Am John Crestani and I'm a multi-millionaire entrepreneur. But I
actually started my career as a professional marketing consultant
working for companies. And in this video, I'm going to be addressing how you can
become a professional consultant if that's what you're interested in. I'm
going to dive into kind of my five steps which is niche market, talk, setting
expectations and getting referrals. So hopefully you can learn how to do this
if that's what you're interested in. Stay tuned. So, back in 2012 when I was
first going to try to leave my job, the way I started was I was a marketing
consultant working for companies. And I was charging those companies anywhere
from 500 to 1,000 dollars per month to consult with them and to
help them with with their marketing. Now, in this video, I'm going to be showing you
how you can become a professional consultant. I'm going to be going over
choosing your niche. How to market yourself and get yourself out there in
front of people who will pay you for your consulting. I'll be going over how
to talk how to start these conversations or have these conversations with people
if you don't know exactly how how to set expectations so that you can get those
clients so that they're happy. And also getting referrals moving forward. Now, you
should know what you're good at. You should know what your niche is. Whether
you're a... You know, doing consulting like interior design consulting or whether
you're a design consultant or whether you are a, you know, a franchising
consultant or a video consultant or a YouTube marketing consultant or a you
know, a lighting consultant. Whatever it is you're going to consult on, it should
be something you are skilled in. where you offer value to the world. Now, I'm
sure there are ways you can make up like that you're skilled in some sort of area.
But if you don't have a skill, you probably shouldn't be consulting. You
should go out there and get a skill. So that would be the first step. Assuming
that you have something you are skilled in, whether that's... You know, whatever that
is. You want to choose a niche. For me, I was doing advertising. You know,
online advertising. That's what I was good at and that's what I was helping
companies with. You know, Google advertising specifically. Now, getting out
there and marketing yourself is one of the most important things. And there's a
number of ways you can get into those conversations with people where they all
be willing to trade your advice for money. A couple ways to get out and
market yourself. Now, what I did personally was I was using job boards. I
was using well what is now up work. Upwork.com is where people will post
jobs they'll say, "Hey I'm looking for somebody to help me with Google Ads or
hey, I'm looking for somebody to help me with this legal contract or accounting."
And you can find potential clients there. It's very specific, very targeted. It's a
little competitive. You don't get the highest prices then if you meet people
in person. Because it's all kind of done digitally through messages. Other ways
you can get yourself out there as a consultant. I mean I would 100% suggest
is social media, okay? Social media such as YouTube. I mean if
you have advice that you're looking to share with people, there's no reason why
you shouldn't have a YouTube channel and be sharing that a knowledge with people
for free. Because that'll bring you way more clients. I could have a very
lucrative anymore. I don't do any trading of time for money. I'm strictly against
that in my business. And that's how I've built up my business personally. You know,
then again, I'm at a different level. If you're looking to just get your first
couple clients, you should start a YouTube channel. I would highly recommend
that. Give advice. Shoot 5 to 15 minute videos with a little information on
whatever your knowledge matter is. If you know how to buy and sell businesses. If
you know how to do financial reports. If you know how to do interior design or
landscape design or contractor or plumbing or electrical or heating.
Whatever it is you do give people that knowledge on YouTube. It's... It will bring
you so many clients, it will astound you. I could have... You know, I have more
business owners hitting me up on LinkedIn and YouTube to work with me or
if asking me to market their business than I can handle. But I don't want to do
any consulting. It's not interesting to me. I don't want to trade time for money.
That's the whole point I build an internet business. So, I don't have to
trade time for money. But again, YouTube and social media is a great way to reach
people. Other ways to reach people is speak.
