming or like a flea market of ideas or like whatever Stark's interested in today, he's going to send an email about because they all rotate around this one central theme. So it turns it into a system, a solar system.

of content that isn't always about the same thing or it's from different angles, but it's all toward that same goal. So I think having that central goal and figuring out what that is for yourself can best be done by coming up with some, just not writing 30 emails, but just the idea for each email, and then talking to some friends who you trust, who are very creative people, and maybe business-minded people. Like, what do you see here? Like, what are the common threads? And then they'll probably say something, and all of a sudden a light bulb will go on. You're like, oh yeah, that is what I care about. That is why I care about this. It's not just because I love to code. It's more about enabling whatever wealth creation in the future through technology. It's something much bigger than what you're used to thinking about on a day-to-day basis. It's more big picture. It's the kind of thing you'd do a TED Talk on in general. It wouldn't be like these specifics like, oh, here's how you use promises in ES, whatever, 2020 or whatever's coming up next. Okay, so I hope that helps. I hope that gives you a few ideas, like ways to think about honing this down. But you don't have to figure it out immediately. You can figure it out over time with your list. Once you have those 30 ideas, then you can start emailing people and see if you can attract them to the list. Maybe they can reflect it back to you. So I wouldn't wait too long to get started. I would just start writing and let it unfold and become more clear to you over time after you talk to a few friends first. Okay, I'm Jonathan Stark. If you have a question for me, you can hashtag AskJonathan on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and we'll add it to the queue, and I'll try to answer it as soon as I can. 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.