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13: Being Stuck In The Client Work Pit & How To Free Yourself
44 Plays1 year ago
You can't do your marketing when you're stuck doing client work but you also can't free yourself from client work without doing marketing. What comes first: The chicken or the egg? Too many agency founders and consultants do the wrong kind of marketing because they've forgotten their own unique constraints.
What type of marketing is the right kind for an agency founder / consultant? What requirements have to be met? How can we become free to do the work we want and not work overtime just to survive?
If you liked the episode, don't be afraid to say hi and let me know on Linkedin :) www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-ciaccio⏳-766826146
Stuck in the Client Work Pit? See how Content Extraction & Packaging solves it: Home | Rekorded
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Transcript
Founders' Dilemma: Growth Stagnation and Burnout
00:00:00
Speaker
Having worked with and interviewed many agency founders, consultants, even family members, I have found a pretty unique problem that isn't being solved. I've even felt it myself and is keeping so many agency founders and consultants stuck, never able to grow, doing client work they don't want to do, feeling burnt out and unfulfilled. I know some that have been in the same place for 10 years and are still going, not understanding why they're in the same place.
00:00:22
Speaker
We've even seen some so burnt out and tired from this problem that after 10 years of staying in the same place, they decide to close up and move on. In this episode, I'm going to explain the client work pit, which is a part of the agency time problem. How so many are stuck inside this client work pit and how to get out of it so that you can grow your business, amplify the impact that you have and stop working overtime just to survive. The goal here is to become free, free to do what we want.
00:00:46
Speaker
to do the fun part of client work or none of it at all to just do the marketing of our business or whatever it is the goal here is freedom to be unstuck to climb out of the work pit so what is the client work pit i'll first explain the feeling you feel stuck fear of your business falling apart is constant fear of not being able to meet payroll is constant the need to work over time is constant you are slowly burning out your work
00:01:10
Speaker
slowly consumes your life, you spend less time with your family, your health is affected, physical and mental, you try everything you can to grow and sometimes just survive, but it never seems to change. You are stuck in a pit and you cannot climb out of it. So that is what it feels like. So to explain a little bit further, you are very involved with client work. Majority of your time is working with them
00:01:29
Speaker
for them or with other employees to do the work. This takes a lot of your focused time. I say focused time and not just time because to do your work well, you have to be focused. And just like time, focus is a limited resource. It diminishes as you use it throughout the day. Because you spend all your focused time on client work, you don't have time to work on your business and grow it or even maintain it. And so your business is at risk. You are completely dependent on inconsistent and low quality referrals. You kind of have to accept what you get, but you also can't charge a premium.
00:01:56
Speaker
Because as I said, the quality is kind of low. And so this continues for years. You don't have time to do marketing to get more clients. So the clients leave at the same rate that you get new ones. So you're stuck, never growing, just staying where you are. You are stuck in the client work pit.
The Client Work Trap: How to Break Free
00:02:10
Speaker
And the only way out of this pit is a steady and reliable stream of new clients that pay a premium price. So the reason is because this stream is the only way to do certain things without risking your whole business.
00:02:20
Speaker
If you've ever tried to delegate more and hire someone new, the problem is often that when they start, they have tons of work, but because when client work is finished and clients leave and there aren't any new clients coming in consistently, these new hires have nowhere to do. And so hiring becomes a huge risk that you can't take. To explain it in a few words, it is a vicious cycle downwards. You can't grow because you don't have the time to do the right marketing consistently because you can't free yourself from client work.
00:02:48
Speaker
because you don't have the consistent income to hire and delegate because you don't have the stream of new high paying clients because you don't do the right marketing consistently. And so it's just a constant loop. And what sucks about all this being stuck in this pit is that you can see how close it is.
00:03:05
Speaker
to climbing out. There's this hope. You can see the surface, but you just can't reach it. You keep trying to climb out, jumping, grabbing onto the sides, but you keep falling back in. And you will continue to keep falling back in if you don't have the right tool. And that tool is a ladder designed to get you out of this pit.
00:03:20
Speaker
out of this situation, out of this vicious cycle. The latter is marketing. It's the only way to unlock this steady and reliable stream of new high paying clients. But you can't do just any type of marketing because of your unique situation as an agency or a consultant.
00:03:36
Speaker
So there are four requirements to be met to create the right ladder for your client work pit. You need to make sure that the ladder is long enough and it won't break. So the first requirement is that it doesn't require too much focused time. You don't have to work overtime to be able to do this marketing.
00:03:52
Speaker
The ideal amount is only a few hours a month. Usually time isn't such an important part of marketing activities for most businesses, but because in most agencies or consultant businesses, the founder is the one that has to do the marketing. You are the bottleneck. This is why you can't always do what other types of businesses do for marketing. Time is really critical because of your unique situation. The second requirement is that it has to be reliable and consistent enough to actually create a stream of new clients.