Speaking at events, okay? Speaking at niche conferences where your target
clients are. Let's say for instance that you are a landscape designer, okay? You're
great at designing. You know, your landscape design consultant. I'm sure
there are conferences that happen around landscape design. And to be a speaker at
one of those and you know working on that kind of getting stuff like that
would help you a lot. Also PR, okay? Getting PR different articles about you
in niche magazines. Again, if you got an article in Houzz. H-O-U-Z-Z. You know that
would be great if you were an interior designer or a landscape designer. Because
it's all about nice fancy houses. Last but not least, you can put up ads. You
can advertise on you know specific terms related to your industry and that would
be a good way to reach people. And also the final way to do marketing is just
the most basic way and it's actually you know, for me it's all it was the most
effective way is just networking. Just go to events, go to conferences. Go to places
where your customers congregate. You know, in my case, I was an advertising
consultant. I went to places where there were lots of business owners who spent
money on advertising. It isn't very hard to just, you know... If you are in person
and connecting with people, that is a much easier scenario than if you're
trying to close somebody or get business over the phone or get business through
messaging people. Now, the third step here is talking to people. And talking to
people... I think, I think most consultants mess this up the most. Because there
isn't really a formula for how to do this. But to get clients, you need to
really do 2 things you need to have some sort of personal connection so that
you like working with each other. And the second thing is you need to offer value.
I think some people mess this up because the mistakes I see people make is they
focus too much on the kind of buddy-buddy connection. They try to focus
too much on you know what sports teams you like or you know what your values
are what your hobbies are. And they never get down to brass tacks business. And I
also see people make the mistake on the other side which is they only focus on
business. They come in, no personal talk, no JibJab.
Nothing else. I work with a lot of consultants personally and the reality
of it is I don't want to work with people that are annoying to me or that
that I don't have respect for. So, I think having a blend of both is very important.
Now, when you go to talk with a potential customer,
you know, you've you've got we've reached out to people you've got in front of
people through your marketing or whatnot. And now you're ready to talk to people,
what I would suggest you do is simply try to offer them value. Have whatever
your meeting is you know what I would always do is I would audit somebody's
account. I would say, "Okay, I need access to your Google Ads account and I'm going to
do an analysis of it." Very simple. Then we'd set up a meeting. And I would go
over my analysis of their Google Ads. Account. Very basic. But offering value. It
was based on actual facts and figures that that person had. Now, if you're going
to consult with somebody about their landscape, what you would
want to do is you'd want to actually get some sort of like a plat map or you know,
a map of their their garden and their yard. Get yourself privileged information
about that person that would allow you to give them advice. Okay? And that is part
of offering value. My friend Steve Weiss who founded 150 person
Facebook advertising agency did the same thing. What he would do is he would
invite people to coffee. He said let's go to coffee and bring your computer and
let's let's go over your Facebook Ads. And him and the potential client would
sit down at Starbucks and they would without his computer and they would just
kind of look at at the person's Facebook advertising. So, he didn't ask for access
but what he did was he got a meeting and you just sit down and look at their ads
and say, "Oh, you know, this is good, this is bad." You know and you know
this can be improved and this is off. And you would offer a lot of value
right there in person showing from an expert point of view how to do the
Facebook Ads better. Now, if you give somebody information that is valuable,
that helps them do whatever it is they're looking to do better. You're
going to build trust. And you're going to show
that you're an easy person to work with that you offer value that you can help
out I see way too many consultants that say they need NDA's or they can't do
anything until or they won't give any information until you pay up. And I think
this is a mistake. You can make much more money in long run if you offer value
first. If you offer something actionable value driven to help out businesses
first than if you start with the money. That's what I've seen from my side of
the coin. I know some other people would say that you know don't even talk
to people unless they're going to pay you money. I don't know. That was my
experience. I'm one person. Take it from me or take it from someone else. I don't
care. The biggest problem I had with clients in my business was bad
expectations. Clients would come in thinking the moon. They were thinking
their marketing was going to explode within a week's time frame of me working
