Daily Letter

Standard operating procedures are the connective tissue that makes productized services faster over time — here's how to document your first one this week.

Track the right leading indicators for lead generation: time scheduled for marketing, content published, outreach emails sent, and conversations held each month.

The Law of Raspberry Jam applies to target market, ideal client, and marketing channels — spreading any of them too thin makes your marketing disappear.

When you're booked solid and leads keep arriving, consider a premium-priced priority slot — let clients buy their way to the front of your queue at a higher rate.

Client onboarding sets the tone for the whole working relationship — here's what to cover, what to automate, and the essentials for indie consultants at any project size.

Start outreach with small, specific asks and build up to larger ones over time — this stair-step approach gets replies without feeling pushy or sales-y.

Productized offers make proposal writing fast and painless. Instead of 3–5 hours on a custom proposal, you write a 20-minute quote from a pre-defined service.

Start with a simple fixed-price, fixed-scope, fixed-timeline structure, then test it in conversations to gather feedback before building out your full sales page.

Carrd.co is the fastest way to get a clean, professional one-page site up for a new service offering, a market test, or a personal homepage — for free.

Your quarterly reminder to charge more — try daily or weekly pricing, move to fixed-price offers, and if you need permission to raise your rates, here it is.

About 60% of people never send a follow-up email — which means the single easiest way to get more replies is simply to follow up once or twice.

A 100–400 level roadmap for consultants across seven business areas: market research, service offerings, pricing, specialization, sales, marketing, and automation.

It’s never too late to follow up — even on a very old conversation. Send it without apology, let the other person say no, and you’ll win more deals.

Following up on an email isn’t rude — it’s a polite, proactive signal that you take the other person’s problem seriously and you’re there to help.

To get replies to your emails, stop asking ‘What are your thoughts?’ and give the other person a specific, clear next action to take instead.

Time Debt happens when you sell more hours than you have — and the only way out is to say no, cancel meetings, cut projects by 50%, and delete overdue tasks.

Implementation-focused productized services are the easiest to launch and sell — start by finding something you've done multiple times and enjoy doing more of.

A recommendation to take the free 16 Personalities test — Kai retook it and landed on ENFP 'The Campaigner,' and found it surprisingly accurate.

Email is the only audience you own — here’s a four-step plan to start your newsletter today with Buttondown, invite your first ten subscribers, and send your first issue.

Before committing to a target market, do a 'Monetarysearch' — confirm they spend money on consultants, because competition is a sign you're near a river of cash.

You're not in the mind-reading business — stop worrying about seeming desperate and start sending follow-up emails to past clients who are happy to hear from you.

Become a consulting niche celebrity by building 'two pounds of marketing proof' — content, testimonials, podcast appearances, and articles that make you impossible to ignore.

Marketing to 'small businesses' means competing for the attention of 27.9 million companies. Narrow your target market to a specific industry and become a big fish.

A 47-minute podcast conversation on getting more clients as a developer, designer, or marketer — covering positioning, referrals, and ideal client messaging.

Four practical strategies to charge more: raise your rates, increase your minimum billing unit, offer tiered proposal options, and use in-project upsells.

Before chasing more clients and revenue, ask why — because firing bad clients and doubling down on what works is often more valuable than growing for its own sake.

Raise your minimum billing unit from hourly to half-day, then daily, then weekly — and you’ll attract larger projects and put the value decision in the client’s hands.

A 'packaged service' is a done-for-you offering with a predefined scope, deliverables, timeline, and price — no proposal required, like an oil change for consulting.

To get your name known as a freelancer, pick one thing you want to be known for, then consistently show up in multiple channels talking about that thing.

Five elements of a great email: you-focused language, a clear call to action, an informative subject line, informal writing style, and 300 words or fewer.

A proven guest post pitch template with three topic ideas, plus the five most common mistakes that get pitches rejected before anyone reads the article.

A customer booked three podcasts in 90 minutes using Podcast Outreach — here's why podcast guesting has a long shelf life and how to get started.

Store all your SOPs in a single Google Doc with a table of contents — here's Kai's template and the filing system that's powered his consulting business for years.

Good follow-up emails, like a perfect avocado, need to be just right — not too short, not too long, not too early, not too late.

Follow-up emails that only ask 'did you get that thing I sent you?' don't work — here's a teardown of a real bad follow-up and how to write one that gets replies.

A personal list of 25 directives for running a consulting business — quick decision-making rules like 'do less,' 'do it now,' and 'play to win, not to not lose.'

Start emails with tiny asks — one or two questions — and work up to bigger asks as the relationship builds. Here's a five-level framework from tiny to huge.

To build an outreach list of industry influencers, pull from conference speakers, book authors, podcast hosts, and Amazon products — then reach out to build relationships.

Block four recurring hours each week as sacred 'work on the business' time — treat it like a client commitment you can't reschedule.

When a major client suddenly ends, the fastest path to new projects is following up with past clients, current clients, and lost leads — not starting from scratch.

The third of the '3 Rs': selling repeat projects to past clients skips the trust-building process and reduces how many new clients you need to find each month.