00:04:18
Speaker
If it isn't reliable and it's not consistent, then there isn't enough new revenue for the amount of churn. Or in other words, there isn't enough growth in revenue to delegate with confidence to the qualified people. If you can't predict revenue, it's a really big risk to hire someone else. It's a really big risk to delegate and free yourself from that client work.
00:04:36
Speaker
The third requirement is that it has to show that you are an expert because if someone is going to buy your agency service, if someone is going to buy your consultant service, they need to trust that you're going to deliver on your promise and actually solve their problems. In most cases for an agency, it is an extension of the founder who is typically the expert. That's why most agency founders handle the sales calls.
00:04:55
Speaker
because they are the expert that people want to buy from. It's also really difficult to charge the premium price that you need to be able to surround yourself with the right people to free yourself from client work. The fourth requirement is because your service is high ticket, you need to be able to sustain a buyer's attention long enough for them to be really educated on the problem and the solution. So they perceive the service to be valuable enough to pay the high price.
00:05:15
Speaker
In other words, you need to be able to fill information gaps in your buyer's mind to increase the perceived value of your service. No one is going to buy your $50,000 service from a single ad. It requires a lot more trust and understanding. So those are the four requirements.
The Fragile Ladder of Client Acquisition
00:05:30
Speaker
The reason you are stuck in your client work pit is because either you don't do marketing or you do marketing that doesn't meet all four of these requirements.
00:05:38
Speaker
If the stream of clients isn't consistent enough, it's like having a ladder that's too short. It makes you feel like you're close enough, but you'll never actually be free of the pit until you're entirely out of it. If the clients are low quality, don't pay well, leave too soon. It's like having a ladder that's too weak or fragile. It gives you the feeling of certainty that you'll be able to climb out of your pit. But once you get to the top, you collapse on yourself getting injured and your business collapsing. And that's what happens when you can't predict revenue. We need a long and sturdy ladder that meets all those four requirements.
00:06:04
Speaker
So which types of marketing can meet all these four requirements? I'm first going to identify the types of marketing activities that don't meet the four requirements that you might have tried that didn't build a strong and long enough ladder to get out of the pit. So talking with clients of mine, as well as others stuck in the client work pit, these are some tried and failed ladders. So cold outreach.
00:06:23
Speaker
emails, and LinkedIn automation. This is the go-to for busy people because it fulfills requirement number one, low amount of focused time. I've heard of some people getting clients from this once in a while, but it's not consistent enough. It can't show you're an expert in what you do and you can't sustain their attention long enough to educate them. This gets you a client once in a while, maybe, making you think that you've got a ladder, but it's a very weak ladder that will break if you put too much weight on it. Another bad ladder is social ads.
00:06:47
Speaker
So, LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, etc. If you have the budget, this is a seemingly very attractive marketing activity because you can start seeing numbers quickly. It meets requirement number two, it's reliable and consistent if done well. But for that to happen, usually it requires a lot of focus time from you, the founder.
00:07:03
Speaker
Even if you're working with an agency, it still requires tons of time because of the planning, but also because the sales calls you get won't be very high quality, wasting a lot of your time. It's also extremely difficult to show that you're an expert and educate in the problem you solve. For this reason, it's really difficult to sell such a high ticket service. So you might get lots of leads and that will feel productive, but when you see how few close, it's not enough.
00:07:24
Speaker
This is something that I noticed firsthand having worked in a social ads agency. This works better for other types of businesses where the founder doesn't have to be as involved. So for example, a B2B SaaS. Because of your unique situation, it requires too much focused time. And because of that, it's not a strong enough ladder. The third one is SEO. You can pay someone to write blog articles on your site. You get traffic, it feels good. But if this is something that's outsourced, then you can't meet requirement three and four. You can't show that you are an expert.
00:07:52
Speaker
And you can't educate on the problem and solution unless you are the one that's writing the articles. But then that would mean you are using too much focus time and no longer meet requirement one. These are the three go to digital marketing activities and they can be very effective, which is why so many agency founders and independent consultants decide to do them. But these marketing activities are only really beneficial when you're not stuck in the client work pit. Like I said, social ads are extremely effective for Assas.
00:08:18
Speaker
SEO, but they don't have the same constraints as an agency founder or an independent consultant. So this leaves us with social media content
Mastering Content Marketing for Agencies
00:08:26
Speaker
marketing. So does this meet all four requirements? Yes and no, it really depends. So what I mean by that is that yes, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn doing marketing on these platforms
00:08:37
Speaker
You can all meet the four requirements, but only if you have the right process. Social media content marketing naturally meets the last three requirements. You can create a consistent and reliable stream of clients, you can show that you're an expert, and you can educate about the problem and solution. But the only way to achieve that successfully with very little focus time required by you, the expert, the founder, is to have the process that allows it. This is where you have to understand the difference between content creation versus content extraction and packaging.
