Double Your Freelancing Podcast

I talk about why I've been M.I.A., and share how focusing on expected results helped me win over a new client.

When you shop for anything, check with the business owners and ask, “How’s business going?” They will be happy to share their thoughts. Roadmapping involves interviewing and understanding a client to identify their needs and craft a solution for them. Take care of and protect your clients to develop successful and reliable results.

My guest today is Lionel Martin, a software and DevOps engineer who helps technology startups improve how they build using the Cloud. As a freelancer, he experienced the income and project roller coaster, which was very stressful. Lately, he has been doing high-value consulting. Lionel shares tips he has implemented that may benefit your company. Tactics he uses that are game changers to make a good impression on clients and get them to pay him more include being more descriptive rather than prescriptive and not having a portfolio.

Today’s topics include:

• Organizing your business and personal life: Schedule, time, and
  bandwidth
• Making mindset changes by setting up hands-on consulting and
  roadmapping to be able to implement strategic or tactical changes
• 4 Phases of Engagement: Diagnosis (identify problems), Prescription
  (recommended solution), Implementation, and Reapplication
• Expressing empathy during diagnosis and prescription to understand
  why client is willing to spend money on you; walk in their shoes
  before going directly to your comfort zone
• Having hesitations and being confident enough to talk with any client
  in any industry and deliver value
• Having curiosity, willingness to help, and asking questions - talk
  business with people
• Getting qualified leads and clients involves content marketing and
  focusing on strategic conversations for productizing (3 months for
  productizing to packaging)
• Building trust and positively changing your relationship with clients
  through roadmapping; others deliver biased advice geared toward their
  services Waterfall vs. Agile Development: Where do you need to get
  to, where are you now, why is now bad, why is there better, and how
  can you help them get there? Assess risks
• Hear It Before They See It: Investing time to talk to client,
  offering proposal, and getting them to buy an option

Resources and links:

• Lionel Martin
• Lionel Martin Email

Learn how to take awesome conversations and translate them into increased scope of works to grow your business with heightened capabilities around marketing. Think about the impact, not just the deliverable. Paint a complete picture of marketing.

My guest today is Ian Servin of Animus Studios, which is a production company that makes videos. Animus has a higher-level, holistic approach of using videos to provide a solution to clients. It focuses on content creation and plans that involve sharing that content and measuring results.

Today’s topics include:

• Be willing to pay more to reach your end goals with videos for your
  business
• Disconnect between sales and production regarding goals and purpose
  of videos; make the product on the backend aligned with the
  expectation on the frontend
• Add intentionality, process, and formalization to deliver in a
  package that feels like a real product and offering
• Animus reaches out to new customers or customers contact them with
  a video need; Animus guides new customers through big picture
  marketing and setting expectations
• Onboarding and roadmapping is tailored around video and includes
  initial question asking and information gathering; never deliver a
  proposal that is a surprise
• Animus financially qualifies a client and works with them on a small
  scale to funnel them into the onboarding package; doesn’t want to
  waste its or a client’s time and money
• Discover how to make better content strategically; take ideas to
  helps customer develop a creative story and think outside of the box
  to make sales
• Generate sales and leads through email generation, boots on the
  ground work at events, and building a content marketing campaign

Resources and links:

• Animus Studios
• Videostrategy.org

Advisors lead by developing a trusted relationship with prospects. This takes out a lot of traditional pitching for business and transitions to paid connections. You become more of a consultant than just a hired gun.

Drew Sanocki and Michael Epstein are partners at Growthengines.io, which has grown from being brand new to generating $1 million in revenue in less than a year through retainer work. How has it gone from nothing to where it is at now in such a short period? What impact does that have on the way that it sells?

Today’s topics include:

• Agony and pain that comes before success and figuring out a model
• Insights: Moving from 1-OP projects to ongoing retainers, and going
  to higher-end retainers
• To go up market practically and mindset-wise what needs to change is
  the 80/20 rule: 20% of clients were driving 80% of the revenue;
  building an agency that targets the 20%
• Structuring things differently to attract and convert the bigger
  fish; generating valuable content and marketing, and focusing
  offering on the highest value adding aspects
• Typical Lifecycle: Hear about Growth Engines, sparks interest,
  follows a call to action/lead magnet, and tag leads for initial
  engagement and email sequence
• Selling Process: Once prospect is qualified, they are funneled
  through various offerings, such as courses and roadmap growth audit
• Sometimes a sales call is not even necessary; convince them without
  it
• Focusing on standardization, process improvement, and fulfillment
• Communication Process for Qualified Prospects: Emails for engagement,
  but not a lot of selling that has to happen
• Follow-up efforts with those who choose not to opt-in
• Pulling data to generate reports and drive presentation deck to
  deliver to client; making deliverable more productized and systemized

