This interview was freaking amazing. I came out with so many notes that I want to implement for Content Snare, even though the advice was directed towards agencies.
We cover a bunch of lead generation strategies for agencies with the common theme of building yourself up as a trusted authority for whatever industry you specialise in.
Hahna drops a ninja trick for outreach that I’ve never heard before, and I LOVE it.
We discuss:
- Podcasting for agencies
- Specialisation and why it’s so important
- Creating a trusted authority platform (like a TAP for leads? Sorry bad joke)
- Making ads work
- A ninja trick for outreach that doubles as content creation
Resources mentioned in the episode
- My podcast launch process
- Previous episodes on specialisation – Jason Resnick and Troy Dean
- Hahna’s Double Your Business checklist
Other Resources
- James' Zapier tutorial
Connect with Hahna
About Hahna
As seen on Fox Business News, Entrepreneur, and other national media outlets, Hahna Kane Latonick has founded Invent With Code to help freelance developers and digital agencies maximize their earning potential, showing them how to double their revenue in the next 90 days, so that they have more time, money, and freedom to live life on their own terms.
For the first 10 years of her engineering career, she worked throughout the defense industry developing software solutions for the Department of Defense and defense contracting companies. She then went on to lead three tech startups, serving as CTO of two of them. By building successful businesses, she knows what it takes to market and sell the right services to the right clients.
Transcript
James Rose: Good day and welcome back to Agency Highway. I'm your host James Rose. And today we're talking with Hahna. You know what, I just realized I didn't ask the pronunciation of your last name. So I'm going to go. I'm just going to try. Hahna, is going to be Kane instead of Kann. No?
Hahna Latonick: So that's my maiden name. That'll be Kane.
James Rose: Kane? It is Kane. I was like, no. After Hanha, I can't have like a classic like Kane.
Hahna Latonick: That's my maiden name. So I've been married for five years. We actually just celebrated our fifth year anniversary. My married last name is a Latonick, so Hahna Kane Latonick
James Rose: Latonick. Oh Wow. Well I clearly had a typo in my notes. I'm so glad I asked. But yeah.
Hahna Latonick: I get it all the time.
James Rose: Yeah, I bet you get called Hannah all the time as well yeah? Yeah.
Hahna Latonick: I called a Hannah Latin nick and I'm like, way off.
James Rose: So by this point in your life you probably like, Eh, whatever. My name is James Rose. No one screws that up. Literally noone. It's such a white English name. So boring as hell. There's like a thousand of me in the world. I have zero hope of ever ranking for my name or for my nickname Jimmy Rose. Anyway, way off topic.
Hahna Latonick: Let's bring it back.
James Rose: Yeah. So all right. Hahna, founded Invent With Code and you help freelancers or freelance developers and digital agencies maximize earning potential. So that's good. And that's pretty much the topic of today, right?
James Rose: How to, well you show people how to double their revenue in the next 90 days? So we're going to talk about Lead Generation, like a 90 day lead generation formula and obviously, I don't really need to explain why this is a good thing. But I do love your tagline that you want to save people time. So sorry. You want people to have more time, money and freedom to live life on their own terms.
Hahna Latonick: Who wouldn't want that right?
James Rose: Exactly. It's pretty much the only reason I'm in business. So no, now I like helping people too. That's what I have a podcast. It's actually one of the best things is when you get little bits of feedback and people are like, oh my God, such and such helped me so much. We've changed our business because of something I heard on the podcast, which is what someone sent me the other day and I was just like, oh my those feels.
Hahna Latonick: It makes it all worth it, right?
James Rose: Absolutely. Okay. But before I go and butcher what you do. I'll pass it over to you to introduce yourself and let me know what the best thing that's happened to you in the last 12 months.
