380: Turning Competitors into Collaborators- with Erik Deckers

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Erik, welcome to the show.

I mean, where do you think most people should spend their time and energy? Analytics, creation of content. Where do you think?

They use analytics to drive their content creation, which I think is the backward way of doing it. You should, your content creation should be first. That should be your highest priority because your analytics should tell you how well it's doing, not tell you what you should write about. And the perfect example is I had a particular client that they made signs, but they also wrapped vehicles.

And I said, well, how many people have actually visited? And, you know, that's the term that they use. Well, none. Well, how many people know about it? Well, apparently none. So I wrote this article on boat wraps and why it was such a big deal. And the following month, it was the second most visited page on the blog behind the front page.

And if we had listened to her first and said, well, nobody's ever visited for boat wraps, so we're not going to write about it, then we would have missed out on a huge audience. So then I ended up doing a second article about boat wraps just to kind of, you know, irritate her a little bit. And that was also a well read article.

So we'll, we'll lean into data to say not our own data, but the greater World Wide Web's data, like, oh, a lot of people are writing about or are interested or typing and searching around this topic. Therefore, we should write about this topic. I mean, sure, tackle that perspective.

What's not getting any traffic and what is getting the most traffic? And so then your analytics guide your strategy. It serves as the guardrails to keep you on the road. And you don't know what you should be doing more of or less of if you don't have those analysts. So, but you're right. It, it should also give you an idea of the things you should be writing about. But at the same time, some of this can come through just, just intuition, you know, I've talked to several customers and they're all asking about this, or, or I see, you know, this is popular in the news, or I think this could become a big thing.

I mean, you know, go back to Jack Kerouac. Nobody knew that Beat poetry was going to be a thing. That, you know, this coffee shop poetry reading was ever going to take off. Or that this stream of consciousness writing was ever going to be necessary. But, you know, he wrote this book and people loved it.

And you want them to make an email introduction between you and the other person. You don't want them to get away with saying, Sure, just tell David I told you to call. Because David might not trust you. You might, you know, here's a stranger who said, Well, Lori told me I should call you. Did she really? I don't know.

And I know somebody who actually tried that. You know, a friend mentioned the person's name. And so this guy called or, you know, emailed him and said, Hey, you know, David told me I should call you and David did not. And so, you know, the friend called David and said, Did you tell this guy to call me? Well, no, I didn't.

Why don't you we, we identified what is audiences that he wants to pursue. I'm like, why don't you just go do and, and do some informational interviews with this audience. And the exact same thing that you talked about and better understand what their pains are and just collect data. Say you're doing some research and we'll compile the information and we'll present the findings and, and share it with them.

But it is a way less threatening approach and I'd say the majority of good human beings out there will be willing to help you gather some of this information and, and help connect you with others. As long as you're doing it in a caring, you know, passionate, authentic way.

But these are also the people that when you hear of opportunities that would suit them, you make those connections.

But that means that every other bookkeeper in town is your competitor. But what if you were to specialize and you're only going to do bookkeeping for restaurants? Well, if you specialize, you can charge more because if you specialize, you know more, and that means it's worth more. And so you can charge maybe 75 or a hundred dollars an hour. And your competitor decides they're going to specialize and only work on professional services: doctors, lawyers, chiropractors.

And so when Susan gets a call from the local Arby's franchise and she says, well, I don't do that, but Lori does. You know, then now you're passing business back and forth to each other. Now you have doubled your sales force. And so then you find somebody else who specializes only in construction and HVAC, and you find a fourth person who specializes only in manufacturers, all bookkeepers, but you're all out there looking and prospecting for each other.

And so they were swapping business back and forth with each other. Sometimes bringing each other in to collaborate on a project. But a lot of times it was just, I don't wanna handle this. I'm gonna give it to to Hazel, or I'm gonna give this to Lorraine. And, and they would, I mean, how they'd hang out together. They'd go to plays together or they had a, a little walking club that met every Saturday and they'd go walk on the Monan trail for a couple hours. So they were good friends, even though they competed with each other. So they referred to each other as their frenemy.

I, I realized it was a writer about the time I was 30 years old. But I sometimes lament the time that I missed when I was just farting around. Didn't even think I was writing. I was just, I was putting words on pages, but I never thought I was a writer. And I, I started writing for my school newspaper when I was 20 and I wish I could have gone back and told 20 year me pay attention to what you're doing and focus on getting better and read these books to make sure you're getting better.

You know, it also makes me wonder that 10 years that I farted around, how much better would I be now if I had started 10 years earlier? So, so that's the one thing I would tell them. I would also tell them don't drink so much soda.

And I just really said, you know, as much as you hate writing right now, I mean, that is a critical communication skill that you're going to need regardless of what path of business you pursue. So keep writing. The more you do it, the better you're going to get at it and the easier it is going to be for you to do.

So, anyway, he's a decent writer.

Terry Ryan. Got it. Yeah, I'll look. That's awesome. Thank you so much for that.

And if you can do that... Whether you call it blessings, or karma, or cool points, or whatever. If you can do this for more and more people, that will come back to you as well. People will remember you, and they don't... They don't owe you anything. They're not going to pay you back. But, you know, the thing that you do for somebody might come back to you through three other people.

If you have a burning marketing or relationship question, reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show. As mentioned before, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'm looking forward to hearing from you shortly, and I hope you enjoyed today's show. Now go out there and get noticed.