Live In The Feast

Justin Jackson is a husband, dad, product guy, podcaster, and now he’s a SaaS owner (you can check him out at MegaMaker.co and Transistor.fm).

Even after a decade in the software industry, he’s the first one to admit he’s still trying to figure things out. But after interviewing hundreds of people, he realized that their defining moments were often a result of relationships. One of his own defining moments came from meeting a friend who pushed him to do a podcast together. That experienced motivated him to do his own show, which resulted in countless relationships and opportunities.

He also credits getting a therapist as one of the best things he’s ever done. After a really rough year, connecting with a therapist really helped him get back on track and it’s something he recommends everyone do, even you don’t think you need it.

Another milestone for him was when he published Marketing for Developers. It gave him an asset that continues to bring in revenue and allows him to breathe a bit easier when he takes other professional risks.

Justin is currently a new SaaS for podcasters, Transistor.fm. He also publishes a weekly newsletter for independent entrepreneurs and business owners.

In this episode Justin talks about:

• How to manage and build your network and relationships
• Getting a therapist and taking care of your mental health as an entrepreneur
• Finding your strengths and knowing what you should be doing to support them
• Doing experiments and getting out of your comfort zone to help build your career or business
• Building something you know will support you and your family is a big first step for a business owner

Main Takeaways

• Face-to-face conversations and getting out of your bubble are essential for building meaningful relationships, which strengthens your network.
• Even if you don’t think you need a therapist, you should get one anyway. The best way to approach therapy is to create a rapport with a therapist before you need one.
• Find out what your strengths are and build on them. Use them to help build relationships.
• Live the life that you desire. Build your business in a way that allows you to live a life focused on the things that are most important to you. But always remember that this is an iterative process - it doesn’t all come at once.
• Try to get 1% better every day.

Important Mentions in this Episode

Drift
Nathan Barry
MegaMaker Club
Marketing for Developers
JustinJackson.ca/newsletter
Transistor.fm

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For full show notes and resources, head on over here for it all. 
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Season 3 of Live in the Feast is all about the origin stories, ups and downs and defining moments of some amazingly creative and brilliant entrepreneurs and freelancers, such as Justin Jackson, Curtis McHale, Philip VanDusen, Paul Jarvis, Carrie Dils, Vincent Pugliese, Matt Inglot, Val Geisler, Bridget Willard and more! 

Head over to http://liveinthefeast.com to subscribe and never miss an episode.

Sara learned that being a generalist meant that every time she took on some sort of new task or service, it was slow to figure out and she wasn’t always billing hourly so that burden fell on her to ramp up as fast as possible.

When she took on services or clients that were similar, she had already done all the learning and education. She was in a better position to sell form and market herself because she had experience in it. Completing the work was faster too because she already had some process to work through.

Back in 2015, she sent out an email to her team with the benefits of specializing:

• More efficient


• Produced better work


• Easier to market


• Positioned as an expert


• Strong negotiating position

And then away they went.

I finally feel like I'm selling something where I can say I have more knowledge than the other person you're talking to. via @sara11d

Sara went through a lot of the struggles and emotions a lot of entrepreneurs go through and very much felt on her own island. But she found that by publishing her journey on YouTube, that there was a community that was also going through the same thing.

Sara now has that position in the market where she can say that she’s really confident in what she does, she’s really good at it, and it’s unlikely that you are going to find someone who’s better at this specific thing. She never felt that as a generalist web designer.

Episode Take Away

Ruben Gamez, founder of Bidsketch, has built a business around strategic content marketing and he’s doing it again with DocSketch. Wondering what the ROI of content marketing is? Then this episode will show you how to maximize your efforts and increase the chances for your service to get the most ROI.

Ruben saw a gap in the market when trying to help someone. He filled that gap through particular content around an ideal client to see if it’s something viable. Almost a decade later, Bidsketch is a multi-million dollar company.

Putting a time and cost investment into testing and building content has proven what works and doesn’t work when it comes to converting leads into customers.

Most people want it done for them, rather than do it themselves

As a result of their testing, Ruben found how educated leads were more likely to convert from trial to customer than if he offered the trial right up front.

So they went against the grain of conversion optimization and put a layer of friction in.

In this episode Ruben generously shares how he’s building DocSketch from the ground up and insights into the freelance and consulting space.

We dive deep into:

Make your service as close to a no-brainer as possible

Getting clients obviously isn’t just about your skill set, but Ruben points out 2 things that freelancers struggle with most often. But understanding them will make getting clients easier.

The 2 points about your business you should understand are:

Episode Takeaway
Ruben walks us through 3 steps in the show to help you craft the best content possible to validate an idea for a service, and the second step is to think about what someone may search for before they know that you and your service exist. Think about the problems, issues, questions your ideal client will have before they even know you. Jot down those down. Then, later on, go ahead and write a post about it and see how it works for you.

When starting out as a freelancer, even as you build your business and gain experience, often times you are working with agencies. Maybe your goal as a freelancer is to build an agency. Lee Jackson was a freelancer with an agency mindset and comes on to share how he's built his agency but also gives us how freelancers can excel and become rockstars that agencies will want to work with.

This season is all about marketing yourself as a freelancer that work in today's market. You can't always sit behind client work and then complain about your sales pipeline being dried up. Marketing yourself doesn't have to mean cold calls and knocking on doors. You'll not just hear how to market your freelance business, but walk away with the resources to do it.

If you are struggling with content marketing either for your own business or your clients’ business, then Chris Marr gives 7 ideas for you as well as 7 mistakes to avoid. Let's stop having discussions around content marketing and talk about the consumer buying behavior, science, psychology and how a blog article, podcast, a video grow a business.