Audio: Do I Really Need a Consultant?

The Value Proposition: “Is Small Business Consulting Worth It?” From the Market Moose Podcast.

Interview of Market Moose founder Daniel DiGriz by Steve Pruneau (Free Agent Source). Daniel explains how consulting services, specifically in the area of internet marketing, can pay off for small businesses, even if you’re not used to working with consultants.

“Why re-invent the marketing wheel, by trying to learn it all yourself?”

Music: “Recercar 2” by Paul Berget (Magnatune label)

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Daniel: I’m Daniel DiGriz with Market Moose Internet Marketing, we help small businesses grow by building an effective Internet marketing plan.

Steve: I’m Steve Pruneau from Free Agent Source, we create the best of both worlds for independent professionals and entrepreneurs. All the resources of a traditional company, combined with the freedom of freelancers and entrepreneurs.

Daniel: And this is the Market Moose Podcast bringing you interviews and insights to help your business market and grow on the web.

Steve: So Daniel today we’re going to talk about, how is it that consulting can create value for small business, is it really worth the cost?

Daniel: We get that question a lot. Because a lot of businesses start out, especially small businesses not being used to paying people for ideas. It’s hard if you’re a one person shop for instance, to pay another person for just what they think or just what seems like talking. But in actuality, spending money on consulting can be one of the most effective and wisest business investments you can make. After all,  you’re a specialist in what you so whether you’re an attorney, an appraiser, a psychologist, etc. So, getting a specialist involved to help you do something like Internet market. Someone that brings knowledge and experience that you might not have, somebody that can bring an aerial view to the topic and give you some real direction, so that you’re not just kind of swimming in the wind, hanging a website out there, handing out business cards. That’s often the most effective way to spend your money, a lot cheaper than just throwing piles of dollars at an Internet mechanic that builds and builds but you don’t know whether it’s going to be effective.

Steve: Yeah but, a lot of us don’t want to be marketers. We have our own trade skill and our own profession that we want to basically get on with and how do we know that we’re really going to get something tangible back?

Daniel: That’s a great question. The beauty of consulting is this pay as you go. Right? now, a lot of people of course try to lock you into a contract, but I would avoid that really at all cost. An effective consultant lives on his reputation and lives on the strength that his advice and his coaching and his guidance and his expertise. So you buy a few hours, you start out with an Internet Marketing Consultant for example, and you see where it goes. and if that person is not delivering tangible results, if you’re not getting return on your investments, then you stop and you find the right person. Unlike hiring, sort of a technical specialist who’s knee deep in things you may not understand and has you locked into a contract and you’re already throwing huge piles of dollars at it. This is actually an effective way to make sure and measure that you’re getting tangible results.

Steve: OK, but isn’t this really just somebody’s opinion and couldn’t I find all these opinions on the web?

Daniel: Well that’s a great question. So, you really asked two questions though. One is, is it just someone’s opinion? And two, couldn’t I just get this information on the web? So let me deal with them one at a time. So, the first question, some of it is going to have flavor from a person’s personality, from their perspective, from their experience. That’s exactly one of the reasons you should be involved with a consultant as a small business. You may have a lot of experience with some technical facets of Internet Marketing for example, you may have built a website once, or you may have sent out an email marketing campaign. But nothing really compares to someone who’s had the experience invested in these things for years. So yeah, there’s a little bit of perspective if you will, I wouldn’t just call it opinion. There’re some real key points that you’ll find most Internet Marketers saying to you over and over again and so you can do web research and if you hear something from your Internet Marketing Consultant that sounds far fetched and way out there, there’s no harm whatsoever in Googling some of the terminology he’s using and see if what he’s telling you is something that other people are talking about.

