At this time of year, it is inevitable that you will come across a handful of posts from various bloggers and publications about setting goals for 2017.
As you read through many of those, you may find yourself inspired, jacked up, and ready to dive head first into an epic new year!
And as a result, you may set a handful of big goals that would be difficult, if not entirely impossible to achieve.
Yet in this post, I want to present a different view on goal setting.
Read MoreWhen you are doing outbound marketing, emails are essential.
Regardless of if you are running a cold email campaign, or following up on a direct mail piece, email addresses are essential to outreach.
In the course of my outbound marketing efforts, I have researched thousands of email addresses and tried out various tools for finding them.
In this post I have outlined the tools and methods I use to find email addresses.
Read MoreIf there is one growth tactic that I recommend all agencies and consultants use, it is strategic partnerships.
Throughout the many podcast interviews and conversations I have had with agencies and consultants, I have seen partnerships arise time and time again as one of the strongest channels for growth.
Many agency owners even attributed partnerships to generating 20-70% of their overall revenue, hence the headline of “double your agency’s revenue”.
Read MoreOne of my sales mentors once shared a very simple piece of advice with me.
It’s so simple, it seems almost stupid when you first look at it.
But yet, I can relate almost every gap of work in my history of consulting down to this simple concept.
And time and time again, I find myself sharing this information with clients who seem to be struggling to keep their sales pipelines full.
Read MoreFor years, I operated without an entry level offer. Both when I had my agency, and as a solo consultant.
But eventually I decided to make a shift and try out selling an entry level offer. The first few months were rocky, but eventually, I saw the light and decided never to look back.
Utilizing an entry level offer has drastically changed my business and my income.
This article outlines the journey I made with selling an entry level offer, mistakes I made along the way, and it gives you a roadmap for creating your own offer.
Read MoreWhen I start working with my clients, I analyze and look at their entire sales process.
And across the board, there is one mistake I consistently see consulting companies making.
They fail to follow the steps of the sale.
They try to leap several steps at a time, and this leads to them failing, falling and losing the deal.
This post outlines, the steps of the consulting sale.
Read MoreAs entrepreneurs, this is something that so many of us struggle with.
We work countless hours, and can’t imagine how we could do it any other way.
And for many of us, when we aren’t working, we can’t get our mind off work.
I was wrapped up in this vicious cycle of endless work hours and worrying about work for years, although through conducing these interviews, I have found answers to many of my questions and changed for the better.
I no longer worry about work.
I no longer work 60+ hour work weeks.
I have a balanced, normal life.
In this post, I am going to share with you the 3 elements of maintaining a life / work balance.
Read MoreStrategy. To many people strategy seems intangible.
It seems like something that companies either do right, or they do wrong.
But the truth is, strategy is tangible.
And creating an effective strategy is a skill that any person can learn.
For most of my adult life, I have read a lot of books.
In particular, I have read a lot of non-fiction books.
I am committed to a mindset of a lifelong learning, and so I am always seeking someway to improve my skills.
But over the past year, the way that I approach reading and learning has drastically changed.
It all happened when I read one simple quote from the stoic writer Seneca.
Read MoreThere are a lot of ways you can market your business.
Content marketing, networking, referrals, thought leadership, advertising, etc.
All of these methods are incredible ways to grow.
But there is one sales and marketing strategy that too many companies overlook.
They overlook the dream client campaign.
Many of my long time followers will notice that I haven’t blogged lately. In fact it has been almost two months since my last post.
For almost a year and a half I blogged weekly with not exceptions.
That worked well, for a while…
And then I started my year of evolution.
My goal with this post is to share with you some of the drastic changes in my business over the past 8 months, and the lessons I learned along the way.
Read MoreNearly every agency and freelancer has the exact same problem.
They need more work, better work and cash flow to cover the monthly bills.
Announcing...
Outbound Creative
We help agencies win their dream clients through eye-catching outreach campaigns
When you are launching something new, there are two mindsets on how to approach it.
The key is to find a balance somewhere in the middle.
In the middle is a place where you ship, but you still ship something you are proud of.
You set a realistic deadline, you do the best you can, and then you launch.
When things aren't going your way, it can really suck.
These moments happen, there is no other way around it.
Your life and your business aren't always going to be smooth sailing.
You will hit rough spots.
It's just part of life.
When you hit these rough spots, it's important to remember one thing.
Read MoreFor many years, I would say that I was mentally unstable.
I had anxiety attacks, constant stress, bouts of depression, and I was consistently filled with a feeling of "what the fuck am I doing with my life."
Then about a year and a half ago, I started a practice that changed all of that.
I started writing morning pages.
Read MoreIf there is one mistake that nearly all creative professionals are culprit of, it is this.
They make promises to clients, and then they don't deliver on them.
They tell a client "I will have that to you tomorrow."
Then tomorrow rolls around, and they break the promise. They don't deliver. This broken promise upsets the client and it hurts the relationship.
Read MoreThere is always more work to be done.
There is always another project to be started.
There is always more we could be doing...
It's easy to go through life and your career, taking job after job for check after check.
Your income raises, and you feel good about it.
It's easy to keep repeating that cycle.
What is hard is to find your mission.
To find that driving force that brings satisfaction beyond the money you make.
Making money is easy.
Living your mission is hard.
There is a barbershop in Thailand...
Read MoreYou know the situation.
A prospect comes to you with a project and the scope is just unclear.
So how to we handle these situations when a client comes to us and the scope is unclear?
How do we proceed forward and not commit ourselves to something we later regret?
My goal with this post is to outline a method to handle these situations and also get paid for your time.
Read More