on the account. And generally speaking you know, clients have unrealistic
expectations. You want to make sure you very firm, before you accept money from
somebody about the expectations of that person has. This will make for a
good long-term relationship. Again, if you're in business to create long-term
relationships, consistent passive income in your consulting business. You want to
set expectations properly. Very properly at the beginning of what all the
milestones look like, what the goals are, what you'll be doing on your side. What
they'll be doing on their side. Don't try to hide behind false expectations. You
don't hope that the client will think you're doing all this work when
really you know most of the stuff is automated. Be very upfront about what
you're doing and what you aren't doing. And that will help you create a
long-term client scenario which will eventually help grow your business. Now,
that brings me to referrals. Now, the fact of the matter is when you're really
helping out a business, most business owners aren't going to actually want to
give you like. They aren't going to want to like tell you like, "Oh, hey. Here's
here's a competitor of you can work with." Because personally for
me, a lot of my friends are also somewhat competitors of mine. I'm mean for instance,
like one of my main business is I sell online educational courses. I teach
people how to do a area of marketing called affiliate marketing. And I have
friends who are also running similar businesses that you know, they're
big on social media and they're selling educational courses. Now, if I'm working
with a consultant who's providing me a lot of value, I do not want to let people
know, okay? Because that just means I'm creating another competitor. I'm creating
somebody else to compete with on that area of my business. So, I don't do that.
But here's the sneaky tactic that you can use. If you are a consultant that is
adding value, you can use to get referrals from your customers. What you
want to do is you want to find out where your client is. If your client is happy
with you, ask them what events they're going to. Ask him what conferences
they're going to. And ask them if you could go with them. Go with them to a
conference about whatever it is they do. Let's say I run a family office and I'm
working with a client who has a very large estate that I've hired this
landscape design consultant for. Well, maybe I'm going to a conference of other
people who run family offices who manage billionaire's estates like I do. In this
scenario, the landscape consultant would simply want to ask me where I'm hanging
out. Because I'd say, "Oh, I'm you know, yeah. Feel free to come with me to this
event. I'd, you know, that would work. I could meet you there. We haven't met in
person for a long time. And you know, we can talk." Now, generally speaking, company
businesses hang out with a lot of their competitors in the same room at the same
conferences. As a consultant, you can simply tag along and hang out with that
client of yours that's so happy with you. And by osmosis, being at the events
they're at, you will meet all of their competitors. You will meet all of the
similar companies and you can grow your business very fast that way. That's how I
actually grew my business when I started as a consultant. In this is in late 2012,
I was managing a bunch of businesses for anywhere from $500 a month
to $1,000 a month I was consulting for. I was making as I said about $4,000 a
month. Now, one of my clients, inadvertently, he
just invited me along to a meeting. You know, a meet-up of people. It was a
mastermind. It was Neil Strauss' secret society
mastermind. It was at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. And he invited me along
with him and what was crazy was everyone in this room was a company that was
spending millions of dollars on marketing. Not even joking. My client
represented a company that was spending millions of dollars a month on marketing.
But there were 50 other people in this room that were spending millions of
dollars per month on marketing. Now, think of this scenario. I am managing people's
advertising for $500 a month. I'm struggling to get deals of people to pay
me $500 a month. And I tag along with my client to a meeting. And suddenly, I'm in
a room of 50 other people who are spending millions of dollars a month
from the businesses they run. Would have never known the scope or the success of
the people in that room if I hadn't been hanging out with that client of mine. But
that shows you that you may not need to get direct referrals. You can simply just
be where your star clients are. And you can get more business very easily. And
generally that's fine with people. If you liked this video, give this video a big
like. And if you want to learn more about what I do and how I run my internet
business and make millions of dollars, go ahead and subscribe to my channel. I have
a couple free mini courses by subscribing you'll also get access to a
free course on what I do which is affiliate marketing. And if you have any
questions about my experience as a consultant or how I got started or how
you can start your own thing, let me know in the comments below. And also let me
know in the comments below if you are a consultant what your niche is. Thanks so
much for watching and love to see you in my next videos.