You’re in business to make money. These days, that sounds like a dirty little secret, but all businesses exist to make money. To reward the owners. The shareholders. To turn a profit. 
 
Therefore, you charge your clients for everything you do. 
 
Or do you? 
 
Or should you? 
 
In this article, we’ll dive into the reasons you should, or shouldn’t, provide some hard, payable work for free. It’s based on lots of experience, with lots of clients—and often, their clients. 
 
The cold-reality ROI argument
 
You’ve surely heard of a “loss leader.” Something that gets a prospect in the door for a super-attractive price. “Super-attractive,” as in “untenable.” Hence the “loss” you take on it. 
 
Ever played a scratch-off Monopoly game at McDonald’s and won a free order of French fries? C’mon. You think McDonald’s will lose money on that one? Remember: You can’t claim that prize on that visit. You have to come back.
 
So would you ever, honestly, make a trip to McDonald’s, and only order French fries? Even if they’re free? Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would anyone else. 
 
Hence the “cold, hard ROI” argument for freebies. Which goes something like this: 
 
Sure, you can give away something for free—just so long as you’re virtually assured that you’ll end up making way more than the value of what you gave away, from that same client or customer.
 
Ooof. How cold. How… Darwinian. 
 
It’s the little things
 
First off, know that we here at Copel Communications toss out freebies to our clients from time to time. Typically, they’re what we’d consider “too small to charge for.” We recently did a little quick-turn project for a client that, while admittedly urgent, simply wasn’t a huge amount of work for us. 
 
So what were we going to do at the end of the month? Line-item it for, say, 50 bucks? 
 
Naah. We refuse to nickel-and-dime like that. 
 
Still, we did list it on that month’s invoice. But the price? “N/C.” 
 
Surprise and delight
 
Sometimes, tossing out the freebie is just the right thing to do—especially if you’ve got a longstanding relationship with a client and the right project comes along and you can afford to do it. 
 
Ever give your dog a treat not because he chased a squirrel away from your bird feeder, but rather "just because”? This is like that. 
 
True story: We have a client that competes in an incredibly high-tech field. In fact, among our tech-savvy clients, this is one of the savviest, to the point where it’s always challenging to write for them—to assume that mantle of brilliance. It’s difficult and daunting. 
 
Yet we must be doing something right, because this client keeps turning to us with projects for years and years. 
 
One day, however, the owner of this business hit us with an unusual request. Turns out he was running for town council in the area where he lived, and wanted our help with some of his campaign materials. 
 
Man oh man. We knew this would be a freebie the instant we saw it. 
 
He sent us some fliers. And posters. And emails. And what-not. Asking us to clean them up, and bill him for whatever it required. 
 
Now we know this guy and you don’t. Trust us: He’s a great person. Any town council would be blessed to have him aboard. 
 
We were flattered, and honored, to work on this stuff. Sure, we had other paying gigs on the calendar, but were happy to carve out time for him. And when we turned to it, we hit it out of the park. 
 
Our client was delighted! He was so grateful—perhaps especially because this assignment fell outside of his usual high-tech comfort zone. “Send us your invoice,” he said. 
 
And so we sent it. With every single item line-itemed. We showed the “rack rate” for each thing—what it would cost in the real world—and even added up the total cost. 
 
And then, below that, we subtracted the entire total cost, with the note: “Courtesy discount." 
 
Amount due? Zero. 
 
If you think this client was delighted by the work we did, you can only imagine how surprised and happy he was to find out he was getting it for free. 
 
And we felt great. It still feels good, simply re-telling this story. 
 
Happy ending?
 
So, this client immediately came back and rewarded us with zillions of dollars’ worth of fresh, new work. Right? 
 
Wrong. In fact, it was months before he needed our services again. 
 
Are we bitter? Not at all! This is the antithesis of the “cold-reality ROI” argument. We’d call it the “spark of humanity” argument. A little Christmas, when it isn’t Christmas. 
 
Businesses exist to turn a profit. But they’re also run by people who live lives. Sometimes you simply need to connect at that very basic level. 
 
Have thoughts on this issue or a story to share? Contact us. We’d love to hear it. 

No that’s not a brand of beer. When we refer to “Draft Number 10,” we’re talking about Word docs.
 
Oh. 
 
Which begs the question: Why embrace that? Just by its moniker, “Number 10,” it’s daunting and annoying. Who in their right mind would ever enjoy, let alone embrace, the tenth draft of anything? Wouldn’t you be automatically burned out? 
 
Let’s answer that “in their right mind” question first. 
 
This is business, not art
 
If you’re a painter or a poet, up in your garret, you can dream and wile away the hours, finessing your grand opus—“a hundred visions and revisions,” in the words of T.S. Eliot—and you’ve only yourself (and perhaps your muse) to answer to. 
 
But we’re not talking about art here, despite our decades of experience (not to mention lots of awards) in creative services. 
 