Resources and links:

• Growth Engines
• Growth Audit
• Nerd Marketing
• Drip
• Jonathan Stark
• AutoCrat for Google Sheets
• Mastering Drip Email Marketing Automation

When your business is small, you need to carve out a niche and engage clients. Know what you can do for them, and put into words what you can deliver. You need to determine whether you want to work with others or not. How do you roadmap your business?

My guest today is Matty McLain, who works for small companies and startups to help them tighten their sales process and get clients. What keeps business owners up at night and bothers them? Matty looks inside the businesses and determines how to make them better.

Today’s topics include:

• Craft proposals based on what clients say and address their pain
  points
• Purpose of roadmapping to understand and overcome objections
• Hesitations that clients will hire you; frustrations over wasted
  research and time
• Create email list following that generates leads and be active in the
  community
• Pitch roadmapping via a call; create roadmapping summary of sales and
  marketing plan
• Funnel: Lead comes in; consultation; qualify client for roadmapping;
  pitch roadmapping; deliverable report; and sell bigger project
• Silent Killer of Small Business: Giving too many proposals that you
  don’t win
• Conversion rates go up when you offer someone a taste of something
  bigger
• First dollar is the hardest to make; companies initially go with
  lower-priced options
• Time with company leaders to vet them and determine if you want to
  work with them
• Trust that you own abilities can impact a business
• Things to be aware of and consider when thinking about selling paid
  roadmapping
• Find a way to charge for value
• Proposal: Here’s where you’re at, here’s where you want to be; given
  my experience and our discussions, the best way to get from here to
  there is…
• Customer Service Era: People’s expectations are higher; you have to
  deliver an experience
• Lessons Learned: Have a process, and sell roadmapping as the first
  step

Resources and links:

• Matty McLain
• Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
• Sandler Training
• Dan Pink

My guest today is Gabi Logan, who offers one-on-one coaching and has a recurring revenue knowledge base/database business, retreat center offering events, and weekly webinar. She also does high-end consulting engagement for travel destinations and serves as a certified executive coach.

On today’s episode, we discuss hurdles she has experienced with roadmapping in her consulting business to get more clients and increase revenue.

Today’s topics include:

• Client Perspective: Addressing problems in time; clarifying what they
  need to work on
• Branding Project: The big picture, what’s hot now, and where people
  really want to go
• Consultation/Coaching Structure: Start with phone calls to determine
  client’s needs
• Send a form/survey in advance; give a list of recommendations based
  on responses
• What have you tried in the past? What worked and what didn’t?
• Final Question: Is there anything else you would like to tell me?
• Know mistakes client’s made in the past to avoid proposing the same
  option
• Use call as an interview - what’s on your mind? Let client do the
  talking
• If you’re not coaching or managing your client, engagement does not
  end well
• Don’t be an order taker - strategic input gets less value and rates
  go down
• Psychically know what clients want, but client does the work
• Value your strategic input; roadmapping is a plan for the client
• Give clients a taste of what it’s like to work with you, and what
  it’s like to work with clients
• Market being flooded with incompetent remote providers
• Curate relationships with clients; build trust and authority with
  clients early on
• Having a plan helps prevent imposter syndrome

Resources and links:

• Dream of Travel Writing

My guest today is Dustin Robertson, chief marketing officer (CMO) of Drip. Dustin has been with Drip for just over a year and came from a business to consumer background. He started Backcountry.com, where he was educated on digital marketing while growing that business. After learning eCommerce and digital marketing, he wanted to venture into online travel and develop data marketing tools. Fortunately, he met people from Drip and discovered the company had a platform that could handle database marketing at scale for eCommerce marketers.

On today’s episode, we discuss marketing automation now and in the future. Automation done right is transformative - both for businesses and their customers.

