How to Stop Being the Best Kept Secret and Start Earning the Rewards You Deserve – In Just 7 Minutes with Brett Jarman

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• Find out the secrets to let you stand out in the market
• How to name your price as an established authority and not charging based on what the market perceives
• Find out why even if your work could speak for itself, no one would hear it, and why the need for you to be proactive

Resources/Links:

• Find your angle. Access your free content creation matrix. Click here: http://www.brettjarman.com/angle

Summary

Have you been wondering why, despite having excellent work, nothing is happening to your business?

Do you find yourself always comparing your price with what the market perceives?

Are you experiencing irregular cash flows and going the feast and famine route?

Have you been working on tasks that don’t move the needle in your business?

Are you not getting any referrals?

Brett Jarman is a business strategist and the Founder of Help Me Leverage, providing training and coaching for business, and the Founder of Experts On Air, a podcast production agency.

In this episode, Brett helps you become not just the best-kept secret but one that stands out in the market. He shares how to name your price as an established authority by making people pay for the value you provide more than your product’s features and benefits.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:13 – Brett’s ideal client: “My ideal clients are business owners or leaders who usually, they’re selling their expertise. Often, they’ll be a consultant or a coach, someone providing professional services, or, and increasingly over recent months and years, there might be an executive who’s looking to expand, build their personal brand, and maybe start a portfolio career.”
• 01:42 – The problem Brett helps solve: “I help them stop being the best-kept secret. I help them stand out from the crowd and claim their authority in the marketplace.”
• 02:22 – The symptoms people experience before they realize they need Brett’s expertise: “One of the first symptoms is irregular cash flow. The second symptom is that they’re having to compete on price or negotiate price with the clients. Third symptom is they’re probably either getting no referrals or only getting what I call first-degree referrals. And then probably the fourth most important symptom is they find that they’re often busy working on tasks that don’t actually move the needle in the business.”
• 04:55 – The common mistakes people make when they’re trying to solve that best-kept secret problem: “They don’t think they have time to market themselves. The truth is, they don’t actually need time, they need a system, they need a good process.”
• 06:18 – One Valuable Free Action (VFA) Brett recommends: “I would say, start a podcast. And now we’ll put the emphasis on the word free there. People don’t realize that you can actually start a podcast for absolutely no cost.”
• 06:52 – Brett’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): http://www.brettjarman.com/angle
• 07:22 – Q: Why are people so reluctant to promote themselves? A: We’re driven by subconscious programming.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:09
Greetings everyone and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland joined today by Brett Jarman, a fellow Australian. Brett, welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Brett Jarman 0:22
Good morning, Tom. I’m just down the coast from you in Byron Bay.

Tom Poland 0:26
Beautiful place. I think I called it Byron Bay, one of the best places in Australia to live. And for those of you who don’t know, Byron is also one of the best places to see whales swimming by because it jets out a bit into the Pacific there. Back on track, for those of you who don’t know Brett, he’s a business strategist, he’s founder of Help me Leverage, providing training and coaching for business, and the founder of Experts on Air, a podcast production agency. Fantastic. So, Brett, our subject today, what I want to grill you on is how to stop being the best-kept secret and start earning the rewards you deserve. We’re going to show folks how to do that in just seven minutes. Our time starts now, question number one, who is your ideal client?

Brett Jarman 1:13
My ideal clients are business owners or leaders who usually, they’re selling their expertise. Often, they’ll be a consultant or a coach, someone providing professional services, or, and increasingly over recent months and years, there might be an executive who’s looking to expand, build their personal brand, and maybe start a portfolio career.

Tom Poland 1:33
Interesting. So, that leads us nicely, I think, to question number two, which is tell us a bit more about the problem you solve for them. Six and a half minutes left.

Brett Jarman 1:42
So, what I do, Tom is, I help them stop being the best-kept secret. And I know that’s a term that you use quite a lot. So, I don’t have to explain to you or your listeners what that is. And so, I help them stand out from the crowd and to claim their authority in the marketplace. Now, the thing is that the vast majority of people who are selling their expertise; they struggle to stand out from the crowd. And what they tend to do is they rely on the features and benefits of their offering. And the problem with doing that is that features and benefits, they can always be beaten, competitors can always either match or beat them. And so, you’re better off to rely on your reputation, build trust in the market, then rely on features and benefits. And that’s one of the secrets to help yourself stand out.

Tom Poland 2:22
Very interesting. That’s a fresh perspective on the on the issue of standing out. So, let’s go to questions three, and we’ve got five and a half minutes left. What are some of the typical symptoms that people are going to be experiencing in their life or their business that will kind of give them a heads up that they need what you’ve got.

