How To Massively Profit on Your Expertise
Seth David, founder and CEO of Nerd Enterprises for over 13 years, started out as an auditor before figuring out there is a major opportunity to profit on your expertise with training.
He started his company with simple Craigslist ads. Now, he has grown a YouTube channel into 2.3 million views and recently reset his business to focus on his main skills.
Seth will talk about this and the steps you can take to profit on your expertise.
On this episode of Growing Your Firm Podcast, host David Cristello and Seth David dive into:
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- How he got more clients when Craigslist ads suddenly stopped working
- The question you should ask if you want to massively profit on your expertise
- A secret tactic to get clients you want
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
- Nerd Enterprises – Seth David’s Company
- Nerd Enterprises YouTube Channel
- Separate Page for Real Estate Accounting Seth Started
- Becoming an Advisor for your Clients – Interview on Grow Your Firm Podcast
The Pathway to Becoming an Expert:
Seth David, founder of Nerd Enterprises, didn’t start out as a world-class CFO trainer and Quickbooks consultant. For seven years, Seth worked in various accounting and auditing positions before starting his company in 2003.
It started off as a side gig mostly helping companies design spreadsheets while working out of his small apartment in Hollywood, California.
After working with a handful of clients, he branched into his expertise of accounting and bookkeeping services. At the time, he was unsure if he should go with Peachtree or Quickbooks. Lucky for him, he chose Quickbooks which is now the top cloud accounting software in the industry.
At first, he managed to get clients through Craigslist ads. He would respond to posts as well as put up his own posts such as:
“Is your bookkeeper cracking the books or on crack?”
He had self-taught himself some marketing steps and his headline worked as new clients called.
Ads Stopped Working…What to do?
As many found around the early 2000’s, Craigslist became less effective for B2B business and the ads weren’t as effective as they used to be.
Seth needed to find a new way to generate new business. He joined the local Chamber of Commerce and BNI (the international networking association). There, he met an internet marketer who would later work with Seth and provide him a turning point.
During this time, Seth was working with clients, but noticed a trend:
He kept getting asked the same questions again and again. It posed a problem as it was inefficient to manually answer repeated questions plus it was frustrating.
To counter this, Seth started recording videos on Adobe and was posting the link on his site. This saved him time and frustration for the time being. The marketer he met recommended a new platform…
Switching over to Camtasia, he began posting his tutorials and training videos to YouTube and currently has a catalog of over 600 videos!
Seth recommends: If you keep hearing the same questions again and again, clients appreciate having a video they can refer back to. It’s much easier to do that than to answer the same question multiple times or have the client afraid to ask the same question twice.
The Key to Profiting on Your Expertise
For many years, Seth’s website included an expanding reach of services: bookkeeping, IT help, marketing, copywriting etc.
Many prospects were confused and didn’t know what Seth was offering. He was making money from clients in all areas, but realized:
“I’m not an expert at all of these”
He was having hired hands do certain tasks he didn’t know how to do. This had to change.
While listening to a talk by marketer Gary Vaynerchuk, this rang in his ears: “If someone is so good at something to teach it, they would just do it themselves.”
This struck a chord with Seth as he sold services he himself didn’t master. It was at this point, he decided to make a big change even if it trimmed profit.
He was only going to sell training on what he, himself, was an expert in: CFO consulting and bookkeeping.
The question Seth recommends to ask — “What are 1-2 things I do better than anyone I know?”
He was best at training CFOs and training bookkeepers and that’s what he focuses on now. He cut back on speaking gigs, he ditched the marketing services and now has a goal to just focus on building this core business into the 7-figures.
Tactic to Get Clients You Want:
While he built his library of training, Seth had worked with various real estate professionals. He realized he could tap into this niche and become an expert with one simple video.
In his video, he helps real estate professionals with specific transactions they would need to do as part of their professional. It has thousands of views.
As you can imagine, his phone rang with real estate professionals wanting to do business with him.
This niche is a specialty service for him and Seth recommends doing the same with certain niches for yourself.
Expanding Services:
As Seth grows in his expertise, he’s found IT and apps to be an enjoyable and profitable niche to also dive into. He gained experience with the various apps he used internally and found the same apps can be recommended to clients to streamline their company.
Clients typically go through a two-step process with Nerd Enterprises. The first meeting consists of laying out all the applications a company might need and recording demos of each the prospect can view in their own time.
The second meeting consists of actually picking the different apps and getting them implemented.
Seth became an expert on this first and found it couples nicely with working with businesses who can use finance help as well as operational.
DAVID’S TIP: Look through your current workflows, find the gaps where problems occur…there’s probably an app for that!
Videos are an incredible way to reach your prospects, your clients as well as your internal team. It’s becoming more mainstream and you have an expertise many need. Start recording your own videos and share them with your clients and team.
You will find they’ll thank you for the ongoing and added value you provided.
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