Kevin C. Whelan: Hello my friends and welcome to another
episode of Mindshare Radio.
It's been a little while since I've been on the mic, and I'm really
grateful to have you with me here today.
Uh, I've got some cool stuff lined up for you.
I've been doing a few interviews in the background, so I'll expect a few
of those to drop over the coming weeks.
Uh, I'm gonna introduce a little bit more interview style
content into the future because.
Frankly, I don't want you to get bored of just hearing me rant and talk.
However, in the meantime, I'm gonna share with you something I came across on
Twitter in an answer that I replied to, and it's just something to keep in mind.
Another mindset, something that sets the frame for the entire conversation.
Uh, with my content and everything I.
I help people do, which is ultimately packaging and selling your
expertise and not just your hands.
So not just deliverables and due dates and deadlines, but moving
toward knowledge products, advisory work, and access to your brain.
How do you get, how do you sell?
The knowledge that's in your head, and not just the, your ability to code
a website, not just your ability to create full scale graphic designs.
So this was a tweet that I saw and I wanted to reply to, uh, or
at least share, I replied to it.
And I just wanna share the idea with you because it's valuable and it's, it's kind
of core to what I'm, what I'm teaching.
So this was from Rob bu, uh, Berker, a friend of mine on Twitter is handle is at.
Berker, B U R K E R T.
And so he basically said from a recent Joe Polish email, leverage
his maximum results least amount of.
productivity is maximum results least amount of time.
My question, he says, what is the right next best thing you should do
to create the biggest leverage and productivity boost for your practice?
So Rob helps B V F L S professionals turn practices they have
into the ones that they want.
And I believe that's something to do with business valuation and stuff.
Don't hold me to that, but different, different industry,
but the same, similar applic.
. So I replied to Rod saying, taking the expertise in your head and putting
it into writing, audio and video.
Then organizing it into some sort of system or framework so
others can learn from you without having to repeat yourself forever.
So why is this valuable?
Well, number one is you can sell access to your thinking and.
Number two is you don't have to be the one to deliver that thinking
each and every time someone asks you.
So when you're consulting, because most of you are consultants and freelancers
of some sort, it's nice to be able to explain something to a client at a high
level and then point them to an additional resource if they want to dive in deeper
to learn more nuances around your idea.
This is especially helpful for advisors who, or coaches or mentors who want to.
What they know and have to convey.
Just the knowledge.
It's not, it's not just about, okay, I don't really want to
learn how to optimize my website.
I just want you to do it for me.
It's not that this is for scenarios where you're advising clients in particular,
or maybe you're doing the work for your client, but you need to give them the
background, context needed for them to really buy in and understand why
you're taking the approach that they do.
So imagine I just said to you, well, I think you should do this.
and com and so then the clients left saying, well, I get, yeah, sure.
I, you know, I trust your advice and yeah, we'll, we'll do it that way.
I suppose without fully understanding it, even though you've maybe
described it or explained it, you can say, here's what I recommend.
I actually have a name for it.
An example might be my Golden Goose strategy, which is leveraging other
people's aggregated audiences to get in front of them with value so that you.
Essentially, you know, get your value proposition in front of
people and sell more stuff.
Versus looking for the golden, the golden Ag, which is a direct
end client or customer, which is really hard and and expensive.
So a strategy might be, well, who are the audience aggregators
of my particular niche?
And then how do I partner with them or add value to them in
some way that is contributory.
gets me in front of them so that I can drive awareness, uh, to my site.
For example, I've been featured on trends.vc several times, and that
points a bunch of traffic over to me for a little period of time.
Every time they, they publish something and then it kind of
trickles in after that, after a while.
So that would be an example of a golden goose where, you know, they have an
aggregated audience, some of whom are.
Marketers and creative professionals who want to get into consulting.
And so that's a perfect example of a golden goose where I, I was featured
in there once or three or four times, maybe three times, and now I sort of
get people trickling over to my website, and that's a research report, by the
way, if you're not familiar with it, head over to trends.vc anyway, so
I'm taking it down her rabbit hole.
But that's an example of, I can say that to my client and
then now, instead of having to.
all of what I just said and even go into greater detail cuz
that's just one example of many.
There's associations, there are other non-competitive consultants, there are
software providers for your, the industry that you're trying to to focus on.
So there's a million different places that aggregate the audience
that you're trying to sell to.
So that's the golden go strategy.
But so rather than me explaining, All those details.
What I can do is I can either point them to an article on my website or
I can point them to more deep dive training if I have something like that.
And because they're a client of mine, they unlock access
to most or all of my training.
Where my mind is at right now is taking all these ideas, putting them into my,
into my learning management system, cajabi, and putting that as part of
the membership and really just saying, Hey members, here's all the good stuff
you need to know, and if you need.
implementing it, or if you need help contextualizing it or you need help
deciding what's gonna be the right next step for you, come talk to me and I
can help point you in some directions that'll, that'll work very well.
Or you can guide yourself through the, the maze of content and figure
out what's most important to you now based on the topics of the courses
and training and that kind of stuff.
So that's kinda my mindset.
and I don't know how it's all gonna play out, but essentially that's
where I'm going is taking these ideas, giving them names, organizing
them into some kind of a framework.
I currently do this with my Trello board, so if you're a member, uh, of Mindshare,
you'll see that I have part of it as you get my advisor os, uh, which is an
operating system for marketing advisors.
But in there is, and this will apply to non marketers and others as well, in
there is a Trello board that basically stores and organizes my ideas so that
I can remember during the course of my consulting engagements, all the good ideas
that I had, all the things, and sometimes they're ideas that other people had.
So if I found that someone shared this really great tactic for growing an
email newsletter, I might save that in.
give it attribution and say, here are some additional resources on
growing your email newsletter.
And maybe one or two of them are mine and maybe five or 10 of
them are someone else's that I recommended and and believe in.
And at some point, maybe I'll go and I'll take the best parts of
that and I'll put it together and give credit where credit is due.
It's not about ripping people off, it's just about being a curator of good ideas
and giving attribution wherever you can.
And so that's kind of the mindset I'm in right now is how do I.
These ideas outta my head.
Teach them, put them into a documented system or method, some
kind of information architecture.
Anytime you're dealing with, and this comes from my web design days, but anytime
you're dealing with a lot of information, the key is, okay, how do we organize the
information so I isolate the variables?
What are we selling, what are we doing?
You know, et cetera, et cetera.
In the case of your methodology or your system or your framework,
how do I organize all these ideas into some kind of a bucket or a
system so that someone looking.
ideas for marketing or ideas for business model design or ideas for their method,
developing their intellectual property.
There's a place to go and explore all those ideas.
And so that's kind of my framework is the method model, and, uh, and marketing.
So what's your methodology?
What's your business model and how are you marketing yourself?
You could say that mindset is a part of it, but I really think
that's folded into all of it.
But that's one example of a framework that would, can theoretically house everything.
It's, is this a marketing tactic?
Is this a business model and revenue model thing?
Is this a way that I'm gonna package my expertise or and deliver it, or is this a.
marketing thing, I, I don't remember if I said that in the first place.
Is it one of those three market method or model?
And so, you know, having a place to store all those ideas
in one place is, is really key.
So I'm just gonna close this off and summarize.
If you are looking to create leverage, whether you're just getting started as
a freelancer, Or you are a full-time marketing advisor or even an educator
or non marketer, but advisor, educator, these principles still apply.
It is leveraged to take your ideas outta your head because
then you can share access to them.
You can sell it as individual workshops, individual courses, or, or do that.
And what I do, which is then package that all up and put into
my membership, sell it as a hybrid membership thing, which is what I do.
And so they can learn, students can learn and get all the information
and then ask me on our calls.
For advice or if, depending on which plan you're on, you can DM me and and
in Slack and we can talk about it.
So there's a lot of components to it, but the key thing is that
you don't have to repeat yourself over and over and over again.
You've got your ideas and your expertise organized and the stuff you've curated
and really, It's okay to be a curator.
Part of my methodology training is about having a swipe file.
It's about having examples.
We learn through examples.
That's one of the things that I picked up in a book called Make Users
Badass, I believe, by Kathy Sierra.
Really great book if you're into, uh, learning.
Uh, teaching, you know, teaching and, and how people learn and what he says.