We’re talking about business. Money. Deadlines. ROI. 
 
Where, then, does a Draft Number 10 even come from?
 
Quick oh-now-you’ll-get-it answer: A client who’s a perfectionist. 
 
Aha. 
 
Now everything should make sense for you. We have a client—we’ve actually had lots of clients like this—who’s a perfectionist. Who will revise and revise and revise a draft until it’s almost perfect… and then decide that it’s anything but, and then trash it, and start over, and then revise and revise and revise again, taking us along for the ride. 
 
As a creative resource, you could fight this. But you know that that would get you in trouble, and perhaps fired. 
 
You could just go with the flow: “Oh, this is the way they like to work. I’ll just… endure it, without complaining.” 
 
It’s possible that you could coast along like this indefinitely. 
 
But neither of the above approaches benefits anybody. 
 
Thus our advice to you in these situations: Embrace it. Heck, enjoy it. See it for the invaluable paid education that it is: 
 
Our fastidious client in this story—like most of the clients we’re lucky to work with, whether they’re fastidious or not—is quite brilliant. We would pay to learn their thought processes. To try and osmose just a tiny bit of that genius. Why do they toss Draft 5 and do a wholesale rework for Draft 6? 
 
Incidentally, the method behind the madness reveals—if you pay attention—that overall, these drafts get better as they go. It’s not a simple straight slope, were you to graph it. But the trend would be positive. Put it this way: Wouldn’t you love to see Einstein’s notes en route to e = mc2? 
 
We get paid for our services. It’s incumbent on us to remain profitable. So we don’t lose money on assignments like this—while, at the same time, we don’t take advantage of our clients’ generosity. And while we get paid in dollars, often the greater reward is the knowledge. The insight. And, frankly, the ability to help other clients like this in similar situations. 
 
As we’d said, we’re not along simply for the ride. We dive right in, on every single draft, seeing what’s changed and doing our best to make it better throughout. That’s why our clients entrust us on this journey. 
 
Need help with a client, or project, that feels unending? Contact us. We’d be happy—truly happy—to help. 

​This is a sensitive one. It’s based on a recent experience with a client of ours. 
 
We need to exercise discretion here, but know that our client serves a certain target audience who is, well, for lack of a better word, suffering. 
 
Yes, suffering. 
 
No, this client of ours is not a personal-injury lawyer. Not a chiropractor. Not an undertaker. Nothing like that. They’re a professional-services firm that just so happens to specialize in helping out a very niche audience who is, by nature of their “situation,” out-and-out miserable. 
 
It’s the context of that “situation” which our client specializes in. Thus the audience of sufferers. 
 
This begs a bunch of questions: 

• How do you approach this suffering audience? 

 

• How do you sell to this suffering audience? 

 

• Should you approach this suffering audience? 

 

• Should you sell to this suffering audience? 

 
Here’s why you should keep reading: 
 
These questions don’t just pertain to our super-specialized client. 
 
They also pertain to you. Believe it or not. 
 
To suffer or not to suffer
 
We’ll spare you any suspense: We believe it’s absolutely appropriate to approach, and yes sell to, this audience. 
 
Of course that assertion comes loaded with caveats. 
 
But before we go there, let’s go here: How does this pertain to you? Who ever said your prospects are suffering? 
 
We did. Right here at Copel Communications. 
 
Think about it. If they weren’t suffering, they wouldn’t need your services. Here’s a kind of warped parallel: 
 
Ever see one of those “ghost-hunter” shows on TV? The ones where a group of “paranormal experts” descend upon some old house or hotel, and wire it up with equipment and recording devices, to try and capture the energy from long-dead spirits? 
 
If you have, great. If you haven’t, great. Because we’ll tell you the “secret ingredient” in all of these “reality” shows. (Boy did we ever smirk when we added the quotation marks to the word “reality,” but that’s the topic of another article.) 
 
Here’s the secret sauce, which all of these shows employ generously: If you think about the “team” of ghost-hunters, who do you think of? Exactly: People who are well-versed in the paranormal and the technology used to try and capture mysterious otherworldly behavior. People who know their history. People who are naturally curious, and certainly not afraid of the dark or things that go bump in the night. 
 
Wait. Scratch that. 
 
What?
 
“People who are not afraid of the dark or things that go bump in the night.” 
 
Nope. Not a qualifier for these TV shows. In fact, the exact opposite is true. 
 
Watch any one of these. Sure, there will be a team of experts who are intrepid. But every time—trust us on this—there will be one person on that team who is utterly terrified of the dark, who jumps out of their skin at the slightest noise. 
 
Think about that. Why would you ever, ever, intentionally add a scaredy-cat to your ghost-hunting team? 
 
(Don’t worry. We’ll connect this to “suffering target audience” in just a second.) 
 
The answer: It makes for good television.
 
Mind you, it’s not the professional ghost-hunters who choose Mister Scaredy-Cat to join their team. It’s the show’s producer.
 
