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The Beard Of Death (Don’t Let Your Clients Become Thought Leaders)

In 1567 there was a guy named Hans Staininger.  He had an incredibly long beard that measured at a powerful 4.5 feet in length.  His magnificent facial hair was longer than toddlers, domesticated house pets, and all Austrian Tatzelwurms (also known as Stollenwurms or Springwurms).  I am sure you can see why Hans usually kept his beard rolled up in a pouch for safekeeping and maintenance.

One day after a long day's hard work as a burgomaster, which is a fancy name for the mayor of an Austrian town, he decided to let his hair down.  Taking his long luxurious beard out of his beard pouch, he pranced around his town in Braunau (current day Austria) running errands, or whatever you did to relax in those old timey days.  Unfortunately Hans got a little crazy, tripped over his own beard, and broke his neck.  The local doctor tried to save him with leeches and pouring mercury in his mouth while simultaneously kicking him in the shin but to no avail.  Hans died an inglorious death.  Hey, at least he got a statue out of the whole deal.

Now this fatal mistake is a pretty easy one to avoid for us modern folk.  Especially since you now know the dangers involved with intermittent shaving.  If one of your friends' beards starts to get a bit too long, you can regale him with the story of poor Hans Staininger.  

Sometimes in life and business we do things with good intentions but end up suffering unforeseen consequences.  In my “writing as a service” business, I see this all the time with prospective clients.  Founders and CEOs will come to me with a firm idea of what they want to accomplish with their newsletter that they want me to ghostwrite for them. They are so earnest about it when they tell me. However, it scares the bejesus out of me because it is the equivalent of them telling me they want to grow a Stainingerian-like beard of death.  Allow me to explain. 

Thought Leader Is Just Another Word For . . .

The majority of the leads in my business now are inbound or referrals from existing clients.  They come pre-sold for the most part, but I don’t automatically bring everyone on board.  I have a limited number of spots available at any one time, so I have become picky about who I work with.  My goal is to create long standing relationships (My best client relationships are the ones where I have ghostwritten for them for a year or more). 

There are a few criteria I use in deciding if I am going to take on a client.  One of them is 100% objective.  Namely, do I think the newsletter I am writing for will make money either immediately, or very shortly after we start. 

“But Wade, I want to be a thought leader in the industry.  We will make money from the exposure.  It will translate to sales on the back end.”

Maybe.

However, those sales are not trackable and I cannot properly attribute them to my efforts.  Even if you can create some perfect tag system to track back end conversions, this is a medium to long term play.  In the beginning, when your client is at the height of their excitement, this seems like a great idea.  

It’s not.

Business has ebbs and flows.  When things get dicey, people look to make a change.  They need to see a direct ROI from their vendors.  If you can’t show that, you’re done.  They will either try to do it themselves, get someone else, or ask you to justify your rate (otherwise known as the beginning of the end).

Being a thought leader is like having the beard of death.  It looks cool, but in the end, it will break your business neck and be the end of your relationship.  Put another way, thought leader is just another word for a metaphorical single engine Cessna with terrible maintenance and an aileron cursed by a disgruntled goth fairy.  It is only a matter of time before things come crashing down.  This is a business truth.

But This Time It’s Different!

Whenever a prospective client tries to convince you otherwise they either don’t know themselves, or the hard truth of business.  You must be able to show a return on investment as a direct result of your work, or the clock is ticking.  Every single time I have violated this rule the client and I have parted ways because of it. 

Every.

Single.

Time.

Your client’s specific situation is not different, special, or unique.  Zeus help you if they say “no money in the beginning but lots later.”  Run.

Any time you start a relationship with a new client, you must always keep in mind this harsh reality of business. Ignore it at your peril.

Establish A Baseline

Remember, your job is more than just making your client money.  You must be able to show how you do it, and how much revenue those efforts produce.  The good news is that this is not hard to do.

What most people don’t understand is that you don’t need to hit a homerun out of the gate.  It is nice when that happens but you really only need to show improvement.  If the trendline is going in the right direction, reasonable people will give you time to do your thing.  The first step to being able to do this is to establish a baseline metric to work from.  That metric is money.

It’s not clicks, opens, subscribes, follows, or any other nonsense.  It is cold, hard, cash.  The purpose of a writing as a service business is to create revenue.  You must know how much revenue is being created day one so you have a baseline to judge your efforts by.  Most importantly, it helps you to know when you are doing something right (or wrong).  Without that one number ($), you are lost.  

You can’t improve upon nothing.  You can improve upon $0.01.

Numbers Can Grow

You may have noticed that at the top of this newsletter is an advertisement.  It is the first time The Understory Dispatch has ever had one.  The amount of money per click is not huge and the subscriber base of The Dispatch is not gigantic either.  Most people in this situation do the back of napkin math and scoff at the amounts involved and don’t do it.  This is silly.  All big businesses started with small numbers.  It is a mandatory step.  I implore you to start as soon as humanly possible to generate revenue in all your business efforts.

The only reason I haven’t done it already is because there hasn’t been a good fit from an advertiser perspective.  Until now, that is.  I am a subscriber to 1440.  I consider it a baseline news source to compare other news sources against.  A baseline is a powerful tool that helps you to make decisions.

In business, the power of a baseline is not reliant upon the numbers involved.  In fact, I would argue that when the numbers are small it is easy to see what is working and what isn’t.  Things can be murky when there is a lot of money flying around.

(In that situation, you look for trends over time.)

When you are tracking the numbers you can see progress when things work.  Then, you can double down on those things and start to build momentum.

Big Mo is a beautiful thing when it shows up.  There is nothing like riding that wave in your business.  Just remember that thought leaders don’t know how to surf.  They are too busy growing their beards.

More in a bit . . . Wade, The Understory Bard

P.S. - If you are on the waitlist for The Ghostletter Seminar where I teach my writing as a service newsletter framework, check your email. The cart is open.

P.P.S. - If you aren’t on the waitlist but want to check out the cart when it opens up to the public next week, subscribe to my email list. I will open up the cart to that list if there are any spots left. We are limiting it to ten people and very smart people are already snapping up the spots. You can subscribe to my email list here: The Understory Bard Emails

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