What she says is that people basically learn through examples,
good examples and bad examples.
So if you showed, just like ai, if you show people a ton of good examples, that's
one of the fastest ways to really learn.
Aside from applied practice and that kind of thing.
. But if you also show people bad examples, they'll learn in inadvertently as well.
We're kind of memetic creatures.
We, we naturally take in information and our brains are influenced by it,
whether we see good examples or bad examples, but anyway, so examples
and curated content to support your core methodology are all fair game.
As long as you give attribution to your ex, to your references, and any examples
you have, you know, label it and whatever, especially if you're not being critical.
It's not about being critical, it's about finding good examples, not bad ones.
And then having that.
So you're a curator, you're a forager of good information, and you aggregate
it and organize it in a way, in a system that lets your clients get a result.
So I just wanted to share this with you.
I do believe it is the most highest form of leverage you
can create, and that is through.
Packaging your expertise, getting it outta your head, isolating the variables,
giving things names, organizing it into a framework or a methodology or a system,
and then selling that alongside your consulting or instead of your consulting.
And that's where courses come into play and all that stuff.
But if you get into the habit of isolating these ideas, you
can be a really great way to.
No longer need to repeat yourself over and over again and to create leverage
around your expertise, and that allows you to deliver better results
faster with less manual intervention.
And eventually, if you could theoretically sell, Just your expertise and not be
involved at all and or be involved asynchronously or whatever you want.
And so that's kind of the direction I'm headed with with my work is really
thinking about training and content and expertise and, and even not just my
expertise but other people's, and being a curator and an aggregator of that.
That's another form of leverage is aggregation and curation.
So if you can bring people and things together and aggregate it
into one, That's a form of leverage.
If you think of all, any social media network, YouTube, they aggregate attention
and they aggregate other people's content to create more attention.
And this, this flywheel that continues.
And so you're not, YouTube's not creating the content.
So that's another form of leverage.
They get the eyes and they can sell ads to those eyes, but they're not creating it.
So that's a, a side version, but, , this is where my head is at.
I think it's really critical to think of yourself as experts, to isolate
the ideas and expertise that you have to curate and forage, and to bring
it all together under one package.
One system that helps you create leverage in your business.
So if you found this useful and you'd like my help, head over to kevin.me/group.
I may change the domain again in the future and make it a standalone thing,
but this is a membership for consultants, particularly for creative consultants,
marketers, that kind of thing, although there are some non marketers that sneak in
and get a lot of value out of it as well.
and, uh, yeah, in there we, we talk, uh, twice a week, twice a
month rather, once every other week.
And we do a workshop of some kind, either with me or a guest expert.
And that's the whole idea.
And then I share some audio files, which are kind of raw thoughts,
kind of like this, but shorter and, you know, less polished or less.
I, I just do it on my iPhone.
Uh, past recordings of all our coaching calls, and there's a bunch
of learnings and stuff in there.
And, you know, all the past trainings that we've got so far.
We've got a whole list of things from copywriting for, uh, for consultants to
seo, for consultants to how to package and sell custom consulting engagements.
How to create productized services, website templates,
optimizing your website.
This is a bunch of content and more being added every month.
So check it out if you want.
Kevin Domi slash.
to check it out.
It's called Mindshare, the community.
It's a hundred bucks a month and, uh, at least for now.
So get it while the getting is good.
And, uh, there's some additional options in there as well when you see the page.
But just wanted to share this with you.
I'm trying to walk my talk and I'm trying to teach this vision,
this wave operating that I have.
It's this kind of a hybrid version of.
Teaching and doing, and the doing creates the content for the teaching
and, and then, and for the advisory work.
So anyway, this is, this is where we're all headed.
The more stuff you know, and the more you focus on isolating it and extracting
that information, putting it into a documented form, the more you'll earn
at the end of the day and the less you'll work, which is kind of the goal,
or at least the more options you'll have and the more leverage you'll have.
So I'll leave you right there, my friends.
You have yourselves a great day and.
Yeah, if you like this content, share with a friend.
I'd really appreciate it.
Your word of mouth is how this thing grows, and I'll see you
on the inside of the group.
Bye for now.