Hahna Latonick: Sure. So essentially what I do is I help propel web design and development businesses to new heights over the next 90 days. Even if they've tried everything else and they're just not seeing the results they desire. And essentially, you know, at the end of the day, businesses want to see more leads and more customers to generate more sales. And so that's what I help them, achieve. So that's pretty much it in a nutshell. And the best thing that's happened to me over the past year. So from a business perspective. I was a Webinar guest with a partner and this has never happened before and so it was pretty awesome when it did. Where after doing that webinar I tripled my email list overnight and I was like, wow, you know, this is actually happening. And to date that partnership has brought in, approximately, actually 122 clients so far. And reliably, it brings in about three to five new clients each month. That's been awesome. So I would say the best advice to take away from that awesome story is that the fastest way to grow your business is through strategic partnerships, right? So if you could think of 10 people that you could partner with. Write their names down, reach out to them, get coffee with them, and even if you just the land one of those partnerships, it's going to just have a great impact on your business.
James Rose: You know, what a really bloody awesome way to start partnerships is, right now. Yeah, a podcast. And I mean, this is just absolutely killer and I've been reading a lot lately. Again, this is a bit off topic, but well not really. Because it's a lead generation thing as well. I've seen a God who was it? I think it's, agency management institute, which is a Drew Mclellan, I think his name is. But he's had like a series of posts about agencies starting podcasts for Lead Gen and relationship development because you could have your clients on, you know, and you can, you can do really helpful stuff. So you know, if you've thought about starting a podcast for your agency, it's a pretty legitimate thing to do. And it really, honestly, there's not that much work to do because I've got my thing down to a, an absolute streamlined process. Now if you're interested in that, just shoot me a line. You can contact me through the website agencyhighway.com. Yeah. And I can show you what to do. Anyway, sidetracking.
Hahna Latonick: I'm thinking back on that and I actually do plan on doing a podcast, if not by the end of the year in 2019 because it is a great customer acquisition channel and so I will definitely hit you up to learn more about your process and streamlining your podcast
James Rose: If you don't want to reach out to me.
James Rose: If you get to jimmyrose.me, that's my personal site. Because it didn't really belong on Content Snare or Agency Highway. So I just threw up the post there. I talk about my process, the tools I use, the microphone I use, everything. Because I've read so many freaking guides from all these like apparent gurus on podcasting and it was just so much crap in there. They were old, you know, like things have changed a lot. Yeah. So I found all the best WordPress plugins and podcast hosting and everything to just make my process as fast as possible because I hate doing unnecessary work. Anyway.
James Rose: Let's talk about Lead Gen because that's what we're here to do. You talk about doubling people's business in 90 days. So I guess maybe it might help to start just a little bit on how you got into this, like where you started.
Hahna Latonick: Sure. So I actually started out as an engineer just learning different programming languages. Actually I would say it probably all started back in high school when I first learned web design and web development. Just designing and developing pages and then once I graduated from college. Then started engineering different software solutions from a web applications down to even lower level programming. But I really enjoy the web application layer. I'm just building websites and just putting yourself out there, right? And so through that, I then led a couple of startups. Teaching kids how to code and teaching them web design and development and just helping startups, pretty much grow through my experiences. And so now I'm at the point where it's like, okay, I've done this for myself, I've done this for others. Now I just want to have a wider impact and really just help digital agencies, freelance businesses to, just as I say, maximize their earning potential and just have the greatest impact that they can have through their products and services.
James Rose: Awesome. That's a cool story actually, like when you said engineer my ears went “click”, because that's where I started too. But more in like industrial programming in like ladder logic and functional block diagram and all these things that some programers have never heard of. Anyway, so where should we start here? Do you think? Like what's, what's the best place to start?
Hahna Latonick: Well, I think at the core of it is that in order to increase your sales, it just comes down to two, I would say key measures, right? So your total sales is the product of two things, which is your number of customers multiplied by your average spend per customer. Right? And so essentially as you adjust those two levers, if you say double your number of customers, you end up doubling your sales or if you double the average spend per customer then you result in doubled sales. And so depending upon, how a business wants to strategically grow, it's just a matter of identifying which lever to pull as well as how to go about achieving that, increased metric, right? So when it comes to number of customers, then you want to think about, okay, how can I generate more high converting leads? Because if you're trying to attract everyone, which is one common mistake that businesses make is that they try to sell everything to everyone. But when you do that, you end up selling nothing to no one. So if you can attract the right prospect, not only is that going to increase your conversions because you're able to sell the right thing to the right person at the right time.
