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hey Jonathan here got a question from kalakijo who asks I'd be interested to hear about how you approach your value ladder or sales funnel process to acquire consulting gigs you talk about giving three options in the proposal and pricing at various depths of engagement is that part of your funnel hmm interesting I suppose you could think of it like that but I never thought of it like that but I suppose in a sense it is I guess I mean I guess it's semantics I never thought of it like that the way that when I was doing really high priced consulting software consulting work in the mobile space I the way that my funnel was actually pretty basic it wasn't there wasn't much funnel to it at all I played the the sort of I played the model where I was excited about something that happened to be at the top of the Gartner hype cycle and which was mobile at the time you know mobile in 2007 2008 2009 I was really excited about that I was also a web developer prior to that so I wanted to become an expert of sort of web development for these new smartphones and I wrote a book about it for a Riley so my funnel basically was you know I picked a specialty that was very exciting to lots of early adopters I wrote a book and I made myself famous for it basically so the funnel was pick a focus get famous for it by writing a I've got a couple of books for O'Reilly I blogged about it a lot I tweeted about it a lot I spoke at lots of conferences of speaking at about a conference a month or sometimes two you know about 12 conferences a year big web development conferences I was flying all over the world and that was really my funnel my funnel was can't get well-known share a lot in public in ways that that presented me as an authority in my space authority author right so like the quick way to become an authority is to write a book because author right so there wasn't much funnel to it but the downside of this was you know for a long time I was printing money but it was it was mostly accidental like I was just interested in the intersection between these two things the web and mobile I I accidentally met somebody who was an editor at O'Reilly I had this idea for a book we it was pretty much accidental I did know that writing a book was like a great way to attract clients I didn't know that but it wasn't like planning it out really it just kind of happened and I knew that it was a good idea I just believed that it was a good idea so you know so my funnel was like I would basically go to a conference and people would come up to me afterwards and be like how do we work together we have to hire you and then we'd exchange emails and we'd have like a sales interview and then I would do all of the stuff that I talked about all the time I would run that sales interview with a wide conversation I tried to talk them out of working with me then I'd give them a proposal it be fixed price based on value with three options so all the usual stuff I talked about but everything everything you know my website was not an important feature here really it was like I mean I thought about it a lot because I was a web developer but it didn't I don't think anybody ever came to me through my website he was always because they read my book and got in touch with me through the book because my contact information was there or they got in touch with me because they saw me at a conference and they came up to me afterwards or they emailed me right after and we started a conversation so I wouldn't out barely call that a funnel compared to what I do now because back then the the downside with that approach is you have no visibility into your pipeline that's one thing the other thing is since I was the interest that was getting pointed my way wasn't because of me per se it was because everybody was interested or the early adopters were interested in the mobile web at the time so I kind of piggybacked on that excitement and and the from from early adopters who were just like looking you know we like certain people were just very forward-thinking and they have a budget so they're willing to spend money to be cutting-edge so it was like there was nothing out of my control basically so when mobile flattened out and became mooring like it is now you know that leads trickled off trickle off trickled because all of the expertise that I had had sort of you know me and like two or three other people in the world were well-known for doing this particular thing after a few years it was built into WordPress it was built into jQuery was built into all the frameworks it was like it proliferated and then mobile flattened out and was kind of like if he didn't if some company didn't have a mobile website by twenty twelve or thirteen they didn't want one you know it wasn't that they didn't think of it so so that's the down so that's that the two downsides are you have no visibility into your pipeline leads just sort of come out of nowhere and and and you're in my case I was pinned to the the hype cycle of the hype curve the Gartner curve of you know when it went into the trough was like you know no leads so compared that to now where where I have like tons of you know this channel right now is part of my funnel if you want to think of it like that the raising awareness of people who don't know about me or never heard of me and then it leads into my mailing list where I deliver lots of useful information on a daily basis and interact with people there and that can lead to someone buying like one of my lower price books like learn your lines or something and it's like twenty nine bucks and all this sudden they're like wow this was totally worth the money and then they move up the ladder so I see the eye and I guess you could extend that into the options on the proposal but I think that's a little bit of a stretch that's more I see a sales funnel I guess it's called a sales funnel but to me it's more of a marketing thing and yeah I don't know I guess it's just semantics but I didn't think of it like that the to me the funnel is about building trust with people by delivering value high you know like whatever I'm asking you for your attention or your email address or maybe a little bit of money I wanted to I want to make you glad you did it I want to deliver 100% customer satisfaction on whatever that transaction was and I believe that if I keep doing that eventually people are gonna move up the ladder and get more and more engaged with me so I mean it's not rocket science really but the value that our sales funnel yes so so consult if I was going to do I was gonna do consulting now what would a funnel look like it would look like probably what you see oh you probably used to seeing this if you've researched it at all where you know big companies cite you know has a white paper for download behind it and opt-in I don't know I don't I don't I get I sure that works if you have like a sales person but I don't think as a soloist I would have time to do that I think the model that I used for the mobile web stuff is still the model that would work for high price consulting engagements if I was gonna do it now you know it would probably be a RvR blockchain I don't care about those technologies as a as an expert though so but that's what you do you just literally go to the Gartner curve see what's at the top of the curve find something you're interested in if it was me would probably be like Internet of Things I don't know if that's even on there anymore and I would just try and write a book on it I blog about it I would just be all about that that platform or that technology and the decision makers at companies that are very cutting edge are aware of those technologies and they're gonna be looking for experts and the first thing they're gonna do is search for a book like who wrote a book on blockchain and like ok which one of these books is the one that is similar to what we think we need and so on and so forth so you can ride that that you could just always be switching technologies at the top of that cycle and grabbing all the early adopters by getting published you know in Harvard Business Review or on you know big websites or write a book for O'Reilly or whoever and then speak at conferences and you're just positioned as an authority because a traditional publisher sort of anointed you as the expert on this thing that we want to write a book and you know as you go to these big conferences where your buyers are attending that's you want to make sure it's conferences that your buyers would be attending and you're up there on stage it's you know you're like a sort of localized rock star for that time period and you're going to attract a lot of attention so I you know I think that still works if you want to if you don't mind flying around you don't mind writing a book that's probably a good approach ok that's probably enough I'm Jonathan stark if you have a question for me has to ask Jonathan on YouTube LinkedIn or Twitter and we'll find it and add it to the queue yeah