Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:09

Okay. So here we are. We're, we're back with another episode. Today, we we've got our friend Brennan Dunn on the show. Brennan, welcome welcome back to the show.

Brian Casel: 00:17

You were on one of the earliest episodes of Bootstrapped Web. So welcome back.

Brennan Dunn: 00:22

Yeah. Thank you. I I forgot. What did we talk about in that early episode?

Brian Casel: 00:25

Yeah.

Brennan Dunn: 00:26

Googling trying to figure it out, but I haven't.

Brian Casel: 00:28

I think I think the theme of that one was all about email marketing and email automation.

Brennan Dunn: 00:33

Got it.

Brian Casel: 00:34

So today, we're gonna take a a very different track, and I think this is kind of like a good follow-up to our previous episode. Jordan, you and I talked a lot about building sales funnels. So today, you know, we we've got, Brennan on who who has done quite a bit of of lead generation and and and lead building in in his various businesses and and, of course, teaches on that that subject. So so, Brennan, I mean, I I think a lot of people in our audience, you know, know about you and and what you're all about. But what what have you been up to this year in 2014?

Brian Casel: 01:06

And what are you kinda working on right now as as we're heading into, into 2015?

Brennan Dunn: 01:11

So conveniently enough, I have in front of me my high level goals for early twenty fifteen. So I can I can read them off? Nice. So got a few things that I'm working on. So I've partnered up with a friend of mine and who owns an agency and he's spearheading the development of Plantscope.

Brennan Dunn: 01:31

So I'm kind of taking a backseat in becoming kind of the chief marketing officer for Plantscope. And he and his team will be and they've they have been developing all the features. And we've been I mean, it's it's insane. Like, amount of progress we've made just in the last three weeks has been monumental. So plan scope is now really being I'm I'm really pushing that.

Brennan Dunn: 01:51

I plan on doing a big I've really never announced it or promoted it to my list at all. I mean, people have kinda read between the lines to find to see that I do run a SaaS. But I'm gonna be doing a big, big launch to my list probably in two months or so once I really iron out a lot of the onboarding work I'm doing now and the and the future work the team's doing now. So I've got that that in the fire. I also am working on a a new agency.

Brennan Dunn: 02:19

So for those who don't know my background, I I did start an agency oh god. How long has it been? Six or seven years ago that I I grew to eleven eleven employees. And it was the typical kind of web web consultancy. And I exited that start Planscope, actually.

Brennan Dunn: 02:37

And I learned a lot along that path that has kind of allowed me to do a lot of what I'm doing now, a lot a lot of the teaching and and course creation I'm doing now. But what I'm what I'm doing is I'm gonna create a new agency. This time it's more of an experiment to really, with the hindsight that I have now, what would happen if I apply you know, when I started my agency originally, it was stumbling through the dark. Eventually, I got to, you know, I got to see light, but it took a while. So it's kind of an experiment and also as a way to kind of really optimize the hell out of it, you know, with you know, it's it's gonna offer product type services.

Brennan Dunn: 03:09

I'm gonna have a very minimal, you know, my dependency on or the dependency that I have or my involvement rather in the agency will be minimal to non required. And so I'm I'm just gonna apply a lot of what I'm I've been teaching. That's worked for me, that's worked for a lot of other people to this company. And and the last thing that I'm working on is I'm I'm redoing. So I have a course that I created two years ago called Sell Yourself Online, The Blueprint.

Brennan Dunn: 03:39

It's basically the blueprint I use to, get my agency to a 100 a month in revenue. The issue with that course is it's very focused on exactly what I did, which was a lot of lead generation through events and using website you know, using our company's website as a way to funnel people toward these events that would then get people to attend. And then there'd be an autoresponder sequence that would condition these leads. And then finally, the last bit of that sequence would close them. By close them, I mean set them up with a sales meeting with some one of us.

Brennan Dunn: 04:17

So that's what I covered in that course. But now I'm expanding it to include networking, to include referral marketing, to include a lot of the stuff that I've been doing, that I've learned a lot about, that I've researched. I mean, I've got a lot of coaching clients who I I've given them a lot of ideas over the years and and I have a lot of data to report on. So I'm gonna be broadening that product. So that's also coming probably in the first quarter.

Brian Casel: 04:39

Awesome.

Jordan Gal: 04:39

Yes. Since the last time you guys spoke, I have inserted myself into the podcast. And so why don't I insert myself into the conversation

Brennan Dunn: 04:48

There you go.

Jordan Gal: 04:48

The the same the same way. I think it's just gonna be a fascinating experience watching this this type of experiment unfold. I can sympathize with the with the pressure that you're putting on yourself, almost doing this, like, on stage in in many ways, but I have a lot of confidence that it's gonna work. And obviously, it's never gonna work exactly the way the plan is laid out, but that's that's part of it. That's part of the the fact that even when you teach people, they can't just take exactly what you did and apply it.

Jordan Gal: 05:21

They have to you know, this is the business world. It's dynamic. So it's gonna be really interesting to see it unfold.

Brennan Dunn: 05:26

If you wanna laugh, I mean, you go back three and a half years in my blog, the very first article was about how I made my first 100 and, like, $2 with Plantscope. It was the fir this is the first time I ever made any money outside of sending an invoice to somebody. And I was so happy. And now, you know, I mean, obviously, my business has grown quite a bit since then. But yeah.

Brennan Dunn: 05:48

I mean, I've always tried to be pretty open. It's never hurt me and it's only helped others. So I plan on continuing that. I mean, obviously, the difference now will be I'll be obligated under certain non disclosure agreements because I'll be, you know, doing client work. Mhmm.

Brennan Dunn: 06:05

Or will be doing client work. So I can't be talking about like financials of my clients and stuff. But but yeah, I'll be as open as I can. And and another one of the other benefits of this is now that I have a pretty big audience of consultants, I'm gonna be I'm I'm gonna be sharing all of this, you know, all those stumbles that I make, all the all the wins that I make and everything with my audience, with my list. And so I think it'll be good.

Brennan Dunn: 06:30

You know, it'll be kind of a way to kind of allow all 23,000 people on my list to be kind of a fly on the wall as I as I start this new venture.

Brian Casel: 06:38

That's really awesome. And I think I think some people who who kind of follow what you do and and and follow along with the story might wonder or kind of think about like, well, as successful as your businesses as a whole are, why why would you go back to consulting and client work? And I think the interesting thing that you said there a couple minutes ago was, you know, you're you're designing this business with the the end goal, maybe more of like an immediate goal, to remove yourself and not have it completely depend depend on your own time. I mean, you and I talked in in-depth about this on your podcast a couple of episodes back, talking about productized services. So we won't get into all that kind of here in this in this episode, but but I just think that's interesting.

Brian Casel: 07:24

I think it'll be fantastic a fantastic, like, long term case study for for all of us who kinda follow along in in your in your newsletter. But let's

Brennan Dunn: 07:33

I mean, if you want really quick before we transition. If you want the three the three goals I have in doing this are, first is marketing. It helps promote my other stuff, to be honest. Just to put all my cards on the table. It's very good.

