Coaching/Consulting/Training

Lol, I can only agree... What a common story. Too many consultants are scared of sharing their ideas, because people are gonna "steal" them. What they fail to realise is that 99% of the people who listen to their ideas, no matter how good they are - These lack the time/drive/contacts/knowledge to actually implement those ideas effectively.

This means that if you share your information, what you're really doing is positioning yourself. So that when someone sees the value in what you've said, and realises that they can't do it themselves, you're the first person they call.

Back when I was just doing simple web design as a teenager, I would unwittingly consult with my clients about changes that they'd need to make in their business. One client ended up paying a consultant god knows how much, to tell him EXACTLY what I'd told him the year before. So he called me back up to make some changes to his website, to match the new changes that he'd made in his business.

If I'd put in more work to position myself as a consultant at the time, I could have earned tons more from that client. But you live and you learn...

That's literally my marketing approach. They attend a "Tell all" 3 hour event...and I spill the beans, answer all questions, hold nothing back.

After 3 hours, the smart ones see the value, and realize that they won't implement...and I'm cheaper than training someone else to do it. So they just hire me.


Very occasionally, I'll sell an hour on the phone. But it's really the same process. At the end, they just want me to do it.

I'm getting out of that model. I don't mind the selling, but I don't really enjoy the work itself.

It's just because I'm getting old and lazy, and I'm not interested in relationships with clients after a few hours.

Well it seems there are a couple approaches to "offline/local" marketing:

1. Do all the services yourself and/or outsource and/or have your employees do it. That's what it seems most of the people here do.

2. Give advice, train, consult, coach with no implementation on your part of any kind and none by your team. Ewen pointed out in a post that true consulting was just this in his definition.

Some of those franchises I mentioned charge big bucks for this knowledge - thousands a month - and do none of the actual work. They work but they nor their team write one thing on a website or post one piece of content.

3. A hybrid approach.

Was just wondering why it seemed more people didn't do #2 when others say that works great.

A big name example would be somebody like Franklin Covey which does training/coaching in sales, business success, etc. but they don't actually go out and do the selling nor do they fix a website nor do they get you better rankings. Action Coach seems to do pretty well for themselves and it is all knowledge and not implementation.

For example, if Doctor John already has a website or a FB page then they can get the work done. Maybe it looks bad or maybe it won't succeed but they can get the work done without us. Their main need may be in knowing how to improve or how to get better conversions. That could be accomplished by the #2 group and they wouldn't have to do any of the hands on work.

Mark