Because if the team were all nothing but ice-cool professionals, they would go in, do their job, get their info... 
 
...and the show would be boring. Simple as that. 
 
Approach with caution
 
If you watch any of these ghost-hunter shows, the best parts are when some door creaks, or a bat flies out of a pantry, and Mister Scaredy-Cat utterly leaps out of his skin and runs off screaming into the night, knocking down expensive equipment as he goes. It’s delightful. It’s funny. It’s fun to watch. And it gives you a little dosage of smug self-satisfaction as you think: I would never do that!
 
And it keeps you watching the show, instead of switching the channel. 
 
So back to our client and their suffering audience. And at least as important, yours.
 
If you only reach out to prospects who are the “professional ghost-hunters,” you’re barking up the wrong tree. To mix metaphors (one of our dubious skills here at Copel Comms), that tree is connected to the wrong sales funnel. The lower in the funnel, the more your prospects are suffering. Not necessarily personally (as is the case with our client), but certainly professionally. 
 
So. Now we can pick up the thread, and tell you how our client—with a little help from us—approached this delicate situation. 
 
Our client is truly empathetic. Spoiler alert: The principal is also a veteran/survivor of the exact same “situation” as their target audience. So they know what these prospects are going through. 
 
Importantly, they also know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel—something that none of these prospects can grasp, deep in the doldrums of despair. 
 
And that’s the way in.
 
This is about comfort. It’s about succor. It’s about understanding. It’s about hope. 
 
Then it’s about professional expertise. About helping prospects face a difficult reality. It’s the delicate balance of “tough” and “love.”
 
Now think about your prospects. We can safely assume they’re not as all-out depressed as our client’s prospects, but they’re still suffering, in their way. 
 
And this leads to some interesting creative/marketing approaches for you. Depending on the degree of “suffering,” you can dial up (or down) the level of comfort-and-compassion accordingly. 
 
But just knowing that opens up a new window, for you, to really reach these people, and connect with them at a much deeper level than you might ordinarily do through traditional approaches. And then, of course, once you’ve engaged with them—once you’ve gotten their attention—you can segue to the value that you bring. Which will end everyone’s professional suffering. 
 
Even yours. 
 
Need help unpacking challenges like this? Contact us. We’d be happy to help. 

​This sentence is in English. You understand it perfectly. And you take all of that for granted. 
 
Stuff like this goes out the window when your client’s first language isn’t English. It certainly makes things harder for you. 
 
And for them. 
 
In this article, we’ll give you some pointers, based on our experience, for making life easier for you and your clients whose English isn't as good as yours. 
 
Bash the bias
 
Here at Copel Communications, we’re native/first-language English speakers. We’ve had additional schooling in English. We speak, think, and dream in English. It all comes very natural. 
 
(Or would that be “naturally”?) 
 
(LOL!) 
 
The “bias” we’d mentioned above is kind of a knee-jerk reaction that you might have when you first encounter someone whose English isn’t very good. They’ll struggle with common phrases and idioms; we have one client who, when they give us input, will typically say, “Let me know how you think.” 
 
It’s cute. It’s kind of funny. And it invites a brutal bias.
 
Because, face it, who else talks like this? Little kids. Little kids who are also struggling to learn English for the first time. So their brains aren’t entirely formed, they’re not as smart or experienced as we adults.
 
And that’s the bias that rears its ugly head when you first hear, “Let me know how you think.” 
 
That particular client of ours is Korean (we have lots of Korean clients; more on that in a minute). Know how much Korean we speak? 
 
Try “zero.” 
 
So on the one hand, this puts us in an advantageous position for non-English-native clients who need to communicate to their prospects in flawless English; they can count on us. 
 
On the other hand, however, it obscures the fact that their English is better than our Korean, any day of the week. That’s the conundrum: Someone who sounds less intelligent than you is actually more intelligent than you, because they’re not only getting across difficult concepts, but they’re doing it in a second language. Holy mackerel! It’s humbling. 
 
So always bear that in mind in situations like this. Even when all those cute phrases keep popping up. 
 
Ways to work better with non-English-speaking clients
 
We have clients with lots of different first languages. As we’d mentioned above, we have lots of Korean clients. But we have others whose first language is German. Japanese. Spanish. 
 
Mind you, we don’t speak any of those languages. But we have successful ongoing relationships with these clients, sometimes for decades.
 
(This gets back to the Korean clients of ours. Once we establish a relationship at one client company, they all know us there. Then, invariably, someone from that company joins another company, and essentially brings us along. This gets so convoluted that we recently got a project for a major Korean enterprise based in Seoul, from their in-house agency in London. They told us they got our name from So-And-So at Such-And-Such Company. Thing is, we’d never even heard of So-And-So or Such-And-Such!) 
 
