Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

This is Bootstrap Web episode 74. It is the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. Jordan's traveling today, so, he'll be back next week. But today, I invited my friend Philip Morgan on the show to talk about positioning your product or your service. Philip was actually one of the very first people that I came across who was doing productized consulting.

Brian Casel: 00:33

And so it's really been inspiring for me to learn from what he's done and get to know him recently. And so he's Philip has positioned himself as an expert when it comes to positioning. And he wrote the book, The Positioning Manual for Technical Firms. And I think this whole concept of positioning is really kind of at the core of what it means to productize your service. So we're going to really dig into to what this stuff is all about.

Brian Casel: 00:59

So welcome, Philip. Brian, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 01:02

Great to be here.

Brian Casel: 01:03

Great to talk to you today. And why don't we just start with what are you working on today? Why don't you tell folks a little bit about what you do? And then I'm also curious just about how you got into this line of work.

Speaker 2: 01:14

Cool. Yeah. I'm working on too much, I think, all at one time.

Brian Casel: 01:18

We always

Speaker 2: 01:18

are. There's couple things that I have going on. So you mentioned a productized service that I offer, which is called MyContentSherpa, and it's it's an easy way for development shops to get content marketing done because the biggest problem that everybody has with content marketing is it's so time consuming to do it yourself. And I think you're well acquainted with that same problem because you have a wonderful service that targets the same kind of problem as well. Yep.

Speaker 2: 01:49

I am I have another product I service called Drip Sherpa, and Drip Sherpa is all about the same problem, things that take too long to do them yourselves but have real value, so people are willing to trade money to not have to spend the time. And that problem is doing a really thorough, careful setup of a drip email marketing account.

Brian Casel: 02:11

Yeah. Very cool.

Speaker 2: 02:12

My whole thing is that I want to help development shops get more leads. That's really where I focus everything I do. So I have a podcast that I just launched that's about that same sort of thing as, you know, getting a pipeline full of leads called the Consulting Consulting Pipeline Podcast.

Brian Casel: 02:29

Nice.

Speaker 2: 02:31

And, you know, then I'm actually occasionally trying to do client work. I have a small team. I have two writers who help me out and a production assistant, all part time people. So I'm able to, I guess, to do a little more than one person, but I also I think I'm maybe taking on a little more than I should.

Brian Casel: 02:49

Yeah. Well, I think we always are. Right? Yeah. So, you know, what a couple of things just really pop out to me when you describe what you do.

Brian Casel: 02:58

Number one, obviously, the the productized consulting stuff, and I wanna ask you about that in a second. And the other thing is that the way that you just introduced yourself and your service, it's for development shops. Right. And that that I think speaks right to the heart of what we're talking about here today is biz positioning is you you're really focusing in now on serving development shops and and designing your service and everything else that you're doing, your podcast, your book, to be for them, to serve them. Yes.

Brian Casel: 03:29

And so I I guess my first question is just about the productized consulting model. How did you did you first get into that when you like, when you first launched Content Sherpa, what were you doing before that? How did you how did you get to that idea?

Speaker 2: 03:43

I was really floundering around a lot in my career as a freelancer before that. So the first thing I need to say is that the whole idea of productized consulting is a very powerful idea that I ripped off wholesale from Nick DeSabato, who is probably, you know, somewhat familiar to the listeners of this show, because he's been doing he's been he's had a productized offering that's been around for longer than MyContentSherpa, which is now just a little bit over a year old. So what I was doing before was billing by the hour or or a combination of flat rate projects. I was doing sort of general purpose content work. So, you know, if someone needed a website, if they needed some emails for an email marketing campaign, if they needed some, you know, sales copy, I was happy to just do it all.

Speaker 2: 04:35

Mhmm. And the type of clients I would take were the type who had a checkbook and would sign a check with my name on it.

Brian Casel: 04:44

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 04:45

So, you know, kind of a take all comers approach.

Brian Casel: 04:47

Sounds pretty similar to to my background when I was doing freelance web design, and I think most most freelancers out there, even when you start to qualify clients and making sure that they have the right budget, there's still that extra step of of figuring out, well, who's really ideal that we wanna be working with. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 05:05

And, you know, I think that that's very common because a lot of freelancers do it the way I did, which is you you're in some kind of job and something happens. There's like an event. Your boss is horrible and you just have had enough, or like I did in 2008, you get laid off because the whole economy went through some big changes and, you know, certain companies stopped spending money on subcontractors and so forth. And you just all of a sudden, you're like, wow. I woke up yesterday.

Speaker 2: 05:36

I was an employee, and today I'm a freelancer. You don't take that break to go get not that getting an MBA would really do that much for you, but you don't go and, you know, kind of study your craft of running a business. Right? So you just kind of dive in and start applying your skills the best way you can, and it creates the situation you just described.

Brian Casel: 05:57

Yeah, exactly. And so okay, you were kind of freelancing for a while, doing a lot of different or working with a lot of different types of clients, then you launched My Content Sherpa and from what I remember the service was focused in terms of its scope and the way that you priced it, but at that point when you first launched it it wasn't really tailored to development shops, is that right?