Brennan Dunn: 07:45

It's a good marketing tactic, the transparency there. I mean, any company that's been transparent has done it not not only to be transparent and to help others, but also as a way to help themselves. So that's one reason. The second reason is obviously revenue because I I have ideas on how I can make this quite profitable. And the third reason is I'm bored.

Brennan Dunn: 08:03

I mean, I a lot of my stuff is pretty much on autopilot now. I've set up a lot of things. I've taken time. But I mean, I don't I don't really work typically more than, you know, fifteen ish, twenty hours a week. So, you know, I've got I've got time to spare.

Brennan Dunn: 08:18

So

Brian Casel: 08:19

It's a good place to be. A dangerous place to be, but

Jordan Gal: 08:23

Yeah. Yeah. It it it depends, though. I think I think what what this is all alluding to is is a mindset of of being a business owner or or an operator, and it's very easy to confuse the two, especially before you get to a place that you are, you know, you're covering your expenses relatively easily. But but if that's not the ultimate goal, then you should have a plan in place for for how that's gonna

Brennan Dunn: 08:50

look. Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 08:51

Yeah. And and I mean, just, you know, just kinda starting from the mindset of working on the business and not being consumed in the business and starting that from day one. Like, now, since you're starting new today, based on everything that you've learned over over the last several years of running different iterations of your business, it'll it'll be it's it's a really great case study because there are so many consultants out there who start like so many of us, as freelance web designers, freelance web developers, copywriters, and you're doing all the work yourself until finally, you might get to the point where you need to hire that second person and start delegating years down the line. But we're kind of, like, fast forwarding through that whole process and building it strategically from day one. But let's kind of shift gears.

Brian Casel: 09:39

You know, let's come back to the things that you've been talking about in your in your book, the blueprint and things that you're putting together for the updated version, I think the the theme that we're going for here in today's episode is really all about building leads and and getting that sales funnel going if you're a consultant, building a consultancy. But what what's kind of interesting about your story, Brennan, is that you've you've done consulting before, you're doing it now. Again, you've built very successful educational products. You have the software product, you know, SaaS, PlanScope. How does building a sales funnel and getting leads differ between consulting education products and software?

Brian Casel: 10:23

Or is it the same across all three?

Brennan Dunn: 10:26

There's a lot of a lot of the elements, to be honest, are similar. A lot of what I've been a lot of what I did with my agency, in the my first agency along with what I'm doing now with the new agency are are very similar in in a lot of ways, I guess, to what I do with my software, my my courses. The similarities are I've always taken a very value driven method of marketing. So give stuff away for free, ideally at scale. Influence people.

Brennan Dunn: 10:57

Give them an ROI on the time they invested in in learning from you. And work your way up the value chain. So I did that and I can talk a bit about how I how I grew that first agency, how I grew the revenue to the 6 figures a month doing this. But the different the big difference now is consulting always requires some degree of high touch something. So, you know, back and forth, talking on the phone.

Brennan Dunn: 11:25

Now, one of the things I did with that first agency, which I'm also doing now, is I tried to minimize a lot of that that overhead of that sales overhead. One of the things I think a lot of us miss is that so much of selling, especially for consulting, is convincing. It's it's showing somebody that you are reliable, reputable, can do the work, so on. One of the things we did or, you know, that we did with my agency was we we automated a lot of that part, so that when we did talk, it's just ironing out details of the the engagement.

Brian Casel: 11:57

It's kinda like building that trust built in without having to go through those meetings. But they just kinda know you from seeing you on stage or reading stuff. Yeah.

Brennan Dunn: 12:06

I mean, we would do events at our office on different topics. And the goal there wasn't necessarily to sell at the end of the event. Like if I do a webinar these days, I'm hoping to get sales at the end of the webinar. But when I was doing these events, just because we were dealing with 5 or 6 figure price points, we weren't looking for immediate sales. What we were hoping to do would be to, like if we have 30 people in the room, to get a lot of what we would do late we would need to do later on with them out of the way, establish that trust.

Brennan Dunn: 12:35

And then once we had them kind of in in our system, in our ecosystem as I called it, we could then do different things. And I I could talk about a lot of these tactics we did to kind of keep them close to us. And the goal wasn't to get the goal was our marketing goal was not to get direct clients. It was to build up an army of people who understood that we are capable of producing value and to keep them close to us. And there could be a chance that some of those people in that army are gonna be direct clients of ours, but more than often, a lot of them became our best referral sources that were basically because I mean a lot of us, we all want we all love having a client who got a lot of awesome stuff out of us and then they refer people to work with us.

Brennan Dunn: 13:18

That's how every consultant wants to have a really strong army of past clients who are referral sources. What we did differently is we found ways to give them value at scale, not individually, but as a, you know, on a big on a big higher plane, guess, or whatever. And we we then used these people kind of like happy past clients. And they referred us and they got us a lot of gigs that we wouldn't have gotten without this, I mean, without these hundreds of people who were acting as referrals versus for us.

Brian Casel: 13:48

Yeah. It's interesting because I guess when you're dealing with consulting, especially high high price point consulting, it's the kind

Jordan Gal: 13:55

of

Brian Casel: 13:55

thing that it's not definitely not an impulse buy. And it's not the kind of thing that you can just do events every month, and know for a fact that we're gonna get x number of sales from every event from every event. The people in your audience have to get to the point where they're where they're in the market for this sort of service.

Brennan Dunn: 14:16

Right.

Brian Casel: 14:17

And not Yeah. The people when trust, but

Brennan Dunn: 14:21

Right. And when when we did these events, we knew that I mean, typically, requires a lot of prep work for the client, you know. They need to prep budget. They need to kind of get their ducks in order. We weren't looking for immediate sales.

Brennan Dunn: 14:33

It was definitely a long long game sale process which was okay, especially considering that you do enough of this and you you have enough of these people going through that pipeline. You know, if you do it right and you're consistent, you can kind of make it so you're never really lacking work.

Jordan Gal: 14:49

Yeah. This is something that we all see around us every day and and still often don't pick up on it. So, you know, when it ranges from going to a Facebook group that you're in and asking for a copywriter. Right? You you would rather take a recommendation from someone and right?

Jordan Gal: 15:07

So that's a natural response instead of just going out looking for a stranger and hoping that they're good. Same thing, you know, I'm considering hiring a lawyer soon for a few things with the company. And I remember about a year ago, I had a conversation with Scott Edward Walker, right, who I got the info from Mixergy. So I spoke with him on the phone for an hour. After the first ten minutes, he knew I was not gonna be a client.

Jordan Gal: 15:32

Mhmm. And he sat there and talked me through everything patiently for the rest of the hour. And, you know, who's in my head when I wanna hire someone? It's just it seems obvious, but it's it's a very admirable, long game, patient approach. The the question I have is everyone sees the logic in that.