So how do you do it? Here are some pointers: 

• Allow for overages. If it takes you, say, an hour to process the input for a typical given project, figure on two hours for an assignment like this. There’s going to be back-and-forth, because the input won’t be clear, and your own queries may require clarifying, and all of this takes time and effort, which you need to factor into the project, including turnaround time and pricing. Otherwise you’ll simply set yourself up for frustration, undue deadline stress, and lost margin. 

 

• Email often is best. You can chat on the phone or Zoom, but lots of times your client’s accent will be so thick that you’ll simply drive them nuts asking them to repeat or clarify. (And if you think you’re “being polite” by not asking, guess again. You must persist.) This is why we generally prefer email. Just like when a friend emails you that they “kust went someplace,” and you can look at your keyboard and see that the “K” is right beside the “J” and deduce that they’d meant “just” and not “kust” and it was a simple typo, you can do the same kinds of things with your clients. Plus you can quickly Google unfamiliar phrases. Email works well in both directions; you don’t need to speak slower or rephrase things; your client can simply look up anything in your email that they don’t understand. 

 

• Lean on tech. Speaking of Google, we and our clients use Google Translate a lot. It’s very helpful for a basic pass on something originally created in another language. So we’ll get, say, website pages or press releases written in another language, and either we or the client will simply pop the text into Google Translate, and it typically lets us understand 95 percent of the intended input. 

 

• Don’t be afraid to ask. This gets back to our earlier point. Don’t ever assume that that five percent of stuff you don’t understand can be simply figured out by context. Ask. Be specific. 

 

• Be prepared to give tough love. It might seem funny, to you, to think that a client whose English, well, sucks, would have the audacity to “correct” verbiage that we create on their behalf, but it actually happens all the time. So you need to be patient; you need to clarify and substantiate your points; and sometimes you just need to give tough love. We had a client, years ago, who insisted that we use the word “beautiful” to describe the people in their company (a global enterprise that you’ve heard of). We had to explain how that would be interpreted by American audiences, as a mark of vanity, conceit, or shallowness. It turned out to be a very tough sell; the word “beautiful,” in that other country’s language, described their intent perfectly. But it just didn’t translate. Time for tough love. 

 
Get help
 
We can offer you all of this advice because, as we’ve mentioned, we’ve toiled in these trenches for years and years, and we actually enjoy the assignments. There’s a huge degree of faith at work here: If we, say, employ wordplay or distinctly American cultural references in our work, our clients simply have to trust us to get the right message across. But they find out, soon enough, whether our deliverables score or not: they’ll get firsthand customer response. Which only helps to bolster the faith, and cement the relationship. 
 
Need help crafting messaging for a client whose English isn’t perfect? Contact us. We’d be happy to discuss your needs with you. 

​Okay, that’s a confusing title, isn’t it? “How to promote promotion.” What on earth are we talking about? And how will this, to be blunt, help you make more money? 
 
Trust us. We’ve got the answers. 
 
This one comes from a recent story with a client of ours. It’s a “teachable moment.” So we thought we’d share it with you. 
 
Spilled ink
 
That client of ours had had a turn of good luck. A big company—one of the nation’s largest banks—chose to feature them in an article they published. 
 
Sounds great, right? 
 
Of course it is. 
 
This bank is a household name. Their brand is worth billions. They have a powerful media presence. So just to have them say anything about our client, let alone feature them in an article, is pretty great. 
 
Why, then, are we writing about this? What’s “teachable”? 
 
Our client, understandably, wanted everyone on earth to know that Huge Bank wrote an article about them. Sure, Huge Bank did publish this article (online). But would it reach our client’s niche audience? Our client wanted to push out a press release, telling their clients and prospects about the Huge Bank article. 
 
This still seems really straightforward, doesn’t it? 
 
Well here’s where it starts to go off the rails. Our client brought in a writer to pen the release, and gave him the Huge Bank article as input. 
 
That might seem logical, but it was a mistake. Because here’s what happened: 
 
That writer scoured the Big Bank article, pulled what he thought were the most important points, and drafted a press release around them. 
 
And that release, well, sucked. 
 
Teachable moment. 
 
Mind you, we’re not blaming the writer here. He simply followed his directions, which were insufficient. And here’s why: 
 
The article from Huge Bank was all about how our client leaned on Huge Bank for a business line of credit, and how Huge Bank was able to meet their needs. Totally straightforward. Sure, it made mention of what our client does and who they serve, but the big focus—no surprise—was on Huge Bank. It was about how Huge Bank has all kinds of creative lending solutions. And how Huge Bank works extra hard to help its clients. It was a puff piece—no surprise—about Huge Bank. 
 
So guess what this press-release writer’s release read like? You guessed it: It read like a promotion for Huge Bank, and not our client.
 
Ooops. 
 
We needed to swoop in and rewrite the release from scratch. That’s because there was a time crunch; ordinarily, we’d simply re-direct the original writer. 
 
