Dennis Yu

The mindset of an employee versus a profit maximizer

One of our team members asked if they should increase the budget on a campaign from $80/day to $140 a day.Here’s what I said. Please choose whatever budget you see fit in your expert opinion.You’re the pro! You know our business goals and are best positioned to determine what tweaks to make to maximize revenue […]

Want to know the #1 reason why your products and services fail?

Because you aren’t starting with empathy. When you show you care about people– not as a marketing ploy designed by a fancy New York ad agency– you’re showing you understand their pain. And when they know you can relate to their situation, and have a clear solution to their problem, then they’re in a position […]

A billionaire friend told me not to charge by the hour or the month.

If you want to stand out as an agency or consultant, measure and charge by business results. The level of incompetence among marketing agencies is astronomical. So to talk about business results, whether or not you can deliver, is what drives sales. Demonstrate you have a detailed process you follow and emphatically state you don’t […]

How much should I charge for social media consulting?

The money discussion is an awkward one for most people, right? Want to know how to charge more, while not being guilty of overcharging and under-delivering? Hint: if you charge by time, you’re always selling yourself short, since you must keep putting in time to get paid. And you’re seen as a “cost”, instead of […]

I’d like to pay you a MILLION dollars.

And I have a budget of $100,000 per day to spend with you. But first, you have to make me $10 million dollars– and only then I’ll pay you. +++That’s what someone basically said to me a while back. I’ll take the risk and you take the profit. I’ve been hit up thousands of times […]

As a consultant, you sell your time.

As a powerful, profitable entrepreneur or agency, you should be selling performance. Nothing wrong with selling time, so long as you understand the pros and cons. Easy money but limited upside. My friend, Naveen, calls this chasing pennies, instead of going for dollars. But if you want a performance-based deal, you must explicitly be able […]

Money or meaning?

*** Traffic is more important than ranking.*** Revenue is more important than traffic.*** Profit is more important than revenue.*** Impact is more important than profit. Therefore, those people that are famous don’t necessarily have any money. And those with money don’t necessarily do good in this world. Do you seek to make money or make […]

I fail 90% of the time– and it’s painful every time.

But I know that 1 in 10 of my ads makes money– enough to cover the 9 failures. The trouble is, I don’t know which of the ads will make money. And the more confident I am about what will win versus what will perform terribly, the worse things are. It means I’m not listening […]

A client called me this morning to cancel their $ 10,000-a-month retainer.

Ouch, that hurts. That’s $120,000 a year that could be helping create jobs and training programs. How would you feel if you lost $10,000 this afternoon? I believe the fear is causing more damage than the actual virus itself. What we need to do is not allow this to spiral into a massive catastrophe– less […]