Jordan Gal: 15:52

The question is, how do you how do you tie that back? How do you keep them close to you, as you said? How do you make it an actually cohesive strategy instead of just give give give and hope it comes back?

Brennan Dunn: 16:04

I think I think where a lot of people fall is they get burnt out. Say say the what Scott Edward Walker is his name. Right? Mhmm. So say he does a lot of these one hour phone calls with people like Jordan.

Brennan Dunn: 16:15

Yes, Jordan, you might be in the future potentially a good fit to be a client of his, or you could refer people now that you've gotten a lot of from him. But he still gave up that hour to do that. One of the things we try to do and and I try to do is, how can I have 30 people listen in to that call with Jordan for an hour? So I don't so I don't spend thirty hours and spend one hour to affect 30 people. It's just a numbers game, ultimately.

Brennan Dunn: 16:44

But, so you're asking about how how do you keep people close? So we we did a lot of different things. First thing we did is we we tried to we tried to become, for lack of a better way of putting it, I hate the term, but like a thought leader locally. So we would do these different things where we'd we'd host these events. People would get value out of us.

Brennan Dunn: 17:05

And I'll talk about kind of the the sequence that we did after the events in a second, because that was really important. But in general, what we did is we we would just constantly be inviting people who had attended events to future events. We would do things like when we shipped new work, we would basically congregate on a bar, invite our client if they were local, invite all of the people on our list, but our our past clients, invite everyone. First run drink's typically on us. And the goal there is, like, you get prospective clients in a room where they're celebrating your ability to get shit done.

Brennan Dunn: 17:40

Mhmm. That's a pretty big signal. And that's, we knew psychologically that, like, I remember the first time we did this, we launched for a local client of ours. He was there. Was kind of the center of attention because we just built this app for him.

Brennan Dunn: 17:55

And I know there there were people in that room who were somewhere in our pipeline who were like, you know, I wanna be like I wanna be in I wanna be in Mark's shoes. And, so we did a lot of that. We we basically kept in touch through, through email and through live events. And since most of this list was local, even though the work we did wasn't always local. Because a lot of the companies by us aren't these big tech companies who could afford us, but a lot of these people knew people outside of the area and and were able to kinda get us in the door.

Brennan Dunn: 18:28

So we we did a lot of these yeah. We just constantly kept in touch. We did a lot of these events and it it worked really well.

Jordan Gal: 18:37

Like once a month?

Brennan Dunn: 18:39

Depends. We did a lot of these Once a like so we did these educational events, which would be like training events or training seminars, I guess.

Brian Casel: 18:48

How would you go about getting new new people to attend those events? Like, you So if it's local and you're local, you could get like the same 30 people every month. Right?

Brennan Dunn: 18:57

So you ask them. I mean, you you basically when you promote the event, you say, hey, you invite one peer of yours so you think we'd get a lot out of this? And we would rotate up the topics. I mean, we talk about like should you build customers, should you get off the shelf, iPhone versus Android, how to raise funding. Like, stuff that really isn't even like our secret sauce in any way.

Brennan Dunn: 19:17

We would just find like, who's the local investor? Hey. You you wanna give a presentation to a bunch of potential entrepreneurs and we'd be the kind of that middleman there. So it wasn't always us at the kind of that center of attention, but we were considering we were the organizers. Right?

Brennan Dunn: 19:33

So that was unavoidable. But yeah, I mean, at first and this is kind of the chicken and egg situation that a lot of people ask about. Like, you know, well, how do I get that first 30 people in the room? How we did that was twofold. The first is we literally went to our chamber of commerce and said, hey, could we present to your audience?

Brennan Dunn: 19:54

And it's like guest posting but in real life. It's, you know, basically, hey, we've got The original guest post. Yeah. Could we could we talk about how how to build a Facebook to your audience of like small like bakery owners or whoever's in the chamber. Right?

Brennan Dunn: 20:10

And we knew this wasn't I mean, this wasn't these aren't direct clients of ours. It was just a way to kinda bootstrap that audience. But another way to do that, and this is something I didn't do as much, but a lot of my coaching clients are doing now pretty successfully, is you when you go to events, you go to a networking event, let's say, and every city has these. They all have, like, BNI groups, which not a big fan of BNI, but, you know, there's BNI groups, Chamber of Commerce run events. Like, meetup.com has a bunch of, like, stuff going on.

Brennan Dunn: 20:38

Typically what happens is you go to these events and you just show up and you make small talk with somebody and then you give them a card and they give you their card and that's it. What I like to do or what I've been encouraging my coaching clients to do, I didn't do this as sophisticated as I think I should have done Is the call to action being the end of that chat should be something like, hey, I really enjoyed this chat with you. I I run this little insiders group where I push out information about the intersection of design and and business. It's all local business owners who are on this group. Could I invite you to join?

Brennan Dunn: 21:11

So you're basically like, hey, I've got this exclusive deal with other fellow biz business owners love doing this stuff. They love being involved in these groups. So you just pull up in like the Notepad.

Brian Casel: 21:22

After all, they're at a networking group.

Brennan Dunn: 21:24

Yeah. It's They're self segmenting themselves. So you pull out your notepad on your phone and you just type in their email address or get their card and then type in their email address. And you go over to Mailchimp or whatever you use and opt them in. And you you start to, you know, kind of grow your list that way.

Brennan Dunn: 21:42

And then these are the people you invite to your first event. You could say you do this 15 times and you have 15 people. Email them and say, hey, guys. I'm thinking about doing this. I'd love for you guys to show up.

Brennan Dunn: 21:52

Could you also, if you if you don't mind, you know, I'm gonna be covering this, this, and this. If you know anyone who you think would get a lot of value out of this, I'd love for you to invite them for me. And that way it's not like you're not the one inviting them, they're the one one inviting them. Right? So it's much more effective.

Brennan Dunn: 22:08

We did that. That worked really well. But we never did the and this is again one of the things I'll be covering in the new course too. Right. Because I have enough data from people who I know have done it successfully that I'm gonna be covering it.

Brennan Dunn: 22:22

Nice. That works really well as a way to start.

Brian Casel: 22:24

Yeah. Mean, know, before we jump into that, I I'd really like to hear more about these new upcoming strategies that you're putting in in the new version. But kinda still, like, let's kinda jump back to to that to that original agency even before you started doing these events. I mean, at some point, you you must have started out or did you start out in the same position that most freelancers and consultants are, you know, who are just getting into this these days. They're a web developer.

Brian Casel: 22:52

They're spending all their time in code or they're a designer or copywriter. How do how do you go how do you how do you make that transition from, like, the feast and famine cycle depending solely on a couple referrals here and there to building this system where you're doing events and you're and you have a list and and you've got your army who's who's bringing in your pipeline of deals. Like, how did you guys make that transition? And and what are, like, the mindset pieces that need to be put in place first?