But the other question that you asked is, “Couldn’t I just get this information off the web?” And the answer is actually, “Yeah.” Maybe a lot of Internet marketing people wouldn’t tell you that. But the truth is, depending on how many hours you have in hand and how much time you’re willing to spend, not only to get this information, but to sift through it, weed out the stuff that’s just snake oil. Because there’s a lot of that out there, there’s a mine field of people saying, “Hey, instant results. Guaranteed stuff.” And when you read their pseudo essays you’re looking at, “Pay here”, at the bottom and a PayPal link. So, you’ve got to be careful about the so-called information that’s out there. But you can sift through this stuff and a reasonable, intelligent person can go through it. Often times, there’s some terminology involved and there’s research on the research. So if I read an article that’s got six terms in it I don’t understand, I may have to open several more web browsers to really get what the person’s trying to tell me. There’s absolutely nothing to stop you from becoming your own accounting expert, your own billing expert, your own book keeping expert. But there’s a reason why small businesses tend to get an accountant involved or tend to outsource that. The same thing is true with Internet marketing. In the time that it takes you to do that research, it’s often easier for you to just go out and get another client, you could have been doing other work by now and the money that you make off of that should more than pay for your consulting professionals.

Steve: So is that what the value proposition is? Is it that, the money I want to spend here should get me the knowledge and I guess, the results faster and more efficiently than if I were to do it myself? Is that it?

Daniel: Well that’s always I think, the quotient isn’t it? In small business, it’s time versus money. So, one of the things for instance, I’ve done a little work in project consulting and one of the things that always comes up is we can do just about anything. Which do you want to spend more of? More time or more money? So, as a small business owner that’s really the case too. What you’re doing is you’re saving money by saving time. So you can invest that time in what you do best and your first question was, “Hey, I’m a real estate appraiser, I want to spend my time appraising and have somebody else do the marketing, I don’t necessarily want to become an expert.” That’s exactly why you get a consultant involved. You can spend those hours doing what you do best and making money and generating income or you can spend that time saving money by doing all the research yourself. I publish a blog called, the Rules of Work, rulesofwork.com, if you want to visit that, and one of the points we made in a recent article on that blog is that, it’s counterintuitive. But the best way a small entrepreneur or small business can spend their time, is not saving money it’s making money. If you look at successful entrepreneurs, that’s where their time is devoted. So, if I spend several hours to save myself ten dollars, if I spend a lot of time researching online because I don’t want to pay somebody the ten bucks it takes for them to do a small task for me. Have I spent my time effectively versus making three phone calls and getting a client that day. So that’s where the value proposition I think, comes in.

Steve: Wow! That’s very profound.

Daniel: Well, thanks. We like to hear that here at Market Moose.

Steve: Do you think some people just have a hard time getting over the fact that I’m actually going to put some money out there and all i’m getting back is this information, this consulting advice. Is that a problem for some of your clients?

Daniel: You bet. It’s a problem for some of our prospects but it hasn’t been a problem for some of our clients and I’m not being smart-alecky, but I want to tell you the difference. The difference is, yeah, if you don’t know what you’re getting, if you’re reaching out for an intangible, it’s kind of like the old P.T. Barnum thing, right? P.T. Barnum was famous for getting people inside of a circus tent with various oddities and things. But a lot of them were tricks, “Step this way to the Great Egress,” and when you went there, you were outside again. You paid five dollars to go to the Great Egress but it turned out, it was just leaving the tent because an Egress is an Exit. So people are wondering, “When I pay my five bucks and I go into the tent, is it going to be a scam or am I going to get something that I can carry home with me?” And that’s a fair question, which is one of the reasons why most consultants start with an initial consultation. So we do that, we have a free thirty minute consultation to start with. If we don’t deliver value in that thirty minutes or if your consultant, whoever that may be, whether it’s an accounting consultant or an appraisal consultant or a legal consultant, if they don’t deliver value in the first thirty minutes to an hour, chances are they’re not going to deliver value consistently over time. So yeah, you want the consultant to prove themselves and that’s why I say that, for our prospects, sure it’s an issue. But once we do the initial consultation for them, an overwhelming number of them become our clients. That’s us, we’re not trying to laud our own services. But that’s what any good consultant should be able to say.

