April 8, 2021

“How do I build an email list from literally nothing?” and more...

In today’s group coaching session, we had a bunch of good questions that touched on topics like:

Good stuff!

Here are some of the questions I answered today:

I’m formalizing my client onboarding process and am looking for best practices on how to streamline things (inquiry & discovery calls, proposals, project scoping, statements of work, contracts) while building trust and setting a good impression. At the moment, scoping sucks up the most time, as my engagements are primarily based on fixed pricing and are customized to the client (I’m working toward productizing). The projects aren’t big enough to use value-based pricing. (timestamp: 2m 0s)

I’m doing customer research for a new target audience (B2B SaaS CTOs), I know a few B2B SaaS CTOs personally and have reached out to conduct interviews with them. I’ve also cold-reached out to other B2B SaaS CTOs via LinkedIn; and as of yet don’t have a great response rate (6.67% total, all of which have been personal reach-outs). Should I keep doing cold-reachouts on linked in or just accept that personal network and friend-of-personal network is who I should stick to talking to? (timestamp: 24m 54s)

I’m interested in your perspective on building an email list from nothing (literally). I have a strong LinkedIn network, but have just gone out as an independent. Some options I’ve been exploring: • Organic growth through blog post publishing to LinkedIn • LinkedIn lead magnet • LinkedIn post asking for subscribers • One time email, asking for an opt-in • Adding a sign-up button to my email signature What approach(es) would you recommend? (timestamp: 33m 1s)

I have an advisory retainer offering where weekly meetings are the main focus. The issue is that sometimes the client doesn’t make enough progress to want a meeting that week or they change priorities without a plan to resume. So, they get some extra weeks. I don’t like managing that. How can I structure my offering/pricing to avoid makeup weeks. Should I make them pay for 6 months at a time? Should I say there are no cancellations and if you disengage, the cost to reengage is twice the cost? (timestamp: 39m 44s)

When meeting with a new prospect for the first time, I like to do an intro slideshow, about 5 mins, about how & when I started the company, our core values, primary services and standard methodology. I usually do this before I ask them to brain dump, because I want to give them perspective on my company and how we can fit into their plans. If it’s a company that I already know, or if they sought me out first, then I ask for the brain dump first. What are your thoughts on the intro? I sometimes find that people don’t want to brain dump before they feel like they know me just a little bit. (timestamp: 42m 19s)

I’ve been paid for about a dozen different services over the last 14 years and I’m looking for a way to niche down. Two questions you ask are “What do you want to be known for” and “Who do you most want to help”. Do you have a framework or other questions to help identify a niche beyond those? (timestamp: 47m 49s)

If you are bad at writing content for a blog or creating videos but have been able to generate enough revenue to have someone else solve that problem. How would you go about finding the right person to do that? For example, explaining to a writer my past experience as a VP of Engineering and how that can help prospects avoid failed projects and have the writer create the blog. (timestamp: 57m 3s)

(If you’re curious, you can review the entire list of past questions here)

Do you have questions like these that you’d like to get answered?

Registration for Group Coaching with Jonathan is open now.

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All recordings have timestamped links for each question to the spot in the video where I answer it, so you can jump right to the answers you care about without sitting through 150+ hours of video.

BONUS: Group Coaching also includes a dedicated Slack channel to facilitate discussion between sessions.

I hope you’ll join us!

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Yours,

—J

P.S. Would you like to see a FREE sample of what group coaching is like? Here’s a past session: FREE replay of Group Coaching session

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