Brennan Dunn: 23:18

So at first, it was reactive like most people are. Most people are reactive. They they wait for the lead to knock on their door, call them. They wait for the referral to come in. That that can work, especially if you if you do good work and you you kinda have that natural momentum, you might get the right late you might get the right clients at the right time.

Brennan Dunn: 23:36

And that especially will work if you're solo because then you can kinda budget on your own and stuff like that. But we got a lot of referral work early on. And this necessitate this kind of required me to grow the company, beyond myself. So I started adding people and, like I said, we we got to 11 people eventually. But once you have, like, 30,000 a month payroll or 50,000 a month payroll or a 110,000 a month payroll, you kinda need to get a little more like, you're not gonna sleep well at night if you're thinking like, hey.

Brennan Dunn: 24:05

January 2015. I hope I get a 110,000 a month in revenue. Otherwise, I'm losing money or otherwise my payroll checks are bouncing. So you need to get a little more proactive. You can't just be reactive about getting work.

Brennan Dunn: 24:18

So that's what kind of we we were forced to kind of figure out how do we how do we get away from this. And we had really good mentors and people that we turned to who, while they didn't work in the same kind of business as we did, I mean, this is all there's nothing shockingly new about anything I just mentioned. And I mean, it's it's the way that sales has been done for forever. So Mhmm. I think tactically there are some changes that we can do differently.

Brennan Dunn: 24:45

Like, most business owner most salespeople if they could understand what I know about, you know, marketing automation, like, would just they'd roll over and die,

Jordan Gal: 24:56

I think.

Brennan Dunn: 24:56

Like, there's so much that could be done. And we just we just did the tip of that. I mean, one of the things we did, and I can let me talk about how we how we closed these people who went to our events or who were on our list. But one of the things we did is so we did this talk for about an hour on subject x. We would then auto opt in people to a two or three week autoresponder that would happen after the event, which would just drill into the details.

Brennan Dunn: 25:20

So you kind of sell the why and then you show them the how afterward. And then that the final few emails I didn't even make these autoresponders. These were all manual that we did at first. The final email is like, hey, you know, Jordan, you just you went to our event, got a lot of out of you got a lot of value out of that. You've been getting my emails for two to three weeks now on this topic.

Brennan Dunn: 25:39

I wanna make sure you don't just say, that was cool, and go back to business as usual. I wanna know what you plan on doing is with this information. So would you be up for sorry, let me put on Slack. You be up for meeting with me for fifteen minutes, you know, either coffee shop or over the phone, just to talk about what your next steps are? And that basically guarantees a sales meeting, even though it's not branded as a sales meeting.

Brennan Dunn: 26:04

And then and then from there, you know, my job was then to convince them, hey, you run a company and the delta between like where you are experience wise and where we are is huge. Be smart. You know, delegate it out, outsource it out to us. And that's how we that's how we did a lot of this. And again, it didn't always a lot of the people who went to these events were not qualified.

Brennan Dunn: 26:25

They weren't ready for anything like this. But we still did these and we time boxed them. It was only a fifteen minute meeting max. And it it produced a lot of goodwill and a lot of clients, a lot of referrals. So

Brian Casel: 26:37

You know sorry. Go on, Jordan.

Jordan Gal: 26:40

I was gonna say the, you know, the similarities to to look. Last week's episode, we talked about building a sales funnel. Right? But but in theory and in strategy, it's it's very, very similar. It's like you you need you need to establish enough trust and credibility and and interest and desire before you can ask for anything big, like a consultation or a free trial or a purchase.

Jordan Gal: 27:07

And and this is this is the same type of thing. It's okay. What do we need to do to give value first? And it doesn't have to be a lead magnet in an email series or a webinar, especially if the sale is a $10.20, $50,000 job. Right.

Jordan Gal: 27:25

You, you know, you shouldn't limit yourself to only these automated things. So I I yeah. I think it's a it's a funny irony in this conversation that, you know, through the email automation and all these different things that happen on autopilot, a lot of the success is just getting out of the building and figuring out how do I go and touch real people and give them a positive impact. And then all the tools and email and software, that's it's an afterthought. The most important thing is giving real value.

Jordan Gal: 27:55

And then when you ask for things in return, it's it's a much easier ask.

Brian Casel: 27:59

Yeah. And like the sales funnel doesn't have to be a thousand it doesn't have to start with thousands at the top of the funnel. It can start with 20 people in a room to down to two or three sales meetings, down to one project, you know.

Brennan Dunn: 28:13

I mean, I've closed 6 figure meet 6 figure deals in fifteen minutes because all of the stuff that usually goes into that, you know, I I mean, for the most part, the client self segments into saying, hey, I'm ready to do this. I've got the money. I've learned so much from Brendan and his team. You know, let's move forward. That by the time they get to me, there's none of this like, can you give me references?

Brennan Dunn: 28:37

Can you like explain to me how I you know, basically the stuff that like, explain to me that you're low risk. Like, that's what clients, a lot of clients who just call you out of the blue, they wanna know before they're gonna really commit to anything like working with you. So, you know, what we were able to do with this was to get a lot of that out of the way. Now, there's stuff that I would do differently. And and I know people have done differently.

Brennan Dunn: 29:00

That works really well. One thing you could try is sell these seminars. Put a price tag on it. Don't make it huge. It's not a revenue generating thing.

Brennan Dunn: 29:06

It's more of a qualifying thing. It's it's a people take information more about you know, more valuably when they pay for it. And secondly, we all love selling to existing customers. And that's basically what you're able to do if you could potentially sell something like a one of these seminars or or like a all day group coaching intensive type thing or something like that. Right?

Brennan Dunn: 29:27

Like, just find a way to kind of put things in between you and that 5 or 6 figure consulting engagement.

Brian Casel: 29:34

So I think that there are you know, so far, we we've talked a lot about in person events, throwing a a a launch party at a bar. I think that's brilliant, by the way. You know but as we all know, so many of us have clients.

Brennan Dunn: 29:50

All over.

Brian Casel: 29:50

The the freelancer, the consultant listening to this has clients that are all over. And when I was doing freelance work, I I remember, like, for years I I went years without ever seeing a client in person, you know. How how can we apply some of these ideas if if your entire business is basically remote?

Brennan Dunn: 30:10

Yeah. So, I mean, if you swap out the s with the w, the seminar becomes a webinar. Same tactically everything. You could do the exact same thing. You could show up and give a talk for an hour to a bunch of live people, have Q and A, and then have an autoresponder sequence that kicks off afterward.

Brennan Dunn: 30:29

People did this very successfully now. I've got a coaching, not really coaching, it was like a one off coaching client of mine who I I encouraged him to try this out with his niche, was chiropractors. So he helps, you know, he ran these campaigns, these Facebook ad campaigns and LinkedIn and even AdWords campaigns that would drive people who he targeted were chiropractors to an opt in registration form for this event he just would run monthly. And, you know, you get a bunch of these people from all over the country who get to hear him talk. He's basically teaching them like, here's to build your own chiropractic website that will get you new patients.