Steve: Let’s talk about a different type of client and this might be someone who, maybe they’re willing to take the leap on the value proposition, but suppose it’s somebody who really doesn’t know much about the Web. Of course they’ll know their own trade and profession but wouldn’t know URL from HTML. How do you feel about working with those type of people and do they fit within the Market Moose client base?

Daniel: Sure, that’s a great question. Well, first let me say, not everybody in the world goes with our company Market Moose. I want to broaden that question and just say, “Is this the kind of person that an Internet Marketing Consultant would be helpful to.” So, there’s a couple of answers, some people don’t know anything about the Web and maybe it’s a generational thing or maybe it’s just that they spend their time with a tool box crawling under a house, and those are perfectly acceptable reasons. So, I will say that, most people do need to learn a little bit in order to be effective. You can’t simply outsource 100% even if you can outsource 98%. You’re going to have to know, I mean even just you making a judgement about what to pay for, involves a certain amount of consulting. If you come to me, for example, and you say, “Hey I want a website, because I’m convinced that a website is going to make me money.” It is my duty as an Internet Marketing Consultant not to just take your money. It’s my duty to say, “Look, things have really changed over the last five years. In the old days when there was only ten thousand websites out there, you throw up a website, it never changes, it has five pages, it’s like a static business card and you walk away, and if you have a website, yeah chances are you will get some visitors.” These days when there’s a hundred thousand websites, that’s really different, and that’s just your industry. We’re not even talking about other sites that bleed off your clientele. So in that market, it’s my duty to say, “a website alone, putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t necessarily the best choice. Maybe you should think about, having a website sure, but also doing a little bit of marketing in Facebook, or doing a little bit of marketing in Twitter, and we can kind of guide you through the mine field and make that easy to understand.”

It’s the duty also of an Internet Marketing Consultant to speak in plain English. I’m not going to throw a lot of terminology out there. The mythology is, well the word Technogeeks, right, and that may have been true again five, six years ago when all you had to do was throw up a website and hire a geek to do it. These days you really need somebody that understands small business,  how business works and how different kinds of industries really do grow and get clientele and then can talk to you just like you and I are talking now. So that’s one answer, the other answer is, that often our clients will start out with something tangible. I mean here at Market Moose we do hands-on work, mechanic work, so you can come to us and say, “I want a website.” We can say, “Sure,” and we’ll build it for you. That’s hands dirtying, toolbox type of work. But in that process, you’ll learn things because through our interaction you’ll pick up that, “Here’s why I’m putting these words in this portion of your site. OK, you’ve told me you want to include your resume on your website, let me give you a way to do that better,” “what if we format it like this because this is going to get you more clients. This is going to appeal to Google better if you do it this way,” and through that process, there’s a little bit of consulting involved and you start picking up the value of it. So, I think a lot of people, they start with a tangible thing in summary, and I think that a lot of people, basically it’s our duty to sometimes not just say yes and grab the fistful of dollars, but to push back a little bit and say that, “Not everything that you’re about to throw money at, is going to be the most effective.” And that’s consulting too, usually part of that free consultation we give at the beginning.

Steve: Yeah, I wasn’t sure you were going to touch on that and I was going to say. Now even if you’re a little bit concerned about being able to understand any area that’s new to you, if you take the jump, you get in touch with somebody who does know, then just that exchange is going to bring familiarity and confidence. And it’s why we have tour guides, it’s why we go with somebody who’s already been there. Just segueing to another point that you made, even though your firm or any other consultant that you hired to do something, generally they can’t do a hundred percent of it. Inevitably some of it comes back, and we have to do some of the work. I really wish I could hire a personal trainer who would really make me ripped.

Daniel: You and me both buddy. I’ve got a few pounds that I’d like to just put on his plate instead of mine.

