Proposify Biz Chat

What it’s about Millennials are constantly in the news these days. One day they’re spending too much money on avocado toast, the next they’re not spending enough on dryer sheets and “ruining” the laundry soap industry. The 21st century can be a harsh world for millennials, but Daniel DiPiazza has figured out some key steps to starting and growing an online business you and others will care about. His company, Rich20Something, provides tools and courses that teach millennials (and millennials at heart) how to thrive in a seemingly broken system where it’s hard to get ahead financially and make an impact. In this interview, Daniel talks about the important skills you can gain from freelancing, why everyone needs a creative outlet, and why you should build your own platform.

No one wants to fire a client. They pay us money, they have interesting projects, and sometimes they become our friends. But then there’s the other kind of client; the one who is such a nightmare to work with that your business starts to lose money and morale. I fired a client ONCE, and it was when I was a marketing/communications freelancer. While I’ve worked with lots of challenging people in my career, I quickly realized that this situation was different and there was no chance for a resolution. Without getting into all the gory details, here’s the gist of what happened: Communication barrier No acknowledgement of my expertise in an area my client had zero experience Unconstructive and harsh criticism from the client I couldn't understand why she was upset, and she wasn’t able to articulate the issue in a way that I could do anything about. She had a very hostile attitude that suggested I had taken advantage of her. Let me say that in my 17-year career in marketing, I have worked with a lot of smart, and

What it’s about Most people are aware of a few of the standard things they need to do market their business online, like having an email list and a blog. But Mike McGrail believes paid marketing is a necessity, even for a company that’s primarily inbound, because it can amplify your content to engage with a wider audience, taking your business to the next level.  Mike points out that previously, you could use Facebook and Twitter organically to build an engaged audience, but over time reach has been significantly reduced. Where organic reach of a Facebook business post was 55-60%, now it’s at about 2.5%. If those numbers don’t scream that paid marketing has become critical to reaching your target audience, I don’t know what does. In this interview, Mike talks more about why you need to experiment with paid social media, and what qualities and soft skills you need to look for when hiring great marketers on your team.

I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you.The folks at your agency are too nice to tell you the bad news themselves, so I’m here to take on that burden and lay it all on the table. It might be tough to hear, but in the long run, it’s for your benefit. So before you get all outraged and pick up the phone to fire their asses, take a few minutes to read this post and consider their side of client/agency relationship. I promise that in the end, it can only lead to a more productive, effective, and valuable partnership. Now take a deep breath and read on.

What it’s about Ross Simmonds’ understanding of online business and the power of content came when he started his second business, a fantasy football blog, while he was in university. “I was a kid living in my parents’ basement, and I was reaching thousands of people all over the world, positioning myself at the age of 18 or 19 as an authority in fantasy football, and people were buying it,” says Ross. That’s when he realized the massive potential in content marketing and that it was something he needed to double-down on. Although he hated writing about Shakespeare and English for university, he loved writing about football, so he followed that passion. It then allowed him to develop the skill-set of creating great content that resonates with people. In this interview, Ross talks about the secret to writing compelling content; why distribution, not content, is king; and tips for reaching more people to grow your business.

FACT: If you’re a small business that’s selling services on the low end of the market, it’s going to be almost impossible to scale your business. You’re also likely to be pretty stressed out since you constantly need to scramble to get new clients, complete their projects at lightening speed to be profitable, and deal with the looming threat of being squeezed out by a competitor who offers an even lower price. Most things naturally drop in price over time, and there’s not much you can do to control that. Disruptive technology, for example, is making things like web design, legal services, marketing, and electronics cheaper by the day. If your only value proposition is a claim to offer the lowest price, that’s a crumbling cliff’s edge to build your business on. Someone will always be able to do it cheaper (or say they can).

What it’s about Dan Martell learned to code when he was 16 and in rehab. While cleaning, he found an old computer and a book on Java programming. This, and receiving the first encouraging words of his life from a prison guard, was the beginning of a whole new world for Dan. When he got out, the internet was exploding, and he started his first company at 17. Some of them were failures, but the software agency that he started at 24, sold at a profit for millions when he was 28. Since then Dan has gone on to found more companies, become an angel investor, and help entrepreneurs.  “I want people to judge me for my ideas and the things I create,” says Dan. “ Anytime I’ve had capital, I’ve just re-invested it in other companies.” In this interview, Dan talks about his ‘rags to riches’ story, what motivates him in business (hint: it’s not money), and his vision of a perfect agency model.

I can’t pretend that I’ve always liked sales. If right now I was being held hostage, deprived of coffee, and interrogated under a bright light in a stuffy boardroom and asked about it, my gut reaction would still be to say, “I hate selling”, even though sales has been a natural part of my career for the past 15 years.  I think I’m still scarred by all the terrible salespeople I’ve interacted with over the years, both personally and professionally. You know the type — it’s likely the same reason why you think you hate sales — smarmy, relentless, and only thinking about their commission. But the reality is, that’s just one type. Of course, not all salespeople are like that, and certainly not the successful ones.  As humans, we tend to remember the bad, focus on the negative (ever notice how you’re quick to complain about that bad service you got as compared to how often you write to a company to tell them they did a good job?) so you’ve probably forgotten about all the times a salesperson helped you make a grea

What it’s about One-Click Lindsey admits that sometimes content marketing is challenging to do consistently.  “It’s hard to spend a whole afternoon working on something that’s not going to produce money right now, the way working on a web development project might,” says Lindsey.  But Lindsey knows that scheduling the time to create content regularly is as an important as any client meeting. In this interview, Lindsey talks about some of the content marketing strategy she uses to attract leads to her business and advise her clients. She also shares some tips on how she lowered her expenses and changed her process to make her agency more profitable.