Brennan Dunn: 31:12

Like that's the subject. So every chiropractor wants to go because they all want new patients. But these are guys who are cracking people's backs all day. They they're not they don't have time to screw around and decode it or try to figure it out themselves. So once they once they know enough, like, you wanna you wanna educate these prospects because you you don't want them to be like thinking that you're just some black magic, you know, whatever.

Brennan Dunn: 31:35

You you want them to understand like, you know what you're talking about. You're you're good you're good at kind of you're you're a likable person. You're you're nice to, you know, you're nice to engage with. And that's that's his entire marketing strategy. He just runs.

Brennan Dunn: 31:50

See, the the mistake people make is they run these targeted expensive PPC ads to some like, you know, we make ideas real real sales page with a big contact form. And that's it. And, I mean, first off, sitting as, you know, pretending I'm a potential customer, for all I know, type my name and phone number in that box and I'm gonna be hounded by somebody nonstop. I don't want that. Right?

Brennan Dunn: 32:16

So if I can have a lower friction way of kind of maybe moving toward that sale, much more much more profitable. Yeah. So, I mean, that's what he's doing now and I should follow-up with him. But I mean, it it was working well last time I talked to him. And that's what I plan for this new agency.

Brennan Dunn: 32:34

All my clients are really all over the world. So that's what I'll be doing for this too.

Jordan Gal: 32:40

And what's the what's the call to action there at at the webinar? Is it absolutely no call to action? This is just education or

Brennan Dunn: 32:47

Strictly there's no sell at the end. Strictly educational. You put them automatically on a follow-up sequence. The call to action is after that sequence, which is the let's talk live. Like, you heard my voice live at this webinar.

Brennan Dunn: 32:59

Mhmm. Wouldn't it be fun to jump on Skype individually with the teacher and get all of your questions answered and get some guidance on where you should go next?

Jordan Gal: 33:08

That way, if you're talking and educating a 100 people, out of those 100 people, the five or six or seven that are genuinely very interested, you're giving them the chance to just raise their hand and go

Brennan Dunn: 33:19

Sell next select to do that. Yep.

Brian Casel: 33:20

Right? If they want.

Brennan Dunn: 33:20

I can't do this selling an e book because it makes no sense. But if you're selling consulting, this is a really really smart tactic to use.

Brian Casel: 33:32

Yeah. It's interesting. You know, like, that that's kinda gets back to, like, one of these differences between selling consulting and selling something like an ebook, or or even software. I mean, it it depends the the price point of the software. But, yeah, like, you know, self select, raise your hand, let's get on that this one on one call.

Brian Casel: 33:51

It's interesting. So so from here, I mean, let let's go let's get into some of these, you know, strategies that you're really recommending today as you're putting together the the new version of of your of your training, you know, your your course on this. And then I'd like to hear how you're applying some of these new ideas in your new agency that that you're starting up. So here we are, like, 2014 going to 2015. Like, what where where do we go from here based on the the strategies that that we were just talking about?

Brennan Dunn: 34:23

So if you're if you're just a freelancer and you're listening, what I would probably do is, I think a lot of us just wanna go up and write blog posts and hope that it results in leads. If you want a quick ROI, I would highly recommend getting out of the house or office or whatever. Go to your local networking go to networking mix up or meter. What are they called? Not mix up.

Brennan Dunn: 34:46

No. Well, Mixer. That's the Okay. The the go the going name for these things. Go to your local mixer.

Brennan Dunn: 34:54

Find a local mixer event. Go to it. Talk to people. It's much harder to bounce when you're talking to somebody when when somebody's talking to you than it is when they're reading your words on a web page. You know, like the the bounce rates are lower in person.

Brennan Dunn: 35:08

So I would I would go and like talk to these people. Do hand opt ins, say, hey, can I keep you in the loop of like the stuff that I've been thinking about in terms of like, you know, x technology, x whatever, and business? And say, hey, I'm also planning on I've got an event in the works I'd love for you to come to. It's gonna be about potentially x y z. You it doesn't need to be about that.

Brennan Dunn: 35:31

Just, you know, an opt in, like, bam, you have one subscriber to your list now. It's a lot easier to do that than to throw up a blog post and a call to action at the end and hoping you get one subscriber. This is a much faster return. So I would start with that. But, I mean, what I plan on doing is to do a lot more of the traditional kind of content based so I have a lot I have a lot of articles that I already have that I've written over the last three years about how I've grown PlanScope, how I've changed onboarding, how I've done this, how I've done that.

Brennan Dunn: 36:06

Things that are kinda like meta about my business, not about like they're about like how I run my business that are somewhat interesting for freelancers, but not a one to one. So, but this stuff is interesting to people who like run a SaaS company or whatever else. So I'm gonna migrate all that all that content to this new blog for the new agency. And the call to action of that will be a it'll most likely be an email course that I'll be putting together on kind of like kind of the best tactics that you can use. So one of the things I'll be doing so let me let me backtrack quickly.

Brennan Dunn: 36:39

The new agency is called step three consulting. What it is is it's a response to people to businesses that think all they need to do is just blog and magically customers or leads will come their way. So it's called step three consulting because step one is create the blog. Step two is write for the blog. Step three is dot dot dot, and step four is profit.

Brennan Dunn: 36:56

So step three consulting is filling in that blank and and connecting two and four together. So what we'll be doing is going in and and and putting into place really smart call to action and very smart kind of lead conditioning sequences that move people over to whatever you want them to do, buying something from you. So what we'll be doing is the opt in form will basically be, hey, get get a, it'll probably be an email course, like I said, that will teach people a lot about what we could do for them. Because I don't want people who are do it yourselfers as prospects. Like, that's not my goal.

Brennan Dunn: 37:30

I want people who are running a business, don't have time for this, and would rather pay an expert to do it for them. So I'll use that email course as a way to establish my expertise in doing that. And then the call to action will either be a webinar or an a probably start as a one to one. If the volume is too high, it'll become a webinar that then becomes a one to one. Because the beautiful thing about a webinar too is it's a way, again, to talk live to a lot of people at once, but you can have q and a, and everyone who isn't asking a question gets to sit in and listen on that q and a, which is really hugely valuable because, you know, they might have that question or whatever else.

Brennan Dunn: 38:05

So that's my strategy for marketing, step three.

Brian Casel: 38:09

Yeah. You know, I I think something that that we've seen you do again and again in, I think, all of your businesses is the email course. Right? Yep. It's that it's that taking that kind of a a fresh new visitor who just opted in and really gets lets them get to know you over a number of days, a number of weeks.

Brian Casel: 38:29

You know, I I think you've become really like a a master when it comes to writing these email courses. What are and this is actually something I wanted to, like, spend an entire episode on, but, you know, just one question here. I mean, what are some kind of bet like, best practices or, like, what are, like, the key things when it comes to writing, let's say, a a a five part email course? Because anyone can just, like, write content and and teach for five emails. But, like, how do you actually make that transition from from from, like, the why to, okay, this is for me.

Brian Casel: 39:00

I'm ready to take out my credit card.

Jordan Gal: 39:02

Well, I I wanna inject one thing along with that. You you said something that I thought was very, you can miss it if I've I've written email courses before in autoresponders, and something that you said there is is one of these things that you face when you actually start to write. And and that's who to write for and and what to tell them. Right? So you said that you were gonna make a distinction between do it yourselfers.

Jordan Gal: 39:27

So it's not that you wanna teach how you can do it yourself, but that you wanna teach what is possible or what you can do for them. So if you're gonna write an email course to your actual target, not a do it yourselfer, but a company who wants to outsource it, in in that setting, what what are you gonna write about? How are gonna put together a multi part series without just talking about yourself and how awesome you are and what you can do for them the whole time.

Brennan Dunn: 39:53

Yeah. So I mean, I think you wanna mask the instructional content with the overarching theme of, you know, there there are more there are bigger fish for you to fry. I I do think it can't you just can't and I've seen this. You can't have an an opt in quote unquote email course that's nothing but fluff about hiring a high buy us buy us buy buy buy buy buy That's what a lot of people do when they get no results. What tends to so case in point, what I've done, I just put together an email course recently for my, my paid course, double your freelancing rate.

Brennan Dunn: 40:31

And what I did is I basically just extracted at a very high level everything from the course, And most of it being the mindset portions, to be honest. And I have a nine day course that basically just gives one lesson a day. And each of these lessons is actionable. Like, there you want people to not just read it and then click next. You want people to read it and then do a little mental work.

Brennan Dunn: 40:57

And that just increases engagement with them and you substantially. So what I do is I have this this nine part email course that's very valuable in its own right. Like, that's the biggest thing is if you're gonna send somebody an email and all it says is buy or it's a bunch of fluff, like, you've lost all credibility for the most part. Like, know I've seen people I'm on a lot of people's news letters, and I see a lot of these people who are just pushing stuff nonstop without giving anything in in return. So what I yeah.

Brennan Dunn: 41:26

I mean, I I think I would look at what you're trying to sell. I mean, you ask how do you determine who to write it for? Ideally, you have a product or a service that you're trying to sell. So you should know who that is. I mean, you have a product, you better know who your customer is.

Brennan Dunn: 41:41

Otherwise, there's no point in having that glue that goes from prospect to customer, you know, even created. But, yeah, I mean, once you know once you know who that customer is, think about, like, what are the objections somebody might have in buying? Like, what what are the roadblocks, mental roadblocks that are keeping them from buying? Maybe there is self doubt that they'll be able to, understand what you what you're providing. Maybe there's you know, there's all these different objections, and and there are we could go on for hours about how to come up with these objections, but there are ways to do it.

Brennan Dunn: 42:14

And, once you know that, your email course should be the whole goal of the email course is to demolish and obliterate anything keeping them from wanting to from from thinking that your product is not for them. And if it isn't for them, make it clear through this email course. Make it clear like, let people self segment out by clicking that unsubscribe link at the bottom. So that's I guess, my my thoughts.

Brian Casel: 42:39

Well, like, tying this back to selling consulting, selling services. And Jordan, correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe maybe this is what you're getting at. If if you know and and the client knows that they're never gonna do this themselves. Like like, I'm in Restaurant Engine, was I was just rewriting our our top of funnel kind of email course last week. I'm I'm teaching kind of like the benefits of SEO and mobile and and like how to like, responsive web design and what that means.

Brian Casel: 43:10

But like, no restaurant owner is gonna go design themselves a responsive website design.

Brennan Dunn: 43:14

That's right. So you're not gonna teach them about media queries. Right. I mean, that's not yeah. So it does depend on that audience.

Brennan Dunn: 43:21

Like for me, I want people to have a set freelancers in my case, consultants, to have a sense of the kind of quality of content they can expect in the paid course. But for selling consulting or selling a productized service like Restaurant Engine Or even when I was selling consulting. Like when we gave a course on, you know, iPhone or Android, we weren't telling people in the email course or in the email course that followed that seminar, we weren't telling people to, you know, go download, you know, Xcode and or, you know, to learn how to write Objective C. No. We were we were teaching people the high level, like, business distinctions between the two.

Brennan Dunn: 44:00

And about things like, well, if you have a iPhone app and an Android app, that's two code bases. And what this means is you're gonna need to have two code bases that you need to maintain, which means more money to spend. And to make matters worse, they're two separate languages, two separate frameworks, which probably means the same person cannot manage both. So there you go. You're doubling your costs.

Brennan Dunn: 44:21

Yeah. And, you know, we would explain a lot of this stuff so that they're like, wow. I've gotten a lot out of them and like, they're that they've received an ROI. That's the first thing. That they've received a return on the time they spent going through our funnel.

Brennan Dunn: 44:35

And, on top of that, they realize we know what we're talking about.

Brian Casel: 44:39

Yeah. Like, I literally have a whole section of of my sequence, the and I've been asked this multiple times by customers, you know, restaurants and and things like, what is the difference between a mobile website and a mobile app? I'd like Right. Everybody wants everybody wants the mobile app. And I'm telling them like, that doesn't help you get, you know, Google results and and like that doesn't, you know, that doesn't help you get new customers.

Brian Casel: 45:01

That's only for your loyal customer, all that. And so, like, that's kind of part of the whole education. It's like, well, you know, this is what it costs to get a mobile app. It goes into iPhone app store, Android app store, like, all these different things. So I I guess what we're kinda what the bottom line here is if, like, if you're selling consulting, it's kind of about educating what it is that they're actually buying at the end of the day.

Brian Casel: 45:26

Because I I think, like, if you're selling websites or if you're even if you're selling things like like marketing copywriting or or SEO services, you don't you don't have to be afraid of teaching the best practices of SEO and and afraid that the customers will just end up doing it themselves and not hire you. They I think that at the end of the day, customers want to learn how is SEO actually done so that I know

Brennan Dunn: 45:50

Pull back to Kurt.

Brian Casel: 45:51

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I

Brennan Dunn: 45:52

wanna know what I up on yeah. I mean, it's kind of like every SEO company a prospect will look at is gonna say the same crap about get to number one on Google. But if you can show them, demonstrate to them, here's the here's the secret sauce. Right? Like, there's not, you know, there there's there's not really a lot of secret sauces.

Brennan Dunn: 46:11

There's a lot of best practices that we happen to use. We're very diligent. We're very reputable. This is how we work, you know, and so on and so forth. And you show them that.

Brennan Dunn: 46:21

And then from there, you're not expecting them to go in and start messing around with meta tags or whatever. You're just saying like, this is how what Google is looking for. This is current as of as of right now. This is how page ranks are affected. You're giving them enough so they know, wow.

Brennan Dunn: 46:37

This person's actually like in tune with how things work. They're not just selling snake oil, which is a big especially with SEO. No offense to any SEMs or SEOs listening to this. You know? I mean, that's a way to set yourself apart.

Brennan Dunn: 46:50

And I know, like, for instance, great guy who does this. And I don't think Jordan's been a MicroConf, but well, Brian, you haven't seen Dave Collins talk, have you, before?

Brian Casel: 47:00

I don't think so.

Brennan Dunn: 47:00

Okay. So Dave Collins runs a software call or a company called Software Promotions. He's talked to every microconf in Europe and a lot of microconf Vegases. And he gets talks about like, hey, you guys are all software business owners. Here's everything you need to know about Google's recent updates to their algorithm.

Brennan Dunn: 47:19

And, I mean, his company that he runs is a consultancy that helps people with SEO. So you listen to an hour talk, hour long talk by Dave and you're like, wow. They actually, like, they're not just these people who picked up a book at Barnes and Noble about you know, SEO and are trying to hack something together. These people know what they're doing. And I think that's, you know, that's the goal.

Brennan Dunn: 47:42

That's what you need to convey is you need to show people you don't you need to sell the sizzle. You need to show them, like, why should they care about SEO? That's obvious. That needs to be done. But it you also need to show them that you understand more than just the keywords and the buzzwords.

Brian Casel: 48:00

So one thing that I I don't think that we really touched on much here today is focusing in on that one target customer or that one ideal customer for whatever you're doing as a consultant or as a consultancy. So many, especially freelancers who are kinda just getting started and taking on any any project that comes their way. How does that impact how you might go about doing this kind of like education marketing, you know, sales funnel, like focusing in on the one solution that you're doing rather than, sure, I could do ecommerce sites and membership sites and blogs and portfolios. How do you kinda tie that in? Or or do you tie it?

Brian Casel: 48:43

Like, any any, any thoughts there?

Brennan Dunn: 48:45

I mean, so with the first agency, we didn't have we didn't limit I mean, our limit was budget, and and size of the project. We didn't really limit, like, we weren't saying, hey. We'll only work with start ups or we'll only work with small businesses or, you know, whatever else. I think the thing with consulting is you're selling you're ultimately selling some package of your time. So if you're good at doing x and, a hospital needs x or a, university needs x, you're you're more than willing to, you know, accept both.

Brennan Dunn: 49:21

Right? Like, there's nothing there's nothing keeping you from that. Now, productized stuff is totally different topic. I think the benefit of that is it kind of allows you to kind of fix package what it is you're selling and what what people are paying to get that and you can do a lot with that. Which listened to our interview, Brian and I's, the other day for a good example of that.

Brennan Dunn: 49:44

But I think in general, when it comes to kind of this kind of marketing approach, a really interesting thing that I got from a marketing guy named Sean D'Souza was the idea of why specific is better in terms of even for general marketing. And he gave he gave really good interesting examples. He was talking about a allergy clinic that said, like a lot of consultants, we can handle any kind of allergy. So we're just gonna say, you know, we help you with allergies. Like that was their whole pitch and they really generalized almost all of their copy on their site.

Brennan Dunn: 50:21

And they were getting really poor performance from it. So when they hired Sean, he recommended, why don't you focus only on one kind of allergy? Like just focus on that one kind of allergy. And their reaction was I think what a lot of us react is, is well, but I can help hay fever and grass allergies. Why do want me to only focus on food allergies?

Brennan Dunn: 50:41

Know, that doesn't that limit myself? But when they did that, they found out that not only did the people who had that exact allergy, their the likelihood that they became a new customer shot through the roof, but it lifted everyone else too. Lifted every other type of allergy in terms of how effective that site was in bringing in new patients into the business. And that was really interesting to hear. Because I think what it I think that allergy clinic is like a lot of us.

Brennan Dunn: 51:09

And that we don't want to be specific because we realize

Brian Casel: 51:13

you know You think you're turning other people away.

Brennan Dunn: 51:15

Right. You're disqualifying people. You're qualifying the people you're speaking to, but you're not it's not like the copy was saying, don't call us if you have hay fever allergies. They weren't saying that. They were just focusing on one specific kind of person with one specific kind of pain point.

Brennan Dunn: 51:32

So that's like what I'm gonna be doing now with my agency, the new one, is focusing on software companies that have business blogs that are not performing. But if a, know, actually one of my first customers runs an info product empire, you know, they're not gonna be I'm not saying no, I can't apply what I'm doing, what I'm promoting to you. I mean, it's the same package, it's just a different kind of recipient. Right? But I'm gonna be speaking publicly to that one kind of company and pulling pulling an allergy clinic on my own.

Brian Casel: 52:10

Yeah. I I think there is a distinction to be made, like, between, you know, because I I talk a lot about focusing in on one ideal customer and and niching down. And people look at what I've done with with Restaurant Engine, and that's, like, as niche as it gets. Yeah. But I think there's a distinction between like, it can work so many different ways.

Brian Casel: 52:28

It it doesn't necessarily mean find one vertical, one industry vertical to folk to sell to. It it it can really be one solution. You know, one Yeah.

Brennan Dunn: 52:38

And if you're working online.

Brian Casel: 52:40

Yeah.

Brennan Dunn: 52:41

Right. And if you're working online, I mean, and you're you have all these channels that are bringing people over and funneling them through an email course and then whatever. What's who says you can only have one? Right?

Brian Casel: 52:53

Yeah. Exactly.

Brennan Dunn: 52:54

You're have five easy helpers.

Brian Casel: 52:56

Getting to the same place. But, you know, like, one problem once like like you said, in in in your new agency, you know, connecting the dots between, you know, a a blocking strategy and and a sales strategy that that in between, that's a problem and a solution that that can fit a a variety of industries, like, and and verticals.

Brennan Dunn: 53:16

Right. But selling to one to software businesses with business blogs. Or with blogs.

Brian Casel: 53:22

Right. But even that, like like, it's you're you know, we're not look looking at only food service software or Correct. Or education. You know, it's you know, it there's there's different like, the difference between the the industry vertical and the problem solution and and That's right. Choosing your focus there.

Jordan Gal: 53:38

Yes. And I think the interesting part of the analogy with the allergy clinic is you would think that one goes through the roof that you focus on and the others go down. But the the reality that it helps across the board should give you the confidence. Okay. You're gonna talk about software businesses, but, you know, people think for themselves.

Jordan Gal: 54:01

So if they see a lot of similarities to the situation, the issues, and problems you're talking about, even if they're not a software company, they will project their situation onto what you're talking about. If it makes sense to them, they'll still reach out to you. That's But it makes your communication a lot stronger.

Brennan Dunn: 54:20

Yeah. When takes a little You wanna treat sales copy like you're writing a letter to somebody. Even even if it's not long form, it still needs to be like it's going to a specific person. I think the benefit of long form is it kind of forces you to think like, dear so and so, who's that so and so. Right?

Brennan Dunn: 54:34

But even if you're not doing traditional long form copy, it should still be speaking to a specific kind of person.