Our new release—which the client loved and immediately approved for publication—was all about our client. In a word, Duh. It talked all about how great our client is, and the kinds of problems they solve for their clients, and that nowadays, they’re so well-known and respected, that they’ve even been featured in a new article by... wait for it... Huge Bank. 
 
How much, then, of Huge Bank’s article informed our press release? Hardly any of it. We just wanted to promote the fact that Huge Bank was talking us up. Indeed, our press release was worth more than Huge Bank’s article. Naturally, we included a link to Huge Bank’s article in the release itself, but we couldn’t have cared less if the readers actually clicked it. 
 
Tracking it down
 
As we noted above, our client was delighted—indeed, pleasantly surprised—by the quality of the new press release we drafted on such short notice. But this gets to the bigger question, the one you’ve likely been wondering about all this time: 
 
Why did this mistake happen in the first place?
 
Why, indeed, is this teachable? Why were we forced to “swoop in” (our own words) to fix this? Why was the original release subpar? (As we mentioned above, we don’t blame the original writer.) Most importantly, how can this be fixed—and avoided—in the future? 
 
Oh, you’re smart. You figured out most of this already. By which we mean, “Our client mis-directed the writer.” Which is absolutely true. What we didn’t tell you, however, was that our client had reached out to this writer without telling us, and only informed us after the original press release was written, i.e., a quick “Hey, could you review this before it gets published?” 
 
Had we known, from the get-go, that our client was only going to give that writer the Huge Bank article as input, we would have instantly intervened and given him proper direction. That didn’t happen, and so this situation quickly became a fire which required dousing. 
 
The go-forward solution? We had to gently admonish our client: “Don’t do that again.” We can certainly appreciate their enthusiasm and excitement at getting some “ink” from Huge Bank, but if we hadn’t intervened, and if they had actually published that original release, it would’ve been a Huge Mistake. 
 
Need help “promoting the promotion,” or any other marketing-related challenge? Contact us. We’d be happy to help. 

​Okay. We’ll admit that the title of this blog—“ SME-based articles for non-SME audiences”—is a mouthful. But it’s also a good, important topic when it comes to business development for your consultancy or professional-services firm. And it speaks to assignments we work on a lot, to our clients’ benefit. 
 
This story starts with a story. We were tasked with writing a highly technical blog article for a high-tech client. So far, so logical. 
 
But the intended audience was non-technical.
 
Aha. 
 
Who’s pulling the purse-strings?
 
Let’s keep one thing clear here: Our mission, at Copel Communications, is to help our clients make more money. Period. All of the deliverables we produce, whether they’re websites or video scripts or blog articles like the one we’re describing here, are designed to soften the beachhead of prospects, and ease them further down the funnel into buyers. 
 
Taking a customer-back approach to the challenge of this article, we asked our client: “Who is this aimed at?” More specifically, “Who would be buying what we’re selling?”
 
This is where it gets interesting. Our client makes high-tech equipment for use in a variety of scientific applications. And there are lab technicians who use this equipment. For them, a highly technical article would be appropriate, with no need for dumbing down any of the nerdy details. 
 
But these lab technicians, although they are users of the equipment, are not the buyers of the equipment. 
 
Oooh. Let’s repeat that: 
 
These lab technicians, although they are users of the equipment, are not the buyers of the equipment. 
 
And this is where the lessons of this story apply to what is likely a ton of scenarios for your business. 
 
Two different audiences
 
The lab technicians’ bosses certainly have technical know-how, given their career path up the corporate ladder. But they don’t need to read an article on the nuts-and-bolts of this technical equipment. They’d rather know the business case for buying one (which often involves replacing an aging or lesser version of the exact same thing). 
 
More importantly, a big, albeit secondary, chunk of the intended audience was relative newbies in the field: People just starting their careers who, despite their schooling, need to quickly get up to speed in the real world to get ahead. 
 
For those people, they’d be Googling topics of interest to learn more. And thus this article was seeded with the types of keywords they’d be searching on; think of it as a “101”-type intro article on the broad applications of this piece of equipment. 
 
Now, why would you want to educate this latter audience, if they’re not doing the purchasing? 
 
Let’s make this easier by re-phrasing the above question: 
 
Why would you want to educate this latter audience, if they’re not doing the purchasing today?
 
Right. Given their ambition and hunger for information, they’ll likely be purchasers of this equipment tomorrow. Time moves fast in business. And they’ll be the ones who will thank this company (our client) for giving them the free knowledge they’d craved to get up to speed in their new careers. Not only that, but said company also proved to be a reliable source of expertise, which burnishes its brand and reputation. Why wouldn’t you go with that brand of equipment when the time comes? 
 
Un-SME-ing the SME
 
So we knew all of what we described above, about the target-audience landscape, when it came time for us to interview the subject matter expert (SME) assigned to us for the article.
 
Not only that, we explained this situation, upfront, to the SME. So she understood what our intention was, and what we needed to do. She was very generous with her expertise, but also helped us to explain the why’s and what-for’s of each nugget of information, so it would be more than just a litany of facts; it would be a basis for working knowledge in the lab.
 
