I recently interviewed Reza Saeedi—a marketing strategist and former Director of Marketing at On Deck—about his transition from employee to marketing advisor to employee again with advising as a side venture. In this episode, we chatted about things like: How Reza got into marketing and eventually, as a mentor/advisor to entrepreneurs How he was ab…

So, you want to publish content to attract clients. Do you start a blog? Hammer out posts on LinkedIn every day? Start a YouTube channel? A podcast? Good question. I get asked it a lot. In fact, someone in Mindshare asked me about it again today, so I thought I'd break out my mental model for how I think about publishing and distributing content. H…

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Brad Hussey—a former web designer turned creator, educator, and community builder. In this episode, we talk about things like: How he made the leap from employee to full-time web designer How he successfully sells web design courses on platforms like Udemy, Awwwards, Teachable, and other places How these…

The other week, I chatted with former software consultant turned CRM SaaS owner, Reuben Swartz about how to do sales in a way that doesn't feel like selling and instead sets up your relationships for success. In this episode, we chat about things like: Why traditional sales processes don't work How he helps people win clients without being sales-y …

Do you have a proprietary framework or methodology you can build an entire business around? I recently recorded a podcast with Billy Broas, a copywriter, advisor, and educator who has built a business around his proprietary messaging framework, The Five Lightbulbs. In this episode, Billy and I unpack the Five Lightbulbs and then go deep into how hi…

I recently decided to rebrand the Mindshare franchise (can I call it that?). Listen in for all the details! —kwBy Kevin C. Whelan

Do you focus much on optimizing your website for search engines? Personally, I don’t really do much beyond the basic best practices. My strategy has been more focused on email, social media, and Golden Goose tactics to build awareness for what I do. But a part of me feels like I’m missing out—especially as I begin to sell knowledge products to a la…

A few weeks ago, I invited Mindshare member and long-time marketing consultant, Mark Evans, to talk shop with me about the business of marketing consulting and fractional CMO work. This was a really fun episode. We went deep into the nerdy nuances of fractional/interim CMO and advisory work. Some topics we explored include: Mark’s transition from r…

The other day, I replied to a Twitter friend's (@RodBurkert) open question: My question: What is the 'right next best thing' you should do to create the biggest leverage and productivity boost for your practice? I replied with the following: Taking the expertise in your head and putting it into writing/audio/video, then organizing it into a system …

It's easy to believe that as advisors, we get paid to have all the answers. We feel like to add value, we need to be able to tell people what to do. What if instead, our value came from things like: Asking good questions Having good taste Running ideas through your filters Pattern matching against your experience Creating visions to consider Clarif…

I recently interviewed Kevan Lee, the former VP of Marketing at Buffer and currently Senior VP of Marketing at Oyster. Kevan is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to leading tech startups to significant growth. To give you an example, he helped Buffer go from $5m to $20m in annual revenue and 100,000 new customers acquisitions per month. In his fi…

You may be a rock star when it comes to marketing your clients' business. But when it comes to your own, it might be an entirely different story. And you know what? That doesn't make you a bad marketer. It's incredibly hard to market yourself—especially if you don't have a system to follow. In this episode, I break down the three core pillars to at…

What if the way to get your emails read and subscribers to stay subscribed was to lower the bar a little? Not in terms of quality, necessarily. But in terms of format or type. Instead of trying to write a grand theory of mathematics every time you publish, what if we treated email more like social media? What if we aimed for a simple, concise, inte…

The most successful businesses have a high degree of customer-centricity. Think Amazon or Google—they're absolutely relentless about the customer experience. And in the consulting world, the most successful advisors are the ones who have a high customer-centricity and low self-orientation. Not sure what this all means? In this episode, I break down…

The odds of you succeeding with new ventures or ideas out of the gate is low. It’s not fun but it’s true. Even if your idea is good, it might be adjacent to the one the market wants. A small set of tweaks and iterations to the format, offer, or audience might just be what it needs to take off. And that’s empowering! It means you’re not alone. Nobod…

Do you ever stop to wonder what it is we are really selling as consultants? Are we selling a website, strategy, or brand identity? Yes... and no. Those are features of our work. And people don't really buy features. Maybe we are selling new customer growth? Better retention? Ease of use? Those are all great benefits of our work. But let's dig a lit…

