Today I finished reading The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha. It's a great book for every entrepreneur and anyone looking to add entrepreneurism to their career (which should be everyone with a job). Highly recommended.
As with all books on my Kindle I've been taking notes and determining how I can apply the knowledge to better help my clients. At the end of this book though I had a huge realization – I've been approaching this the wrong way.
Over the past months I've been approaching my product and service offerings at Dempsey Marketing from the standpoint of “what else can I offer my clients that will help their businesses?” It's that thinking that gave birth to our premium WordPress hosting solution. Today though I realized that I've been asking myself the wrong question.
Rather than ask, “what else can I offer my clients” instead ask “what do I need to know and be able to do in order to better help my clients?”
This different approach provides a great direction for both learning and networking. Here are a few examples:
When creating strategies for our clients I know that my knowledge and thinking only go so far. Instead of ending with an answer such as “this is what my best thinking came up with” I can go outside of myself to my network and brainstorm additional ideas with them.
I don't have to have all the answers; in fact no one person does. And that's okay.
So it behooves me to make contacts with people in the industries in which my clients operate.
Secondly, I love to make tools. Blog Summaries will be going private beta for Dempsey Marketing customers soon, and I already have ideas percolating for additional tools. Based on the new question, rather than asking myself “what should I build” I approach it like this: “what information do I need to gather and analyze and from what sources so that I can better serve my clients?”
It's a subtle difference with a profound effect.
So let me put the question to you to noodle on: what do you need to know and be able to do in order to better help your clients?
Get writing!
I guess I have gone in a different direction and am trying to narrow down what I offer, some clients are SEO, some are web dev, some are video editing, and some are social media (one is all of the above even) and it seems to spread me thin… I am thinking of removing some services so I can focus on the service I am most passionate about……
Good article nonetheless Robert, as always.
Sounds like it’s time to find some partners Keith!
I ma actually looking into outsourcing some of it now… just haven’t found the right combo and as usual am having trouble letting go of responsibility 😉
Your thoughts about removing some services is in front of my thinking also..
Is it the spring cleaning urge, Keith?