Six tools and tactics for finding anyone's email address — from their website and newsletter to Google search operators, Twitter, Hunter.io, and warm referrals.

The second of the '3 Rs': your business is the sum of your relationships, and consistent follow-up with past clients and colleagues keeps those relationships warm and profitable.

The first of the '3 Rs' of getting clients: how to ask five contacts for referrals with a simple, direct email that creates referrable moments for your business.

Every email you send is the least important email the recipient gets today — so make it you-focused, short, actionable, and end with a clear call to action.

The fastest way to escape the feast-or-famine cycle isn't new marketing — it's sending a short check-in email to your past clients asking how you can help.

Proactively reaching out to past clients and colleagues to ask for referrals — and telling them clearly who you work with — creates referrable moments for your business.

A coaching client testimonial from Lee C., who gained clarity and confidence in his consulting strategy after a single coaching call — even with a single-digit client list.

People say no to requests from strangers because it feels like a risk — so focus on giving value and building a relationship before you make any ask at all.

The goal of your business is to render yourself obsolete — automate, delegate, or eliminate anything you don't uniquely need to do, starting with lead qualification.

Three outreach tracks for reaching prospective buyers: referral-based, direct prospective buyer, and market research outreach — and how to adapt each one.

A six-step process for writing a book: start with the expensive problem, generate 10 topics, turn them into chapters, then answer 80–100 specific questions.

A consulting firm lost a $30,000 project by pitching their tech stack instead of asking about business goals. Asking questions first is what wins clients.

The Positioning Question — who do you serve and what expensive problem do you solve — is the foundation of every other aspect of your marketing as a consultant.

A framework for the four levels of consulting — from 100-level freelancer to 400-level independent business owner — and what changes at each stage.

The dark secret of meetings: canceling with a little notice is wonderful, not rude — four words ('I need to reschedule') are all you ever need to say.

The feast-or-famine cycle doesn't have to end in panic — if you budget for it, slow periods become freedom to work on your own business instead of a client's.

A good first cold outreach email is designed to get to ‘no’ fast — here’s the short template Kai uses and the research process behind every campaign.

If you can speak confidently for 20–30 minutes on 3–5 topics, you're ready to pitch podcasts — even with just one client, here's how to start building the relationship.

Seven book recommendations from Kai — Snow Crash, The Brain Audit, Value Based Fees, The One Thing, and more — with honest notes on what each one changed.

A podcast episode with Nick Disabato covering what productized consulting is, who it's for, and how to create fixed-price, fixed-scope service offerings.

Scope productized services by writing limits into the description, setting a minimum price, and using a pre-qualification process before any project starts.

A curated reading list and seven essential questions to answer if you want to build your consulting pipeline, get more clients, and charge higher rates.

The best use of your podcast show notes link: a custom landing page with a lead magnet beats a homepage every time — plus how to use contextual and closing CTAs.

A real cold email torn apart and rebuilt — showing how switching from ‘I’ focused to ‘you’ focused language makes the difference between delete and reply.

Use 'The Magic Google Search' to find every podcast and guest post a competitor or colleague has appeared on — then use that list as your outreach target.

Podcast guesting puts you in front of your target market, builds authority by association, and generates warm leads — here's the full case for making it a habit.

Repitch your best existing articles to new sites as ‘new unique versions’ — editors love proven topics with social proof, and writing them is far easier than starting fresh.

How to design a freebie offering and free educational email course that guides subscribers from awareness to a pitch for your initial consulting service.

Attending MicroConf? This guide will teach you everything you need to know as a first-time attendee.

A deep-dive definition of productized consulting — fixed-scope, flat-rate services with public sales pages — and an honest look at where it shines and where it doesn't.

Five strategies for building a podcast outreach list: iTunes search, iTunes Preview, Google, marketplace tools like ListenNotes, and expert shadowing.

A complete podcast pitch template and framework: demonstrate your value to the audience, show your research, and give hosts a 'choice of yeses' on topics.

Build an evergreen launch funnel for your productized service by working backwards from the offer — designing your drip sequence, lead magnet, and articles in alignment.

A 95% automated system for hiring your first part-time contractor: writing the job ad, setting up the application, running interviews, and using paid test projects.

The initial prospect email template Kai uses for every new lead: schedule a call, ask about their business, and qualify them — all without talking about yourself.

You don't have to go all-in overnight — here's the exact email script Kai used to transition existing clients to fixed-price productized service offerings.

When a prospect misses a call, send a short, blameless follow-up with a link to reschedule — most no-shows are innocent and easy to recover from.

To promote a great article, product, or course: define your goal, identify relevant authorities, build a relationship, make a small specific ask, and nurture long-term.

Kai's 2017 annual goals — a 4-day work week, 10,000 email subscribers, product revenue milestones, and a Burning Man camp — with honest notes on why each one matters.

Interviewing experts in your niche builds authority, creates linkable content, attracts referral traffic, and opens doors to valuable industry relationships.

A roadmapping session replaces unpaid discovery and proposal writing with a short paid kickoff — here's the full script, rationale, and how to pitch it to clients.

I plan my life in 5 year segments. Long enough to hold most projects. Short enough to be real.