More Clients Memorandum

Your unscalable advantage

Posted byIan Brodie on August 4th, 2021.

“Scaling” your business has been a buzzword for the last few years, as if it's the only thing any sensible business owner should do.

It's the right answer for some. But personally I don't want to remove myself from my business and have others do the work I actually find interesting and enjoyable while I sit on top managing and organising (ie doing the kind of work I don't enjoy).

We're constantly being pushed to do “scalable” marketing too. Told that networking or interacting directly with potential clients isn't viable if you want to grow your business. You need to automate and have others do stuff for you.

The problem is that “scaleable” marketing doesn't work so great at the small scale end of things.

Take Facebook or Google Ads for example.

There's a big fixed investment of time or money in learning how to do them well (and these days they're a lot more complex than they used to be). A bigger business can spread that investment over their greater volume.

And then if you want to be able to get a winning ad in a competitive market you need to test lots of different variations, refine and optimise. A bigger business with a bigger budget has a huge advantage – they can test many more variations and find a winning ad much faster.

But look at the “unscalable” marketing that gets disparaged so often.

A big business can't have their CEO reply to all their customer emails personally. You can.

A big business can't have their CEO appear on podcasts or webinars to promote their business. You can.

A big business can't have their CEO talk to potential clients directly on Zoom. You can.

With unscalable marketing you can do things bigger competitors can't or won't. And the difference between getting an email from you vs a customer service person, or speaking directly to you vs a professional salesperson is huge.

If your goal isn't to grow a huge business, it's usually a good idea to embrace unscalable marketing and use it to your advantage.

More Clients Memorandum

Do something unscalable

Posted byIan Brodie on August 1st, 2021.

Hi – Ian here.

The trouble with a lot of marketing advice is it's context-free.

“This one simple website tweak will double your sales” for example.

“Ooh” you think. I'll try that.

Especially if you're the kind of person who likes tweaking your website in preference to, say, talking to people. (mea culpa, obvs).

The problem is that if your website is getting no visitors, or if you already have something similar to that tweak, or if the tweak just doesn't click for your audience…you're not going to get anywhere near the same results.

About a decade ago I did my first (and only) big online launch.

I copied the type of videos one of the big gurus at the time had used for a big 7-figure launch he was talking about.

I had all the clever launch sequence stuff going on with different emails depending on how people interacted.

It took me an age and a ton of effort to set up.

And while they were OK, the results weren't anywhere near what the guru got.

I was kinda satisfied, but in all honesty a bit disappointed that it hadn't been a big breakthrough for me. I wondered what I'd done wrong that meant I didn't get the kind of results the guru talked about.

A few weeks later he did a handful of postmortem videos of his campaign (as a lead up to selling a course on it, of course).

By piecing 2 + 2 together from a couple of different videos I managed to figure out what his list size and conversion rates had actually been – rather than just the headline revenue figure.

And it turns out I'd had a significantly higher conversion rate of email subscribers into paying customers than him.

There'd been nothing wrong with my videos and emails and automations.

The issue was that his email list was over 50x as big as mine.

What I'd done was copy a marketing technique primarily designed to increase conversion rates. But I just didn't have enough people to convert to properly justify the big fixed investment in all the videos and automations.

Of course, the way the guru talked about the method made it sound like it would work for everyone. But a bit of common sense should have told me otherwise.

A couple of simple questions would have helped me:

Look behind the big claims and ask “what is this marketing technique or strategy primarily designed to do?” (e.g. get you more contacts, build relationships, build credibility, convert contacts into customers, etc).

Think of your own business and ask “is that something that's a problem for me? Would an improvement in that area make a big difference to my results?”

Unless you can give a very big yes to that combination of questions you should pass.

No matter how great the results the method supposedly gets for everyone else.

There are subtleties to this of course.

And there's an important difference in the economics of marketing at a small scale and large scale which it's worth knowing.

I'll talk about that in my next email.

More Clients Memorandum

I wish I’d know this when I first started

Posted byIan Brodie on July 28th, 2021.

Some of my early blog posts and emails were awful.

Not that they didn't have useful information in them. In fact the opposite.

I tried to cram so much in to emails that they became almost unreadable. And style-wise it was almost like I was trying to lecture my readers like some sort of haughty professor looking down on them.

It was a long time before I learnt that sometimes less is more.

Giant “ultimate guide” posts and in-depth how-tos are great. But that doesn't mean every piece of content you create has to blow everyone's socks off.

Sometimes a simple lesson well expressed has more impact.

There's a reason some of history's greatest teachers used fables and parables.

It's difficult to take in more that one idea at a time. And expressing it in story format draws us in so we extract the lesson ourselves rather than having it spelled out for us.

And because we discover the lesson ourselves, we tend to remember it more and take the ideas on board more.

My first “parable” email was about how you sometimes just have to knuckle down and do hard work for a while to get a breakthrough.

A really simple lesson. Too simple I thought at the time, but I'd just run out of “clever” stuff to say.

That email got my best ever response.

Dozens of people emailing back to say they'd been through something similar. Or that it was just the message they needed to hear.

My fear that the email wasn't “clever enough” was completely unfounded.

I didn't need to spell out my ideas in detail every time. In fact by doing so I was preventing people learning for themselves.

Instead a simple story or anecdote or example making just one point rather than dozens can have more impact.

It's a lesson I often find I need to re-learn when I get a bit too full of myself and forget that my job isn't to be clever, it's to help people.

And sometimes helping people just means telling simple stories with a single lesson they can learn quickly.

More Clients Memorandum

50 ways to kills your mammy

Posted byIan Brodie on July 25th, 2021.

Back when he was living at home our youngest son Robert was a huge fan of the TV show “50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy”.

The show featured Irish TV presenter Baz Ashmawy and his 70-year-old mother as they travelled the world engaging in various death-defying escapades and daredevil stunts. 

It's a great example of how you can create something interesting for an audience by going out and doing something interesting.

Comedian Dave Gorman has made a career (and a bunch of best-selling books and TV shows) out of it.

And anyone can do it.

If you're struggling to think of something interesting to write about for your audience, maybe you should stop thinking and go out and do something interesting.

Then write about that.

Not daredevil stunts of course.

But something in your field of expertise.

If you're a sales expert, go out and sell something challenging and write about what happened.

If you're a leadership expert, go out and lead. Take a voluntary role. Or lead your family on an unusual (for you) expedition.

Writing about what you're doing in real-time is usually a lot more interesting to your audience than dragging up that anecdote you've used 50 times before. Or rehashing the mountains of articles that have been written about Steve Jobs or Jack Welch or Elon Musk.

Writing about something you've just done is fresh. It's unique to you. It has an element of danger as it could all go horribly wrong.

And you might well learn something from it yourself too.

People today like learning with someone perhaps more than they like learning from someone I reckon.

So next time you're struggling to find something interesting to write about…go out and do something interesting.

Then write about that. 

More Clients Memorandum

None of them? Really?

Posted byIan Brodie on July 18th, 2021.

Wow – it's been so, so hot in the UK today.

I think I have some sort of thermal cut out switch which kicks in at about 25°C. After that my brain struggles to work, so writing today's email was a bit of a struggle.

But I did have something important I wanted to talk about that's cropped up a couple of times during the week.

It's dichotomous or polarised thinking.

The tendency to see things in extremes rather than shades of grey.

In marketing you typically see it in words like “none”, “never” or “all”.

As in “none of my clients would pay that much” or “my market never uses Facebook” or “no one is ready to buy when they first meet you”.

Really? None of them? No one?

This kind of thinking stems from oversimplification.

Usually it's true in the majority of cases. But rarely in all.

Maybe most of your clients wouldn't pay that much. But are there enough of them that would to make it worthwhile?

Maybe most of your market isn't on Facebook. But maybe enough are to make it a viable channel – especially if none of your competitors are there.

Maybe the vast majority of people aren't ready to buy when they first meet you. But are there enough to make it worthwhile offering something?

Challenging these oversimplified rules you set for yourself can help you break away from what everyone else is doing and find profitable little niches that others aren't active in.

Because usually they're oversimplifying too and going for the majority rather than exploring whether focusing on the minority might just work.

“None of my clients would pay that much”. “My market never uses Facebook”. “No one is ready to buy when they first meet you”.

These are all oversimplifications I've told myself in the past. And when I realised there might be exceptions and explored them it opened up very profitable possibilities for me.

What oversimplifications or polarisations are you making that are blinding you to great opportunities?

Finding them starts with challenging yourself whenever you say “none” or “never” or “all” or “always”.

More Clients Memorandum

Your value legacy

Posted byIan Brodie on July 14th, 2021.

I've been sitting out on our back balcony a lot recently (after you manage to put up a gazebo single-handedly by balancing a giant pole on your head you tend to want to make the most of your handiwork :) )

We overlook a fishing pond and there are a whole bunch of birds tweeting away as I write this. So it's a great place to relax and read, away from the desk.

Today I've been scrolling through an article from Eric Barker that mentions a group of people who are happier, have more friends and are more successful, accomplished and warm than others.

They're not defined by whether they're rich or poor, and they're not united by race, religion or politics.

What's common to this group is they have what psychologists call “generativity”. They’re concerned about future generations and they work to make the world a better place.

By focusing on others and leaving a legacy – be that big or small – they become happier.

I think this taps into the theme I've been talking about recently: how delivering value for your audience, clients and potential clients is what gets and keeps their attention and builds loyalty and trust over time.

I think for many of us, this is where our legacy comes from.

How we work with clients and the results they get from that work is an important legacy of course.

But our writing, our videos, our podcasts – they live on to help others we couldn't hope to reach personally. Or who couldn't afford to work with us. Or who need help when we're just not around.

Sitting here on our balcony I kind of like that idea. I have a little smile on my face right now just thinking about it.

So perhaps the side effect of delivering value in your marketing is that it makes you happier.

Not a bad side effect at all.

More Clients Memorandum

James Cameron’s creativity secret

Posted byIan Brodie on July 11th, 2021.

I've been bombarded with adverts recently for Masterclass: the online training portal with courses from Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams, Shonda Rhimes and other luminaries.

They're falling on deaf ears because Kathy already has an annual membership. But my ears did prick up when I heard something James Cameron said in an excerpt from his course on filmmaking and storytelling.

“Before you radiate, you need to absorb”.

His take on creativity is that your ideas come from a mashup of all the inputs you've had. “All the films you've ever watched. All the books you've ever read. All the dreams you've ever had”.

When I speak to people who are struggling to create great content to market their business a good number of them simply aren't getting enough quality input.

Not all, of course. But a great many.

If the only things you're reading are the blog posts and emails of your competitors or what happens to scroll up on your Linkedin feed then there's no way you're absorbing enough quality material to radiate quality yourself.

(I guess saying that is a little ironic as this email is based on an advert I saw when randomly browsing YouTube but you get what I mean).

In Steven Johnson's book Where Good Ideas Come From he highlights that innovations most often happen in what's known as the “adjacent possible”.

Something outside your current field – but not so far outside that no one can make the link yet.

If all you read is stuff inside your field your ideas will be so similar to all your competitors they'll be barely distinguishable.

But if you dip into adjacent fields your brain will pick up things you can apply. Perhaps not immediately: Tim Berners-Lee's ideas for the World Wide Web were inspired by the format of a Victorian “how to” book he read as a child. But they'll come.

If you're in marketing that might mean a detour into psychology or anthropology. If you're in leadership then perhaps history or even animal behaviour!

And, of course, fiction works too. Our great authors understood human behaviour long before the scientists did.

More Clients Memorandum

A surprising source of interesting ideas

Posted byIan Brodie on July 7th, 2021.

If you're in the “expert” business an interesting new idea is worth its weight in gold.

It hooks the attention of potential clients and harnesses their curiosity to find out more.

It differentiates you from everyone else toeing the line of accepted wisdom.

It creates value for potential clients and makes you more memorable.

Good ideas aren't easy to come by. But I've found a surprising source I've been using more frequently recently.

It's where last week's “value legacy” idea came from.

And the “time to value” email from a few weeks before.

And a whole bunch of other ideas I've been sharing.

That source is…

Me. In the past.

I should perhaps explain.

If you put me on the spot and asked me to come up with a good idea for an email to send out tomorrow I'd really struggle

It would take me hours. And I'd come up with something mediocre at best.

But give me 30 minutes of quiet time and a pad of paper and ask me to scribble down some ideas about a broad topic without the pressure of having to publish them and I'll do a decent job.

Or even better, get me to jot down stuff that randomly strikes me in the shower or gardening or doing the dishes or DIY and I'll come up with something decent at least once a week.

The “value legacy” concept from Sunday's email and the video from the week before both came from a venn diagram I scribbled in my “random thoughts” notebook 2 months ago.

I didn't know how I was going to use it at the time. It just felt like a good idea to “me in the past”.

2 months later when I was looking for something interesting to write about I scanned through the notebook and it felt like a great follow-on from my previous emails about delivering value in your marketing.

I know from many, many discussions I've had that I'm by no means special in this. I don't think of any more ideas than the average person.

But one thing I do that most people don't is I write them down as soon as I have them.

And I take time out regularly to scribble ideas.

I don't hope that my memory will somehow pluck those months-old ideas from my faulty brain. Experience (and the immense frustration of knowing I had a great idea but being unable to properly remember what is was) tells me that's not going to work.

So when I'm looking for interesting ideas to share as content I can just jump in my metaphorical time machine and harvest the ideas past me scribbled down.

And like I was last week, I'm often quite shocked at how good my random ideas from months ago are.

If you've ever had writers block or struggled to think of what to write in an email or blog post it could well be because you're putting yourself on the spot to come up with something now.

That pressure doesn't help.

It's much better to regularly come up with ideas, write them down, then come back to them later.

It seems like stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs stating.

Write your ideas down when you have them – don't try to remember them. And take time out to jot down thoughts and ideas on a regular basis.

Then comb through those ideas later when you need them.

It's a much, much easier way to do things. But one few people do.

More Clients Memorandum

Different types of value

Posted byIan Brodie on June 27th, 2021.

In a recent More Clients TV video I mentioned that value is what gets you repeated attention from your potential clients.

You'll hear a lot about how you should use techniques like open loops or cliffhangers or other “tricks” in your communications to get people to stay tuned in and anticipate your next missive.

These can help, of course. But they shouldn't be your primary focus.

Because no matter how clever the cliffhangers are at the end of a TV show, if we find we're not actually enjoying the show itself, we'll stop watching.

At the end of the day, what really drives people to keep tuning in to business communications or keep up a business relationship is the value they get from it.

Deliver value in your communications and interactions with your potential clients and they'll come back for more.

They'll seek you out and they'll give you their time.

But value doesn't mean that every single time you interact with a potential client or send them an email that they get life changing advice from you they immediately implement and get massive results from.

Not only is that pretty much impossible for you to do, it's also pretty much impossible for them to cope with.

The best action movies aren't action all the time. The best comedies don't have a joke in every sentence.

You need light and shade. The chance to breathe. Relaxation after tension.

When it comes to delivering value, there's “big value”: a significant change and improvement in their business or life.

But most of your communications will be “little value”. A snack to tide them over before the main meal.

Little value can be many things.

It could be little hints and tips.

Or an interesting idea or concept.

It could be an inspiring story that motivates and gives hope.

It could be relevant news. Or useful resources they can access.

It could be a discount or special offer (for people who are ready to buy).

Or it could just be something amusing, fun or entertaining that makes them smile and brings a little ray of sunshine into their lives.

(Actually, strike the “just” from that previous sentence. The older I've got, the more I've come to believe that bringing a smile to people's lives is perhaps the most important type of value there is).

My point, I guess, is that there are so many ways to give “little value”.

If you find yourself struggling to come up with something to email or a video to make or content for your website, it might well be you're trying to do too much “big value” and not enough “little value”.

Let yourself off the hook a little bit.

No one expects everything you do to be filled with earth-shattering new ideas. In fact they'd soon get worn out if it did.

It's much better to keep your relationship bubbling along with regular “little value” than to pop up with “big value” once in a blue moon.

And I hope this example of “little value” has maybe inspired you to do the same yourself :)