It's incredibly easy to get sucked into being an employee-like figure when you do fractional leadership work. When I first got started as a fractional CMO, I basically had two part-time jobs. The money was good but I worked HARD. I knew I needed to create better parameters. In this episode of Mindshare Radio, I'll break down the five main ways to a…

This post originally appeared at https://kevin.me/ways You can think about niching in a lot of ways. In many cases, the tighter you go, the easier it can be to sell what you offer. People are swimming in options, they want specific when they can get it. So there are two angles to consider when deciding on how specific you should go with your busine…

I don't position myself as a fractional CMO. I might have a fractional CMO service. Or in a sales conversation, I may say that I'm like having a part-time CMO on your team. But I don't call myself a fractional CMO as my top-level positioning. I'm a consultant. I'm an advisor. I help companies with their marketing strategy. But I'm not a part-time e…

What is your quiet inner voice telling you? The one that whispers. You barely notice it at first. But when you do hear it, you're inspired. Should you explore it? Maybe you don't take it seriously at first. Maybe it feels like a pipe dream. It's not always rational. Sometimes it's idealistic. Regardless, when you pay attention to it, it feels direc…

In this episode, I break down where my advisory clients came from. I also compare my niche (Everspaces) vs. general consulting clients came from to see if there was a difference. And let me tell you, it was enlightening. Do you analyze where your clients come from? Give this a listen and let me know what you find about your own business. —k…

Are you having trouble selling your productized service? In this new episode of Mindshare Radio, I break down the four main things to consider when trying to fix the problem. Give it a listen.By Kevin C. Whelan

Companies are hiring in-house and outsourced marketers differently than they did before. I'm seeing less reliance on using a single in-house marketer or even one full-service agency to "do everything" for them. Marketing has gotten too broad with too many specialties to work like that. But there's still a long way to go. In this episode, I share a …

When a client requests your services, it can really help to have multiple options at different prices. You can do this with a product or service ladder at different prices and scope, or you can create multiple options in your custom proposals. In this episode, I break down the reasons why you may want to have multiple options and how to price them …

What do you do when clients give you advice but then do their own thing anyway? In this episode, I talk about why this happens, how to prevent it from happening, and how to both give and get the best possible advice. —kwBy Kevin C. Whelan

I interviewed Dagobert Renouf of Logology last week on how he's been so successful on Twitter. Dagobert is extremely active and publishes a meme every day of the week, which is a big hit for his 30k+ audience. But like any successful story, there's an underlying mindset and strategy that makes the tactics more successful. So I wanted to dig into th…

It can be nerve-wracking to propose a project that is more expensive or takes longer than a client is asking for. Our first instinct might be to charge the bare minimum to get the job done. Or to promise the most ideal timelines—assuming nothing will go wrong—to win the deal and avoid pushback and rejection. But we know that's not realistic. Someth…

I recently decided to switch from daily publishing to a more flexible format. In this episode of Mindshare Radio, I break down the reasons why I started publishing daily in the first place (549 days ago) as well as the reasons for giving myself permission to publish whenever I want. I'm still bullish on daily content. It's an extremely powerful tac…

When you price your services, there's something called customer surplus to consider. Customer surplus, in this case, means the amount of profit your customers gain after deducting your costs. Not all profit is financial, but it's easier to think about it in financial terms. On the one hand, you want to price your services high enough to attract peo…

Mindshare member, Sean, had an interesting objection while selling his advisory services. This is a common question when selling advisory work, so it's worth unpacking this and other follow-up questions Sean had. "What if my marketing budget doesn't allow me to implement your advice?" In this episode, I talk about: How to answer this question succi…

Mindshare community member, Jack, had a great question about how narrow to go with your niche when just starting out as a new consultant. Here's the gist of his question: I'm currently in-house at what would probably be classed as a B2B manufacturer. The plan is to step into strategy/advisory within the next 6 months. So with my current experience,…

Mindshare Pro used to be a premium upgrade to the free Mindshare Community membership. But in my opinion, that was a mistake. It should have been positioned as Group Coaching. And the templates/resources should be categorized separately as knowledge products. In this episode, I talk about categorizing your own products and services, how to break th…

On a long drive today, I re-listened to some of the book, The Passion Economy, by Adam Davidson. It spoke to me the first time I read it. It's about craftsmanship in your business and working on something you're passionate about. It's about the power of building small-scale, high-quality work instead of mass-produced commodity work that can be scal…

How much work should you take on? When does the quality of your work suffer? What are the ethical implications? I talk about this and more in today's episode. —kwBy Kevin C. Whelan

A while back, I had my car detailed at a new shop around the corner. When I called to book, the new business owner asked how dirty it was. I said it was decent but it had some dog fur in parts of the back seat. He grumbled and told me (reluctantly) to come in. They were closed a few months later. In this episode, I get into a few lessons we can all…

There are a lot of problems with having purely generalist positioning. The main one, though, is that potential clients don't know what you're actually good at. So they're left to figure that out for themselves—and there's no way to tell what you're actually good at until they work with you. And by then it's too late. The best clients will go to som…

I cleaned my office today and I felt a lot better. More clear-thinking. Strange how your environment can affect your mental state. And to me, this is analogous to all areas of your business. For example, cleaning out expenses you no longer use. Or services that are not profitable enough. Or clients who are not the right fit for you. Or emails that …

I had a window installer come by recently to quote new windows on my house. When I asked how the process works, he told me he'd educate me on the products, size the windows, give me a quote, then I'd "beat him up" on price, and then we'd make a deal when we figured out the details. The throwaway line about haggling over price had me feeling uneasy.…

One of the things I've noticed about myself is that when I don't have a fixed publishing schedule, it's easy to push it off for long periods without publishing anything. Just like exercising, the longer you don't publish content, the harder it is to get going again. I noticed this recently with Mindshare Radio, too. I used to publish episodes 3 tim…

Could you take one day off client work per week to work on your business (and yourself)? I've been doing that for the past five weeks and it's been incredible. In this Mindshare Radio episode, I talk about how and why it might just be the best thing for you, too. Listen on the web or subscribe on your favourite podcast player. Have a great weekend!…

Super-consumers are the 10% of your customers who account for upwards of 50% of your profit. All industries have them. All of us are super-consumers of at least something. It's true. And for very logical reasons. In this episode, I break down the concept as coined by Eddie Yoon in his book, Superconsumers—and why it matters to your both business an…

There's a common misconception that marketing advisors don't execute. The reality is, we do execute. We just don't use our hands nor manage the minutia. In this episode, I talk about how to think like an agency (even if you're doing advisory work). At the end of the day, you're responsible for execution. You just do it differently than a typical ag…

What do you do when a client comes along looking for your help, but until now, they haven't been doing much (or any) of their own marketing? Do you take on the work, turn it away, or do you use this as a chance to educate them on what to expect? Personally, I prefer the latter. And if it seems like they are bought-in to reality, I'll consider worki…

> Click here to join the conversation on this episode in the Mindshare community. Your thinking will get updated. You will try things that don't work. You will pivot your advice based on what works. In this episode, I give you permission to change your mind and update your thinking—regardless of any sunk costs. Listen in to hear more. —k…

> Click here to join the conversation on this episode in the Mindshare community. One of the biggest challenges I hear from marketing consultants is getting stuck doing execution work. Managed advisory services/fractional CMO is a great way to ease into advisory work. In the short-term, it can be an exciting and profitable line of work. But if you …

> Click here to join the conversation on this episode in the Mindshare community. Are you a freelancer or agency owner looking to sell advisory services in addition to or instead of execution services? If so, are you willing to stop earning money on execution so you can become a "trusted advisor" to a fiduciary standard? Do you need to? Should you …

> Click here to join the conversation on this episode in the Mindshare community. If you've done any fractional CMO/freelance head of growth/managed advisory work (as I like to call it), you'll quickly notice how much it limits your time to work with multiple clients and do your own marketing. In this episode, I unpack a few topics, questions, and …

In order to be successful as an advisor, you need to be able to: Prove you're worth hiring for your knowledge in the first place Reinforce why you're worth listening to after they hire you If you have difficulty selling advisory services, or if clients stop listening to your advice during your engagements, it might be due to one of the three things…

> Click here to join the conversation on this episode in the Mindshare community. It can be tempting to ignore all or parts of your core process with a new client. You might find yourself jumping into an engagement head first, reacting to demands and/or responding to tactical projects already in motion. Things may be under tight timelines and the c…

As I wrote about the other day, one of the most critical aspects of scaling a consulting business without hiring a team is to generate assets from your ideas and expertise. In this episode, I break down how and why you should aim to document all your ideas and processes in your business to help you create leverage and grow without working harder. —…