Speaker 2: 06:19

You are remembering correctly, yes.

Brian Casel: 06:21

So you weren't really like how did you make that progression over over the course of the last year to, like, start really positioning yourself and focusing in on who you're serving?

Speaker 2: 06:30

You know, it's kinda funny. It's the progression of how I've positioned myself has definitely been a progression. I I did not, you know, have some kind of epiphany or wake up one day and say, okay. I I know exactly what it needs to be. It was a gradual progression.

Speaker 2: 06:48

And I wanna well, I want to point that out because, you know, I help a lot of people with their positioning, and I see that that's very common. And I guess I want people, the folks at home, to know that that's not unusual or substandard. It really is a process. It's not a getting from one end of the field to the other in one play, you know, if you kinda think about a sports analogy. So Totally.

Speaker 2: 07:13

One of my original attempts at positioning myself was I had this tagline on my website that said smart marketing for geeks and creatives. And I just say that even though it embarrasses me a little bit to say it because it gives you some context as to where my head was, like, two years ago or yeah. Not quite two years ago. And I was thinking, well, I have a sense of who it is that I want to help. It's it's people who are like me, right, who are kind of geeky and and on the creative side of things.

Speaker 2: 07:45

The thing that I was gonna do for them is marketing. Right? And that was how I defined my position, which, you know, it's it's an okay tagline, I guess. It's kind of catchy, but it changed because it wasn't working for me. No one was going to my website and seeing that tagline and going, oh my god.

Speaker 2: 08:05

I've found you. I found my answer. So I knew it needed to get more focused in terms of you could think of it as audience, or you could think of it as who it is that I help. And so when I launched MyContentSherpa, it was it was really I I had sort of narrowed the scope a little bit to any kind of technical company I was willing to work with. So, you know, if you wanted content marketing for your the new line of makeup that you're launching, I probably would have turned you down at the launch of MyContent Sherpa.

Speaker 2: 08:36

But as long as you were somewhere in that realm of we're we're a development shop, we're a agency that creates websites, or maybe we do SaaS software, and I've worked for all three of those types of clients, I would take you on. And what I did eventually, this is gonna sound very simple and low tech, Brian, is, you know, I wrote this book on positioning, and I and I realized, well, I kinda need to walk my talk a little more than I have been. So I just I just picked one. I just picked one of the three, and I picked the one that I thought where I could offer the most value and probably where they need my services the most. And and for me, was development shops.

Brian Casel: 09:21

Interesting. I can certainly relate to that too. Mean, I I I teach about productized services, and when in the last few months, as I was trying to figure out, like, what is gonna be the next business that I get into, the thought of getting into a productized service, while really doing that again, just made so much sense. It's like, alright, well, I really gotta do what I'm what I talk about and write about every day.

Speaker 2: 09:41

So Yeah.

Brian Casel: 09:44

So that's that's interesting. And I I also liked what you just said that development shops stand to benefit from from what you're from the type of service that that you do. Because I think it's not just about picking a niche where there's a big opportunity, but it's also about like who can you really design the best possible solution for, right?

Speaker 2: 10:04

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 10:05

So as you started to make that shift, as you started to change who you're serving, like what were the implications of that and what were the results? Like what did that actually look like? Did you actually say to certain clients, hey we need to stop working together? Or was it a gradual phasing out and phasing in of the new clients?

Speaker 2: 10:22

It's more of the latter. A) it's not easy for me to go to someone and say, I've changed my mind about something that we, you know, we had an agreement about, so see you. You know, that doesn't feel great to me. So it's been, as clients are ready to transition in some way, we stop working together. It's it's been more of a gradual sort of, you know, sunsetting, I guess you could say, of the old positioning.

Brian Casel: 10:53

Mhmm.

Speaker 2: 10:53

So what it has turned into in terms of saying no is saying no to people who just are outside the scope of that audience. So I do in a very nice way, and I try to be super helpful by providing a referral, but, you know, it's no. I I real my I mean, I'll give you my standard email template, actually. I have it memorized. The standard email template is I am not set up to knock that out of the park, so I need to refer you to somebody else.

Speaker 2: 11:26

So if someone, you know, again, the example of someone launched the line of cosmetics and came to me and wanted some help, I'd say, that's awesome. I can't I'm not set up to really do the best job for you, so let me try to refer you to somebody else.

Brian Casel: 11:39

How did that actually change the way that you do serve your clients once you started? Or maybe this is about the way that you market and communicate your service, but also in the way that you deliver the service itself. Like, what changed once you started working specifically with development jobs?

Speaker 2: 11:56

Well, I'll add the caveat. This is a fairly new tightening of my focus. So I think there's gonna be a lot more interesting stuff to answer this question with, like, six months from now. But what I can say definitively now about, you know, what's changed about after someone is a client is I feel a lot more confident. And I don't I don't have this available publicly, but I'll give you one example.

Speaker 2: 12:24

I am a lot more confident saying this is my approach to what I do, and if you don't like it, that's fine, but we probably won't end up working together if you don't like it. So I actually created a page on my site that outlines the philosophy of, you know, the type of content I create, the type of websites I build, and it has a form. I haven't had to do this with a prospect yet, but they sign off that they agree with my philosophy. So it has made I mean, this is gonna sound weird, but it's made me a little dogmatic about what I do because I'm so confident that what I do solves a real problem for clients. So that's like one example, kind of a weird example, I guess.

Speaker 2: 13:07

But

Brian Casel: 13:08

Yeah. I I really love that. I I think that's I think that's super important because I hear all the time some pushback on the on the idea of of productizing your service.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Right.

Brian Casel: 13:17

And the pushback is it's just too rigid. Like how can you just dictate that this is what you're doing and you're not going to do anything else for a client? And I think that comes down to there's two steps to this, right? Like step one is the positioning, it's figuring out who you're serving and how you how and the benefit that they're going to get. Right.

Brian Casel: 13:39

And then step two is figuring out what is the best package of services that will deliver that result. Yeah. And and, you know, the the client the the traditional model is like the client saying, we want this, this, this, and this, and we want a little bit more of this, and a little bit more of that, and less of this. Now, how much will it cost? Right.

Brian Casel: 13:57

But this is more about the client saying, we have we have this need. We have this problem. We're looking for a specific result. And you're saying like, oh, that's great because I sell that result, and this is how we do it.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Exactly. Exactly. And, again, I may need to tone down the wording on this page that I wrote, but it says things like, I'm not going to invite you into the workshop as I'm building this for you. It's gonna be built in a way that achieves the goals that I know you need. And, you know, you're gonna give final approval, of course, because you're you're paying for it, but you're not gonna stand by my shoulder while I'm building this.

Speaker 2: 14:33

Mhmm. Like, that's an example of of how true it is that I believe this is a a really effective solution for a super specific situation.

Brian Casel: 14:42

Very cool.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Not for everybody.

Brian Casel: 14:45

Yeah. Exactly. And that's I think that's the whole point with with productized services as well is that there it's not your service is not for everybody. It's it's for a very specific ideal customer, and it's intended to resonate with a very specific customer. I mean, for example, I was writing the the copy on the audience ops homepage, which I've rewritten like three times in the last three weeks now.

Brian Casel: 15:08

One of the headlines there says founders shouldn't blog. Right. And that's kind of taking a definitive stance on something that like if you're a founder of the company, you have no business writing your own blog posts.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Right.

Brian Casel: 15:22

And but the truth is plenty of founders write their own blog posts.

Speaker 2: 15:27

Sure.

Brian Casel: 15:27

And some are very effective at it. But there are plenty of founders who who don't, and they see the value in not doing it and spending their time on other things. So in that in the way that I'm positioning, in the way that I'm marketing my service, I'm trying to only speak to those people who see that value, and I'm trying to exclude those who prefer to do their own blogging because they're not an ideal customer.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Right. You wrote a blog post recently that was explaining some of your kind of guiding principles for for audience ops. And one of the things that stuck out at me was with productized consulting, you're trying to get away from everything's custom. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:09

And the opposite end of that spectrum is everything is a 100% standardized. Yeah. Now I'm remembering. And you kind of you alluded to that at least in your blog post. It's like every interaction should be routine.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Right? Everything should be a 100% standardized as really top to bottom, right, with a with a truly productized service.

Brian Casel: 16:31

The the thing that that really burned me out and stressed me out about consulting before when I was doing freelance web design stuff is that lack of routine. It's like, oh, a fire came up and I have to put it out or I have to go chase down some unpaid invoice or I have to go or this client is requesting this one special custom thing like just this once and and you know that just that just really wears wears you down after a while. So one of the key goals for me in the in this new productized consulting business is is to make sure that every time I'm working with someone or or we are working with someone, the the team, that every interaction, whether it's the kickoff call or the monthly update or the publishing of their of their blog, every interaction goes according to plan. Like, we're in week three of this engagement, then this is what we should be working on because that's what comes in week three for every client. And of course, you know, there's always a little bit of that's how it looks on paper, but of course there's always a little bit of flexibility and nuance to it, but that's the concept.

Brian Casel: 17:37

I think early on in the business it's a good time to start to think through these, but you can certainly rework what you're doing over time. And that's a little bit scary to do it when you've been doing things a certain way for a while, but I think that's a lot of what you talk about and write about is that it's frightening, but you have to kind of step back and make these these decisions for the better.

Speaker 2: 18:01

It for sure is.

Brian Casel: 18:02

So one more question about your business, and then I wanna get into kind of these high level things that that we can kind of teach the audience about positioning. But well, how do you go about marketing your productized service today? And and how do you get clients? And how has positioning helped you do a better job of that?

Speaker 2: 18:20

It's primarily marketed through a sales page. So if you go to my content sherpa.com, you'll see the sales page I'm talking about. I'm actually split testing two right now, so you may see an extremely short, basically, lead gen form that's a couple paragraphs of text that focuses on the absolute core value of it. And maybe you'll see a longer term long term sales page. Sorry that not everybody can see both.

