Black lives matter. I stand against racism.

The Method To The Madness

A long-time list member wrote in to ask for some clarification about the point of all these emails I send out.

This is totally understandable because I jump around between a lot of topics, and I very much appreciate the question (Thanks FM!)

Even though the central theme is crystal clear to me, I don't always do a great job connecting the dots between my daily musings and the core mission of this list for you.

So here it is:

The central theme of my daily mailing list is this: 

TO HELP YOU STOP TRADING TIME FOR MONEY

Other ways that I sometimes articulate this central theme include:

• Ditching hourly billing
• Stop billing, start pricing
• Increasing your profitability
• Making more money without working more hours
• Selling results, not deliverables

Okay, so... where do all the individual topics come from?

There are three non-optional core competencies I see that support a service business owner who wants to stop trading time for money: 

1. Pricing
2. Positioning
3. Publishing

Underneath each of these competencies, there are loads of smaller tactical topics. You'll probably recognize many of them if you've been around these parts for a while: 

Pricing

• Understanding value pricing
• Creating productized services
• Selling advisory retainers
• Increasing your altitude of involvement
• Anatomy of a project proposal
• Asking for 100% up-front
• How to conduct a sales interview
• The Why Conversation
• Pricing curves
• Offering guarantees
• Avoiding deadlines
• Controlling scope creep
• How to write an effective sales page

Positioning

• Three types of positioning statements
• Creating a laser-focused positioning statement
• How to tell people what you do
• The difference between the menu at the bar and the sign on the sidewalk
• Writing Heck Yeah headlines
• How to collect killer testimonials
• Optimizing for conversation
• Pigeonholing yourself
• The difference between a specialization and a niche
• The pros and cons of a platform specialization
• The pros and cons of a horizontal specialization
• Playing The Introduction Game to figure out what people think you do
• How to tell when your positioning is focused enough

Publishing

• Getting speaking gigs
• Launching a podcast
• Going on a podcast tour
• Maintaining a daily writing practice
• Writing a book proposal
• Writing a book
• Self-publishing a book
• Using webinars to validate ideas and generate leads
• Owning your platform
• Leveraging social media
• Building an email list

So, yeah... lots of seemingly disparate topics that support the central theme of ditching hourly billing. 

Whether you're new to the list or have been reading for a while, I hope this message will help orient you to the Content Solar System that I'm dragging you around in ;-)

Yours,

—J

P.S. I wasn't planning on running another session of the 5-Day Podcast Challenge for a while, but recently I've had a number of organic inquiries about it. If you would like to launch your first podcast in a little as five days, reply to this message with YES and I'll add your name to the waiting list. As soon as there are enough people to make a solid group, I'll run another session.