James Rose: Yeah, and specialization has come up quite a few times on this podcast. In fact, I think one went live today. So from Jason Resnick, and that'll give you guys an idea of how far ahead I am in interviews right now because I mean this is the 11th of October, we're recording this. And this is probably going to come out in like nine weeks or something. I think I'm ahead at the moment. I like being ahead. I'm about to go away. So, it's good to have that content sorted for the next, two and a bit months. But Troy Dean has spoken about it. So yeah, I think I'll link both of those episodes, yeah. Because selling everything, anything to anyone is, there's a lot of traps there, right? So, we can be doing too much work because you're trying to do Google Ads and Facebook ads and whatever or you know, even lots of parts in one website, like if you do lots of different types of websites, you got to learn constantly, right? Whereas if you sort of specialize in something then you can charge more because you're an expert, you know, that industry. And anyway, you should be talking about this. Not Me.
Hahna Latonick: No worries. Yeah, so, so essentially it's like, okay, people think all right, well all I have to do is attract more customers and they kind of go to the, they go straight to tactics of, well, okay, I need to start doing Facebook and LinkedIn and Google AdWords and it's like there's actually a few things you need to have in place even before you start attracting or generating traffic, right? So the first thing that I recommend is that you build a trusted authority platform and what that enables you to do is you can position yourself as a true leader in your niche or in your industry. You can, it'll allow you to create not only authority but credibility and most importantly, trust with your audience, with your clients. But also another added benefit of having a trusted authority platform is that you can attract higher paying clients and generate a new business, right? And so how do you establish this trusted authority platform?
Hahna Latonick: Well, first and foremost, you want to, set up your website, right? That's going to be your core platform. Um, and then reaching out to say one or two outposts where you can use that to send traffic to your website. So for example, what I do is not only do I have my website as a trusted platform, but I also utilize LinkedIn and Facebook. Those are the two, I would say platforms that I'm utilizing to establish my authority and credibility. Right? And so on my website, on LinkedIn, whether it to be in my profile, whether it's via the LinkedIn groups as well as with Facebook on my Facebook page and Facebook groups on my news feed across these three platforms I'm providing engaging content that helps, inspires and transforms my audience. Right?
James Rose: Are these other people's groups you are in, or are you creating your own group to create yourself? Like I had this kind of vision for a second there where it was like, you're creating groups for, you know, let's go with the classic nature of a dentist. Are you creating a group full of dentists or is this, are you engaging in other people's places?
Hahna Latonick: Both. Right. So essentially I first started out and creating my own group. And in that way, I can use that as a way to attract or drive people into, say, a funnel, right? A sales funnel. and I'll get to that part in a second, but also by utilizing other Facebook groups, not in the way of a stealing customers or clients. Right? But it's more of helping people in those groups answering their questions. Even, you know, working with say the Admin or moderator, but essentially you're building relationships in groups because then they see you as a go to person.
James Rose: Right. And, and I can definitely back this up, I just, that's the reason I'm jumping in here because I like, I absolutely want to let people know that this is a solid strategy because this is how we built Content Snare in our Facebook group. I didn't do the LinkedIn, I started doing the LinkedIn thing, but I dropped it because it was too much. But, um, we created a Facebook group and I had a list on Facebook groups that I would go in and check and literally scroll down questions and find things I could answer or search through and try and find things. Obviously not posting on old stuff because that makes you a Douche bag, uh, if you're trying to dig up old threads, but, um, yeah, like going into other people's groups and we'll let sharing relevant content doesn't have to be yours. You know, it's nice if it is, but you've got to tread a fine line,
Hahna Latonick: Self promotion and whatnot.
James Rose: But you know, what I developed relationships with people that owns these other groups as well. Right. And, and would ask is it okay if I share this thing, you know? So yeah, that's definitely a good strategy.
