Marketing Out Loud · Daily Marketing Tips for Consultants & Service Providers

I recently interviewed David C Baker on Forecast. I’ll be sharing some of the notes from the interview in the coming days. But the one key lesson I learned from the interview is that when you play the long game, the short game becomes a whole lot easier.

With our third child on the way, life at the Munawar household is about to get very busy. It’s got me thinking about balancing work and family, as both start to get more and more complicated.

John Jantsch told me an amazing story on Forecast about an architecture firm that was looking for their “differentiator”. So they went out and surveyed their clients to find out why they had hired them. The answer they got was something they never would’ve come up with on their own.

I believe specialization is the #1 obstacle preventing most consultants and service providers from working with better clients, earning higher fees and getting the respect they deserve.

We always make things more complicated than they need to be. It’s human nature. We take something that should be simple and we add all these unnecessary layers to the process. Stop doing that.

I was listening to a discussion on “when to invest in your business” on the Business of Authority podcast with Rochelle Moulton and Jonathan Stark. I thought I’d weight on the topic here as well.

David C. Baker has an excellent positioning test in his book, The Business of Expertise, called “Drop and Give me 20”. Not only is this a great way to test your positioning, it’s also a great way to come up with thought leadership ideas.

Here’s a heart breaking story I heard about someone who’s about to have a heart transplant in his thirties. It’s a sober reminder of how delicate your life is and how important your relationships are.

I had a fantastic phone call with Liston Witherill the other day. It reminded me how important it is to have a tribe of like minded folks who are fighting the same battles as you to share notes with.

If you’re waiting for perfection to arrive, keep waiting. You can spend hours upon hours perfecting your website, LinkedIn profile, content videos, blog posts, etc. But spending more time trying to achieve perfection is preventing you from doing something else that’s more important.