And thus the article. In fact, we did a couple of these; they’re peppered in among the company’s more-technical offerings, which is a smart approach unto itself: Never assume your target audience is homogenous, especially when it comes to their level of experience or expertise. 
 
So the next time you feel inclined to push out technical promotional material to the world, (re)consider your audience. You certainly don’t want to swamp or intimidate the very people who might make formidable future allies—or customers. 
 
Need assistance with this kind of complex communication challenge? Contact us. We help our clients with assignments like this all the time, and would be delighted to help you, too. 

It’s that time of year again. Time for our annual wrap-up of business-building posts for consultants from Copel Communications. 
 
We hope you had a good year, considering that 2020 is one for the history books, in so many ways. We had a good year (thanks for asking), but that’s because we’re blessed with some really smart clients who always see the glass as half-full, and were able to thrive amid the most challenging of times. 
 
Here’s a recap of our 2020 posts, with a teaser and a link for each. If you’d like to revisit any, here’s your chance. And if you missed any of these, by all means, catch up! 

• What’s the best medium for increasing your exposure? We always get asked, “Which medium should we use to promote our business?” Guess what? That’s the wrong question. Find out what you should be asking—and answering—here. 

 

• How to write a pillar page (and get better site traffic). If you don’t know what a “pillar page” is—let alone how one can boost your business—this is the article for you. Lots of good, useful detail. 

 

• How to write business-building emails. You might be shocked to learn how hard this “simple” task really is. But boy is it worth the effort. Learn killer tricks and tips here. 

 

• How to nail that webcam performance. We actually penned this one before the pandemic put everyone on camera! We were ahead of our time. Catch up. Our tips are the best you’ll find, trust us. 

 

• How to create—and use—talking points for your business. You don’t need to have a CNN crew at your doorstep to need the help this article provides. You’d be surprised how many practical applications exist—and why you should prepare now. 

 

• How to profit from gig-economy vendors. Websites and apps have democratized specialized labor. Great news for you, right? Not really: It’s a classic double-edged sword. Learn how to help your business, while supporting talented individuals. 

 

• What is your “gateway offering”? You have one, right? Ooops, you blinked. Better read this article before you get caught flat-footed by that next big opportunity. 

 

• What is the best “media mix” for promoting your business? There’s a ton of choices out there: traditional, digital, social, you name it. Where should you invest? Find out here. 

 

• Continuing education for consultants. Should you pursue an online degree? Invest in an advanced certification? What are the counterintuitive options out there which deliver outsized ROI? Get the answers you need to make smart choices. 

 

• What is “cross-pollination consulting”? How do you break into new markets with minimum friction and maximum payoff? What tools and advantages do you already have, that are hiding in plain sight? The answers may surprise you. 

 

• Do business gifts build business? What’s the ideal end-of-year business gift for that client or prospect? Discover our radical approach to this annual conundrum. 

 
Have a topic you’d like us to weigh in on? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you. 

Keep that pipeline replenished
 
Ordinarily we equate September with back-to-school. That may get cramped by social-distancing and/or Zoom classrooms, but the need to keep current—especially if you’re in the professional-services business—is ongoing. Let’s call it the continuing challenge of continuing education. 
 
In this article, we’ll review the “why,” the “what,” and the “how.” Let’s not waste time: The “why” is hugely important. 
 
Why continuing ed is vital
 
It’s not degrees. Or awards. Or certificates. Or accreditations. It’s income. Simple as that. 
 
Put it the other way: If you can get by, and keep current, and prosper, without continuing education, then by all means, do so. Because education is an investment. And you want ROI. 
 
Thing is, no one can keep current, and properly prosper, without continuing education. Know why? Things change. It’s the entropy of business. If you don’t keep up, it’s your loss, quite literally. 
 
Think of the common business metaphors you often hear: 

• “We don’t want to be dinosaurs.”

 

• “We don’t want to be making buggy-whips.” 

 

• “Look at those digital Neanderthals.”

 
Need we go on? 
 
If there’s one thought that encapsulates this—if there’s one takeaway in this article that should motivate you—it’s this: 

• Your clients and prospects are changing.

 
If that doesn’t make your blood chill, then nothing will. 
 
Let’s be more specific. What, exactly, changes? What do you need to learn about? Here are some examples: 

• Clients’ needs. 

 

• Their clients’ needs. 

 

• The state of the competition. 

 

• The state of technology. 

 

• Current or pending regulation. 

 

• Social, fashion, and news trends. 

 
At this point, you should rightly be wondering: “But how does all of this pertain to education? This goes way beyond what you learn in school.”
 
Bingo. You’re on the right track already. 
 
