In this episode I chat with Jay Baer, marketing strategist and best selling author. Jay has done everything from sales to social media to content and digital marketing, and he’s going to explain how helping rather than selling will give you an edge.

Forget what you were taught.

Business is more competitive now than ever before.

The best way to break through all that noise is to help, not hype.Click To Tweet

Sure, it used to be that the way to build your business was to do marketing, use the Four P’s, and all that jazz. But nowadays, it’s different.

The best way to grow your business now is to create content that is useful. So useful, that people would actually want to pay for it, but don’t have to because you’re giving it away for free. It’s this kind of super helpful, free content that will help you be heard above everyone else.

Yes, you can give it away for free.

If you’re worried about giving away your content for free, you need to let that go. There’s no real secret ingredient anymore. You don’t have the uber proprietary lock on strategic planning. What you have is the same plan as the next agency, just with different acronyms.

Giving it away for free doesn’t mean you’ll lose business. People just want to know the so-called “secrets.” In the end, they’re still going to hire you to do the work.

Making time to be helpful.

The idea of adding something else to your plate probably seems daunting, but don’t worry because Jay has a tip:

* Take whatever business development you’re already doing and dedicate a portion of that to creating helpful content. If your company writes a blog start adding in blogs that are useful to your readers.

Building authority.

Confidence in your own thought leadership is what gets you attention. You know what you’re best at doing, so start there. Write content that’s within your niche.

According to Jay, you should take everything you know and give it away one bite at a time. This is one of the biggest drivers of my business growth and you need to start doing it too. I show you step by step how to do this in my program called Generate Leads Everyday. Learn more

Jay’s biggest struggle.

In all Jay’s ventures and experiences, he says his biggest struggle has been working in his business rather than on it. Sound familiar?

You need to be creating processes so that you don’t have to do everything yourself. And if you’re thinking that you can do it better and faster than someone else, you’re probably wrong.

You’re uniquely qualified to do certain things, so don’t let yourself become hemmed up in doing the things someone else can do. Free up your time to work on growing your business and getting to the next level.

What you can do right now.

Take a look at your services. Now take a look at your competition. What are you doing that they aren’t? If you haven’t chosen an area to laser focus in on, this may be a good one to choose.

Build content, marketing, etc. around this area of specialization so that you can become a thought leader in your industry. If you like this strategy, you need to check out the Agency Playbook, which walks you through all of this and more. Check it out now by clicking here.

Helping vs. Selling

Jay’s