Today’s topics include:

• Describing the possibilities of automation
• Being interested in marketing automation - email is center of the
  universe
• Educating clients on cart abandonment and another issues or services
• Moving toward various ways to communicate for engagement and
  purchases
• Shifting to an eCommerce business model for selling
• Evolving ecosystem into a command center for all online marketing
  activities
• Naming and defining Drip’s electronic customer relationship
  management (eCRM)
• Specializing in marketing automation will get you tons of success
• Overturning objections for time investment involved with setting up
  automation

Resources and links:

• Dustin Robertson
• Drip
• Drip account
• Backcountry

Jason Resnick is a consultant who also educates other consultants on systemization and building sustainability via his program, Feast at Rezzz.com. His mission is to help other freelancers and agencies create recurring revenue using automation. Jason has developed his skills working in both the independent and corporate worlds, and has learned the ins and outs of what customers want and why they buy. More recently, Jason has leveraged personalization for his clients and himself which is essential for creating trust and building longer term relationships with clients. He sat down with Brennan to discuss what tricks he’s learned about building sustainability into his funnel.

• What questions you’ll need to answer in order to personalize
• How to demonstrate potential upside value
• How to communicate with customers about their needs
• How to increase lead quality and quantity

Jason Resnick has automated his business to be fully sustainable, bringing in recurring revenue for more than 8 years. His business grew out of his programing knowledge and experience working at large scale corporate organizations, but Jason has learned that some commonalities exist among clients no matter what the scale of the business they hire. His study of how consumers think, why they buy, and how companies fulfill or exceed their expectations has enabled Jason to become an expert marketer and to teach his automation strategies to other freelancers and agencies. He shared some of his expertise with us.

Developing the Skills

Jason started learning web development in the mid-late ‘90s when he was in college. He says at the time web development skills were looked at by employers like having a backyard pool: unnecessary but nice to have. He honed his craft while working at design agencies and Fortune 100 companies. Meanwhile, he leveraged his web design skills as a side hustle. Between side jobs and his full time work, Jason expanded his development knowledge, while he started to learn how to grow and run a business. In the DotCom boom and bust, Jason learned the importance of deliverables the hard way. He was laid off, but knowing he had the development skills and numerous freelancing gigs under his belt, Jason struck out on his own. Within a year, things failed to go as planned and Jason wound up back as an employee at an agency. This time, recognizing where he had fallen short, Jason paid extra attention in his new position to the business management side of things.

Eventually, when the time was right, Jason eagerly pursued freelancing full time again. A key factor in Jason’s interest in freelancing was that he wanted to be in charge of his own time. That’s why for Jason, automation was an essential part of his path to independence. As a one-man operation, he needed time-saving systems in place and he knew his clients would too. So Jason started out building websites with WooCommerce integrations. Today his offerings have expanded and now include him setting up entire automated marketing campaigns for businesses of all types that make online transactions.

Convincing Clients You’re Worth It

Brennan recalls being intimidated when he first started conducting paid consultations with clients. He says it became easier as he saw the positive results but asked Jason if he experienced any self doubt in his sales meetings while expanding his skills. Jason says the hardest part of these meetings for him was simply convincing clients that the automation would be beneficial. Clients didn’t believe the time investment upfront would produce any valuable changes in the long run. To address this common fear, Jason came up with a solution that provides a visible argument that it will. He builds custom KPI dashboards for customers that feature spreadsheets and graphs and show his clients’ transaction sequences. This is where paying attention to the client’s perspective comes in handy. Understanding the buyer’s journey and its nuances is the key to knowing how to measure a campaign’s success and to improving it. Diving deep into the customer’s experience not only allows Jason to better predict and evaluate the value his service will have on the agency he’s working with, he’s also better able to sell long-term services by speaking to their interests and needs. One drawback that Jason acknowledges is that having a shorter term project (as is frequently the case for independent consultants) does make it harder to gauge results, but this makes it all the more important to empathize with the customer whenever possible.

Evaluating Long-Term Business Needs

Jason believes the business should drive the technology instead of the other way around. As a result, he doesn’t mind telling businesses if his skills are not going to be helpful to them. Although a customer’s buying decision is usually made before they ever contact the business, focusing on the lifecycle of a customer helps Jason know what he needs to do next. He says his first task is to find out what areas of the cycle he can stream-line to accelerate the customer’s time to purchase. One way to demonstrate your ability to address the customer’s need is with personalization.

Jason started pursuing personalization when he was preparing to go on a three week honeymoon. He started wondering what his clients’ businesses would look like after he was gone for nearly a month. How would that time away continue to impact the businesses months down the line? This longer-term thinking prompted him to start asking his clients what they needed from him which incited further questions like “what am I doing for them that could be recurring in their business?” Additionally, Jason recognized that different businesses had different peak seasons and events that require prepwork or extra attention leading up to them (e.g. non profits often needed more help in the spring to prep for summer events, and product sites need more help in the fall leading up to Black Friday). In anticipation of these various events, Jason began regularly meeting with organizations to find what they needed and also what they liked about working with him/where he could improve. He learned lot during these chats that he says would not have been brought to his attention had he not stepped into his client’s shoes.

Jason was also trying to build a bigger client base on his own (naturally it had been easier to find clients as an employee). Jason started to look at his own leads and considering who they were and what they wanted. He distilled what he learned from the client calls to a set of 5 or so things and set up emails with trigger links that corresponded to them. He then sent those emails to his list. He garnered some valuable information from the experience including solid examples of what services respondents were looking for and also features he could package as products that he hadn’t considered before. For example, Jason says he over-communicates via email when possible but learned through this experience that calls are sometimes better for others. The results prompted him to change his marketing as well as his service offering and the new version included a phone call option. At the time, most of Jason’s work was agency overflow work and ecommerce companies rather than working with coaches or individuals. The data Jason gathered gave him the knowledge to open up this whole new audience and help other freelancers discover their client’s pain points and how to address them.

Building Recurring Revenue with Business

The more Jason showed leads what they wanted, the more he noticed changes in who was coming to him. He received project briefs from many new people and the quality of his leads increased as well as the numbers. Jason chalks this up to giving leads more of what they wanted through automation. When Jason asked these new customers the first question: “why did you sign up with me?” responses included “You’re responding to me weekly,” or “I want you to create a custom dashboard for me.” While this question remained relatively intact in every version, Jason says the form a given client actually sees changes based on the client’s intent -- that is, someone wanting help with digital marketing will see something different from someone who wanted a custom page. Today, Jason’s form is designed to get to those answers worked out pretty quickly.

Brennan likes that the trigger links allow users to self subset. When tracking their funnel, most people stop at calculating whether each lead is resulting in a conversion. For Jason, segmentation helped him provide better service by narrowing the gaps in what customers want. Brennan asks if his numbers are sorted further and how clients are responding. Jason says they’re happy and his sphere of influence has shifted to include a few coaches and other professions. Email marketing has become a huge part of Jason’s life since that is where his best customer is found. These listeners are intelligent and focused. They like that Jason will listen to and care about their own bottom line rather than his own (as an agency would most likely do). Personalization has allowed Jason to expand his offerings and change his business, again putting the customer’s need in front of what technology can do.

Where to next?

What comes next? Jason wants to take the skills he has learned helping other people and their businesses and apply them to his business. His next goal is to create more of a back and forth dialogue with his audience, allowing them to ask him questions and allowing him to service their exact needs. Jason says he’s a better salesperson now thanks to automation enabling him to give customers what they want, and telling him when they’re ready to buy it. With his current focus on lifecycle-based marketing, Jas

In this episode of DYF Podcast, Brennan talks to Joel Hooks whose site, Egghead.io, provides “video tutorials for badass web developers.” The site thrives by giving out tons of free content and supporting it with backend automation that brings in viewers. This strategy can work across business types (whether you offer a product or a service) with the big difference being scale. To find out how, and to hear tips for targeting, dealing with challenging customers, and scaling up, listen in to this week’s episode.

• Finding the right product and the right audience.
• Correct (and less correct) responses to critics.
• The difference between Free Content and Community Resources.
• How to generate more time.

Today Joel Hooks runs Egghead.io, a website that provides video tutorials on every tool and aspect of web development. Today, the Netflix-style subscription service has grown to have 20 employees and over 100 instructors, but things weren’t always so promising. Joel talked to Brennan about how Egghead came to be, What he’s learned along the way, and how other consultants --even across different business types-- can apply Egghead methods to their own areas of expertise.

Finding the Product

Brennan first met Joel Hooks in 2011 when both were students of Amy Hoy’s 30x500 course. Joel says that contrary to Amy’s advice, he held on to some of his early ideas far longer than he should have. At the time, Joel was dead set on selling an app for stay at home moms who are passionate about photography. He knew there was a growing community among this audience, but it took Joel a couple years to realize that they weren’t responding well to him as a male outside of their demographic.

Amy coached Joel to sell to a customer who might be more accessible to him and who he may understand better. She told him, “Sell to you.” So he began writing an ebook about Angular.js which was taking off at the time. Simultaneously, he noticed that his friend, John Lindquist, was making useful, high quality videos for programmers and distributing them for free (though donations were encouraged). Joel suggested to John that the videos could be repackaged and offered for sale via a monthly subscription. Though he wasn’t keen on it at first, Lindquist eventually agreed. While John continued to produce videos, Joel took charge of the marketing and the Egghead we know today was born.

To start, Joel assembled 50 of John’s videos (which he points out are still available for free on YouTube). He packaged them as a zip and then created a product landing page for them. Next, Joel gathered every email address John had and announced the new product. To everyone’s surprise, that first week they brought in $6000. In another week the duo went from a very simple Gumroad setup to a custom Rails app Joel built that included Stripe subscriptions. At this point, the premium content that was driving subscription sign ups didn’t even exist, but the promise of that content was sufficiently valuable to their audience. Joel points out this only worked because of the trust he and John had built into their reputations. John was well known for being an expert in coding screencasts and had a considerable following going into this experiment.

What if People Hate Me?

With the sales offering in production, Joel worked more actively on creating a real, consolidated email list, and building better emails. He had many of the same trepidations we all face when building something new, but one thought that nagged him as he faced this part of the automation process: “What if people hate me for sending too many emails?” Since each email he sends is going to about 200,000 people, Joel is now well aware that there will always be some people who don’t like what he’s doing. While most subscribers will continue to enjoy Egghead’s offerings, there will be unsubscribes and some negative comments. Continuing to follow Amy Hoy’s advice, Joel does not engage with confrontational customers. He points out that responding to critics by defending your position, bending over backwards to help, or even returning the fire with fire is usually a huge waste of time. He prefers to look at what comes next instead of dwelling on what didn’t work for one person. Of course he mentions that in a few very rare cases when someone has abused Egghead’s policies or crossed a line with their customer support staff, Joel has indulged in one of the less talked about perks to being one’s own boss. He may have even ensured the user was blocked on all of his social media accounts before then customizing their videos to play exclusively Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Brennan agrees that sending sales emails is intimidating. Who wouldn’t prefer to be approached by a customer who has cash in hand and a solvable need? How did Joel learn to not take negative feedback personally? Joel says his attitude is “buy it or don’t,” and he will even recommend a competitor if he thinks they’re a better fit for the customer’s need. He points out that the bigger the subscriber list, the less of a loss one, or even several account(s) can be. Joel knows his subscribers have to opt-in to his list and he provides actionable, content-based emails to ensure the experience is mutually beneficial. That’s why he says he feels less bad when he encounters subscribers who are uncomfortable with the level of marketing he sends out. Joel brings up the example of a recent hard sales push Egghead did over the course of several days. They received numerous angry comments from readers on the last day of the sale when they sent out 4 or 5 emails in one day. Audience members said things like, “no one is going to buy product when you spam them this much,” but Joel points out, 25% of the business that came out of this promo was from the final sale day featuring the most emails. Joel’s approach is that “the people who complain are not your customers.” He treats refund requests in much the same way.

Free Content vs Community Resources

Leading up to Egghead’s subscription service, they offer free introductory courses and have free resources stashed throughout their business. Brennan asks what elements drive actual subscription sales for Egghead with so much free material available. Joel says he doesn’t like to think of these materials as “free content” but rather as “community resources.” He feels this distinction allows him to support his employees while also supporting the open source community of which he is a big fan. Despite being free, these community resource materials are valuable on all fronts. Joel believes it is essential that this content be relevant and useful to viewers. Beyond that, instructors are paid for their time whether or not the resource is for sale. Lastly, this content usually serves as a gateway to the Egghead email list or subscription service either via search engine optimization or a direct link --after you’ve watched a couple videos, the materials are still free but viewers are required to opt in for emails if they wish to keep watching. This is Egghead’s primary inbound lead funnel (although they do also use Facebook ads).

Liberating Time Through Automation

Joel says in his business, the journey from lead to paying customer is fueled by reciprocity and value. Following Nathan Barry’s advice, Joel coasts on giving freebies and soft sells to potential customers over time before delivering a hard sell. One of those freebies is an email course designed to feed into an evergreen sales funnel. Brennan asks what happens to the many people who participate in the email course and then don’t subscribe. Surprisingly, Joel doesn’t really track this part of the business down to decimals. He says he knows there is potential to make more money but ultimately, he feels his work is good enough for now. Joel’s work/life balance is stellar and his sales are high enough to comfortably pay his employees. He doesn’t sweat the lost potential and believes he’s happier for it. Joel hopes to someday integrate more personalization into his email sequence and Egghead is just starting out in this following Joel’s participation in the DYF Drip course.