A not-so-tangential tangent: 
 
Back when scientists were first measuring the speed of light, they encountered a puzzling phenomenon. No matter what the speed of the observer, the speed of light was always measured as a constant. Think about that, and it makes no sense. If you see a car approach you at 50 mph, that’s one thing. But if you’re also racing toward it at 50 mph, then, clearly, your rate of closure—the apparent speed of the approaching car—is 100 mph. 
 
But light didn’t behave like a car. No matter how they measured it, the scientists always came back with the same speed. What were they doing wrong? 
 
Turns out that they weren’t measuring anything wrong. Their measurements, to the contrary, were quite accurate. But these brilliant scientists were thinking wrong. And it took an even-more brilliant scientist—yep, Albert Einstein—to realize that in the classic “speed” definition of “distance over time,” the variable here wasn’t distance, but rather time.
 
He figured out that time changes. So the speed of light seems the same. Conceptually, it’s very simple: If one of the two variables isn’t changing, then the other must. But no one, before Einstein, could wrap their heads around it. It was this germ—this passel of head-scratching experimental data about the speed of light—that led to his immortal Theory of Relativity. 
 
In other words, he asked the question that no one else was asking.
 
To return to our thread: 
 
There is a certain Einsteinian logic to your question about continuing ed. That question about “what they teach in school.” 
 
Think big(ger)
 
Yes, you can certainly go (back) to school for your continuing ed. Colleges these days, given the drought of students in the wake of Covid-19, would be more than happy to accept your tuition. And it needn’t be on-campus or even in-person; virtual learning is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic, along with tech enablers like Zoom and GoToMeeting. 
 
So you could do that. 
 
But can you sense our, um, indifference toward this topic? There are so many more opportunities available to you these days. And so many of them are richer, cheaper (free, even), faster, more efficient, and infinitely more fun. 
 
Now, we can’t narrow this article to your one specific field of professional-service consulting. But we work with enough consultants to know “the usual suspects” when it comes to ongoing educational opportunities: 

• Trade associations (think AIA, SHRM, etc.) and their offerings, such as publications, websites, courses, and seminars. 

 

• Accrediting organizations (PMI, Six Sigma, Blue Ocean, etc.).

 

• Trade shows (think of seminars and panel discussions, whether live or virtual).

 
Those are obvious. We’re also somewhat wary of professional associations—specifically, the ones that are more interested in your dues than delivering value. How much are they charging you, each year, to tack a few letters after your name? Do your clients, um, care? The important question—think like Einstein!—is “Am I gaining new insights that help me grow my business right now?” That’s a good litmus test. 
 
Through the looking glass, down the rabbit hole
 
So there’s traditional education. There’s professional societies. Fine. But the interesting, third, often-overlooked category is what we’d call “nontraditional education.” And it’s where you’ll find the answers to some of the thorniest questions. It’s where you’ll gain peer-around-the-corner insights that will impress your clients, and entice prospects to sign on. 
 
The fun thing about this third category is that it’s, well, fun. 
 
Think about stuff you do when you’re not working, but should be. You might read the news. Watch a TV show. Read a book. Spend time on a social platform. Write in a journal. Do a crossword. Binge on YouTube. 
 
Guess what? There are continuing-education iterations of every item on that list. Don’t believe us? 

• Read the news. What better way to learn about current or pending legislation? Ditto for social and fashion trends. The only difference here is to be an active observer. Stay on topic for your profession, your vertical. And then dig. Deep. Go down those Reddit rabbit holes. Follow threads. Read comments. See who’s posting them. Read their bios. Sign up for Google alerts. Go where it takes you. You’ll be amazed at how much you learn. 

 

• Watch a TV show. No, not a “Friends” rerun. But how about the latest episode of “Nova”? What about a documentary? A science show? Even late-night comedy shows (and sites like The Onion) can help you keep up with current events, because that’s what they satirize. They might lampoon a story that you otherwise would have missed. 

 

• Read a book. “Continuing education” doesn’t get more basic than this. Think about it. What’s the first thing that professor, in that expensive college course, is going to give you, on the first day of class? A reading list. So save your money. 

 

• Spend time on a social platform. We already mentioned the “Reddit rabbit hole,” above. You can do similar stuff on LinkedIn. If you’re not a member of relevant groups, search for some and join them. Then dive into the conversations and threads. See who the thought-leaders are—based on your estimation and no one else’s—and join their conversations, follow their threads. Chances are, they’ll recognize you as a peer, as well. 

 

• Write in a journal. Process what you learn. And do it in the safety of a journal that no one else will see (unless you want them to, after the fact). There’s a fire-hose of information out there, and you need to figure out what matters, what’s valuable, to you. Paw the air in a journal or Word doc. Feel your way around. “Talk to yourself” about what you’ve learned, why it matters, how Tidbit A relates to Tidbit B. 

 

• Do a crossword. This might seem far afield, but it’s not. Think of it as cross-training. You want to be a great biker, so you also run. Or swim. A crossword is like doing brain-ups. And you might be surprised to learn how many current events, and trends, make their way into them. You’ll need to learn those, and get current, in order to succeed. 