Speaker 2: 18:44

But so it's a sales page. I don't do any paid advertising or anything like that. So there's referrals and kind of organic, mentions. It was one of certainly not the first productized service. When I did some research into productized consulting about a year ago, I found mentions of productized consulting on the Internet going way back.

Speaker 2: 19:08

I mean Mhmm. Way back would be, like, I don't know, five years back or something.

Brian Casel: 19:11

I remember finding, some kind of screenshot of of a very early thirty seven signals website. I I don't know when this was from, maybe like '99 or something, and and they had a productized service offering for like a $2,500 website design. A whole sales sales page for that and everything, you know.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Right. Yes. You know, Jared Drysdale's landing page in a day. Yeah. The the precursor to that.

Speaker 2: 19:37

So anyway, it's not a new idea, but I because I was doing it and had some friends who were kind enough to tweet about it, I've gotten some publicity that way. And other people have mentioned it, like, you know, there's this guy doing this thing called MyContentSherpa. So it's it's been very much inbound marketing driven.

Brian Casel: 19:58

Mhmm.

Speaker 2: 19:59

And right now, you you can on the sales page, you can sign up for more info. You'll get some emails that really are actually kind of an educational series about content marketing in general that will honestly try to talk you out of hiring me because I wanna make sure that the people do do hire me are really that right fit.

Brian Casel: 20:18

Yeah. Actually, I I went through your your email sequence there, and and it's really well done. And and you're right. You do a lot of kind of qualifying and and in a way, not convincing you that it's not the right fit, but but definitely speaking to a very targeted perfect fit client.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Yeah. Oh, that's good to hear. Thank you. I'm glad it it's mission accomplished there.

Brian Casel: 20:39

And so, I mean, now it looks like you're doing other well, you you released the book a little while ago, right? Yeah. Has that helped to bring awareness and exposure for your name and your service as well?

Speaker 2: 20:51

It has. Yeah, it definitely has. For podcast, interviewed somebody yesterday who teaches people who make handmade soap how to do a better job of running their business of selling handmade soap. Wow, Yeah, talk a seriously, that's why I wanted to talk to her. Her name's Kenna, and this was just the most fascinating interview.

Speaker 2: 21:14

What she found was when she was, she had a soap making business, and she would find marketing guidance and sales information and how to run business information, but there was never any information that was specific to her niche. And so in the same way, there are other books out there about positioning. In fact, the best one, if you want to read it, I would suggest you do, is called positioning. Easy. Positioning the book.

Speaker 2: 21:40

Yeah. Seriously. Yep. The title is positioning. There's probably a subtitle, but if you just look for the book called positioning, on your favorite bookseller, you'll find it because it's been around forever.

Speaker 2: 21:50

A lot of the examples are gonna feel out of date, but they are truly timeless examples about how positioning works. I just wrote a book about positioning for a particular audience. That's the link really between Kenna, the soap making gal, and and what I did with the positioning manual was and that wasn't really my explicit strategy. I just got interested in positioning and felt like it could be very helpful to the kind of people that I'm trying to help more broadly, And so I wrote a book about positioning for them. And that has certainly yes.

Speaker 2: 22:22

That has, I I would not say I'm Internet famous by any means, but more people on my mailing list and more emails coming in from people saying, hey. I read your book. It was great.

Brian Casel: 22:33

Yeah. Now you just and just this week, you launched a top rated podcast on on iTunes all about consulting and

Speaker 2: 22:41

I know. Yeah. Blown away, man. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 22:44

That I mean, that that's awesome. And I and I think the way that you're, you know, unquote positioning the podcast as well, it falls right in line with everything. And I think this leads right into the whole concept of why it's well, you know, the question here is like, why is it a bad idea to go broad Yeah. And and not to focus in on on one niche? Because like when I look at or not to say niche, but but a folk a narrow focus of who who your ideal customer is.

Brian Casel: 23:15

Because like when we look at your new podcast, it's clearly targeted at an audience who who would fit your your ideal customer. It's not, you know, general marketing advice Yep. On on the Internet. Right. So, yeah, I mean, what what is kind of the drawback of of of being too broad?

Speaker 2: 23:34

Well, I wanna I want to illustrate this with just two quick kind of stories. I wanna ask you actually, Brian, have you ever run into someone while you were traveling or at an airport or some place away from home, have you ever run into someone who's from your hometown, your high school, your university or anything like that?

Brian Casel: 23:56

Yeah, I mean I guess it's happened. It's weird because I don't live, I live in Connecticut now, and I grew up in New York, so

Speaker 2: 24:03

don't Okay, pass your

Brian Casel: 24:04

hometown

Speaker 2: 24:05

too many is huge.

Brian Casel: 24:07

Yeah, that too.

Speaker 2: 24:08

Okay, let me put But

Brian Casel: 24:09

yeah, sure. Sure. It's happened before. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:11

You know that feeling you get? Wow. It's so crazy. I'm, you know, in an airport in London, and I I run into someone from the same high school I went to. What are the chances?

Speaker 2: 24:22

And Yeah. If you can just imagine that happening, even if it hasn't happened to you, the feeling you get is very distinct and unmistakable. So the first reason that I have for people to not go broad is that you'll never get that feeling from your prospects, That feeling of, oh my god. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:41

You're, you know, from the same hometown, you're a marketing consultant who's set up to help soap makers or you just help development shops? Really? Wow. You must know a lot about the problems that I have with marketing.

Brian Casel: 24:55

Yeah. Or you get these these messages like, did you create this service just for me? Yeah. You know?

Speaker 2: 25:00

So it sounds like you've had that happen. You want that reaction because what happens in in my world where you're selling professional services, they're sold based on trust, and they're sold based on the belief that you can deliver, which is, you know, the emotion that goes along with that is trust. Yes. And it is yes. There's logical stuff.

Speaker 2: 25:19

You know, we have to believe that this company, this development shop has the capabilities to execute on this project and so forth. But what really closes a deal if you don't screw it up is is having enough trust.

Brian Casel: 25:31

Yeah. And trust, and I think that that plays into like reducing risk as well. Right? The the the client needs to know that, okay, if we're gonna invest in this Mhmm. I need to minimize risk.

Brian Casel: 25:41

Absolutely. When when they come across your site or they come across what you do and they have that moment just like you described, like like bumping into it to an old friend in an airport or something, it's like, what are the chances? Like, one in a million. Right? It's it's that feeling of, wow, you really designed this exactly for people like me.

Brian Casel: 25:59

Like you said, you must know the problem really well. And I just think back to this, like working on Restaurant Engine versus working on my previous work as freelance web designer doing all sorts of things. I mean, Restaurant Engine, obviously, we just do websites for restaurants. And when a restaurant comes to our site, which happens all the time because we market to restaurants, they're like, well, clearly they're capable of creating a solid restaurant website because that's all they do, and you know, I could see all the examples, and they've done it before. Thinking back to when I was a freelancer, I remember a couple of times I had a few leads come to me, prospects who would ask for an ecommerce website.

Brian Casel: 26:39

Right. And I I knew how to build an ecommerce website. No problem. I knew all the tools out there. I knew exactly how I would do it.

Brian Casel: 26:47

I just hadn't had the opportunity to actually have a a a big ecommerce project for a client to put in my portfolio.

Speaker 2: 26:54

Right.

Brian Casel: 26:55

So I had a couple of these conversations, two or three times I had a conversation with with send a proposal and everything, and they didn't accept the proposal only because they couldn't see an example of another e commerce site that I had built for someone else. They see other examples of other types of sites, but I couldn't say to them, look, I know your needs, I know your problems. Look, I've done this before for other shops, I can do it for you too. They just look at me like, well, I'm just a web designer, developer. It's like a fifty fifty chance that I can actually deliver on this promise.

Speaker 2: 27:26

If you focus in one particular type of thing you do or one particular type of client you serve and pretty specific, you will build up the most powerful portfolio that the future prospects have ever seen in in just no time flat. I remember as as more of a generalist freelancer, people would say, you know, can you do some you know, can you build some educational content for us or some training content? And I would say, yeah. And, you know, you could we kinda feel yourself bluffing a little bit. Yep.

Speaker 2: 28:01

Because, of course, you believe that you have this broad you know you have this broad range of skills. You've got the toolbox to build it, but do you know how to put all the parts together in the best way? And do you know what three things should take two hours but are actually gonna take twenty hours? Probably not.

Brian Casel: 28:19

Yeah. Totally.

Speaker 2: 28:20

So here's here's another reason to to not go broad. Think about these two things. Which of these is gonna change your behavior? A sign on the on the highway that says the speed limit is 45 miles an hour and you're going 75 or 60 or that same sign with a police car parked next to it idling by the road. Mhmm.

Speaker 2: 28:38

Which one's actually gonna change your behavior? It's the Yep. It's the second because it's a problem that you care about. So the first one is, like, a potential problem. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:51

It's you know, it it could be a problem if there was a cop who noticed that I was going 20 miles an hour over the speed limit. In the second case, it's a real problem, and it's what I tend to refer to as an expensive problem. So Yeah. It's a problem that matters to you, as as a potential client. And when you go specific, you can start to, in your marketing, speak to those problems and get people's attention.

Speaker 2: 29:16

This example really comes from a book called The Brain Audit by Sean D'Souza, so I don't wanna take credit for this. But Yeah.

Brian Casel: 29:21

That's a good one. I was just reading that a a couple months back.

Speaker 2: 29:24

Yeah. It's a super powerful principle about getting people's attention so so that you can move to the next step and not just say, well, you got a problem. You know, tough luck. You can say you have a problem, and I have a solution for that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:37

Everything in your marketing and sales gets easier when you when you have that going for you.

Brian Casel: 29:42

Yeah. And and just the way that you just said it there, like everything gets easier. I I think that makes so much sense. And, you know, the other thing that I think about is that before you you narrow your focus and when you're still just being a generalist web designer or generalist writer, you know, whatever it is that you do, you can't really do marketing. Like all you're doing is providing your service and basing your marketing off of like referrals.

Brian Casel: 30:11

But you can't actually do real marketing or real business building. It's not until you know exactly who your ideal customer is that you can start to do real things like putting together a marketing plan to get yourself in front of these people and, you know, putting together processes and systems to execute your your plan. Like, you can't really do that kind of stuff when you're doing all sorts of different types of projects and different requirements.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Exactly. I mean, if you go specific enough, you can literally build a list of names of people who could hire you. Not that cold calling is the best way or and it's certainly not a lot of fun for anybody, but you you can do that if you know who you what problem you're trying to solve and who you're trying to solve it for. If you don't, then you can just go down, you know, the phone book and and cold call, which is a lot less effective.

Brian Casel: 30:59

Right. You know, still, like, even when you understand these these benefits and why it's important to do this, there's still that fear. Right? You've been doing things for a long time, and I hear this again and again from people. I'm afraid of cutting out all these other customers or these potential clients that I could be working with if I'm narrowing my focus.

Brian Casel: 31:22

How do we deal with that? How do we get past that?

Speaker 2: 31:24

First step honestly is to know what the fears are so that you're not, you know, it's like a doctor, you go into a doctor's office, first thing they want to know is what the symptoms are so that they can create an accurate diagnosis. So you are specifically gonna fear several things. You're gonna fear loss. You're gonna fear like, okay. I have 10 clients, and none of them are in the same industry.

Speaker 2: 31:47

So if I pick one of those, that means I'm gonna have one tenth of the business. That's the kind of math that our our reptilian brain is doing for us. And so that's the first one. Just know that that is not very likely to happen. It's very unlikely to happen.

Speaker 2: 32:01

The second is worse. It's impostor syndrome, and it happens to me. It happens to every person I know. I'm not gonna name names, but every, you know, successful person still has to deal with this even at the height of their success. Who am I to say I'm an expert in x y z?

Speaker 2: 32:18

So if you say I'm focused on helping develop my shops get more leads, then there's gonna be a part of you. Hopefully, this doesn't happen, but it tends to happen. It's gonna say, you can't do that. Know? It's it's gonna be kind of the internal saboteur.

Brian Casel: 32:34

I I hear that and I hear myself saying that all the time, that, you know, inner chatter of, like, I'm promising this result, but how can I guarantee it? And and I think it comes with experience, but even even after you've after you've done for a while, there's, you know, I think it's part of it as though that that's kind of what keeps it interesting.

Speaker 2: 32:53

That's true.

Brian Casel: 32:53

You know?

Speaker 2: 32:54

That relates to the third fear that I wanted to call out by name, is the fear of boredom. So there's this idea that is, I think, a misperception that, well, if I just focus on whatever, but if I just focus on one problem that I'm solving for people or even just one audience, I'm gonna become like an assembly line worker who's just screwing in one screw to, you know, this thing, and it's gonna become completely boring. That never happens, first of all, because running a business is super interesting and challenging and diverse, and you're still gonna be running a business. So you're still gonna have to market yourself or manage people or just there's gonna be something that that you're it means you're not really doing your craft a 100% of the time. And and even so, you'll go deeper into that craft, and you'll discover nuances and more effective ways to do things.

Brian Casel: 33:48

And you're gonna shift from project to project within like, over the course of your business. You know, like, first, it's just about getting your first clients in the door, and then then it's about refining your systems. And then it's about growing it. And then it's about getting a team in place if you want to go that route. So you yourself, as the founder, you're going to be working on a bunch of different things.

Brian Casel: 34:08

But what the business does and who it serves remains constant.

Speaker 2: 34:12

And, you know, if you think about it, that combination of you, your team, plus every client, each client creates a unique combination of you plus them. And so this actually relates to another question, which I don't think we need to get into, but people are concerned that they're gonna get into, like, noncompete type situations or you know, where one client is like, hey. You can't work with other people who do the same thing as I do. That's, you know, conflict of interest. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:41

But really, every situation is unique. You plus that client is gonna be a unique situation. And so I think that fear of, you know, conflict of interest is is kind of overblown.

Brian Casel: 34:53

Yeah. I think the conflict of interesting does tend to crop up when it comes to marketing type services. I think the reality is that that's that's probably much more on a local level these days. If you're if you're operating online and you're selling to a nationwide or worldwide audience

Speaker 2: 35:10

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 35:11

You know, if you're if you're concerned with that, you're doing it wrong.

Speaker 2: 35:14

Huge pool. Absolutely. So another thing that's not really a fear, but people get overwhelmed with the number of choices. So, anyway, those are the fears. And I think that, first of all, knowing that they're gonna happen is maybe half the battle because you can say to yourself, okay.

Speaker 2: 35:35

Philip told me this was gonna happen. You're like everybody else that's ever done this. And then you can start to, you know, use the more rational part of your mind to attack the problem. So how many development shops are out there? Because I used to be serving development shops and then these other kind of clients, but if I just focus on development shops, are there enough?

Speaker 2: 35:57

And the answer is you bet there are. There's a lot of development shops out there. I'm just one guy. I can't couldn't even

Brian Casel: 36:04

And it's and it's growing faster

Speaker 2: 36:06

than I couldn't even serve 1% of that market, I'm sure. And Yeah. I probably am best suited to serve the English speaking part of that market anyway, which anyway so you can start to engage more rational things. Do I really have the expertise to do this? Well, you know, do I know 20% more about the subject than the people I'm helping?

Speaker 2: 36:26

Sure. Do I have a pretty good track record? Yeah. You know, you can you can deal with the fear if you know if you know what it's gonna be before it hits you. But if it hits you, you're gonna you're gonna think that you the best idea is just to keep doing what you've been doing.

Brian Casel: 36:40

Yeah. And I and I think when you step back and acknowledge that you're, you know, that whole idea of like the impostor syndrome thing, it's really just you against yourself. Yes. You know, it's because the fear is that your client is gonna call you out, or somebody is gonna call you out on this. But like you said, you know at least 20% more, or you have 20% more experience doing this particular service than your client would doing it themselves.

Brian Casel: 37:06

So that fear is unfounded because it's really just your own mind.

Speaker 2: 37:13

It really is. I have never I mean, I've had clients say, well, you know, we need to improve this or I I've had even had clients say, just don't like the work. But I've never had a client say, Philip, I really don't think you know what you're doing.

Brian Casel: 37:24

Right.

Speaker 2: 37:24

You seem you seem like an impostor.

Brian Casel: 37:26

Right. Cool. So okay. So then how like, the next logical step is, alright. We we get that we need to focus, we need to we need to make these changes, but how specific is specific enough?

Brian Casel: 37:41

And like how how far should we should we narrow it down? And I get this question a lot especially as it relates to industry, you know, because with Restaurant Engine I I went specific into a niche vertical industry with restaurants. And I try to push back on that idea that you don't have to go into one industry. In some ways that might be a little bit too limiting, in some in other ways it it might work perfectly well. I think there are ways to narrow that focus to like a broad not too broad, but a but a set of characteristics put together that ideal customer.

Brian Casel: 38:13

But any thoughts on that? Like how specific is too specific?

Speaker 2: 38:16

There is no too specific. I mean, unless it just comes across as patently ridiculous, like, you know, you're calling out, like, only I'll only work for companies owned by men with mustaches or something silly like that. That's you really just I don't think most people could possibly get too specific in their positioning. Because what happens, the more specific you go, the more your your success rate goes up with with turning prospects into clients, and and the greater you can the greater your capability is to own that market, and that's why I don't think you can go too specific. Backing up from that, I think you can think about it a couple of ways.

Speaker 2: 38:53

There's you can segment a market vertically. So a vertical segmentation, for those who don't know, is what we usually think of when we think of an industry. You know, automotive transportation is a, you know, vertical segment of the market. And then within transportation, there are smaller segments like, you know, rail transportation and companies that supply carmakers and carmakers and, you know, on and on. Right?

Speaker 2: 39:18

The other way you can segment a market is horizontally. So and there's not just one way to segment horizontally. You can segment based on customer size as a horizontal segment. We'll sell to anybody who has a million dollars to to spend on our software, would be a a, you know, horizontal segment. Mhmm.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Or we'll we'll sell to companies that are between 5,000,000 and 50,000,000 in revenue is another horizontal segmentation. You can take that all the way to the level of individuals. So you you might say, target market maybe you're into coaching. Right? And you're you're doing executive coaching and you wanna coach CEOs.

Speaker 2: 39:54

You'll coach any CEO because CEOs have certain problems that they have in common with other CEOs. And it may not matter what type of industry vertical they're in because they fit that horizontal market, and the problems and the pains that that horizontal market feels are so strong and so particular to them that you can market just based on it being a horizontal. So there there are cases where you you could ignore a vertical and just go after a horizontal, and there's cases where targeting the vertical may be enough. I remember reading an article about a company that did salvage operations for they're not oil tankers, but the the ships that, like, carry cards and cargo over overseas from, you know, China to The US and vice versa, those ships sometimes wreck out at sea, and it's possible to save part of the cargo. They don't sink.

Speaker 2: 40:47

They just kinda turn over, and everything gets water in it. And there's at least one company that that's what they do. They go out, and it's super dangerous, and they charge a lot of money for it. That's an extremely specific market vertical. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:02

But and so I don't think they need to worry about segmenting also horizontally because it's so specific.

Brian Casel: 41:09

And and they must have identified that problem, and and it probably came up a a couple of different times with a couple of these different huge companies. And they identified that as like, oh, wow. This is this is something that happens. This is this is a problem that other huge companies need to need to solve. Another question that I hear all the time is, you know, I do, like, high level consulting for Fortune 500 companies.

Brian Casel: 41:31

How can I productize what I do, or how can I focus, you know, what I'm doing, or narrow it down? And I mean, of course, are always a number of different ways you can you can go with that, but as you're doing that work, you can find these these problems that that crop up internally. Especially if you're doing like development work type, you know, type type of work. Chances are that that one problem that you solve for one company, the next company has a similar problem in in their organization that that needs solving. So you can start to target that particular problem still For sure.