Hahna Latonick: Yeah. Because essentially what you're doing is that, um, by adding value to the community. Whether it's, you know, writing engaging content on your website or sharing other people's contents, in these groups, or on your profile or a page, people will recognize that you're not only very helpful, but that you're also very knowledgeable and that you have the experience to solve their problem. Right? Um, and so once you're seen as a trusted authority, then you're in a position to start, I would say sending more directed traffic to either a landing page or your website. So for example, once you have your platform in place, you start building a pipeline of targeted potential clients. And what that essentially entails is that again, this is going to position you to attract the right prospect is that say you have like three components, right?
Hahna Latonick: You have your landing page, that you're going to send traffic to. And on that landing page you're going to make them ask for them to schedule a call. And I've found that depending upon the pricing of your services, especially if you sell a premium service, you have a higher conversion by booking a call with them versus trying to say pitch on a Webinar or just flat out in an email, hey, buy my like $5,000 service. But essentially what I want them to do is to schedule a call. And in the process of scheduling a call, I actually have them fill out an application and it could be like a questionnaire or a survey, but essentially I'm evaluating or qualifying whether or not this is someone that is a good fit and if they meet that criteria then essentially will conduct that call with that person. Right. And so if they don't meet that criteria, then I don't have to waste my time to figure out at the end of the day there they can't afford my services or they're just not a good fit.
James Rose: Certainly. And you know what, I've heard so many people talk about this, not so many, like some very few very smart people talking about this application form process. Like James Schramko from the SuperFastBusiness podcasts and the guys at the hustle and Flowchart podcast to Joe and Matt. I forgot the last names but they're 2 very good podcasts that cover a lot of different business things and these guys are well known, right? They're the real deal. And I've heard both of them talk about using application as the first step in the sales process because it just re-positions everything you know, and allows you to filter like you talked about there.
Hahna Latonick: Oh yeah. It filters out a lot. I would say it's definitely saved me a lot of time, and eliminated frustrations and headaches. But if you think about the analogy is like, you know, when you go to see the doctor, right, they have you fill out a questionnaire or a survey to kind of help, qualify what's going on as well as to help diagnose the problem. Right? And if you're able to be seen as a doctor, someone that can diagnose and prescribe versus someone that's salesy, just buy our product. Then you're going to end up with higher conversions because you're going to be working with people, that are a best fit for your product and service. So if you're not, if you're not using an application process or even making that initial ask to book a call, I'm definitely tried in your business. And if you get results, you know, share it back with us and Content Snare there and, and just see how it works on your business.
James Rose: Yeah, I mean I'd love to do something like that for Content Snare, but to me it's a little bit douchey. Like it's a software product. There's no, it's not like I can have a wait list or something or like, you know, anyone can sign up and use it. That said we definitely need to be better at qualification because we have quite a lot of people that come in and think about it like a magic bullet or something and are prepared to put in the time to set it up. Like, you know, most processed things, it takes time to set up and they come in and they never take the time or that, which means they send port bad requests to their clients, you know, if it's just like a, a bunch of fields or whatever, and no help for their clients. And they go, oh, it doesn't work. And they leave. Right. And I'm like, right on, you just need to spend a bit of time and so part of me is almost like I should have a theme that's like, Are you willing to put in the time now.
Hahna Latonick: One thing that, that works is a different type of, is a different form of like an application survey or questionnaire is a quiz, right? If you have a quiz upfront, it's not as intimidating or as formal, but you can ask those key questions of how much time would you be able to dedicate in a week, right? Like, do you have one to two hours, two to five hours and so on. And that'll give you a better idea of the type of customer or client that you're going to be engaging with. Right? Because they don't have the time of day, then it's probably not going to work out then.
James Rose: I'm taking a note of that like, like an “Are you ready for Content Snare.” Exactly. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Like, I wouldn't make that the bar, like a barrier for everyone though, because you know, we have bigger clients like big agencies that just hear about it or google something about getting content and they're like, I want to try this so don't want to jump through a bunch of hoops. But having that on the homepage, that's really good. Just on this quickly to you were talking about applications and stuff and I just wanted to mention my experience here. Because we kind of screwed up when we were doing the agency thing and we had a wait list. I remember all these like smart marketers talking about wait lists for their communities or their products and I was like, I want to do that for our website.
James Rose: And I think we actually turned quite a few people off because they were like, oh, I don't know how long it will be a til I get my website or whatever. In hindsight it's very obvious that we shouldn't have done that. But the application form, it has that same level of, I guess scarcity or whatever. Like, it makes you seem quite professional and you know, and that you're not going to work with everyone, ends that you're obviously into mind if you can have an application process, but at the same time it's none of that negativity of having to wait that you do with a wait list.
Hahna Latonick: It definitely turns the table because usually it's the client or the prospect is evaluating whether or not you're good enough for them, but with the application or the qualification process, you turn the tables and you're really asking that prospect are you good enough or the right fit for us? Right? And so it really puts, I would say, the ball in your court versus being at the mercy of your. prospect Alright, so what's, what's next thing, right? So once you start building that targeted a pipeline of clients, right now you're in a position to start generating traffic. And this could be done in a few ways as well as just what I call a traffic approach versus a messaging approach. And so if you're taking the traffic approach where, you can, you know, set up Facebook ads, for example, this is what I just described, what I'm using in my business right now, to go through this process.
Hahna Latonick: So using Facebook ads, Google ad words, and even webinars to send traffic to my landing page. And then on that landing page, it has the ask to schedule a call, fill out the application, and then if they qualify, we conduct the call. But then what I've also found useful is the messaging approach, right? So the traffic approach or kind of, you know, you have the shotgun rifle effect, right where traffic approach, each kind of just shooting everything out. It's still kind of targeted, but you're casting a wider net. Whereas with the messaging approach, a we'll call that like the, the shotgun effect or it's very narrow and targeted. So unless you've got a shotgun with a slug in it, which is a thing, it's so, the messaging approach, you're going to be very precise and targeted in which, like for example, I'll use Facebook messenger or Facebook.
Hahna Latonick: Yeah, Facebook messenger or I will reach out to people one on one and not only building that relationship with them, but eventually that'll lead to, hey, let's jump on the phone, learn more about each other and see how we can help each other's businesses. Do the same thing on LinkedIn because that's my second main authority platform is again, using LinkedIn messenger of reaching out to people one on one, building that relationship and then again trying to get them to book a call. And then lastly for the messaging approaches via email. You know, your email list is critical to your business and so if you're able to segment your emails properly, then you can use very specific indirect messaging via your email to your subscribers, to get them to schedule a call. They fill out the application, conduct the call.
Hahna Latonick: So the traffic approach, as well as the messaging approach. So I say the traffic approach is like one to many, whereas the messaging approach is a one to one, but they all converge to either a landing page or scheduling a call. So that I can then begin the, the closing process.
James Rose: So, with the traffic approach. You mentioned Google Ads and Facebook Ads. I don't know many people that have really made that work for agency stuff or maybe they're just not doing it right. So do you have any tips there? Just because the cost cost per clicks. And so I that space, right?
Hahna Latonick: I would say I do use when it comes to Facebook Ads versus Google AdWords, I do use Facebook Ads more often, probably it's like an 80/20 just because Adwords just has the most expensive cost per click.
Hahna Latonick: And so, with Facebook ads, what I would recommend is not only being as specific as possible, right? So for example, you want to not only identify the niche and so let's just say web development, right? And then having a second tier, I think they're called attributes where essentially I want to say target businesses that are related to web development and do SEO. Right? And with that it's going to narrow down your, like getting a cross section, right? Because usually people just do one level, of. Okay, just make sure they're interested in web development, but that's not specific enough. It's almost like a whole other topic because I could talk about this for awhile about this cross sectional stuff where like being able to say this and this and this to really narrow it down like you could say to dentists and in my city and I'll facebook page admins because they're probably going to be more likely to be a business owner in that case and to really dial in that audience.
Hahna Latonick: Yeah. I try not to go beyond three, but I find the sweet spot is to no more than three, but also on the audience size and the industry you're in because it does give you that little gauge on the side, how big the audience is and how title board it is. Exactly. You don't want to be in the red where it's on the opposite end, but not only that, you definitely want to make sure you're using the re-targeting pixel. And so for me, what I do is I try to not only re-target the people that have visited my website, but have say engage with my ads or I definitely upload my business email list up to Facebook and really I'm just trying to target, my subscribers as well as those who have visited my webpage. So the only time that I'm doing, I'll just say cold Facebook ads is when I'm trying to either have,them sign up for a lead magnet or Webinar.
James Rose: Yeah. I was just thinking that the webinar approach because like, you know, I, I think you'd have a quite a hard time marketing to a cold person. Like someone if you don't know what that means. It's like a peep. Someone who's never heard of you before, they just saw your ad. They clicked through the probably unlikely to book a call with you. But if you have a webinar about how dentists can add four bookings per week or something very specific to that market, you might have a lot more success in getting them to sign up for that. And then obviously you would have them on your email list and you can sell them right off. So the Webinar's seems like a really good choice for that kind of thing if you have a niche.
Hahna Latonick: As well as, if you want to take the lead magnet approach, which definitely has a lower cost per click compared to like doing a Webinar conversions are checklists, any sort of checklists or audit people or business owners eat that up like hotcakes, right? But for the most part in doing my Facebook ads, I'm just re-targeting people that I at least have a relationship with. Right. So someone has visited my website or is on my email list. That's good idea. Yeah. Yeah. And so essentially that's the main, I would say the key steps, right? So you've built out your trusted authority platform, you start layering in the elements to build a pipeline of your targeted potential clients. Then you're driving traffic or you're driving visitors, whether through the traffic approach or through the messaging approach, once they book that call, will you review their, application to make sure that they meet your criteria and then once you are on the call and you're conducting it, right, that gives you the opportunity to understand their pain and frustrations. You can help diagnose the problem again, that whole doctor analogy, and then prescribe a solution that is unique to their business situation.
James Rose: Absolutely. So is this just, it was just thinking like, do you teach all of this? Is this what your course is? This like this messaging, like building your platforms? the messaging component?
Hahna Latonick: Yeah. So for the, the one course I just recently put together to help freelance developer and designers is essentially the whole end to end system. So going from, you know, not only trying to attract anyone but who's your client Avatar, who's the right prospect to track. And then it goes through this process of how to set up your platform, how to target potential clients, the funnel that you need as well as, the different ways to, generate more sales and double revenue.
James Rose: Just actually something that you just drove my mind from there is the double your revenue thing. I was thinking at the beginning because you were saying you can double how much you charge people or double how much, how many leads you get. What it's like that classic compound effect, right? So what's the square root of two, one point four or something. So a few times both by one, you only need 40 percent increase in both of those to double your revenue overall, believe that math checks up.
Hahna Latonick: So I did the math on it, right? So if you think about, going back to those two measures of increasing your number of customers as well as a number of the average spend per customer. Definitely if you have a increase of 50 percent then in each of those then you definitely double your revenue right? So if I have a thousand customers and they have an average spend of a thousand dollars, that's a million dollars right there. But if I increase both by 50 percent, so now I have 1500 customers and they each spend $1,500 and that, I think that comes out to about 2.25 million. Right. So right there. So if you do these 40 percent, but it's certainly easier to remember. Okay. Just 50 percent right?
James Rose: It's just cool like how you know, and if you increase your conversion rate from leads to customers as well, you know, that's. And it all compounds on each other. What we didn't really dig into the what I want to cover is messaging, because I know this, I guarantee there's people listening going like, I don't want to do outreach or like that spam or something, you know. So I want to squash that a little bit because I know there's bad ways to do messaging and there's good ways to do messaging. So I'd like to hear a little bit about what you teach, I guess here or what you recommend.
Hahna Latonick: Sure. Well, the first thing you definitely don't want to do is say hi, buy my product.
James Rose: Really, I thought that would work?
Hahna Latonick: Or even, you know, leading with what you do and what you think you can do for them and what you think they need. And so I, I actually, I just take a very personable. So if I'm doing the messaging approach right, I take a very personal, approach where essentially I will ask the person a question, right? So for example, I'll just do this on the fly, right? So I'll ask you James. So, can you give, like, Hey, I'm writing an article and can you give a tip or two about the best way that you attract new clients? Right? And by presenting a question along with showing how I can add value to this person in which like if I'm taking the article approach, then I'm going to give that person, exposure. I'm going to, you know, help build their reputation and their authority, but I haven't asked for anything yet.
Hahna Latonick: Right? And so I'm just saying, Hey, I'm writing this article, I'd love to include you. Do you have a tip or two? And then based on their response, pretty much I'll gauge it of how to follow up with that person, right? So I'm trying to understand more of what they do and the way that they answer the question. It'll also hint at one of their pain or frustrations, right. So, for example, I had one person say, hey, you know what, I really need help in this area, but one thing that has worked for me is X. Right? So now I know, okay, I didn't even ask this person, do you have trouble with clients? But just by getting to, by asking them very simple question, people will tell you more than what you expect and through that I can then start building a relationship, either sharing the resources related to that, or sharing an exchange of tip of mine. And then eventually that will lead to, hey, you know what, I've had a great time chatting with you, love to learn more about your business. Let's talk on the phone.
James Rose: This is awesome. that's an approach I like. I've heard something like this talked about, you know, like getting, you know, we could create a blog post of people in our space like other web design, people that serve agencies to get Content Snare promoted, right? Because then they're likely to share that post out. Like that's. I've heard that before. This is like a little twist on this where you're getting your audience to contribute to something so you can get content out of this as well for your site. You know, obviously the prerequisite to this is knowing your client because you can't just reach out to everyone, but if you could have a post about like top 10 marketing tips from successful dentists or something, and in the process you've also landed a few clients out of it just by asking people if they want to contribute like that. Oh, that's epic. I really like this.
Hahna Latonick: It's definitely, simple and subtle yet very powerful.
James Rose: Yeah, it's huge. I'm trying to think how I can use this. I'm just like, but I feel like a thief on this call. I'm just like, this is what my podcasts apparently is, just ask people for advice and then steal it and implement it.
Hahna Latonick: Yes. There you go and then you just give credit back. But it's essentially the, like, as a framework of, let's say you don't like writing articles. The whole point is that your first providing value to your prospect before you make any ask. Right? So whether that's, hey, I love to have you as a guest on my podcast or I love to bring you in as a Webinar guest, anything to make that person look good, right? If you can make them look good and then it's easier to build a relationship with that person and then eventually it leads to a call.
James Rose: That's awesome. I love it. You know that making people look good is key as well, right? Like it's, it's on my actual weekly to do list, to be like, look at who I've spoken to recently or like partners and stuff and being like, who's, who can I make local awesome this week. You know, like are they launching something if they put up a new blog post or something so I can be like, hey guys, check this out. So it's like, that is super powerful when people see like their stuff getting shared or whatever. Right?
Hahna Latonick: Right. Because I mean it's validation of what they do. Um, and I would say, I mean isn't your weekly newsletter that makes people look good every week, right?
James Rose: Yeah. And that's usually one of the ways, right? Like that's actually one of the ways I make people look good is my. Because I have a lot of people's feeds in there that I pick out stuff from and I will intentionally try and pick out certain people's information. it's obviously got a, the is this awesome test for everything that goes in there. But yeah, it's and if you want that by the way, it's a contentsnare.com/weekly. Just a weekly newsletter that, it was so blown away when we started talking. And you were like, Oh yeah, I'm on your newsletter. I was like, wait, no way. And I looked up your email and you'd subscribe like 12 months ago or something. I was like, get Outta town.
Hahna Latonick: Yeah, it was. I was just, you know, trying to stay on top of things that are happening in the industry and just trying to stay current. And I was like, okay, you know, web design newsletters and you know Content Snare came up. And I was like, all right, subscribe.
James Rose: Awesome. That's so cool. It came up like that. But I mean that's one of those things like the podcast that when people actually take the time to respond and say stuff like, you know, I've unsubscribed from every newsletter except yours. And you're like, holy crap. Like, it's like some really good feedback.
Hahna Latonick: Yeah. I'm, I'm actually one of those people. I subscribe to very few newsletters and yours is amongst my like top 10 so.
James Rose: Thank you. Alright, well I think we can probably start wrapping that up because there's so much stuffi here, even I've got a bunch of to-do's out of this and I'm sure other people listening to as well. And we don't want to explode their brains too much or make a fire hose effect. Yeah, drinking from a fire hose. I love that analogy. Yeah. So I think we've kind of done that already. So I think we should, we should, let people know where they can go to, to actually take their time and have you teach them this. Where would you like to recommend people go?
Hahna Latonick: Yeah, so definitely check out my website inventwithcode.com you can reach out to me via email. That's hahna@inventwithcode.com. And I love to learn more about people's businesses, how I can help. and yeah, hit me up viathose two ways.
James Rose: So that was invent , I n v e n t just in case that's not coming through. Clear on the audio, invent with Code Dot Com. But let's just last few questions. So what would you go back and tell mini-Hahna just starting out on this, on this journey, agency life.
Hahna Latonick: I would say my recommendation to mini-Hahna would be to, don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. Massive. That's huge. Yeah. Because it's, very easy to get distracted by what other people are doing and it might seem like their success happened overnight, but a lot has gone into the making. Right. And so, I would say remain focused on your journey. March to the beat of your own drum and just know that it's gonna work out. Right? So don't give up and stay, stay focused.
James Rose: Nice. Yeah, I, that's huge, like, everyone's pretty bad. Well not everyone, but a lot of people are very bad at comparing themselves to other people, you know, like even with Content Snare. Now, like I see other SAS companies that are where I want to be and I'm like, oh, they're there already. And it's like we've been out a year, dude, like chill. So yeah, like, that's good stuff. What's your favorite piece of technology right now?
Hahna Latonick: Oh, Zapier? Zapier makes me happier. I love Zapier just because I try to automate as much as possible and you know, being an engineer, being a developer, I just love automations and how I can make things easier and faster. And so it just saves me a lot of time and so it makes my life easier. So zapier for the win.
James Rose: I'm actually in the process of writing out my outline for a Zapier course I've done most of the outline. I just need sort of sit on it and think because I want to teach people about it because I talk about some automations and people are like, wait, you can do that. Or like how do you know, how do you do that kind of thing. I didn't know Zapier was capable and when you have that developor mind I guess. Especially like, and you want to automate everything, especially because I came from automation engineering. I like I think I might do a lot more with it than most business owners. So I really want to show people what they can do a because it's saves so much freaking time. Some of the things you can set up, like for example, old, like when this podcast goes live, I literally do nothing. It, but it pulls out the featured image, and puts that on Instagram with some hashtags and it's sharing it in my Facebook group and on my LinkedIn and like all with different texts as well. Like I can rotate different bits of text, like it's so powerful. Anyway. Again, that's like a whole other episode. Alright, let's wrap that up. So thanks for joining me, Hahna.
Hahna Latonick: Thank you so much for the opportunity. And yeah, had a blast.
James Rose: It's been awesome. This has been one of the longer episodes too because I think there's just so much stuff we could keep talking about, but if you want to find out more, go to inventwithcode.com. Did you have something else you wanted to send people to like a lead magnet?
Hahna Latonick: Yes. I'm glad you brought that up. So yeah, I have a lead magnet. It's a checklist of how to woo business, right? So it's 50 plus ways to double your business so you can go to inventwithcode.com/dyb which is short for double your business.
James Rose: So, inventwithcode.com/dyb, which I will put it in the notes and I just realized how funny it is to call something a lead magnet when we're telling people to go and sign up. That is my bad. I'm sorry. But look, I think we all know what that stuff really is. No one's no one's that silly. I'm Very happy to sacrifice my email to get something that's valuable. Right? And especially if I am going to get all the awesome stuff after I sign up, yeah. Anyway, let's wrap it up there. Man, I'm just looking at my notes here and how much stuff that I want to do out of this episode. That's awesome. That's so good. Alright, again, thanks for joining me, Hahna. Thank you so much and thank you guys for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review and I will see you in the next episode.