00:09:03
Speaker
I explained the difference in detail in episode 10, but for a refresher, there are two ways to produce content. The first, the traditional way is to do all yourself, to become a content creator. You are coming up with all the content ideas and creating the content yourself. To use an analogy, you are writing your autobiography, and this takes a ton of time, which is why most people jokingly call being a content creator a second job, because that's really what it feels like. And so when you do content creation, you are spending way too much focused time to be able to climb out of your client work
00:09:30
Speaker
You can't do it consistently. If you're not already an expert, you have to spend even more time on how to do it. And this is why I know so many content creators on LinkedIn that are also agency founders that start and stop every couple of months. They start and stop posting every couple of months. It's a constant struggle. They get a client from their marketing.
00:09:48
Speaker
from their content, then they get busy, and then a client leaves, they have time to create content again, then they get another client, then they stop posting again, and the cycle continues, stuck in their client work pit, never able to climb out. So they get enough to stay kind of alive to survive, but that's why they're stuck. They're never able to grow, they just keep doing the same thing. And in many cases, they have to work over time to be able to do it. Like I said, our goal is freedom and not be a slave to our client work and to these little bursts of marketing just to stay alive.
00:10:17
Speaker
And this is why content extraction and packaging is the only effective and reliable solution to getting out of the client work pit. Because you don't have to be a content creator to put out the right kind of content with your ideas and expertise that creates the consistent stream of clients, educates on the problem and solution and shows that you're an expert. Instead of producing all parts of the content yourself, someone is extracting and packaging your expertise. You're being interviewed on a video call answering questions and that being made into video and written content.
00:10:41
Speaker
the same quality, oftentimes even better actually, because it's still your ideas. But the time consuming parts of the process have been delegated to others. So if done correctly, this is the way to build your ladder out of the client work pit that you're in. Now I take a few steps back, I made the claim that content EMP done for any of the main social platforms, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn will build a ladder long enough and strong enough to get you out of the client work pit.
00:11:04
Speaker
However, there are several reasons that I think LinkedIn is by far the best of the platforms to create this reliable stream of clients. And there are about five reasons here. So text and video allows to fill information gaps more effectively, or in other words, educate about a problem and a solution. With recorded, we used to only post videos for clients from our recorded video interviews.
00:11:25
Speaker
We found that text posts work really well when trying to push the audience to the next step, going to the landing page. This is because you can pinpoint certain information gaps and fill them more strategically in a single post and get them to click a link. So the beauty of LinkedIn is that you can combine both text and video posts.
00:11:41
Speaker
So the second characteristic of LinkedIn is that it's easier to send off platform to fill necessary information gaps because of contextual behavior. So there are certain information gaps that are absolutely necessary to be filled later on in the buying journey that simply can't be filled with content on a feed. That's because digital users perceive information in different ways depending on the context and where they are. So for example, we can very easily talk about their problem and the solution to their
00:12:05
Speaker
problem and content on the feed. But when we start providing information about our service specifically, which is very important when they're considering our service, they will only perceive this as valuable when it's off platform. If we talk about our service on LinkedIn, they think it's selling. When we talk about our service on our landing page, it becomes informative and transparent. So with Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, it's a lot more difficult to include links off platform and fill those necessary information gaps.
00:12:30
Speaker
So number three, not starting from scratch with an established network. So in many cases, someone that is starting content marketing on a platform, they already have more of a qualified network on LinkedIn than on other platforms. This one obviously depends on your unique situation, but usually you're not starting from scratch on LinkedIn where that might be the case on other platforms.
00:12:50
Speaker
Number four, because there are so many users in high level positions on LinkedIn that are active, you don't need more than a couple thousand followers to attract really big deals. So I first started landing deals with less than a thousand followers, with half of those being French college students that weren't even active. So basically just a few hundred real followers on Instagram and TikTok. This is simply not the case. Number five, the algorithm on LinkedIn is less manipulated.
00:13:14
Speaker
So what do I mean by that? It's easier to keep someone's attention for the long term on LinkedIn. First, you have notifications. So it's easy to see the same person's content over and over again. Second, it requires much more effort to discover creators. There's no for you page like on other platforms. So this means that once someone starts following you and consuming your content, there's a much greater chance that they will consistently consume your content.
00:13:36
Speaker
which is essential to sell a high ticket service that requires lots of education. So because of all those five characteristics of LinkedIn, the latter that we need is going to be a lot more sturdy and long enough to get out of the pit when we do the social media marketing on LinkedIn compared to other platforms.
Personal Escape Plan from the Client Work Pit
00:13:52
Speaker
Getting out of this client work pit is extremely difficult to solve because of the so many requirements needed for the solution.
00:13:58
Speaker
And interestingly enough, I myself am a bit stuck in the client work pit, which is why I understand it so well. I am in the process of documenting all my research strategies and processes so that I can start to delegate the content extraction and packaging to do my own marketing instead of just being a content creator. Because only when I create the right ladder will I be able to climb out of this client work
00:14:19
Speaker
If after listening to this episode you see that you do suffer from this problem, I would highly recommend listening to episode 10 where you can learn more about the problem as well as the content extraction and packaging as an alternative to becoming a content creator. Hope to see you guys all next episode.