Steve: Yeah, and inevitably what happens is, I actually pay them money to tell me what to do. But the reality is, if I knew a hundred percent of what to do, I wouldn’t have to pay him the money, and they do actually reduce the amount of time that I would spend. The same thing is true with the dentists. You’re paying money to the dentist and what happens at the end of the appointment? “Well, you really need to do this and that differently and now come back and show me the results.” And I think for some people who really want to avoid that, you can probably avoid a lot of it, but in the end you’re going to have to be involved. I don’t know of any business people that can’t be a hundred percent not involved. And so, if we are in business, I think we’re stuck. By the way, if you ever find a way that we can avoid being involved, let me know and I want to pursue that.

Daniel: Yeah, both with Internet Marketing and with losing weight. You bring up two great points. So one of them is, Gee, when we pay consultants sometimes we’re concerned that, “Hey, all I walked away with is advice this time on what to do better,” and of course that’s exactly why we pay. I joined the gym recently and the first day at the gym, I thought it was going to be like any other gym, and I walked in and I have a great doctor, I really do, but my doctor had given me advice and the advice was, lose fifty pounds, just the kind of thing you were talking about. So I go in to the gym and I say, “I need to lose fifty pounds and my doctor tells me that the way to do it is everyday I need to come in here and just pound it out for thirty minutes until there’s sweat dripping down my face and go as hard as I can.” And the personal trainer spoke up and said, “No, you don’t. Your doctor is almost right, you do need to lose the fifty pounds, we can tell that by looking at you, but what’s really necessary is for you to find your target heart rate and stay at your target heart rate. And that’s what our job is, is to help you find that. So we’re going to advice you.” So they modified the advice. So the beauty of that, and one of the reasons I’m still a member of that gym, is that I didn’t just go out and run as fast as I can around my block for thirty minutes everyday, which wouldn’t have been an efficient burning of calories. I wouldn’t have lost the weight as quickly. But I lost ten pounds in thirty days because I stayed within the target heart rate and followed the advice. So it was totally worth it. I could have done that myself and saved the cost of the gym, but I’d still be running around the block wondering why I have to eat a ton of calories to put that stuff back.

So, the other issue is owner involvement, and yeah, Internet Marketing does not work without some owner involvement, and so people always say, “How involved do I have to be?” “I don’t have a lot of time, I don’t really want to do this.” The answer is, “Look, the owner involvement stuff, is the fun stuff. You hire me for the boring mechanic work and you hire me to educate you and give you the main sense of direction, but if you’re willing to spend thirty minutes a week on your business doing some stuff that’s kind of fun, you can grow your business significantly through Internet marketing.” You can hire us to do the specialist work, but thirty minutes a week, if you don’t have thirty minutes a week, ten minutes every other day, five minutes everyday on the average. If you don’t have that, your business is not going to grow anyway and no amount of throwing money at it or buying an online solution that, “Hey, I’ll spend a thousand dollars on this, they guarantee results.” None of that is going to be effective. When somebody calls you up on the phone and says, “Nope, you don’t have to do anything, just give us your credit card number and the address of your website.” Do not give out your credit card number, it’s not going to be effective.

Internet marketing is just like invoicing, it’s just like accounting, it may feel like pulling teeth sometimes, it may feel like a trip to the dentist, but it’s part of your business, it has to be done and it requires a certain amount of your involvement. You can’t just go to the dentist for a cleaning very six months, you have to brush your teeth and floss, right. And we all hear that and maybe we floss more than we did before. The same thing happens with Internet marketing. I tell people often, “Hey you need to update your website, you can’t just leave it sitting there in a coma because if there’s no signs of life, why should anybody interact with it or give you an order.” So people say, “Oh yeah, I know, it’s been three weeks.” and I’m like, “OK, but you got to get it in gear.” and so I become the dentist, you’re totally right. But without a dentist or without a personal trainer, I’d really hate to think where I’d be right now.

So, again i’m Daniel DiGriz with Market Moose Internet Marketing and we help small businesses grow by building an effective Internet marketing plan.

Steve: And I’m Steve Pruneau, I’m a guest. It’s been my pleasure to speak with you Daniel, thank you.

Daniel: So this is the Market Moose Podcast, bringing you interviews and insights to help your business market and grow itself on the Web. Thanks very much for joining us today.