 

• Binge on YouTube. We recently fielded a query from a prospect for one of our clients. They were in a business that we certainly grasped, but didn’t know too well. So we visited their website. And read. And read. And read some more. And then we saw that they’d posted some videos (hosted on YouTube, naturally) about their business. So we figured we’d watch one, just to help us get up to speed. Guess what? The video was fascinating! Before we knew it, we were all-out bingeing on them. It wasn’t, actually, self-indulgent. It was productive. Because we learned a ton about this prospect, saw what they do, and began to guess at challenges and pain-points of theirs, by reading between the lines of what they were promoting. 

 
Get help
 
We know about these continuing-ed tricks, because we practice what we preach. A lot of it is in-going attitude. If you approach it like a chore, it will be. If you come at it like it’s something you shouldn’t be doing—like it’s self-indulgent goofing off—you’ll have more fun, and end up learning more. 
 
That said, you can also avail yourself to other resources. Like us. Like you, we strive to keep current, because it equips us to help you with your marketing and communications challenges. Contact us today to learn more. 

Three top tricks for making more money
 
Quick: How much of your college education do you put to use at work each day? 
 
Second question: By contrast, how much of your career experience do you put to use at work each day? 
 
We’ll guess your answer to the second question outweighs the first one, mightily. 
 
We’re not going to spend this article dinging a college education. Rather, we’re going to focus on that education you got—and continue to get—while earning a living, and how to leverage it to your advantage. To make it pay, even more. 
 
The Man From Infinity
 
Years ago, we were working at an ad agency in New York, and were tasked with our first “color separation” for a full-page newspaper ad. Back then, this was a complex assignment that involved a high-tech vendor, a considerable budget, and special skills. (Today, it’s not even done anymore. If you create a newspaper ad on your computer, the file automatically includes the “CMYK” [cyan, magenta, yellow, and black] “plates” that are “separated out” for the different inks on the printing press, hence the term “color separation.”) 
 
This was new to us. Daunting, even. Because it’s one thing to get the funds for the separation and call in the vendor—but that’s only after you’ve applied these “special skills” to create the input artwork in the first place… skills which we didn’t have. 
 
A senior art director at the time gave us the magic tip: “Ask the vendor to show you.”
 
Simple as that. 
 
The company that did the “sep’s” for us was called Infinity. And the guy who worked there was named Steve. Steve From Infinity! Sounds like a super-hero. And in this case, he was: he swooped in and taught us all we needed to know. 
 
Was he being nice? Sure. Was he “cultivating a new client to boost his income”? Absolutely. 
 
Did we get an education? Indeed. Did we pay for it? No. In fact, we were on the company payroll at the time. Paid education. Put another way: Free food tastes better. 
 
The joys of email
 
There are a few guidelines you can apply toward bolstering your paid education: 
 
1. Pay attention.  

2. Be humble.  

3. Build. 
​ 
“Paying attention” is easier today than ever, thanks to email. If you’re cc’ed on the latest iteration of a deep thread from a client or a higher-up within your own organization, read the entire thread, from the bottom up.It’s amazing what you can learn from the depths of a conversation that was sent to you only for the benefit of the last addition. You can see how other functions function. You can see who the players are. You can get a handle on protocol: what’s accepted, and what isn’t. You can pick up on useful terminology or jargon. You can discern important strata of politics among stakeholders, sponsors, and customers. You can even pick up the timing of events and correspondence, based on the meta-data. In short, it’s a trove. Don’t pass it up. 
 
“Be humble” is another way of saying “Ask.” Think of it this way: Whenever you need to ask someone something, the tacit implication is that they know more than you. So when you ask someone—when you request to tap their expertise and experience—you’re complimenting them. It’s such a win/win: You look great for expressing humility, interest, and curiosity. The “teacher” feels great for being respected and valued. And you come away with new knowledge that’s valuable to your career. Would you gain any of these benefits if you cop an attitude or are afraid to admit your ignorance? Of course not. 
 
“Build” means that you can find synergies that aren’t handed to you as such. If you’re serving several clients in various verticals, you can apply the lessons of one to the business of another. And Business B will be all the more impressed that you did, simply because they lack the visibility into Business A’s industry that you possess. 
 
And take advantage of all venues. We’d mentioned email as one simple example. But there are optional meetings that could pay off handsomely, if the attendee list looks ripe. Ditto for conference calls, webinars, vendor presentations…. don’t look at them as “chores.” Look at them as “opportunities to learn.”
 
Making it pay
 
Each new skill set you add to your quiver is valuable. It’s as much “breadth” as it is “depth”; indeed, your paid education will often yield you more of the former than the latter. 
 
Of course, there are times when you simply need to tap the services of people who have been there, done that. Like us. For your next creative or communication challenge, we’d love to help—and put our hard-earned education to work for you. Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation.