How to make a living while you’re making a difference. A weekly show for independent professionals who want to go from six-figures to seven while increasing their impact on the world.
The Song Of Significance with Seth Godin
Why right now is the best time ever to make a significant contribution to the change you want to see in your world.The importance of focusing on the smallest viable audience to accomplish significant work.How to transform your work into your art (hint: it includes the story you tell yourself about where you’re going).Why “soft skills” need to be considered as “real skills”—and why they are often far more valuable than skills that can be easily measured.What to tell yourself to push past imposter syndrome.Quotables“It's way more likely that adroit committed, passionate, smart people are going to realize they have more tools than anyone on Earth ever had before.”—SG“What I'm trying to help undo is industrial brainwashing and remind people that significance comes from making a change in the world.”—SG “I've done more than 200 projects in my career. I've never missed a budget and I have never missed a deadline. And the reason is because when I run outta time or I run outta money, I'm done.”—SG“The key to significant work, particularly for the soloist you're talking about, is understanding the power of the smallest viable audience. The goal cannot be the biggest possible audience, ‘cuz that will water down your work and wreck it.”—SG“Part of my contribution is helping people tell themselves a story so they can transform parts of their day from work to art.”—SG“Real skills are honesty, generosity, leadership, connection, charisma, creativity, a sense of humor.”—SG “We have filled our lives with dangerous, ineffective proxies. Things we measure that look like they're gonna give us a hint as to what we're gonna get, but they don't.”—SG“People say how do I get rid of imposter syndrome? And I say you can't. And that's a good thing because feeling like an imposter is a symptom that A, you're not a sociopath, and B, that you're actually doing something difficult. Something important, something that might not work, something you can't prove because you're leading.”—SGLinksThe Song of Significance The Carbon Almanac
How To Design Guarantees For Your Work + Products
What exactly is a guarantee and why/when does it make sense to offer one?Why you are probably already offering a guarantee even if you haven’t explicitly stated it (and what to do instead).How to develop meaningful guarantees when the client is intimately involved in the outcome.What happens with your client conversations and relationships when you offer a guarantee.How clients are (already) telling you which guarantees they’d value most.Quotables“The thing with guarantees is that you - as a buyer - automatically know they're a good thing.”—JS“One has to kind of punch through the fear of making a guarantee. And it always feels a little bit easier on products to make a guarantee—just give it back.”—RM “I'm sure everybody who's ever billed hourly has eaten hours because they're like, ‘Dang, that took me six hours and I thought it was only going to take me one!’ which is them honoring a guarantee that they never explicitly made.”—JS“If you really listen in your sales conversations, they will tell you what they're worried about…it’s like big old giant neon signs pointing you to a potential guarantee.”—RM“You could address that fear (when they’re afraid of themselves) with something like a red alert guarantee.”—JS“This is what goes through their head: ‘I'm gonna mess this up…I will never be hired again, I'm gonna have to go be a Walmart greeter.’”—RM “For an info product, it makes a lot of sense to just offer an unconditional 100% money back guarantee—if you're unsatisfied for any reason, I'll refund your purchase in full, no questions asked.”—JS“Acknowledging their fear…will make offering guarantees more smooth, because you'll see the ways that you can make it more comfortable for them at no cost to you.”—RM
Sales Pages 101
Why capturing the pain your ideal buyer is experiencing is the perfect opening for a successful sales page.How to move away from focusing on your “fix” to the emotionally charged decision your buyers are making.The four essential parts of every successful sales page (and how to up the ante once you’ve got those covered).What to do if you don’t have social proof for your new offering just yet.How to think about what you’re selling and why your mindset impacts the success of your sales page.Quotables“You want someone to know immediately that you understand them. And by describing their pain…they’re automatically going to be somewhat convinced or beginning to trust that you’ve got a solution to this thing.”—JS“We buy how something is going to make us feel. We don’t buy on logic.”—RM“In the dream section, you want to present the reader with the mirror image of the pain—you want to flip it.”—JS“This (the CTA) should be a big button. It should be in major contrast to all of the copy and the colors around it. Your eye should be drawn to this giant button.”—RM“Social proof: like the smiling faces of people who have just been transformed in the way that you promised above, that that will resonate with the ideal reader of the page.”—JS“If you’ve already got an audience, you’re hitting on their pain, you’ve designed the solution that your kind of people are looking for—the solution matches the pain and their dream—you’re golden.”—RM“If someone is coming to the page ready to buy…in the first five seconds, they know what it is and how to buy.”—JS“If you don’t sell, you’re denying your people the opportunity to be better than they were before they experienced this thing.”—RMLinksBuilding The Perfect Sales Page
Productivity vs. Creativity For Soloists
Why authority-based businesses require being unproductive at times—and how to give yourself permission to go there.The hidden costs of failing to innovate, especially for soloists.The wide spectrum from productivity to creativity—and deciding where you want to be in any given moment.Pushing through any residual guilt from not being highly productive, all the time.The difference between exploration and expedition—and why exploring (a proxy for creativity) may be challenging for experts.Quotables“There are things that you probably need to do for an authority-based business…that require you to be unproductive.”—JS“Creativity is like being delightfully unproductive.”—RM “There's no stopwatch to be like, okay, like how fast did you come up with an idea today?”—JS “You may have this sort of mindset that you need to always be busy. And sometimes that just has to be broken.”—RM“The question immediately comes up like, how do you schedule projects back to back if you're not sure when they're done? And I'm like, why are you scheduling projects back-to-back at all?”—JS“You just have to find a way to shift back and forth between those times where you're really busy and it's relatively quiet.”—RM “There's a thing that I do that looks like I'm doing nothing from the outside. And if you just recognize that that's part of the process, like without that, you're not gonna innovate.”—JS“People resist it (allowing an idea to roll around before it gels) like I can't even tell you because there's so much discomfort in sitting in the not knowing.”—RM
Specialist vs. Generalist
The two ways you can decide to be a specialist or a generalist.A four quadrant approach to choosing where you want to take your business on the generalist to specialist continuum.How to make a generalist skill set work in a hyper-differentiated market place.Why experimenting between the quadrants will lead you to your ideal balance between specializing and generalizing.Quotables“In the etch-a-sketch metaphor there's these two knobs you can dial…one would be who you help and the other is what you do.”—JS“Is there a market for this? And how big is that market?”—RM “The lower left quadrant is a rough place to be because that's the place where you have downward pricing pressure. You're commoditized.”—JS“If you just pick one of these two axes, I think most people know right away which feels better.”—RM“If you really want to be a generalist, I'd say, okay. Stay general in your skills, but pick a vertical, pick who you help.”—JS“This can be an experiment, but even if it doesn't work, what do you learn from that experiment? Well, you learn what you didn't like, so how do you get closer to what you DO want?”—RM “You create a moat around yourself that very few competitors will be able to cross.”—JS“You can think about which quadrant am I in? And is it the right quadrant for me and for my business? “—RM
Niching Into Specific vs. Small Targets
Why it’s more important for your target market to be specific than small.What happens when you truly understand your group of target clients and buyers.How to think about the revenue model you might build to serve your targets (and one incredible real-life example).What changes in your business when you get specific about who you’re targeting.How a handful of experts niched successfully into specific—but not small—markets.Quotables“It's much more important for your target market to be specific than it is to be small.”—JS“If we can substitute specific for small, maybe it cracks through a psychological barrier to niching.”—RM“It's almost a revelation how much easier everything gets when the group is specific enough that you can understand them.”—JS“We can also look at the other end (from bespoke services), where you can create a system…that meets that (serious need), and you make up for what you lose on price in volume.”—RM“At the beginning to get traction, to establish really solid, predictable cashflow, a great approach is to pick a very specific market that you know inside out and then serve some existing demand.”—JS“You don’t start big—you start specific.”—RM“She can speak with like comical specificity to her target audience about the things that are going through their minds.”—JS“When it (getting specific) works, it’s a thing of beauty.”—RM
Considering Cold Outreach?