I once hired a job candidate very quickly. Too quickly. George (name changed) came in for the interview and impressed us. Our agency needed developer badly, so like idiots, we just went with our gut feel and hired him the day of the interview without calling references. George started the job, and I gave him a relatively simple assignment  -  integrate a Google Maps plugin with our CMS. Over the next few weeks, I checked in regularly, “How is it going?” “Do you need help?”  He gave excuse after excuse why he wasn’t finished. Eventually, our client was upset that the project was late, so I came in on a Saturday to get it done myself (I’m not a trained developer like George said he was). Within an hour or two of Googling, I had figured out how to get the project done and delivered it to the client.  I was ecstatic the job was complete, but I was furious with George for misleading us into thinking he had any skills as a developer. That Monday he called me because he noticed he couldn’t log into any of his compan

What it’s about Brent Weaver started his career as a freelancer who could build websites. One client turned into a hundred, and then he and his business partner acquired a team, a downtown office, and all the challenges that come with running an agency. He became an entrepreneur through experience, not business school. “Sometimes we learned from that experience, and sometimes we made mistakes that almost shut our lights off,” says Brent. In this interview, Brent shares some common mistakes he sees agency owners making, mistakes he made himself, and how to turn those mistakes around to make a positive impact on your business.

You may have had a great initial meeting with your sales lead; you feel like you really connected with them, and you can offer a solution to their business challenge. Now that it’s time to move the opportunity to the next stage, it’s up to the proposal to reinforce and deepen that connection through the written word. How you express yourself in the proposal will reflect on the credibility of your company, your expertise, and your working style. It’s critical you get it right (pun possibly intended). Pick the right tone of voice We all know that how we say something is as important as what say. It doesn’t matter what you want to communicate to your sales lead, if you use a tone of voice or language in your writing that alienates them, you’ll lose the deal. Writing with a tone of voice your client can relate to will help you connect emotionally and engage with them. Once you establish that emotional connection and create some common ground, it’s easier to be persuasive. And being persuasive is the name of the p

What it’s about To Nicholas Kusmich, a successful business owner needs to know how to turn paid traffic into predictable profit, whether they learn to do it themselves, or they invest in someone to do it for them. As a strategic consultant with the highest Facebook ad ROI in the industry, Nicholas believes that if you have a scalable business and you’re looking to acquire new customers at a reasonable rate, there’s no better form of paid advertising than Facebook. In this interview, Nicholas shares some insights on how he gets such incredible returns from Facebook ads that you can apply to your business.

When I was running my web design agency, we developed and launched a website for a client who sold commercial real estate. A few weeks after we sent the final invoice, the client still hadn’t paid. I called to ask the client about the payment. He explained that since the original website design included social media buttons and they hadn’t gotten around to creating their social accounts yet, the website was, therefore, incomplete, so they were holding off on paying the invoice. I explained to the client that the social media buttons were not integral to the website’s functionality and could be added later, and that ultimately it wasn’t our responsibility whether or not they had set up their social accounts. Bottom line: pay up! When he still didn’t pay up, I locked him out of the content management system so he couldn’t log in until he paid the invoice. Mysteriously, a cheque was cut that afternoon. That’s an extreme example of a client not paying their invoice on time, but sadly it’s not uncommon for clients

Tim Kitchen actually started off wanting to be a rock star. When that dream didn’t quite happen, he became an online session drummer, recording drums for people over the internet. To get work, he had to market himself online and so inadvertently taught himself SEO, Adwords, and the basics of web design.   One day, he built a quick website and did some digital marketing to help his neighbour, an under-employed plasterer, get more work. It worked so well that his neighbor was able to buy a house and his wife quit her job. He realized that most people had no idea what SEO is all about and most of the books he researched focused on what NOT to do, but very little information about what you SHOULD do.     So, without any previous writing experience, Tim sat down and wrote a book called “How to Get to the Top of Google”. The original was very basic - he just opened MS Word and started typing and then published it straight to Amazon. “I designed the cover myself and it was horrible. The book was also full of spellin

I’ve talked before about the importance for founders to be the company’s first sales reps. It gives you an in-depth understanding of your sales cycle, your customers, your unique value proposition, and your place in the market. These are all things you need to figure out before you hire your first salesperson. And that’s what my co-founder, Kevin, and I did for the first two years of Proposify. But as the company grew, other aspects of the business required more of our attention. We also realized that since we don’t sell high-priced enterprise plans, we needed to be hyper cognizant of acquisition cost — will the customers we acquire be worth the cost of a sales reps? So we concentrated on inbound marketing - SEO, blogging, podcasting, social, and other inbound channels. While not a quick win, this approach worked well for us (and still does!), driving lots of leads. More leads than Kevin and I could ever talk to on our own. Two factors motivated us to think seriously about hiring a sales team: In 2016 we la