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Cheat Codes for a Small Business

Cheat Codes for a Small Business

How to punch above your weight as a small software or infoproducts entrepreneur.

I presented this at Baconbiz 2016.

Patrick McKenzie

May 01, 2016
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Transcript

  1. A DARK
    CONFESSION

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  4. IN BUSINESS, I’M
    ALLOWED TO CHEAT.

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  5. CHEAT CODES FOR YOUR
    SMALL BUSINESS
    PATRICK MCKENZIE

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  6. BOARD MEETING
    KALZUMEUS
    SOFTWARE

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  7. SCENE: A LARGE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE STARTUP
    “WE NEED A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY”
    ▸ Email marketing team
    ▸ 3 members
    ▸ Marketo license ($10,000 per month)
    ▸ Content team
    ▸ 3 members
    ▸ Engineering support
    ▸ 1 member
    ▸ Marketing management

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  8. 500 VISITS / POST

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  9. 6 POSTS / MONTH

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  10. CUTEST PUPPIES

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  11. ςΩετ

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  12. ςΩετ

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  13. ▸ Publishing >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Waiting until perfect
    ▸ Multiple platforms but you don’t have to be everywhere
    ▸ Static website
    ▸ Email list
    ▸ Blog technology but publish essays
    ▸ Podcast or video (totally optional but they can work)
    ςΩετ
    CHEAT CODES FOR CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

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  14. THIS LOOKS LIKE
    A WHOLE LOT OF
    WORK.
    (Let’s peek behind the
    curtain.)

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  15. DEVELOPING A PROCESS OPTIMIZED TOWARDS SHIPPING MORE
    WHAT’S REQUIRED TO SEND?
    ▸ Text of email
    ▸ Design
    ▸ Calls to action
    ▸ Archive page
    ▸ Push the send button

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  16. ▸ Send more email than you’re
    comfortable which.
    ▸ Watch for what works —
    engagement and, ideally,
    conversions.
    ▸ Take the best emails, edit to
    remove references to time and add
    CTA, add to autoresponder.
    ▸ Your newest users get your best
    writing automatically.
    BETTER, FASTER, AT HIGHER VOLUME THAN A TEAM OF PROFESSIONALS
    SPECIFIC CHEAT CODE FOR EMAIL

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  17. BETTER, FASTER, AT HIGHER VOLUME THAN A TEAM OF PROFESSIONALS
    MARKETING VIRTUOUS CYCLE
    ▸ Post a blog post, get more emails.
    ▸ Post an email, get more emails.
    ▸ Do a podcast, get more emails.
    ▸ Don’t be shy about re-using or
    repurposing themes or content.

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  18. SEPARATING CONTENT AND
    PRESENTATION IMPROVES VALUE OF
    YOUR CONTENT PORTFOLIO AS TIME
    GOES ON.

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  19. 2 MILLION WORDS

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  20. 2 MILLION WORDS
    I get 90% of the economic benefits from 2% of them. Start there first.

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  22. MAXIMIZING THE VALUE OF WHAT YOU MAKE
    ▸ Direct almost all of your efforts to platforms you control.
    ▸ Separate the content and the process / technology, so that
    process / technology improvements incrementally increase
    the value of your back catalog.
    ▸ Double down on what works.
    ▸ Triple down on what works.
    ▸ You’re still not doing enough of that. 99.98% of your
    market has no ideas that you’ve “done it before.”

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  23. MOST OF THE WORLD CAN’T
    USE EXCEL 0R ANY API
    CHEAT CODE FOR DEVELOPERS

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  24. A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE
    EXPEDITED SSL (MANAGED RENEWALS / INSTALLS FOR CERTS)
    ▸ Identify a business need of your target customer
    ▸ “I need to not have my SSL certs expire w/o knowing.”
    ▸ Build a tool which addresses that need succinctly
    ▸ Paste in domains; we’ll tell you when they expire
    ▸ Snap into your marketing empire
    ▸ Give us your email/phone and we’ll send you reminders

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  25. TOOLS PREDATE SOFTWARE
    DEVELOPERS!
    NOT A DEVELOPER?

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  26. I JUST DON’T HAVE IT IN ME TO BE CREATIVE TODAY
    UNREASONABLY EFFECTIVE ONE-DAY DEV PROJECTS
    ▸ Integrate any of the following with your application
    ▸ Trello: instant, arbitrary, low-friction work queues
    ▸ Slack: incredible insight into “pulse” of business
    ▸ Email: tag customers w/ lots of stuff, figure out emails later
    ▸ House ads: given cookie w/ opaque ID, post to API, get desired ad
    ▸ Automatic post-sale upsells
    ▸ Annual billing for SaaS
    ▸ Next higher plan for people at 80% of quota
    ▸ Cross-sells for info products

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  27. THE AUTO-
    RECRUITER

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  28. CHARGE MORE

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  29. I LOVE TALKING TO PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU
    ▸ @patio11 or [email protected]
    ▸ You should really be on my email list: https://
    training.kalzumeus.com
    ▸ bit.ly/baconcheats for my slides (pssst if you ever do a
    presentation swap slides or related commentary for email
    addresses)

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  30. FRANZ APOSTOL
    IN MEMORIAM

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  31. FUNDING FOR THIS PROGRAM MADE POSSIBLE BY THE INTERNET
    PHOTO CREDITS
    ▸ Big Jigsaw: Alan Levine, by CC: https://flic.kr/p/mDYE
    ▸ Unfinished Jigsaw: a2gemma, by CC: https://flic.kr/p/
    wTUmk
    ▸ The Thinker: Sharyn Morrow, by CC: https://flic.kr/p/
    qoK2g3
    ▸ Franz Apostol: Keith Perhac

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