One of my personal goals for the first quarter of 2014 is to “Do 100 consults for 100 different people.”
I’m up to number 33 right now.
I price tested the consults from $250/hour to $350/hour.
All of them sold out (except two time slots last Wednesday for some reason).
I’ll explain some other time why I REDUCED the prices from the $350 level even though they all sold out.
But lemme tell you the story of WHY I stopped consulting as much in the past, but now I’m totally cool with it and even enjoy them:
I used to offer consulting (aka just talking face-2-face with me over video chat) to people who needed help with:
–The copy on their marketing,
–Their overall business.
–They’ve never started a business, and want some guidance.
The problem with this was I had to work around THEIR schedules.
I mean, THEY paid money to hire me, so THEY get to pick the time.
This forced me to shift my schedule around someone else.
This wasn’t painful, but it was annoying at times (especially to accommodate international folks on totally opposite time schedules).
The other thing was dealing with the 17,000 back-n-forth emails I’d invariably have to send for each one:
-Hey man, we good for 2pm tomorrow??
-Hey man, here’s some info about my business…
-Hey man, I forgot to send you this link.
-Hey man, my pet fish died, can we move it to 3:30pm??
-Hey man, I think I wanna design my site with 3 columns, what you think?
-Hey man, so just confirming we’re on for 5pm?
-Hey man, sorry about that, I means we’re on for 3:30pm right!????
-Hey man, I don’t know how to work Google Hangouts, can we Skype instead???
Holy bejeezus that’s a lot of emails before a very simple call.
So in order to avoid tons of needless emails and scheduling conflicts, I implemented a system that looks like this:
I placed strict rules on the consults so there is NO confusion. Such as:
–They’re only over Google Hangouts video chat.
–They last one hour.
–They can send me info about their current business with a specific email subject line.
–Only the shown time slots are available, no other times.
These rules made me happier, and eliminated any confusion from the customer.
AND IT WORKED GREAT!!
People loved them, everyone showed up on time, and they knew the exact drill to follow. I personally was happy that I got to meet a new person, help them with their business, learn about new industries, write their copy, or get them to do something they’re afraid of right there and then (we got one guy to kick off his first small business by getting him a photography gig with the TED conference in Washington DC….AND become the official event photographer for the sponsor for a full year, all during just one call)!!!
This unconventional way of doing consults has turned out to be quite rewarding.
It’s cool sending out these emails to you, but it’s much cooler to actually meet someone face-2-face (or video-2-video in this case)!
You might wanna snag this idea of these consults for your own biz. And of course, if you want to speak with me sometime next week, feel free to snag a spot right now:
View available consults
Sincerely,
Neville N. Medhora
P.S. After this round of consults I’ll be jetting off to a foreign beach for 2 weeks with my Jewish friend Noah, so they’ll be no more consults for a little while after these!