Brennan asks Joel his thoughts on transitioning from traditional sales methods (i.e. calls) to automated email marketing. He asks how Joel would convince a consultant that investing time upfront into creating a substantive newsletter is worthwhile. Joel says once the sequence is doing the work that you used to do, the time liberated by the workflows is extremely valuable. For a freelancer, time can be significantly harder to come by and more precious than money. How one uses that time is up to the individual: they could create a new product, give a client extra attention, or perhaps, like Joel, use the opportunity to recharge. Another benefit to automation is being able to sell 24 hours a day. When working with international clients, this can be exceptionally helpful. Automation can help answer most of the questions leads will ask, and even if the client will require a sales call down the line, automation can help set that up also.

When to Hold Off on Automating

Of course, sometimes the waiting audience can be a motivating factor. For Brennan, he says their influence is huge so he has to create workflows that will help his process without hindering his productivity. Having too small an audience is another example of when automating may not be the appropriate use of time and resources. Joel agrees. He says that “you have to build a thing to use a thing. Joel encourages listeners to think about whether or not their investments are going to pay them back and that includes purchasing automation software. He al

Greg Hickman facilitates automation for all types of clients, but on this episode of DYF Podcast he talks with Brennan about how automation works for consultants. Not only has Greg automated his own consulting business, but he also uses Active Campaign and InfusionSoft to set up campaigns for other consultants including some big influencers. In this episode Greg tells Brennan how his business started --almost accidentally-- and grew to serve an impressive list of heavy hitting clients in just a couple years.

Key Takeaways:

• When you should start automating
• What you should automate first
• How to break down the value of a lead
• How to use paid ads to increase leads

Greg Hickman started his agency, System.ly, as an experiment. At the time Greg was co-hosting a podcast called Zero to Scale with his friend Justin McGill. When the Podcast’s success reached a plateau Justin challenged Greg to try monetizing his automation skills by offering funnel-building services. System.ly was born and soon became the force behind numerous influencers’ and course creators’ sites. What started as funnel building evolved into a much fuller service including front end marketing, back of house client how to guides on automation, fulfillment, operations etc. Greg says they fell in love with helping businesses expand the role of automation throughout the entire client journey right up to fulfillment. System.ly spent much of 2017 moving away from coursebuilding clients and into service based business. System.ly’s current focus is helping service-based business go from productization to building sales teams. They then streamline the sales experience with automation at every turn including new lead acquisition, client onboarding, and the sale itself.

Can solo agencies and smaller businesses benefit from System.ly’s consulting and if so, is working with them worth it for Greg and his team? Greg says size of the agency doesn’t matter --in fact, he says automation is “the best first hire.” While size of agency doesn’t matter, having an established process does. He says there is a lot of temptation to start using cool new tools before it is necessary. Greg says selling manually at first is key to creating systems that actually work. Early on, agencies won’t have a sales process which is understandable but automating this early, Greg says, “is just wasting precious time,” since the use-cases and workflows that are implemented might not target the right things. Greg says, “for anyone just starting out, the focus should be sales sales sales.” Then once they have validated their offer with proven results, new ventures should evaluate the system for automation opportunities. As Brennan says, automating your process is “the codification of something you’ve done a lot manually already.” Rather than the invention of a new system, automation should be curating and editing a proven process to make it evergreen. Greg points out that System.ly has 3 employees but finds that their automation does a lot of the heavy lifting so he believes in getting started early --just not too early.

So how do you automate a consulting business? Greg and his team typically set up very similar foundational systems for each of their clients with small variations. For System.ly, the automation process typically starts with productization. When they first meet, agencies and individuals are usually functioning as generalists: e.g. “I am a web designer but I also do facebook ads and SEO etc.” Greg says when his clients have multiple service offerings, he often sees them attempting to systemize the back of house first which, as he points out, can become very messy. Greg says he fell for this trap also, developing hundreds of SOPs for his business while needing to customize the product (and therefore the procedure) for every sale. As a result, he never really got to use those SOPs. Having learned the hard way, his first questions for clients now are “What are you selling?” and “Who are you working with?” He works to extract his clients’ expertise from the process to find what is uniquely theirs since, much as we may try, no one is an expert in everything.

