hello everybody it’s Harry Fu here I guested on a podcast called the indie game movement with Andrew Papas last

month really really enjoyed it I recommend you check it out after listening to this episode I got into everything Business Development so this

is an opportunity to hear how I approach things Business Development wise so I’m ghost writing for six Founders now and

the business is making over $10,000 a month monthly recurring Revenue so this is a little bit of insight of how I got

here which might be useful for other indie game studios or other people looking to kind of build an impact and

make more money using LinkedIn please enjoy the [Music]

episode hey everybody and we’re back and today with us I have Harry Fu Harry how

is it going man and thanks for being on the show hey thanks for having me it’s been going pretty good 37° in Cypress

now so nice and cold in my room with the AC on all day that’s pretty much me

awesome love it yeah things are uh heated up here uh in in the states we’re

looking I think a highs of like 80° and then there was some thunderstorms on the way so hopefully this you know

conversation doesn’t get interrupted by any uh strikes but uh we’ll see we’ll play it by year but enough about the

weather uh for those of you who don’t no Harry is the founder and CEO of Fu

digital um specifically he’s working to bring Founders offline reputation online

which folks this is all something I know is we’re in dire need of and part of the

reason why Harry is here we going to talk about things that relate to that and his uh and the work that he does and

his expertise but also he is the podcast host of The Playbook and uh you know

you’ve also worked at evolution recruitment gaming recruitment provider

um but first I please share a little bit more details about the Playbook and what that podcast focuses on yeah for sure so

at Evolution recruitment gaming I was a podcast host it was a way of us interacting with clients and through

doing that I did over 180 interviews with gaming leaders it was like every two weeks loads of roundtables and since

I’ve been solo since April I wanted to continue that so I do a weekly podcast with a leader in the gaming industry and

if people know the H man Leb podcast just like a long form where we dive into certain topic maybe similar to the

podcast we’re doing now to be honest and I just doing that for the games industry focused on leadership and I pretty much

try to get a different type of topic each podcast nice well it it you know

those are all great things to have and especially leadership I think it’s something that we know we need to an

extent but don’t necessarily know how it can be applicable and you know different facets and different forms and things

it’s not just within your business so definitely uh folks if you’re interested in uh trying toh check out other

podcasts like this uh then the Playbook sounds like a great one now uh and and

you know you know we shared another interesting uh thing about you too you just went solo recently and you said uh

back in April at the time of this recording we’re we’re talking about you know mid mid June here so that’s two

months that you’ve been doing that so I’m sure there’s probably some stories they’ll share to uh that relate to our

conversation about that but I would say that’s that’s pretty impressive going solo and and from from what I can tell

from from following your recent efforts at least on LinkedIn that looks like things are going great so congrats on

that front oh thank you yeah it’s been going really good so everyone listening I was

doing business development as a contractor for my old company Evolution

I did that for six months and I was only doing business development with the UK gaming market and a lot of

that was posted on LinkedIn going to conferences and doing podcasts so

basically stopped doing the and day-to-day recruitment it was only doing the B side and then after six months I

realized it was a need for kind of personal branding like I got told that on an e Coffee in February by AA

figarola who works at King she has been posting a lot I interviewed and she’s like you should charge for this I was

like huh maybe I should went and put an offer together and then I started asking people at the end of calls everyone was

interested I was like all right I’ll bite the bullet um I didn’t renew the contract and then the start was trying

to do employer branding and then I realized with the current state of the market people were like this is amazing

but we’re not really hiring right now not a big need so then I pivoted in week two to go after service providers people

who either doing work for hire people who sell stuff to gaming Studios and Publishers and I started helping a few

recruitment owners like one to one just giving them some advice on LinkedIn and then he ended up becoming ghost writing

so I have four Founders I ghost write for now one of them is a Cod development company which probably focus more on

today and the other one is a strategic advisor another company they sell an AI tool to game studios and the other one

owns a recruitment company so ghost right means I just get their voice and I

put it on LinkedIn like I rotate post for them I write all their content and we just make sure that LinkedIn is

getting as much BD out of it as possible so it’s called founder Le marketing so that’s what I do dayto day on top of the

podcast and you know posting on my personal LinkedIn so lots of stuff going on there and we’re definitely going to

get into more on that in a moment uh but before we do uh considering how busy you are with all these things and stuff I

mean what do you do in your free time what are some any hobbies particular interests anything you like to share

that uh you do when you unplug yeah so Bata big dancer and funny

enough everything I do makes me a bit more money so that’s a very good thing I try to do so I did a post uh last week

so this would be uh yeah back in June for everyone listening but I in my

Bachata class there was someone who runs a talent acquisition team in liol like in I gaming and they started following

me on LinkedIn and then they needed help with their LinkedIn they invited me to the kind of Studio long story short

we’re now halfway through a boot camp where I’m teaching the whole HR team so funny enough I do Pata really like it

the dancing and as I love dancing so much I try to bring that energy to the conferences so I’m usually doing an

Afterparty somewhere which again more opportunity for business and introducing people so yeah I’m a party person with

the with reason I don’t really drink that much but I’m there to like bring people together that makes sense no I I think that’s a great attitude about it

and one thing I can probably quickly summarize from that alone and I just a good lesson itself is like you know

there’s opportunities everywhere and in your case you’re just talking about hey I like dancing this style of dancing and

through that I I I talked about it and look you know and and I think the key there is like it’s just a form of

authenticity in a way you’re being authentic you’re true but it’s it’s not like oh I’m only going to be talking

about this in this more busy space no it’s just hey I’m authentic it’s true it there’s there’s so much going on there

and it just presents again like when we look at things this way folks it’s it’s everything could be looked at as an

opportunity um when you start doing that it’s like I don’t know like like Harry says all in his case at least it’s um

you know everything I I do uh it could potentially or has made me money so

can’t wait to get into uh some of those things further and how it relates to our conversation but folks you know and

Harry well he may know um before we do that we have to get into the qbox Round

And for those of you who aren’t familiar it’s just a series of a few random questions I prepared for Harry today so

Harry are you ready for the qbox round ready awesome what advice would

you give to someone else that’s just starting out and I think this is super interesting because in a way you just

started out so with a bean Super Fresh and having a very small window what

would the advice be so this is to me myself uh no to anybody listening out

there uh in relation to the show or even Beyond anybody that’s just starting out with their new Endeavor or or what

they’ve been working on uh that might seem not new but is what would you give

uh what would you suggest to those had a lot of these conversations and I think the biggest thing that

people are missing out on is momentum so a lot of people try to learn and then start doing and then I speak to them

it’s like yeah I’m going to start my business but kind of want a website first I’m like so a website is what’s

holding you back six months and most people when they start their first

business broadly speaking is a service business service businesses you just need to take money and give a service

that usually doesn’t require any upfront cost in terms of building a website for example I still don’t have a website if

you go to fcu.com it just says not for sale with green with like horrible text my LinkedIn page is my landing page

pretty much anyone when you’re starting out a new Endeavor you want to keep cost next to zero and just want to take money

from someone and give them a lot of value for that so yeah my biggest tip is

just to get that momentum and that means by helping people sometimes for free so I my first two clients I did them in

exchange for testimonial and feedback I said I will Coach you for four weeks

we’ll go for everything you need to do on LinkedIn this is to help them post more get the habit and I’ll do it in exchange for a testimonial and

feedback then I use those case studies to actually sign my first client it’s a completely different conversation when

you’re talking to the first client by saying yeah this is how I helped this person from King BBC even if they didn’t

pay you the experience is a completely different conversation yeah absolutely love it so good key one there focus on

getting momentum all right next one what’s the one thing that most people don’t know about

you all righty most people don’t know my real name isn’t Harry um it’s haralambos

which is Greek so I’m born and raised in Cyprus for everyone living at home I’m based in Cypress now I was in UK for

seven years hence the accent which may be confusing yeah har Lambos is my real name Har means Joy Lambo means glow so

my name is glowing from Joy so I try to wow use that as I use that as a pickup line and I try to embody that a little

bit it’s such a good one though it really is and uh I mean yeah really

living up to that so I I love it all right last but not least and the staple

here on the show is what game are you playing now hone been playing since 2013 it’s

pretty much the only game I play cuz I like to see number go up my collection get Fuller so if I’m going to start a

new game I always think I could or I could make my collection look better on hearstone and I can play on the phone so

yeah I can’t really play new games anymore I just go back to hone love it

and that’s a good one too in general anyway so um and hey if it keeps bringing you Joy and uh and and loving

that experience that’s all that matter so love it awesome well hey harry thank

you so much for you know diving in let us learn a little bit more about you but now let’s get into the heart of this

conversation here and folks as I mentioned in the intro we’re going to be talking about killing the game Biz Dev

scene cuz you know let’s face it this is an area we often have a lot of challenge

with uh especially the idea of bizdev or Business Development right and I mean to

kind of like kick things off uh Harry I mean could you talk about you know the

importance of Business Development for indie game studios and what successful

business development might look like in this industry because I’m sure it’s different for a lot of people yes so I think it’s worth

starting with a definition because people sometimes get scared they think ah sales I don’t like sales so for me

business development is pretty much having conversations that could lead to partnership and there’s loads of ways to

have those conversations some are more proactive where you go and start starting those conversations and some

are more yeah I guess more proactive as well in the sense like you could create content and they could come to you

whether you could have a website and people come to you at the end of the day business development is just having conversations so I prepared a couple

things as to why we need Business Development the main thing is most people I speak to rely on referrals

which is great if you’re really good at what you do you’ve done the hard part like you have a good service and people want to recommend you to other people

that’s amazing but if the market starts to shift money starts to be a bit more hard to come by you might stop getting

referrals and then if you’ve never done business development for two years which has been the case for some people I speak to you might be out of luck

because you don’t have the muscle of being rejected quote unquote 19 times to

have like one conversation business development is just about starting those conversations and if you don’t have that muscle you

really are going to struggle when you end up having like no project to work on for example so the importance of

Business Development I can’t understate enough like you should always be doing some

form of active Business Development we can get into more detail of like how um

but like some examples are LinkedIn Discord gaming events in

person networking just with your current people you know and asking for recommendations so yeah the importance

of Business Development I can’t really overstate enough especially for an indie game Studio because most people start

rightly so as a work for higher Studio because you either going to have a full-time job and make a game on the

side and then publish it in 5 years or be work for higher build the muscle as a

team and then once you have enough money coming in you can spend proportion of your time making a game which then gets

published it’s a lot more sustainable and that’s kind of like what we said before you’re not having to invest invest invest and then gamble on winning

you have money you know that’s coming in and using the extra time and resources to make it game which might you know n

out of 10 games fail so it might be the one that succeeds so you need to be able to do business development to get those

projects in otherwise you’re G to have to do the long way which takes five plus years if you want to make like a really

good game yeah you know the one thing I’ll call out that you led in with which I think is great is just and and folks I

I don’t necessarily see this from the point of oversimplifying because I think it provides a good mindset of just looking at Business Development as just

having conversations at any point in time whether it’s now later or down the road in the future

you’re going to have a need for someone who provides porting a publisher a uh

other type of service I mean there’s any number of things that you will need assistance with and help with and having

those conversations now is going to put you in a better position but again those conversations uh again another word

could be networking whatever but just as a whole conversations are a great way to kind of get the ball rolling without

even realize that it’s rolling it might not feel like it is but it is just or organically just by talking and I I I

love that because again it gets it gets a little scary sometimes or or overwhelming like oh Business

Development and and we put this like big I don’t know stigma or fear behind it when the reality is just talk like have

conversations and I get it sometimes that can be harder to to implement than than we would like to either admit or

have time for but make that push for those conversations is great you know

and part of what you shared too you were talking a little bit about platforms and I I want to kind of um I think it’s a

good segue into my next question that focuses a little bit in the area of you know just lead generation and Business

Development like exploring this idea and concept further so you mentioned some I

I’m curious what channels and platforms do you find most efficient and sustainable for driving business

opportunities compared to let’s say some of the common defaults uh that devs and

uh Studios might rely on all right so from my understanding

the defaults for some devs are the networks they already know so like

people they know they ask around try to get those referrals and I see a lot of people using Discord a lot where they

join communities and try to get some work for hire projects there which does work now I’m of course bias I’m the

LinkedIn guy that’s the service I sell but I just see it time and time again LinkedIn is the place to be so I want to

talk about LinkedIn a little here so on LinkedIn the reason it’s so overpowered

it’s unlike any other platform pretty much everyone’s verified on Tik Tok you

see maybe loads more views loads more activity going on on LinkedIn you know everyone is pretty much over 18 probably

working have some disposable income and pretty much verified you’re not going to see when’s the last time you saw a duplicate account on LinkedIn like it’s

not really there they don’t really survive so with that in mind and the fact that you can search for exactly who

you want to connect to and for free connect with them you can’t do that on any other platform you can’t go on

Instagram and search CEO of gaming studio in Europe and then find someone not going to happen so the fact that you

can directly reach out to pretty much anyone and then have a chance of them seeing your message super powerful and

the other part is you can post on LinkedIn so I recently did a post where

the title was like you’re more popular than than you think on LinkedIn around 1% of people actually publish content a

week that’s like at least once a week so LinkedIn works with connections so you have first connection second connections

and third connection first connections means you’ve both accepted a connection request a second connection is someone

has a first connection and you’re connected to that person so it’s like one degree away and the third is an

extra degree away what this means is if someone’s connected to like 500 a th000

people they pretty much only content with those 500,000 people most of the time it’s really prioritized unlike

YouTube or Instagram then like the content is really what drives whether it

gets shown or not LinkedIn is very much like ah my network posted this let me show this to the rest of my network so

with this in mind if you build a network let’s say my network I have 6,680

followers maybe like 4,500 connections I’ve only pretty much accepted people who hire in games so when I post content

and if 20 4,000 people see it most of them are people I want to see it so it’s not about the views on LinkedIn it’s

about who’s actually watching and the fact that if they do like if they do comment if they view my profile I can

see that and I can start the conversation very hard to do that on Instagram or it is possible but it’s

just it’s a different VI so the powerful part of LinkedIn is everyone’s kind of verified you can find exactly who you

want to talk to connect to them and when you post content it pretty much gets seen by them so you can very proactively

build your own kind of network where you’re posting content to them I kind of

use this analogy of you making them forcing them to sign up to a newsletter

in a sense like if you just post good content and you connect to someone even if you never speak to them they pretty much going to see your content like

every other day so Linkin is very powerful there because you can pretty much communicate to exactly who you want

to talk to yeah no I I I love that too because I mean if you look back to like some of

the examples you provided I’ll throw some other ones too like you know Twitter I know that’s a big one a lot of us uh probably rely on for a lot of

reasons I mean when you know it’s it’s sometimes it’s hard it’s it’s basically a a human characteristic like a trigger

in her brain when we’re seeing like oh it’s getting all these like uh engagements it’s getting all these

Impressions people are seeing things but then but then the question becomes like but who are the people that are seeing

these things as as you pointed out and you know each platform I would say has their ad Vantage and and what they offer

but when it comes to Business Development and and I mean there’s still some opportunities and strengths Within

These platforms too I’m sure but when it comes to Business Development what you called out to and being basically

hyperfocused and and you we haven’t and we’re not going to um unless you feel it’s absolutely necessary we haven’t

even talked about some of the other tools uh on the platform that they that they offer I think there are services on

LinkedIn but but still everything you mentioned and everything else is is free free the same as all these other

platforms but it’s going to be a lot more hyperfocused in terms of you know what what the goal is what the objective

is with this and gez that that number you shared 1% post at least once a week

like that’s that’s staggering so when when we’re talking about folks games let’s say discoverability how about your

own discoverability if you know that the only 1% people do that one thing which is 1% I mean uh sorry one post a week 1%

do that huge opportunity to get seen to to do everything else now let’s ask this

though cuz you dove in a lot with LinkedIn here and I’m kind of curious too sure it sounds like there’s

opportunity to stand out to be seen and everything else but how how can people

you know use this developers whether they’re you know indie devs or even Studios use this to actually generate

leads and grow their business sure they’re getting all this attention but it’s like how do you go about getting those leads then if they’re just

people picking up what you’re putting down all righty let’s get into it so

LinkedIn you could use it without ever posting content I know people do and build a massive business just by the

fact that you can start conversations so step one when you do get attention that

needs to be optimized in the sense that when you do get that attention you want them to make an action after they’ve

viewed your profile start a conversation think of you as an expert what have you so number one you want to optimize your

profile I just literally rapid fire go through what you need to make sure that’s done if there’s plenty of advice

out there on this uh but essentially the banner is free real estate if you solve a problem tell them don’t make it like a

journey to try figure out what you actually do headline again the headline

you could write game developer sure but kind of sell yourself a little like for me it’s helping CEOs sign gaming clients

on LinkedIn anytime they see me in a comment anytime they see me post they see that tagline so people aren’t

confused as what I do in the past I had podcast host spreader of Good Vibes and

recruitment consultant and and you can imagine how many people said what do you actually do I’m like yeah that’s a good point how are you supposed to know what

I do so you want to just tell people exactly what you do who you help and then some kind of obvious stuff like if

you have a job experience put your three bullet points of like what you’ve actually done like make it very clear so

when someone comes to your profile they see a smiling face that You’ actually took some effort in if you put effort

into your profile they’re going to think you’ve put effort into other areas of your life that’s one thing I want to make clear like if you come up to a job

interview and you’re dressed in shambles you might not get the job even if you are perfect for the job because you

haven’t put effort same thing with your profile if your profile picture is weird sunglasses and you’re not smiling then

why haven’t you put eff into your profile that’s going to be the first thing people see so you want to get that good first impression but other than

that in terms of starting conversations the best advice I’ve ever received is

treat LinkedIn like you’re in a pub what do I mean by that so LinkedIn is a

networking platform people are there to talk to other people most to find a job

but after you find a job or two is pretty much the place where you keep in touch with all your professional contacts so with this in mind when

you’re in a conference the worst thing someone can do is okay hey I’m Harry let me tell you exactly what I do and what

problem myself was like bro I don’t know who you are you don’t want to just message them with the essay of why you could help it’s called a pitch slap you

just like in like why are you here you just want to exactly so in real life you just want

like you would do in real life you just compliment them so this is how I start conversations if you see someone in a

conference like hey nice hat my name is Harry start the conversation you’ve now got permission to talk you want them to

just get a reply so when I either send a connection request you always compliment something about their profile that you

find that you know they done a good job that’s interesting and then the job of the first message is to get a reply once

they’ve replied then you can start trying to Pivot to a call again we’re all just trying to start conversations

even on the call I’m not trying to sell on the call I’m trying to build a Vibe build a relationship and then I figure

out if I can help them and at the last 5 10 minutes they usually start asking H what is it like to work with you that’s

not because I’ve said at the very start of our conversation hey these are all the services I have all I’ve done is just start a conversation see if I can

help them maybe introduce them to someone and then it naturally just becomes the flow of the conversation so

with that in mind if we’re just trying to start conversations on LinkedIn we want to treat you like a pub try to make

friends chat with people so many people I’ve chatted to which didn’t need my help now introduced me to someone who

then became a client so with that in mind if we’re just trying to optimize for conversations and Good Vibes good

things will then happen if you’re trying to start every conversation think I want to sign this person as a client people

will feel that energy not wo woo it’s just it’s kind of you feel it you’re not here for a genuine reason so just with

those two in mind like just optimize the profile make it look like you put effort into it and then just try to start

conversations you mentioned everything on LinkedIn is free 100 connection requests a week free yes they may be

blank because they’ve done something recently where you can do less personalized even then 100 connection

requests a week that’s 400 a month most people accept around 20 to 30% you could add I do this I max out my connections

every week so I literally add 30 perfect icps to my connection list every week

that’s 30 * 52 that’s a lot that’s like 1500 so, 1500 new people a year who are

exactly who I need to talk to for free are now in my network and I can directly message them that’s 30% of the people

that accept so just doing that free thing every day Game Changer that will get you business yeah and and when

you’re saying things like um you know maxing out your requests I know LinkedIn has uh measures in place where you you

you throttle uh or Limited on those connection requests that you make and then here you can pay for our

services but still within that means I mean that’s your request but that’s Al I

mean you also have inbound ones too coming in so like you said all those numbers and everything else they add up

and create lots of opportunities um you know just to quickly recap on some of

those things what what I love too is when you talked about the profile and optimizing that it really sounds like it comes down to just Clarity and and the

effort part right showing that effort and and if we’re not clear and and folks I’m sure to some degree you know that

I’m a big proponent of this but sometimes we’re our own worst enemies cuz as har was saying this I’m like

maybe I could be clear with my profile especially like oh like what do you like but how how do you represent yourself

really is what it comes down to and what are different ways to do that is your brand logo in that little Banner spot

could that be is that more important than providing more clarity to people right um and then it might be a question

of uh hey if it’s an ego one that’s fine it’s it’s your choice but you know what what ultimately do you want at the end

of the day um how do you represent yourself and and the other one too you you talk so much about value and I think

part of where we lose this connection or understanding of value is that a big

portion of what you’re talking about how conversations happen how business

development works well is there’s value and meaningful relationship

so the salesy approach that we are probably all familiar with and get pitch slapped with right that is very cold

that’s salesy that’s nothing anybody wants I mean how many times have you seen post uh especially on LinkedIn

where I hate it when random people just you know but there there is instead of

looking to show how you can provide value in the services or other things that you offer do the thing that no one

else is really doing which is providing value in a relationship and you get Harry you gave some great examples like

asking questions just like you do at a conference like hey I love your hat hey I love your Crocs hey I love all these

other things uh just real quick and here’s the other that’s really cool about it it’s a human characteristic and

we all feel this way okay if someone else comes up to you and focuses the conversation or questions about you

what’s the chance that you’re likely going to engage and and want to talk further because it’s like wow someone’s

actually paying attention to me so if you do that to some someone else that is definitely going to get you in their uh

good graces and then eventually what typically happens is wow this person has

already invested so much in me and it could just be a couple questions where now they’re coming back and like well

wait I know they know so much about me but what about them like I want to hear them because this person’s kind of cool

because they’re always asking questions about me so I want to know more and then there you go right cuz it goes right

back to what you’re saying and then now it becomes becomes more of a conversation and anything else so even if you’re not necessarily getting

business from that connection that you just made like last week Harry you have someone else now referring this

Potential Prospect that is now actually referring business to you just from a

nice conversation that was focused on value and relationship building it’s

just it’s just crazy but because it sounds somewhat counterintuitive but it’s not right yeah it’s precisely that

like the cold Outreach which is when you send someone a message who doesn’t know you and the pitch laap that comes with

it there’s a reason people do that it’s because it’s it’s efficient you get a list of people and you template a

message and you go boom boom boom maybe 1% reply and you close one of them amazing but the 99% that didn’t reply

they now have you’ve reduced your brand with those people they now think Boo this guy doesn’t put effort not trying

to build a relationship I’m not going to ever recommend this person and you’ve literally done that in like two seconds

so it’s negative brand building at scale please don’t do that so instead that

takes less effort so if you wanted to do a 100 conversations with the method that we’re suggesting which is try to start a

manual conversation that will take a longer time well the conversion will be

much higher and also you probably sleep better at night knowing that you just made conversation so it takes less time

but you don’t need to start that many conversations 5 to 10 a day done everyone can start 5 DM conversations a

day it’s more about the habit of doing it most people want to see everything like a Sprint like ah I just need to put

this campaign on and then I’ll get leads and then I’ll stop and then when I need it again I will pull the lever again

like it’s a lot more efficient to just do a little bit every day do that in half an hour just like sending your

connection request like a a little hack here it’s free you just go to my network on LinkedIn and then scroll down

LinkedIn has a really good algorithm it just suggest people to connect to sometimes I just do that you just see

like oh this people I probably need to talk to and you just click one click connect connect connect connect do 20 of

those do that as a daily habit it’s 1500 Extra people a year assuming that 30%

accept could be even more like just that habit and then starting the conversation massive you know one thing I want to

talk about too a little bit we talked about conversations but more within the context of um let’s say direct messages

and things like that connecting reaching out you know and and starting that whole uh relationship right but conversations

can happen in a different format too and in particular what I’m referring to is content because that in itself could be

a form of a conversation even though it might be a little bit more passive or more involved because other people can

you know chime in with comments and things like that so with that said like what would you say like is the right

type of content that you know Indie Studios or or Dev should be uh posting

on places like LinkedIn to attract potential clients or even business

partners perfect so I’m very much in this world now that’s what I’m trying to do with my

content all my content is trying to solve one job which is eventually get

people to want to use me for my help now I could post every day hey guys I offer

these services and I might get one person a year but there’s a better way to do it

where bear with me here you break it down into three types of content you have attract content nurture content

content and convert content attract content is more of the

personal story side things that are quite relatable to a broad member of LinkedIn and you’re showing yourself as

a human I always try to do in every post is to educate Ed edutain I guess like

entertain and educate at the same time or Inspire someone with every post but I

track post once a week just being an actual human the nurture content is show you know your stuff you can do this in a

lot of ways you can just give tips always in the form of how I did something is better than how to it’s a

very big bar to be able to say how to to a lot of strangers on the internet so if I’m you and to get rid of that imposter

syndrome as well just say this is how I did this game these are the things I’ve learned hopefully that was useful those

type of posts that shows you know your stuff if you have client testimonials

that’s amazing anything that shows you know your stuff that’s nurture content then convert content is when you just

directly ask people like hey guys we have five Unity developers available they’ve done this this and this they’re

available August 1st message me if you’d like to have a conversation um to see what it’s like to

work together those are like the convert post I usually do once of those a week and I they’re more optimized if you

combine that with like a case study like here’s the work we’ve done so your clients can see your clients like

through your content they can like experience that vicariously through them like oh I want to have that experience too so those three types of

content you just rotate those like whenever you’re in doubt like what do I post like all right I could post a story

something inspirational like today I posted about the fact that not every day is perfect but my brother you know kicked me off the ass and maybe go

boxing that post is doing well and I got three messages which has never happened I’m not just saying that for the podcast

but three messages saying wow been following you for a while and that is what led them to start messaging me and

asking for advice even though the post itself never said anything about hey this is step by step what to do on

LinkedIn but I was just being a human and when you’re a human people want to have a conversation if you just look

like Google and you just given tips all the time it’s not something that people want to actually start the conversation

with so I would rotate those three types of contents attract nurture and then

convert you know I absolutely love that last story you just shared too because it really does put things in perspective

how you know this this attract type of content is is meaningful to to people

because I think what it does too is outside of just being relatable um and

also authentic it it shows more it shows a lot more without telling

more about I would say people as uh a person what kind of a what are their

values what are these other things that are important and relatable to other people and it’s like okay you have

awesome service and everything else but if the let’s say if we find out later through our networks or Through the

Grapevine that yeah they provide a great service but man they’re either difficult

to work with they don’t communicate well I don’t get the best Vibes like those

things are still valuable because like we said like we just talked about not too long ago about the value of

relationships it’s not just the value of the service but it’s also in the relationship and and we know this that

from a uh Studio culture perspective right right like those those relationships that value there those are

all important things because if they’re not in place or if uh other things it’s the other extreme like there’s toxicity

like H how like that affects that can affect so much more than we realize so a

lot of this makes sense um but going back real quick I mean how you broke things down into that framework is great

attract nurture and convert and I think a lot of us sometimes fall in the Trap of oh we just need to post more

frequently and get our service Serv out there and we’re we’re all in the the the convert cycle which is it’s just convert

post and and things going out there but like it that that framework is so simple

it is just like a track so be relatable and authentic right cuz again like we you we’ve discussed already those things

call out to value and then nurture like show how you know your stuff don’t don’t be afraid to show what you’re you’re

good at and everything and and by doing so it’s insightful it can help others with their problems and it doesn’t

matter if um they’re coming to you or not in that moment what matters is wow not only is this someone cool that I

like and I’m following but now they’re actually providing even more value by in another another way in format and then

going back down to that convert part then now those start those those other things the attract and nurture start to

click and when you get to the convert part they’re like well this person’s cool they were adding more value and

insight to me and actually even with that insight it guided me a little bit further but now I’m stuck but hey look

they have a solution that uh I know that they can help me with and I can’t think

of a better person at this moment and there you go so love that framework it just such a good thing to follow and

again because I think we over complicate things so having that simple framework is is really nice uh for people when

they’re you know CU we’re overwhelmed we’re going to get stuck so simple Frameworks make that easy

th% it’s the first thing that people talk to me is like the friction to posting like I don’t know what to post I

don’t know what to post and then these are people who have had on the podcast they have so many stories but it’s that

like ah what do I post and in my head you want to have as many guard rails as possible so for example if you don’t

know what to post just post advice that you wish you knew 12 months ago 6 months ago two years ago and just do that at

infinum that’s just nurture content it will never hurt your brand you just giveing value out there and then

naturally through that you might tell a story that’s for a you might tell some advice with a story that might be

relatable then that will naturally do a track content and then naturally whenever you say hey guys I’m open for

business this is what I help with and again in that post you’re not out there with your credit card machine asking for

them to pay you’re just asking them to have a conversation with you to find out more that’s another big thing about convert it’s not like guys fit in this

form and let’s start business it’s more of like yummy and we can explore what it looks like because we always want to get

the conversation from let’s say a comment section to the DMS to a video call ideally and on the video call

that’s when you can actually sell and like talk about all the features step by step on the post it’s more just to get

to that situation um I want to share one analogy because it’s resonated a couple

days ago it’s about radio so if you just treat LinkedIn like radio yeah I’m going

to break this down very quickly so like what do you actually listen to when you on the radio they replay the greatest

hits so one thing to remember not every post has to be this miracle page that

you written up and it’s perfect and then it’s going to be there that’s one post like we can reuse a lot of these posts

that we do for example today’s post was the same post pretty much exact in January I just changed it with my

current routine resonated completely some with people that read the original one in January now that was five months

ago but to be honest every two three months let’s say you’re posting three times a week that’s 12 posts a month

that means after three months you can basically only need to make an original post maybe once twice a week because

people need reminders more than they need lessons it’s not like they need to go and start learning new things and

everything has to be told like you pretty much can only talk about so many things on LinkedIn um if you have a service so you can replay the greatest

hits that’s what radios do you’d be confused if you turn on the radio like they’re not playing the song Walter it’s

like it’s the best Ever every time radi their song it’s because it’s good like if someone’s on LinkedIn and they’re scrolling that’s another thing to

remember it’s not like YouTube they’re not searching for a solution they’re scrolling on Linkin they need to see great content so if you have great

content reuse it and another thing is you want to engage directly with people if you post on LinkedIn and then put the

phone away and then come back tomorrow that’s one of the worst things you can do from an algorithm perspective

on LinkedIn the engagement is one of the biggest measures as to whether the post

is quality and will be recommended to other people so if someone’s commenting on your post and you’re not starting the

conversation and replying to them LinkedIn is going to think ah this post does not promote conversation we will

recommend it less because there’s another post over here which is getting loads of conversation loads of people spending more time on LinkedIn let’s

recommend that post so you kind of want your post to start a conversation uh

very practical thing to do is try to have a PS statement at the end of a post and you ask a simple yes or no question

that’s related to the post to start conversations because then that’s going to trigger people

to engage shares the post more and also some of the times they ask a question

that you can help them with and then people can see in public that you’re helping them what an amazing thing and then the third thing about radio is they

play music not ads for 80% of the time so if you’re playing ads 24/7 people are

either going to unfollow or not spend time on your post and then linkedin’s going to say ah the well time of this

post is quite low the amount of time someone’s spending looking at it let’s stop recommending it that’s another

thing to remember so you want to be given value for at least 80% of the time so let’s say two out of the post a week

given to the audience but the third one that’s when you can ask for help or ask for someone to use your service but even

then you still try to give value in that post try to give one Insight so yeah you always want to lead with value I I

absolutely love these content ideas here and I mean just to add a couple more

things to some of those so the radio post well one I I I was like nodding as you were talking about it because yeah I

I saw that resonated with me and I’m like such a great point but the the point in what you’re making was hey I

made that post before and I repurposed it and here’s the thing that I was thinking and when you were talking about

that was you know there’s I I I try to read as much as I can and I read more like self-help or or uh nonfiction than

I do uh fiction but what I’ve realized in time is what I read said two years

ago if I go back and read that again I’m in a different position uh I’m in a

different place on my journey and now things that um I saw back then are much different now I’m seeing them in a

different light and I’m able to apply them in different ways so repurposing

isn’t as much as a concept of hey let’s do this to scale things which yes it can

but then if you look at it from the perspective of hey maybe people forgot hey maybe people didn’t see it cuz we

always think oh if we repurpose that means people’s going to see it again they’ll get tired of it well not if you

do so uh with maybe a little bit thought in there but also sometimes like you’ve

said people have read it and then they read it again and maybe they got something different out of that post

maybe they’re applying it different because they’re in a different mindset a different place on their Journey there’s any number of things where now that one

post is getting more value and it’s scaling so if if that’s not efficient I

don’t know what is right so just so many great things happening there and then with the engagement part yes there’s

following up with engagement I know it works very similar to to Reddit in a way but I think there’s less of a algorithm

aspect in Reddit than there would be in LinkedIn in this case but but still these points remain the same for both

which is if you’re always commenting in a way you’re showing value you’re contributing to those conversations

you’re adding value by doing so especially if people are asking questions and follow-ups and things like that

so outside of any elgo boost that you may get from that activity which again that will help scale things obviously

but now you’re validating you as a person as someone who cares being authentic all these other things that

are going on and then if people see a post and there’s oh look there’s over

400 comments H I might want to be part of this conversation or you know and and

that’s typically the types of things that can start happening too just from that so there’s so many other things

going on here even Beyond from what what’s Harry saying and unfortunately we you know can only discuss so much but

the these are the this is the type of amplification and value and other things that are coming out of just these types

of efforts so you know as we talk about efforts I know that from our

conversation so far there may be people listening uh that are like well you know

I I I am a studio I’m a Dev we don’t necessarily do things you know work for a higher Maybe maybe we’ve considered it

because we want to open up other possible like Revenue channels or things because you know publishing uh landscape

is difficult especially from a funding perspective even with investors all these things and and crowdfunding great

but it’s a lot of work so like I want to kind of dive in a little bit with like

growth opportunities and such and where those potentially could lie with this idea of hey how else can we be

sustainable so let’s say Beyond game development what would you say are some key growth opportunities that indie game

studios you know should consider to diversify their revenue streams and enhance their business

stability all righty so what my mind goes to is I used to do contract

Recruitment and specifically for unities that’s mobile games and I became top biller and a lot of those placements

these are individual Consultants into Mobile gaming Studios where with hiring managers who didn’t really consider

contractors for it because they felt was a bit of a hassle now we did placements

the hourly rate is quite high in contract um Game Dev

so it’s unfortunate but my answer is literally trying to become work for higher I don’t know I just feel like

it’s the best solution like if you have resources available and you have more time you want to just it does two things

you start learning so you’re getting paid to learn awesome and then you get things to talk about like testimonials

and you get experience from other Studios so like Beyond gain development if you’re an indie studio and you want to make money

like you could look into like I don’t know you could do a course but in my opinion like the most

efficient thing to do is to get active income which is contract work how to get Contract work it’s kind of similar to

what we’ve been saying you just need to have more conversations and be the solution before they start posting jobs

so most of my placements happened because I was talking to the hiring manager for six months and then when he

ah I need another senior Unity developer rather than go to the recruitment team and start hiring for 3 months he’s like

ah I know Harry he said he’s got like three available let me ask him so you want to be that person and that doesn’t

mean you need to take him out for dinner that’s not the sort of relationship you can literally just have a conversation on LinkedIn maybe one video call then

you’re going to be in the back of his mind and you’re going to be in like the first kind of point of action when

someone needs to find a solution to something you can be like ah I remember Mark Mark’s a good Unity developer let me ask him if he’s available so to do

that again you want to have more conversations if you’re a Indie Studio I

would look to have conversations with agency recruitment kind of a niche solution but I’ve placed people from

Indie Studios individual U contributors into other Studios so the Indie Studio

were renting out the very good Unity developer at a really good rate because they just happen to be there so then the

IND Studio can kind of get someone to do work for like 6 months at a time get some cash in and experience so the only

way I knew of the IND developer is because they reached out to me on LinkedIn and I was like oh yeah I have the chat and then they said oh here are

the people we have available they’re available in three months I said cool I’ll keep it in mind now I’m a Unity agency recruiter my job is to speak to

hir managers in unity all day every day it’s a lot more hours I’m putting into that than you are so I would leverage

this yes they probably take 10 20% commission but these are more options that you can say yes or no to so I would

try reach to recruiters as well as um the game studios

themselves I I absolutely love this because it’s just like again it goes back to what you were saying earlier

about hey just having these Connections in place and it doesn’t necessarily mean that business needs to come out of it

but if you’re always the person who can provide help value and assistance and in any other way shape or form and if with

that’s one by just making introduction uh connecting uh someone uh to someone

else that they need um you’re be top of Mind whether it’s for something similar to that or or other or just be like hey

again hey this is someone I was talking to they’re a great guy I understand you’re looking for this you should reach out to them because they they they help

me quite a bit in this in a different capacity but I know that they do this and you’re looking for that so why don’t

we connect right all those types of things uh you know can really help in terms of looking at um you know further

growing things now uh with that said I mean you you talked a lot about about or

to to an extent about um you know focusing on expertise hey we have a great Dev team great in unity uh great

we could leverage that but like um I what would you say are some other things and and should people just play to their

strengths or are there other areas or or can they leverage their expertise in another way such as maybe entering

Consulting space and and should they because let’s face it uh recently especially I think with the past like

year or so or even Beyond we’ve been seeing a lot of Consultants pop up so like there are other ways to leverage

their expertise and and maybe let’s talk about Consulting because I know that’s something that you’ve actually done recently and and might have a little bit

more insight in how that could be another growth opportunity or anything else that comes to mind yeah of course

so one of my clients is exactly that um they are a consultant to Founders and

gaming Studios I am technically a consultant if you pay me per hour for advice so to me this is kind of like an

ension model like step one of getting paid for your time is just getting paid for an hour for advice and then the

upgrade is like oh we want you for a certain amount of time every week 20 hours 40 hours a week pretty much a

contracted employee at that point but you’re still a contractor and the power of being a contractor is you’re paid per

hour usually and it’s usually a lot higher than an employee because there’s a lot less security for you but that

means they can afford to pay you more because of that and the fact that there’s usually a lower notice period

they don’t have to do a golden handshake if they’re in the nordics like having an employee is a big expense so if they can contract you for that it’s a it’s a big

deal for them now to become a consultant what I found when I speak to the

Consultants they always say the main way they get their clients is referrals so

people who’ve worked with them before and conferences like meeting someone face to face now this kind of may be

going against what I’ve said with LinkedIn but in my opinion you want to use everything that you can so if you

have the ability to go to a conference go to a conference because they are their people literally buyers and

sellers the only reason they’re there are to talk to each other so if you’re there making content about it even if

you don’t close someone on the day but being face to face then you can start be getting the referrals when it comes to

Consulting and anything I’d recommend at the start go cheap or do it for

testimonials if you don’t have any if you have no experience given a consultant in my opinion you give free advice on E and then see if people

actually want to get on the phone for the free advice if they don’t want to get on the phone for the free advice then we we need to either Elevate our

position or maybe learn more but if people have if you start getting booking up for example like bro I have no time I

can’t give all this free advice then you can start charging and then you go up from there you just charge a bit more every time so the going rate for like an

hour of time usually starts at around 100 and you can go up to like 300 so that’s very high leverage stuff and then

to get repeat work that can often happen after having that one power hour so one

of my clients booked one hour just to get advice and then there’s like oh actually I want more long-term help

amazing then we got a retained solution so at the end of the day you just give

value and you’re charging for it there’s loads of ways to do it um if you want to do one where it’s less like oh let me

hire myself out 40 hours a week then Consulting is a way to do it and what I found if you’ve never done it before

it’s going to be difficult to do that just from scratch so I’d recommend going with the people that you know asking who

needs that total help going to a conference I want to share one thing actually I got my list of leads here I

did a post recently and I want to highlight how I’ve got the lead is someone who’s interested in what I’m

looking for so I have a bit of a harder definition for lead some people consider lead just anyone who you have their

contact details I guess this is an Engaged lead someone who I’ve started a conversation with so I have one I have

26 here so I have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 came from inbound so they reached out to

me from my content I have 1 2 3 four 5 6 7even 8 nine were from a conference and to be

fair these are all the people that said yes so I have others that said no and then I have one from a podcast one from

an audio event and then two from warm Outreach and so what I’m trying to

highlight here is it’s a bit of a mix if I only posted on LinkedIn I would have like half the sign clients if I only

went to conferences I’d have half sign clients and these all don’t take that much time like going to a conference is

a two-day event it’s like counts like 40% of my clients right now and when it comes to inbound content that’s just

that’s a post on LinkedIn every day for me regular consistency doesn’t have to be once a day three times a week is like

amazing compared to the average so I just try to do all these little things to start those conversations and then

someone someday be like whoa I need more help on this can you help me sure that’ll be1 nice you’ve made it for sale

and then we have momentum you know I I I love that you share that too because I saw I did remember seeing that post too

and I I I thought it was interesting because again we might look at a post

like that that could be oh it’s it’s more of I’m talking about myself and stuff but think about what what what is

also that post doing that sharing it’s it’s being authentic sharing the process it’s it’s nothing about it there was if

you if folks follow Harry on LinkedIn and read it there’s the I would say from

my perspective there’s nothing that’s calling out to hey look at me look at what I did it was more about addressing

things in this way that relate to how can you provide value how and and why

are these people coming in and and identifying uh the source and the reason

like like you just called out now it helps people it again it’s more insightful more value so that in itself

is kind of interesting and going real quick back about like the the expertise I mean you had some really good

Solutions and and you shared this one in particular uh before like if anybody else is looking for growth

opportunities um and looking to become a little bit more sustainable and support themselves without having to go

through whatever other means that are potential but very hard uh or uh

challenging to execute like the the free advice one get people on Bard with that and again it’s like because I know

that’s a problem a lot of people have well okay well how do I do this where do I start like there’s always going to be that

self-critic but if you go out there and this is one thing I like to do and I think this is something you probably do

too is in if you’re in this space providing a free value right like so I

believe like as consultants you and I probably have some type of like hey free consultation or reach out and we’ll give

you some time just to discuss your needs right one of the things I like to do at the end of a call is go well first is

ask people like Get Set an expectation and then at the very end ask

and and let’s say the uh the expectation is I I I’m looking for my goal here is to provide you in value in some way

shape or form from our conversation and then at the end I go back and say did I do that and I uh through that alone I mean

and everybody can have a different approach but through that alone I’ve had even compliments of people wow you actually went back to that like they

called out to it because no one else like calls out to those things and stuff and but anyways it it what what I’m

trying to say is when it comes to the free advice and everything it it it goes right back to what you’re saying too how

do you represent yourself how do you be authentic how how these are all things and ways to how are you showing the

effort these are all things that can help really make things clear and also

help you stand out when you’re doing these things so even if uh and and then

there’s off like even if you have those positions where you feel that you know you have the expertise but you feel like

you don’t because this is something new or different just start having those conversations start providing that free

advice and go in with with effort and everything else because if you’re doing like these little things that we’re

talking about you’re more likely to then further validate yourself um it’s it’s

in a way can help build up like things like affirmations like I know this is true it’s not just me telling me myself

that I’m capable of this but because I had that awesome conversation with that person and they said wow thank you so

much for that help and that’s just going to they validate so if you’re looking for those other opportunities whether

it’s Consulting whether it’s other type of work just continue to bring and show that value and it should be

good just want to highlight one thing there like free advice doesn’t mean you don’t treat them as if they’re paying

you so treat them like a paid client yes th% give them everything you would if someone paid you the full price but you

can just set the expectation at the start we’re doing this only if you’re going to be committed to it let’s say if it’s a multiple day thing and you’re

going to give me feedback and if you like it a testimonial yep make sure that’s the expectations awesome stuff

well there are so many things here that we discussed and unfortunately we can’t talk more because we’re at time but

before we close Harry uh what are some three suggestions tips advice that you could give us today whether it’s a

summarization of some of the things that you shared and just to recap or anything else what are those so people can take

action from our conversation today cool I want to share a stats I had

86 conversations at the time that I planned this and that got me my four

retained clients and my six oneoff clients and I’m now making three times what I used to make before in two months

I just want to reiterate that there was 86 conversations in two months I had about two conversations a day with

different people and that’s led to this business some of those were e copies that led nowhere some were sales calls

where they said yes and gave me thousands of pounds on in 20 minutes some calls where they recommended

someone and that person became a client long story short like we said at the start have more conversations that is

number one uh number two momentum is everything the reason it looks like I’m

having a good time and I’m very very busy and loads of activities because this is my season of like hustling like

I’m working a lot like I’m not working 40 hours like I used to it’s probably more 60 80 hours but

everything is exponential really so if you’re gonna do the BD I would do it

with a bit of fire like don’t half ass it because the harder you do it it starts to compound like it’s if you do

five times the effort you might get like 50 times the results so if you are going to do this like I’d recommend to do all

the different Ms you know LinkedIn conference and this doesn’t need to take all the hours that I’m talking but at

least commit to it and keep doing it um that would be the momentum piece and the other thing is the reason I’ve got to

this stage is because I’ve paid down my ignorance debt learned this from Alex hosi it’s basically if you don’t know

some you don’t know what you don’t know so I’ve paid for coaches to teach me this so if you feel like you need

expertise in business development if you need expertise in game design like May to fill in some gaps hey this is the

biggest return investment of all time because they might teach you something which gives you the ability to make hundreds of thousands pound that might

have cost you1 pound power hour so I always recommend that I do a lot of introductions I do a lot of cohort I

join a lot of cohort style coaching so I’m even joining one for podcasts which I’ve revamped my whole podcast strategy

the relative cost for that for the benefit is crazy so yeah if it ever feels like you want to learn more about something the online education space on

LinkedIn I think is really underrated like just paying for advice because then you’re like oh now I know the skill forever amazing so those three things

yeah and and that that last point is great and and plus it goes back to if you think about it you’re you’re

investing in yourself for for that that’s and because cuz like like you said you don’t know what you don’t know

and paying down that ignorance debt is basically investing in yourself and you can’t think of I mean it’s take away

yeah no one can take away from you it’s not taxed ever and it stays with you

yeah forever and the more you do it the more it’s worth because if you are a

One-Stop stop if you’re a One Stop Shop solution you can charge five times than

the individual Solutions so for example if I’m just a ghost writer for Content I could charge um let’s say the going

rate, 500 a month let’s say but if I can also do the Outreach represent them at a

conference I also do their whole BD strategy I teach their whole BD team you can imagine how being a One-Stop shop

for all of that you can charge three times four times as much so having more skills in your domain is like the more

you do it the more valuable it get so yeah it’s underrated so so good all

right well before we ask you to drop some links so people can reach out

connect and get in touch with you um you you do have kind of an offer for our listeners today so what is that if

people want to take advantage of it cool so kind of what we mentioned before like that Clarity call I usually go all out

on my clar calls I just give you all the advice that I wish you’d knew and so

that is available so if you reach out to me on LinkedIn we’ll book a call I’ll give you as much advice as I can so if

you are looking to learn more about this happy to have a onetoone chat um that’s the offer awesome so folks if you’re

stuck somewhere or if what we discussed today is something you want to dial yourself into a little bit more reach

out to Harry and I’m I’m assuming here that LinkedIn is going to be your profile of Cho your channel of choice

yeah the only two links I’m dropping is LinkedIn and if you like this type of um

or if you would want to know more about if you have another podcast like your second favorite to the indie game movement then you can the Playbook with

Harry Fu so you go to my LinkedIn profile and scroll down it’s there um yeah weekly episode so you can find me

on LinkedIn at H Fu which is spell P kou or just write Harry Fu there’s no one of

the person on Earth that he’s called that so it won’t be hard to find awesome Harry really can’t thank you enough for

everything today this this insight and in this discussion it’s uh definitely been in insightful so appreciate you

sharing everything that you have with our listeners today no and thank you for being a great host I really enjoyed this

hey everyone thank you for listening to another episode of indie game movement I’m Andrew papis your host and the

show’s producer is Mustafa price show notes for this episode can be found by visiting renen marketing.com the number

episode of the show renen marketing is a Consulting marketing company that helps Indie devs with their marketing efforts

whether you needed Guidance with your game’s marketing strategy or could use a free marketing plan template then please

visit www. renen marketing.com and take action a special thanks to Dakota sa for

season 2’s opening theme and Melissa gellis for the new logo design and as always thanks for being such great

listeners and we’ll see you next time on indie game movement