Brian Casel: 54:42

You know, I I think as we kind of start to to wrap up here, that's a good kind of segue into this last question that I had here. And this is something that I've just been thinking a lot about, and I find myself saying it a lot on when I'm on other podcasts and things. I I hear from a lot of freelancers and and and especially web developers and designers, as I'm sure, you you you guys do, and and, Brennan, you of course, do. You know? And and so many of them say they say, like, you know, I I'm a developer.

Brian Casel: 55:12

I'm a technical person. I have no idea what to do when it comes to market like, sales and marketing. Or I have an idea for a product, or I even have launched a product, and I'm a coder, and it the the sales and marketing piece is kinda like a big gray cloud. Like, how do you break out of that? How do you start to how how can the technical freelancers get engaged and start to get excited about learning sales and marketing so that they can start applying it?

Brian Casel: 55:39

I mean, guess, obviously, at a certain point, you just have to if you're gonna have any sort of business. But, I don't know. I mean, like, any any tips or any, like, places that that people can go to start getting up on this stuff? I mean, obviously, number one, I recommend, you know, joining Brennan's email list and get on his email courses and everything, because that I'm saying this, like, there's some awesome stuff in there.

Brennan Dunn: 56:03

The free email course is pretty much the one I just did is exactly on that, which is how do you go from the I'm a I'm a technical freelancer who's good at writing code to I'm running a business who provides solutions. I mean, that's what that's what it's focused on. But I think, to to remove myself out of the equation, I I think ultimately what needs to what you need to realize is that no one has ever woken up and thought, you know, I wanna pay a lot of money for somebody to write code for me. Like, no one does that. No one has ever thought that whether they're hiring an employee, or they're hiring a freelancer, or they're buying a product, like, no one buys my, my, no one no one buys my course because they wanna read something like that.

Brennan Dunn: 56:46

You know, that that's not why people buy. They buy because they want something they they want some outcome. So the biggest thing you can do as a somebody who's used to selling yourself on your technical credentials is to not stop doing that, but to let your technical credentials take the backseat and instead sell to the problem that somebody wants solved. So they want more customers, they want more conversions through their website. They want more, you know, whatever that is.

Brennan Dunn: 57:10

And that's gonna require you to talk to people. You're gonna need to talk to new prospective clients because they're not gonna if they give you an RFP, it's not gonna say it's usually not gonna say, hey, I I, I'm worried about making payroll in a few months from now because our our customer, you know, our customers are declining. I need help. They're not gonna say that. Usually they're gonna say, hey, I'm looking for a new website.

Brennan Dunn: 57:31

Because they mentally piece together, maybe a new website will get me these new customers I need to kind of like, you know, reverse it. Reverse my business, bring it back up to where it needs to be. Mhmm. So when you understand why people are commissioning a project and you sell that and you speak to that, that's what you need to do. And it doesn't mean becoming some like fast talking guy in a suit.

Brennan Dunn: 57:54

That's not what I'm advising or or encouraging. It's it's basically understanding that people do not pay for code. They don't pay for web no one wants a website. Nobody cares about your webs nobody cares about the website. They care about what the website can do for them.

Brennan Dunn: 58:08

So if you can sell what if you can sell to that end, not only will the sales process be a lot better, you can charge premium and everything else, but on top of that, you're gonna be building a better website or doing a better whatever it is you do because you're constrained by what needs to get done, by what problem needs to be solved. So everyone wins. And so I guess that's it's a loaded question, but that's the shortest way I could summarize it.

Jordan Gal: 58:34

Yeah. I I think technical people have to face, you know, two choices. They either learn and what you're talking about, and the course you put together, I have literally sent people to. I've been in a mixer in Portland, and a woman was talking about, I don't understand what's happening. I'm building the WordPress website for, you know, $500, and I'm building it for an agency who's selling it for $5,000.

Jordan Gal: 58:58

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.

Brennan Dunn: 59:00

What's the agency selling that I'm not selling? Right?

Jordan Gal: 59:03

And they're selling a solution as opposed to a website. So I sent her to your to that course. Where where can people find that course anyway?

Brennan Dunn: 59:09

That's it. Doubleyourfreelancing.com, free pricing course. I have a short URL that I don't remember. But, yeah, free pricing dashboard. Actually, if you go to my site, Double Your Freelancing, and click on any article and go to the bottom of it, a little thing pops up.

Jordan Gal: 59:26

You'll see it there. Yeah. So I I recommend that very highly. So it's choice one is deal with the fact that you need to learn or find a fast talking guy in a suit like me and and work together because you you have to sell. Either figure out and learn yourself and and do it or find someone who can do it for you and work together, but it's not gonna work if you just keep doing it, you know, and relying on your technical skills.

Brennan Dunn: 59:51

Yeah. And sales isn't a dirty word. It's really just It's aligning a with a solution, and that's what we do.

Brian Casel: 59:58

That's that's that's absolutely right. And, if I think back, you know, a couple years when when I was a freelance web designer, I I remember, like, I My tip here is to just remove yourself from the technical blogs and podcasts that Not saying like stop listening to them altogether, but like, I used to be really consuming all the tutorial sites and all the learning the latest and greatest, you know, responsive web design techniques, HTML five and all that stuff. And then I got into Mixergy. And that's kind of what changed everything for me. I I I never really set out to be an like an entrepreneur or products person getting into sales and marketing, you know?

Brian Casel: 01:00:36

But watching these interviews and hearing these case studies of what people who are just like me with the same kind of set of skills, how they made that this transition. That's what really inspired me to learn even more about this stuff and consume, you know, 15 I'm subscribed to like 20 different business podcasts now. It's, you know and like, these days, when people ask me what I do, it it's like, I almost have a hard time saying that I'm a web designer, that you know, which I was for many years, but it's that's not even what I do today. I like, I run a business.

Jordan Gal: 01:01:10

You you chose the first the first path.

Brennan Dunn: 01:01:14

And I I mean, you do need to stand I mean, obviously, you need a you can't just be selling snake oil. You need to stay on top of things. But again, I think you're right in that. If all if all you're doing is learning how to better fulfill by, you know, learning how to write code better, how to be a better designer and so on, that's good. Like, that's great.

Brennan Dunn: 01:01:34

But realize that people don't buy that. That's not why people buy. They don't they don't care about how many how amazing your vector skills are and how, you know, all the, like, best practices HTML five stuff blah blah blah. It's that's not that's not why even CTOs, that's not why they buy. Yep.

Brennan Dunn: 01:01:51

That's not why people buy.

Brian Casel: 01:01:54

Cool. Well, I think that's a that's a great place to to leave it. Of course, you guys can connect with Brennan. Get on his email list at w your freelancing dot com. And Brennan, thanks so much for for coming on today.

Brennan Dunn: 01:02:05

Yeah. Brian Jordan, thank you guys. Thank you.

Jordan Gal: 01:02:08

Alright. Till next week.