Brett Jarman 2:41
There are many, Tom, and we could probably go for 70 minutes rather than seven, but I’ll cut it down. So, one of the first symptoms is irregular cash flow. And most consultants or coaches out there, they’ll go through what they call the feast or famine, they either got a whole bunch of work, or they got nothing happening. And obviously, cash flow changes according to that. And one of the reasons for that is that they’re not marketing while they’re working. The second symptom is that they’re having to compete on price or negotiate the price with the clients. Once you’re established and once you’ve claimed your authority, you tend to name your price. And you’re no longer curious about what others are charging and trying to adjust your price accordingly based on what you think the market perceives. Once you’ve claimed your authority, you tend to price yourself based on the value that you give rather than time rather than what your competitors are doing. And you also attract customers who, they’re expecting to pay a premium for you. And not only expecting to pay it but they’re actually willing to pay it because they know they’re going to get better value for money. The third symptom is they’re probably either getting no referrals or only getting what I call first degree referrals. So that means that they’re getting referrals from immediate customers. Once they’ve claimed their authority and stop being the best-kept secret, they tend to get referrals from people who have never even worked with them. And so those are referrals based on reputation.

Tom Poland 4:02
Perfect.

Brett Jarman 4:03
So that’s another symptom. And then probably the fourth most important symptom is they find that they’re often busy working on tasks that don’t actually move the needle in the business. That might be redoing the website yet again, or updating the logo, working on that book that they’ve promised themselves for months or years that they’re going to kind of create, and maybe being distracted by the latest and greatest marketing techniques because they think that’s going to be the secret to helping them break through. And then they do all this stuff with the best of intentions, Tom. They don’t even think that they’re avoiding the real work. But that’s it’s just one of the underlying symptoms of kind of being at that best-kept secret level.

Tom Poland 4:43
Thank you, Sir. So, three minutes left. What are some of the common mistakes that people make when they’re trying to solve that best-kept secret problem, maybe just a couple so people can get a bit of idea? Like, ‘Yeah, I kind of done that’.

Brett Jarman 4:55
Okay, so these relying on the features and benefits which I mentioned earlier. The other one is, they don’t think they have time to market themselves. The truth is, they don’t actually need time, they need a system, they need a good process. And that’s something that you’ve mastered very well through your podcast. And I know through the process of signing up for this interview, you’ve got very good processes in place. A lot of people think, ‘Oh, no, I don’t have time to do the marketing’. But that’s not the issue at all. A lot of them think that my work should speak for itself, I do good work. And a lot of cases, their work is excellent. But work does not speak for itself. Twenty years ago, when I first started as a consultant, it actually worked for itself, because there wasn’t all this kind of white noise going on. Right now, people are just bombarded with information. And even if your work could speak for itself, no one would actually hear it because we’re just constantly getting bombarded with messages. So, you just need to be a bit more proactive. And probably the last one, there are more that I could go into is comparing themselves with their competitors in the market, rather than comparing themselves with the people that they want to serve. When you compare yourself with others that you look up to, the people who want to look up to you tend to get left behind because they don’t know what you can offer. So, that’s just a few of the mistakes that people make.

Tom Poland 6:09
Thank you. 90 seconds left, three questions to go. One valuable free action that you could recommend someone takes just as take them a step in the right direction.

Brett Jarman 6:18
Right. Well, funnily enough, this might sound bolt on, but I would say start a podcast. And now we’ll put the emphasis on the word free there. People don’t realize that you can actually start a podcast for absolutely no cost. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. But I just want to make that point because people overestimate the amount of work that goes into creating a podcast. And if someone is really eager, and determined, they could jump on Google now. Quite honestly, within 24 hours, they could have a podcast launch at no cost.

Tom Poland 6:52
Thank you, 40 seconds left. Sorry to jump in. Question number six. I’m going to focus on the answer just for the sake of time. Folks, one valuable free resource go to brettjarman.com/angle that’s B-R-E-T-T J-A-R-M-A-N dot com forward slash angle. Go there and get more information about this because it will make you go from invisible to invincible. Twenty seconds left what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t, Brett?

Brett Jarman 7:22
So that question probably, Tom, would be why are people so reluctant to promote themselves? And in my very short answer to that is we’re driven by subconscious programming. It relates way back to our childhood. So, I could expand on that a lot more. But given the time, just leave them hanging with that.

Tom Poland 7:38
Thanks, Brett. Appreciate that. Great interview

Brett Jarman 7:40
Spot on.

Tom Poland 07:43
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.