How to think about cold outreach so you can practice (and get comfortable with) doing it on a regular basis.Three situations where you can use a low-key form of cold outreach that is likely to be highly successful.Why knowing exactly who your ideal client is makes cold outreach more effective and faster to leverage.How to make cold situations warm(er) and more comfortable.The surprising results from continuing to follow-up, even beyond your comfort level.Quotables“Imagine an acquisitions editor from a big publisher sent you an email and said, ‘Hey, we'd like to talk about doing a book with you’. That's cold outreach.”—JS“I wouldn't want to spend my whole day doing just cold outreach, but it's really a fun part of building an expertise business.”—RM“They're not trying to take something from you, they are sending a highly relevant message to you for a very specific reason.”—JS“The time that cold outreach makes the most sense is when you have something that's potentially mutually beneficial.”—RM“A great time to do (cold outreach) is when you're inspired by something.”—JS“The tighter you make that ideal client, the easier it is…to know what's gonna light them up.”—RM“The best time to do cold outreach is when you don't need to do it—when it can be organic and serendipitous and genuine.”—JS“The first thing I always try to do is to turn cold to warm.”—RM
Chat GPT For Authority
Why Chat GPT can be like having a sort of infinite number of (free) interns.How to learn and deal with the limitations of the service so you can ensure you’re getting reliable information.Various use cases for your authority business, including blind spots to watch for.Understanding the application’s privacy and IP challenges and making decisions in line with your mission.Quotables“I've heard it described as it's like having a sort of infinite number of interns for free.”—JS“It doubles down on the things that are already there versus exploring the new and the interesting and the quirky.”—RM “It has the opinion of the sort of collective unconscious of people who have posted stuff online. So it's skewed and not perfect and not true…But I used it as a sparring partner for some of my maybe more controversial ideas.”—JS“Somebody has to take that extra step right now to say, oh what other voices are there on this topic?”—RM“(We have been experimenting with) an app called Podium that you can upload your audio, your MP3 file, and it goes through and creates the show notes and highlights and quotes and timestamps and chapters with summaries and timestamps, and it takes about 45 seconds and it's free.”—JS“In this case it's a thinking assistant because it's listening to your words and deciding what to do with them.”—RM “Okay here's a wild one, especially for the non-technical people: I told Chat GPT to hand code a webpage for a solo consultant…and boom, it puked out the HTML and the CSS and you just open 'em in your browser and it's like a website.”—JS“I don't need somebody to listen to an hour (of the podcast) if they can get value in three minutes. That's okay. You're not hurting my feelings. Take what you need. It's a gift.”—RM
Do You REALLY Have Competition?
If you’ve ever taken a business course, chances are that competition was presented as a zero-sum game: you battle it out and only one party wins.Jonathan and I explore why thinking about your competition differently can turbo-charge how you sell and market your expertise:How to identify your competition in similar spaces (and look for non-traditional competitors you might overlook).How the game changes when you view your competitors not as adversaries, but as fellow players in the same game.Why focusing on your ideal client is a more sustainable (and memorable) move than trying to beat competitors.How to use your competition to make positioning decisions that will attract your ideal clients and buyers.What it means when you have no competitors.Quotables“If you put a label on yourself, then people can Google for it and find a list of alternatives.”—JS“There is this deeply ingrained thing in capitalism that you have to have competition…that your job is to slay them.”—RM “I know I do lose deals to people, but my mindset is that I probably dodged a bullet.”—JS“Just kiss them goodbye in a nice way…I want you to get the help that you need and I don't think I'm the right solution.”—RM“If you have an abundance mindset, you're playing an infinite game and you see your “competitors” as other players like you’re all in the park playing Frisbee.”—JS“I don't wanna be apples to apples because nobody else is exactly like me.”—RM “It would be pretty easy to come up with something where you have no competitors, but it's because there's no demand.”—JS“We do create our own competitors.”—RM
Book Series: Choosing Your Best Editor
Why you want a developmental editor—what they do and how to work with one.The role of a copyeditor and how to determine who has the skill sets for your particular book.The role of a copyeditor and how to determine who has the skill sets for your particular book.How to decide which editorial comments to accept and which to ignore.Determining schedules and timing with your editor (hint: more time does not guarantee a better book).Where to go to find potential editors for your project.Quotables“What we're talking about today is when you're self-publishing and you need someone to make sure that your book holds together…that it's not rife with typos and your thoughts are carried coherently throughout the book.”—RM “I suppose worst case scenario (after editorial review) was start from scratch. Best case scenario is it's perfect. Certainly the reality is somewhere in between.”—JS“I can't imagine anybody ever gets a developmental edit that says it's perfect. Editors by their nature can always find something to change.”—RM“I can imagine getting that feedback…and pushing back slightly and saying why, do you think that's going to make the book better?.”—JS“I want something that's more than ‘I did this once and let me show you how to do it too’…that is not an authority book.”—RM“The advice to the listener is get a developmental editor and listen with an open mind.”—JS“There aren't nearly as many people hanging a shingle for developmental editing as there are for copy editing. So it does create some complexity in the search, but the outcome is worth it.”—RM“There was a torturous experience that was very common when I wrote books for O'Reilly…you'd still be working on chapter 10 and you'd be getting edits back on chapter one.”—JS
When Clients Aren’t Spending
Identify those in your target market who will use this as an opportunity to leapfrog past their competitors.Start moving up the food chain within your niche, either with more complex work or with larger clients.Use this extra time to create authority products—such as a book—or productized services and work on building your email list and/or allies.Look at serving markets adjacent to yours—the very event limiting your clients’ ability to hire you might have the opposite effect on those just next door.How to avoid making moves from desperation (and what to do now to insulate yourself from future “surprises”).Quotables“A bunch of people are going to belt tighten and hunker down, but not all of them will. Find the ones who are using this as an opportunity to make a leapfrog event happen.”—JS“If you are taking a consultant's mindset…then you've got an opportunity to do something that is perhaps less revenue, but higher impact.”—RM“Perhaps you could create it (productized service or product) quickly enough to address the new current expensive problem in some way that is still very profitable for you, but is aligned with their risk tolerance.”—JS“This could be the ideal time to take the step from thinking of yourself as a freelancer to thinking of yourself as a consultant and business owner.”—RM“It might be that some of them (your clients) take the opportunity to speed up, get ahead of the pack. You could do the same thing for your own business.”—JS“The tyranny of the checklist: it feels so good for some people to just check that box off and convince themselves they're moving their business forward while they miss the real opportunity.”—RM“It's possible that there's something right adjacent to it (your target market) that…is triggering an opportunity.”—JS“The key when you suddenly have this big open slot of time is not to get desperate…that desperation just leaks out of you and everybody picks up on it.”—RM
How To Think About Your Time
Why time is a cost when you’re selling expertise, but doesn’t need to factor directly into your pricing strategy.When to track your time—and what to do with what you learn.Evaluating the quality of the time you’re spending on client work—your personal happiness factor.Negotiating with contractors for non-time based fees on joint projects (and one cautionary tale).Quotables“It (time) is our cost, right? So you can't just ignore your costs, but… it's like you just don't want to be setting your price based on your cost. You wanna set your prices based on the value.”—JS“You probably won't pay so much attention to your time unless something starts to feel off. Your spidey sense will start tingling when things are going off the rails.”—RM “What's the point of tracking all of this, measuring all of this if you're not gonna use it to make a decision?”—JS“Client profile “A” gets a yes—I'm happy to work with you, here's the price. Let's go. Client “B” gets a eh. I don't think we're a fit.”—RM“Once you're good at what you do, billing for your time is leaving money on the table.”—JS“I would negotiate a price with the consultant to do Project X as we define it together—then I don't care how many hours they work.”—RM “That billable hour concept—it infects the whole organization.”—JS“How can I make the hours that I'm spending on work happier? How can I just enjoy this more? Because that's the freedom that we get as soloists—we get to create our own reality.”—RM
The Pricing Seminar v11
Are you ready to start getting paid what you’re worth?The Pricing Seminar is back for its 11th session, and registration is open now.Enroll Now »I hope to see you there!
Do Authorities Have To Write?
The traditional path to authority and how writing and speaking fit in.Why you don’t need to write/publish to run a successful expertise business, although building authority gives you more growth options.What to do when you’re better at speaking than writing.Viewing writing as a practice vs. a natural talent that you have or you don’t.Quotables“If you run a chain of laundromats, you don't need to be out there publishing books about it or doing a daily email list.”—JS“The question is: Can you do enough to grow your business if you’re not writing?”—RM “There's almost an inherent built-in editorial process with writing that does not exist with speaking.”—JS“The tried and true path to authority is writing and speaking, and for most people, that's gonna be the fastest, easiest way to authority.”—RM“This turns into a marketing question, like how am I gonna do my content marketing—is it gonna be an audio first workflow? ”—JS“To go out and just talk, hoping there's an idea in there is not doing you or your audience any favors.”—RM“I feel like a big part of getting better at writing is just writing more. If you really can't write, okay then, alternatives abound.”—JS“You can work through this stuff by talking, but…don't do that in front of an audience until it's tight enough so that you're not wasting their time.”—RM