In early 2019, I made the decision that I was going to try to sell Lead Cookie over the course of the year. I had built the business to a good spot where it ran without me, and the idea of selling it and moving onto something new was quite appealing.
Over the course of the year, I went through the process of preparing the business for acquisition, talking directly with buyers, listing with a broker, getting an LOI, and then having them back out on the deal.
Read More"If you don't find some other outlet for your creative energy, you will just keep tinkering with your business." - Alex McClafferty
It's amazing how one simple statement can create a ripple effect that can change the course of your life. This quote above is one that my business advisor shared with me about a year ago. And the impacts of that statement has led to massive changes and an increased fulfillment in my life.
Read MoreRecently, I worked with Explainify on an explainer video for Lead Cookie. It's always amazing how whenever you become a customer of another company, you pick up tips and tricks on how you can improve your own.
In this article, I share some of the things I learned from Explainify's productized process for creating an explainer video.
But before that, be sure to watch their 60-second explainer video below so that you can see the quality of the output.
Read MoreBusiness is not that complex. Yet so many entrepreneurs seem to struggle endlessly and thrash around trying to "figure it out."
For years, I operated in this realm of thrashing around, but as of the past few years, my mindset has shifted.
Today, I view business as this very simple thing.
Read MoreOne question I consistently get from other entrepreneurs I talk to is, "How do you offer a money-back guarantee? Won't people abuse that, or isn't that too risky?"
Alas, so many misconceptions are implied in that simple question.
At Lead Cookie, we have offered a 30-day money-back guarantee since the start of the company, and it has been incredibly helpful in our journey.
Read MoreAn interesting question that seems to pop up among many entrepreneurs I talk to “How do you manage and run such a large team?”
At the moment, Lead Cookie consists of roughly 26 team members and we are running over 70 live accounts.
That is a lot of people and customers to stay on top of.
Read MoreSo you are ready to update your website... Or create a new one...
Now the big question is: What do you actually say on your website?
There is a lot of noise on the internet about different ways to approach your website. I'm not saying that my approach is pure gold, but it has served me well.
Read MoreCulture.
In the entrepreneurial sense, it is an ambiguous thing about "how it feels to work at your company" that is rather hard to quantify.
Yet you hear entrepreneurs talk about it all the time.
While I don't believe there is any specific "how to" on building a great culture, I do think there are many things you can pick up, learn, and apply to your own company.
In this article, I am going to dive into how we have built a culture at Lead Cookie and how we are currently building one at Content Allies.
Read MoreIn this article, I need to call bullshit on myself.
About 18 months ago, I wrote an article titled Zero to $33k in 6 months - Lessons learned.
The contents of the article had a lot of valuable insights.
Read More"I can't help but wonder if all I needed to get rolling was for someone to show they believed in me." - Jess Brown, Lead Strategist at Content Allies.
Over the past two years, I have evolved from a solo consultant to running two companies with a total team size of over 30.
During that time, I've seen several of the team members I brought on board radically transform their lives and reach new levels of achievement in their careers that was unlike anything they were doing before.
Read MoreOne fear that many people have when starting an interview-based podcast is their ability to actually conduct the interviews.
Often, this fear of being a "bad interviewer" is a mental barrier that the host has to break through because, in reality, they would be great if they just gave it a shot. We see this all the time with potential customers at Content Allies.
Regardless, after 130+ interviews on my Working Without Pants Podcast, I've picked up quite a few tips on how to conduct a great interview.
Read MoreYour business model- It ultimately creates some of the biggest questions that most entrepreneurs face as they start off down the journey of building something new.
What am I going to build?
Who is it going to serve?
How am I going to package it?
It is pretty common that people ask me if I am writing and creating all of my own content.
The answer is yes.
While I am beginning to experiment with writers who will be supporting me through turning interviews into content, as of today, I write it all.
Read More"We churn ~20% of our customers off every month"
"We churn ~11% of our customers off every month"
"We churn ~10% of our customers off every month"
These are all quotes from various owners of marketing productized services.
Read MoreFor years, I would pick up and read books like crazy.
If someone recommended it to me, then I went for it.
And while there was a lot of good in this, there was also a lot of waste.
And there was a lot of mental chaos created by reading so many books ad hoc.
Getting testimonials from customers can be a pain, or kind of awkward at times.
Yet at Lead Cookie, we have built a wall of customer testimonials on our website.
The way that I get these testimonials is simple and below you will find my script.
Read More"We have a sales problem so we are going to hire a salesperson."
This is a mistake I have heard over, and over, and over, and over again from the consulting firms and agency owners I advise.
The owners have a decent business going, but they can't seem to get sales figured out.
Read More"If you were to start over again today, what would you do differently?"
This question was asked of me recently on a podcast, and I found it ironic because at the moment I am starting a new business.
After 2 years of building up Lead Cookie and scaling myself to working 5 hours per week, I have decided to build a second venture.
Read More"I feel like I am on a roller coaster ride" - This was a consistent quote from me in the early days of building Lead Cookie as I had calls with my adviser, Alex McClafferty.
Each day I woke up early and worked insanely long days, in what felt like an endless cycle of just trying to keep my head above water.
And each week, during our advising calls, Alex would have to remind me of this simple lesson:
"You are not on a roller coaster. You are in the driver's seat. You choose what business you build."
Read MoreNiching and positioning is something I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. They can't seem to nail down a strong value proposition and instead want to do it all.
They read blogs on positioning, watch video courses, and seem to obsess over this...
Yet it's uncommon that I see many people finalize on a niche and positioning statement that really works.
Read More
