The Secret Law Of Success In The Digital Marketing Consulting Business
If you can’t work with someone for the rest of your life, you shouldn’t work with them for a day. This is a key piece of advice you should apply to be successful in digital marketing consulting or any other business, especially a small or midsize business.
Naval Ravikant, CEO and co-founder of AngelList (active angel investor in deals such as Twitter, Uber, and others), and Tim Ferriss, author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers (often called the Oprah of podcasting), think this piece of advice is so valuable that they included it in both of Tim’s latest books (Tools Of Titans & Tribe Of Mentors).
At Elisha Consulting, we’ve been able to work with global brands and also help create brands from scratch. We’ve helped public companies have an impact through integrated content marketing strategies and entrepreneurs get their business started. We’ve had a 3X revenue growth, comparing 2018 to 2017, been invited to speak at TEDx events and professional marketing organizations, and have already gotten past the 1-year and 2-year milestones that separate wannapreneurs from entrepreneurs.
Elisha Consulting turned 3 last week!
We want to share with you the steps that have helped us be successful so that you can do the same and celebrate your business’ birthdays soon.
How To Do Professional Dating In The Digital Marketing Consulting Business
Just as you would not ask someone to marry you as soon as you meet them, you shouldn’t ask someone to work with you without getting to know them first.
There are several crucial conversations, and trust-building events, that need to happen before making a big commitment such as getting married or working with someone.
I always joke that thanks to being in the same MBA program, Matt and I were able to date professionally for more than a year before we made a professional commitment.
This is something that you should do with employees as well as clients, especially if you provide a service. As a small business, the wrong hire or the wrong client could have a huge negative impact on your growth.
Always keep in mind that “You play like you practice”. Always be honest to who you are to build a cohesive brand experience that delivers a brand promise consistently.
During our MBA, Matt and I were grateful to be able to work in projects with our Assistant Dean Steve Koch, and on the leadership of the MBA Consulting Club, which gave us the opportunity to have a better understanding of how we “played”.
While we were engaged in these projects, we:
Never missed a deadline
Never were late for a meeting
Never had an excuse and always exceeded expectations
The results of this “practice” could have been projected and it explains exactly what has happened with all our clients. If you don’t have some degree of OCD, you will likely not enjoy working with us because we:
Do project managing for every deliverable
Actively communicate every week to keep a healthy workflow with our clients
Work on tweaking our processes until these are running smoothly
Don’t shy away from positive conflict and uncomfortable conversations
Constantly review goals, analyze metrics, and share insights
This scenario could’ve have been easily, and accurately, predicted just by looking at the data points of our engagements during our “professional dating” period.
When you are making decisions about who you want to work with, there are no guarantees. Yet, by gathering critical information, you can increase the accuracy of your projections and the likelihood of success.
Gathering Data Points Before Committing To a Professional Relationship For Life
As a business or individual, it is key that you have a clear understanding of your values as well as your goals.
The union of these two will give you a strong and clear WHY which will simplify the way you make decisions and execute in business and life.
A great way to gather critical information is to have as many uncomfortable conversations as possible upfront before making any long-term decisions.
As Tim Ferriss says, “A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
Do yourself a favor and bring out the uncomfortable topics as soon as possible. As Matt mentioned recently on our blog, cynicism is important. Something that I now do routinely when meeting with potential clients is stating that it is irresponsible of me to make any type of guarantees.
It is common to see the “results may vary”, or “not typical results” in many advertisements. Yet, most often these are in tiny font size and can be misleading.
Everyone wants to how to invest their money to get guaranteed results.
Everyone wants to know who is the right hire for the company.
Everyone wants to know how to allocate their marketing resources to get more clients.
Yet… only ONE THING in life is guaranteed and that is that we will die. Everything else can be susceptible to changes.
For this reason, I now say to every prospect that we cannot guarantee results. I can guarantee that we will deliver with excellence. As marketers, our goal is to allocate resources (time, effort, and money) to increase the likelihood of converting someone into a customer.
We create strategies, that when executed, will deliver value to your audience so that relationships can be strengthened and trust can be built. Doing so will make people more prone to buying from you.
But nothing in life is certain.
Track records, experience, and work ethic are data points you should examine to have a better understanding of what can be expected from someone. If you’d like to do so, to determine if Elisha Consulting is a good fit for you, you can:
