Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: Three years ago, I had zero testimonials. Today I've got 117 video testimonials and a lot more written ones, but here is the kicker. Neither number really matters.
[00:00:15] Ken: before all that. I had an industry. Leading website as one of the top app agencies, building the first apps, but then also getting clients like PBS, Levi's, Toyota, Geico, and a whole lot more. We didn't just have static PDFs or capabilities deck. We had. Interactive case studies laid out in a way that no one else did in the industry.
[00:00:44] Ken: Quotes from VPs of global businesses,
[00:00:48] Ken: font kerning, just right
[00:00:51] Ken: animations. They were beautiful. They were also useless
[00:00:56] Ken: I know today that some of you relate to this [00:01:00] hyper curated case study mentality, but I also know that a lot of you relate to what I hear all the time, especially for. People who leave corporate jobs that are starting their businesses, or even people that are trying to pivot from one kind of offering to another,
[00:01:17] Ken: I don't have any testimonials. I have no case studies. I have no proof of work.
[00:01:24] Ken: Confidence in consulting is dramatically underrated, and I think it's no more obvious than when we talk about this exact topic.
[00:01:33] Ken: So whether you're the person that has the same industry leading website that I had. Or whether you're someone who is still trying to get traction in the market. This concept of what I call testimonials for days is applicable to both of you,
[00:01:48] Ken: and I think this is also important relative. To the world that we're living in today
[00:01:54] Ken: in a world driven by feeds, algorithms,
[00:01:58] Ken: instant [00:02:00] satisfaction. No one wants to spend 20 minutes going through your case study,
[00:02:04] Ken: but what I wanna really advocate today. Is that, no, you don't need the 117 buttoned up video testimonials that I have to move from no leads to sales conversations. You also don't need the glossy case studies with Fortune 500 logos to start closing bigger deals.
[00:02:22] Ken: What you do need though is a way to create confidence in your prospect's mind that you have the ability to do what you're saying you could do at the level that you've done it for others consistently. You do need proof. You may not be able to wait three years, and I've worked over three years to get those testimonials.
[00:02:44] Ken: And what I want to challenge you with is that you have this proof if you're actually paying attention, if you're actually thinking about what's relevant. To your prospect, the proof is actually in your mind's eye. I just need to help smoke [00:03:00] it out of you today.
[00:03:01] Ken: Now, when I was leading my agency, I essentially acted as our marketing director, and it was not. A small team, especially relative to the size of the business. I'd argue that's part of why we actually did better eventually invested into having a full-time video producer and editor on payroll.
[00:03:20] Ken: I had a dedicated content marketer. I had a head of growth.
[00:03:25] Ken: And if you also think about the fact that I was allocating a lot of my time and effort to marketing, it was a large five figure a month burn for a business that had less than 30 people.
[00:03:39] Ken: And not to digress, but just to paint the picture of what it looks like to spend five figures a month, polishing posts, creating videos, doing elaborate shoots. And I thought that it was gonna help me get to the next level, and it turns out that it was just expensive wallpaper [00:04:00] videos that stroked my ego alone and nothing that actually drove ROI.
[00:04:04] Ken: and I see this still today. I had a great conversation with a marketing agency, very industry specific marketing agency, beautiful website.
[00:04:14] Ken: They help their own clients with marketing and sales enablement. And when I see these kinds of situations, I also hear the same problem that consultants and solopreneurs have, which is that they don't have the scalable way. To drive leads. They don't have that go to market strategy, and that website is like what I talked about in past conversations like episode nine, which is that it's a museum.
[00:04:40] Ken: it's not the cool club that everyone's coming and hanging out at, which means that the competitor who's dropping a screenshot from a Slack message. Is actually closing a lead and a deal that they thought they were gonna win
[00:04:55] Ken: So while a lot of people out there are burning big [00:05:00] money on big websites, they're also bouncing off those perfect websites. Deals are stalling and every month you wait, you lose out on opportunities where your competitors. Are hanging out with your lighthouse clients.
[00:05:16] Ken: What you need is credibility in real time.
[00:05:20] Ken: I can tell you because I have moved to this model in this particular business and also adapted a lot more to the times, and that's why I have prospects lean in or I get to yes, even faster versus people ghosting or stopping the conversation before I even have the opportunity to close that deal.
[00:05:38] Ken: But I don't wanna stop here. I don't want it to stop at a conceptual level. That's why you come back every single week.
[00:05:44] Ken: I want you to start building out your own testimonials for days. Not with a deck or a logo wall, but starting with something possibly even simpler than you realize.
[00:05:54] Ken: Sometimes our own best proof of work if we actually [00:06:00] have to defined our lighthouse client well is ourself.
[00:06:04] Ken: When I had zero testimonials coming into this particular role, again, leaving the business that I mentioned before, decided to do something that was not common at that point, which is I said, you know what?
[00:06:16] Ken: Maybe I could be a fractional COO. I've heard. A fractional CFOs, why not do that for a COO role? Much more common today, and I began selling 15 to 20 KA month retainers, even though that title and those kinds of rates were not yet on the market. I know because I began being friendly with others that were kind of doing some things that I did, and when I told them that I closed the kind of deal that I did, Their response was, oh yeah, that's cool. You got lucky there. No, I didn't. It's called testimonials for days. And I used my proof of work as what I did in my agency, which immediately gave confidence to prospects that I was speaking with in the market.
[00:06:57] Ken: What mattered wasn't the label.
[00:06:59] Ken: [00:07:00] It was removing any question in the prospect's mind that I could deliver at the same level I did in the past.
[00:07:08] Ken: So stop saying you don't have testimonials 'cause you haven't done this offer before, or you haven't been an entrepreneur yet.
[00:07:15] Ken: Or because you're a new entrepreneur, start asking where you've already proven yourself.
[00:07:21] Ken: And the thing about. Testimonials is that it truly is a flywheel. It's a compounding effort.
[00:07:29] Ken: Each one that you get makes the next one easier, and it's really just about building it into your sales process.
[00:07:36] Ken: I remember having clients legitimately tell me, Ken, I want to be on your wall of love. That's my goal, because it meant that we were successful enough that they were ready to give me that testimonial.
[00:07:49] Ken: They had saw other ones give testimonials and they wanted their story. And their success to be featured as well. that's the flywheel in motion.
[00:07:58] Ken: The more you [00:08:00] tell your prospects and eventually then your clients that you want them to be your next best success story, and they hear that. The more it's reinforced, the more the flywheel works.
[00:08:12] Ken: I promise you that. It wasn't luck that I got Matt Barker, and then because of Matt Barker, Lara Acosta learned about me. And during that time, people like Nick Broekema, who was a very unknown creator, zero people, knew who he was. He said, I'd like to be like Matt one day. And then I worked with now Nausheen because she saw a few different people that I had worked with as well.
[00:08:40] Ken: One win can turn into a chain reaction.
[00:08:45] Ken: Proof does compound when you know how to use it. And here's the thing. Those are fun names, right? They're big names. If you're someone who's on LinkedIn, a lot of these people have large audiences, but the most important part is that this [00:09:00] flywheel works for my agency owners, my fractionals and coaches, which is the bulk of the people that I work with.
[00:09:06] Ken: A couple of weeks ago, I gave some guidance to a brilliant AI consultant. They were being shielded from stakeholders. Sound familiar?
[00:09:14] Ken: The person they were talking with wanted them to write up something, send it over, and when you do that, it goes into an abyss and you'll never hear from them again. So we took this testimonials for days mentality, and as a result, it opened up a direct conversation.
[00:09:32] Ken: I call it a proof drop. It doesn't have to be, again, an elaborate case study.
[00:09:36] Ken: It could be a comment, a quick win, a message, something that you've even put together specifically for them that's hyper relevant,
[00:09:45] Ken: and it's not only impactful for them, it's actually also an encouragement for you. To understand that you have a lot more credibility than you believe you do,
[00:09:53] Ken: and then this helps you, as I mentioned again in the unusual case for LinkedIn in episode nine. The [00:10:00] ability to put this onto a social channel or the ability to send this in an email, or the ability to put this into a dm. It's the real stuff.
[00:10:10] Ken: It's uncontrolled social proof, which is actually a benefit. It's not you trying to superimpose your point of. Onto a case study, it's them saying, here was my experience with Ken, this is where I was and this is what I accomplished.
[00:10:25] Ken: So please stop saying you don't have testimonials. You already have proof.
[00:10:32] Ken: Stop waiting to put together the perfect case study or ask permission to get that testimonial that no one actually reads. I want you to start stacking the proof that you have because while you wait, someone else is already proof dropping their way into your client's dms
[00:10:51] Ken: testimonials don't just stack, they snowball all, and you either ride that momentum. Or continue to be invisible [00:11:00] to your prospects.
[00:11:01] Ken: that's gonna be where we end today. I'm gonna do something fun. As we wrap up this episode, so don't tune out on me. The first is I'll show you my testimonials for days page on my site. The link will be in the show notes and it shows you how I've created this flywheel and the way to go from boring case studies to instant credibility in a world of social selling And prospects that have no patience.
[00:11:28] Ken: or again, if you use the show notes and hit the link for LinkedIn, I'm happy to give you my eyes on your own proof drop. So if you're wanting to get some help, some perspective on it, send me a connection request or dm. On LinkedIn with Proof Drop, and I'll give you a hot take on what that looks like and what you could do to improve it.
[00:11:50] Ken: Love having these conversations with you. Love giving you tactical, practical, and actionable insights, and I can't wait to have another conversation with you on how to [00:12:00] grow without hiring.