Brian Casel: 42:06

Still serving those those large companies.

Speaker 2: 42:08

And that's really how actually, when I'm working with people on their own positioning and trying to help them, that's that's usually my starting point is what problem do you solve? What expensive problem? Or what things have you written a proposal for where you kinda wrote the same proposal over and over again? I mean, that's another great way to give birth to a productized consulting services. Look at those patterns in your own business.

Speaker 2: 42:31

Right?

Brian Casel: 42:31

Yep. Yeah. I kinda teach the same ideas there, and I look at the because especially when you look at the types of you you talked about earlier, like, high value expensive problems.

Speaker 2: 42:42

Mhmm. Right? Right.

Brian Casel: 42:43

It's the ones that that come up again and again in your conversations with prospects and in your proposals and in the line items on the invoices. It's the things that people are actually paying for or those make or break requirements that they that they ask you for. Like, maybe there's something there that that other clients need solved as well.

Speaker 2: 43:04

No. I think the ideal is to combine a market vertical with some kind of problem. So, you know, I I help pizza restaurants get more return traffic, or, you know, I help this kind of restaurant solve this kind of problem. I think that's the ideal, but a lot of people are not ready to go go for it, you know, because of the fear and because well, because if you probably don't wanna bet the farm on a new idea. Right?

Speaker 2: 43:34

And positioning for a lot of folks is gonna be a new idea. So what I recommend in those cases is think about what's the next step of specificity. So if you're building WordPress sites, that might be something like deciding to build WordPress ecommerce sites Mhmm. Only, or create a page on your site that that says we specialize in this. And don't show that page to anybody unless you think they're a good fit at first.

Speaker 2: 43:58

And then notice how amazing the reaction is compared to your other prospects. And then when you have enough courage, make that the homepage of your site that says we specialize in WordPress ecommerce only. So what's this, like, one step more specific you could get? Test it out. Don't bet the farm, and see if that starts getting you business results that make you happy.

Brian Casel: 44:20

I really like that, and that that's actually the answer to to my last question that I had here, which was, you know, how do we get started with this? What is the first step? And I I I love the way that you put it there. You know, the whole concept is just putting up one page on your site. You can even kinda put together a pitch in an email or a one page, you know, document that you can send out or present in your conversations with people that you're talking to.

Brian Casel: 44:44

Or as you start to really, like, hypothesize over who your ideal customer will be, you know, in these early stages when you're figuring things out, you know, you can you can just find a list of 50 people or, you know, handpick a list of 50 people who you think would be ideal targets for this, send a personalized cold email with this pitch, the one pager or a link to your special page on your site, and kind of start from there and get and at that point you're just getting feedback that you can then tweak and iterate and kind of learn as you go. That's what this is all about.

Speaker 2: 45:16

Man, I agree a 100. And I wanna say that if making a page on your website is a barrier for you, then just write it down in a Word document. And, this tip comes from my buddy Kurt Elster. PDFs have this weird power over people to make something that maybe took you, you know, ten minutes to type up look very official and real. Like, oh, it's a PDF.

Speaker 2: 45:41

Okay? So That's true. If, you know, if there's some technical barriers, like, oh, I have to talk to my web person to put a page up, and that's gonna take three weeks, just do an end run around those problems. They're not gonna stop you from testing something out. Just, you know, do the best you can.

Speaker 2: 45:59

The the real goal here is to get an offer that is a specific offer about solving a specific problem in front of real people. Yep. Which is exactly what you said. I just wanna encourage people, don't get hung up on, you know, making it perfect.

Brian Casel: 46:14

Exactly. Yep. Well, Philip, this has been super valuable. This this might be one of our most valuable info packed educational episodes that we've had yet. This was awesome.

Brian Casel: 46:27

And I encourage everyone to check out your new podcast. What's the name of that again?

Speaker 2: 46:31

The podcast is called The Consulting Pipeline Podcast. There's a URL that you can go to. It's simply consultingpipelinepodcast.com. Cool. Real easy, just like it

Brian Casel: 46:42

I'm subscribing to that. And Philip, always great to talk to you. And as always, you you can check out your site, philipmorganconsulting.com. That's where all of your work there with My Content Sherpa happens. Where where else can people connect with you?

Speaker 2: 46:56

Well, they can connect with me online, Google. There's not a lot of other Philip Morgans out there, but I would love it if people wanna find out more about positioning. I've put together a free crash course. It's, I don't know, six or seven lessons of just more depth on positioning. And if you wanna kinda take it to the next level, that's probably a good starting point.

Speaker 2: 47:18

And there's a Bitly link to make it easy.

Brian Casel: 47:21

There you go.

Speaker 2: 47:22

B I t dot ly slash positioning crash course, all one word. So Bitly slash positioning crash course. That's probably just the best place to start.

Brian Casel: 47:32

Perfect. We'll get that in the show notes. And so, Philip, thank you. Thank you so much for this.

Speaker 2: 47:37

My pleasure, Brian. Great talking to you. Okay.