Having a product that clients can see helps a business stand out in the marketplace, accelerate the sales cycle, and sell easier. But how do you make a product out of ideas? Greg looks for the unique processes that his clients use so that he can build the back-end system around it. Fulfillment depends a great deal on product so it is easier to work backwards from there than to build the service anew with every new customer. Once System.ly has helped a client refine the offer, they’ll expect the client to spend some time validating and selling it. The client will need to prove that the product is something they can actually get people interested in and sell. Once the product is deemed viable, System.ly and the client will work on building an acquisition system. It is much easier to direct people towards a sale when you know what a product is (in fact, Greg says without it, pretty much all of your leads will either be via referrals and word of mouth).

Brennan thinks of acquisition systems similarly. He says you should front load your targeted marketing into your system and look at it from the client’s perspective, isolating a certain outcome rather than listing services. He points out that if you say “I’m a web designer, and I have a webinar,” all of your sign ups will be from people who have already identified an immediate design need. He gives the example of a friend who specializes in cold outreach to chiropractors. Although he is a web designer, Brennan’s friend sells himself based on the ability to get more leads to chiropractors. This is much more effective than just offering websites or redesigns to chiropractors who probably think their site is fine. This strategy tells customers that they are missing out and that there is a solution within reach.

The cost of the product also determines the sales tactics you’ll want to use. Greg says “The lower your price point, the more ninja your funnel needs to be.” For example, using paid advertising like Facebook ads to sell something at a low cost, is going to require much more work than selling a high-ticket item. Lower dollar items are going to require more re-engagement sequences, split testing, and of course, more money up front if you’re paying per click. Higher value sales allow more wiggle room and you can spend more getting one lead to an intake form than you’d have to spend on a smaller one. As a result, Greg has found that selling a service with a higher margin often works out to be more profitable than selling a course at a higher volume with a lower individual cost. If you’re good at the service you provide, Greg suggests just using systems to get more prospects and letting automation do as much lead generation work for you as possible.

System.ly typically starts out by setting up two funnels. As discussed, they have their client testing the market to see if a product is validatable. Meanwhile, Greg and his team set up an application process and the necessary screening procedure for ensuring clients get on the phone with the right people instead of wasting time with the wrong ones. They build the automation that powers getting to the sales call, arranging the sales call, and following up on call. The manual version of this is creating a Wufoo form that goes to your email, reviewing it and set up the call or not. Greg’s clients start with a version of this that is slightly more sophisticated. Theirs includes some of the stuff that goes into the process of getting on that first call: reminders, touchpoints like reviewing applications etc.

Greg is a big fan of webinars as a tool to introduce a service to a customer. System.ly itself uses a webinar to app to phone call funnel. Greg’s team will typically be building a webinar for the customer during the product validation portion also. To get prospects to their webinar, most of System.ly’s clients will use paid and organic traffic. He says clients often have a tiny list to begin with which the System.ly team will use to get prospects into the client’s app in order to grab any quick, low hanging sales. However, getting clients into paid ads is usually a first step in the System.ly approach if the customer doesn’t already have some kind of audience. The team also gets their clients to examine how they look to their own Facebook groups and to other components of their audience to promote more organic traffic in the long run.

Brennan typically promotes lead magnets rather than heftier webinars when he uses paid ads so he asks about the cost aspect of System.ly’s business. Greg says their clients sometimes pay up front, then they hire his team on a retainer. Other times they just go straight into a retainer. Greg says they use an excel spreadsheet to show their clients how much they should spend per webinar registrant, how much they should spend per applicant etc. All of these numbers are based on how many of each group moves forward and the percentage that end as actual paid clients.

Greg says in general, he shoots for at least 20% of Facebook clicks to end in webinar registration, and on average, his company gets closer to 40%. Of those who register, Greg says about 50% actually attend. At this stage, the funnel is still evergreen, since the webinar is pre-recorded and on demand every 15 minutes. Greg points out that when they host live webinars, the number of attendees usually drops to 20% because timing is difficult to coordinate. Of the 50% of leads who attend his webinars, 15% apply. Greg makes an offer to nearly every qualified applicant and 20% of those offers will result in a contract. Greg says if he had a dedicated paid ads pe