How April Dunford Built a 7-Figure Solo Consulting Biz

**April Dunford** (0:00)
Most people, I think, don't give themselves enough credit for the thing that they're really good at. So they'll say, oh yeah, I know how to do that, but so does everybody else. But if you think about your work that you do all day in your job, what's the thing that everybody comes and asks you about? What's the thing you get asked to do over and over again because they think you're pretty good at it? You can start with that.
And then the second thing I would tell you is that most marketing jobs are very broad, like you're doing a lot of different things. And so you can get really good at something very narrow in a pretty short period of time by just focusing on it and studying it and learning a lot about it and doing a lot of engagements on it.

**Louis Grenier** (0:42)
Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Everyone Hates marketers.com, the no fluff actionable marketing podcast for people sick of marketing bullshit. I'm your host, Louis Grenier. In today's episode, you will learn how the most witty slash charismatic slash no nonsense consultant in the tech slash marketing space has built a very, very thriving solo business.
The story goes like this. On December 15th, 2017, I got an email from my friend Sarah McKinnon, who's a marketing consultant in Canada. And she said, if you're looking for suggestions for upcoming interviews, have you looked into April Dunford? She's a marketing executive, was now focusing on consulting practice and positioning for startups.
Every conference I've heard her speak at, she has literally blown everyone else out of the water. She's got a unique mix of saucy wit and laser sharp inside, honed over years with the big boys with the tech space. And I think her communication style would learn itself well to your approach to interviews.
I'm reading all of this verbatim because this is perhaps the best description of my guest today. She's been on the podcast twice already, so that's the third time, and she's the only one who has the luxury to do this, but no more, three interviews and then that's it. Anyway, you've heard of her for sure. She's not a white man with a suit and a beard in the tech sector. She has 25 years experience as VP in marketing, launching many, many different products. And I've loved looking at her business from an outside perspective. And today I get to ask, April, don't follow the question I ever wanted to ask, but I couldn't. April, welcome back.

**April Dunford** (2:26)
Awesome. Thanks for that intro. That's pretty amazing.
Three times. What the heck?
I've never come back. What if I don't die? And it's five years from now. And we got something else to talk about.

**Louis Grenier** (2:37)
You better keep doing interesting shit then.
Or else this is it. Or else you pay me.

**April Dunford** (2:42)
You know, they told me the same thing when I quit IBM the second time. They said, look, like, you know, two strikes and you're out. That's it. We don't bring you back.

**Louis Grenier** (2:51)
Yeah. And now they're like begging for you to ever work with them for an hour, I would say.
So you started consulting in 2015, correct?

**April Dunford** (3:03)
Yes, around then. Yeah.

**Louis Grenier** (3:05)
So imagine you have 10 seconds to tell April from 2015 something to help her start business in the right foot. What do you say?

**April Dunford** (3:17)
There's a handful of things. So the big thing is just focus. The broader you go, the less money you're going to make. And the harder everything is going to be. It's going to be harder to get clients, it's going to be harder to keep clients, it's going to be harder to be known for something.
Like the faster you get focused, the better. And the more narrow you can go, the better. That's the first thing.

**Louis Grenier** (3:34)
So that's 10 seconds.
You only have 10 seconds. That's it.

**April Dunford** (3:36)
Okay. That's it. Just go narrow and get really narrow.

**Louis Grenier** (3:40)
So you're talking to yourself, right? You're talking to your past self. So does it imply that at the start, this wasn't your mind frame?

**April Dunford** (3:49)
No, it wasn't at all, at all. At the beginning, I always knew positioning was my jam. Like in the later part of my career, if you hired me as the VP Marketing in-house, part of the reason you hired me is because you thought your positioning was weak, and I could talk intelligently about that. You were going to hire me, go come in and fix it. But when I switched to consulting, I didn't really understand how I could do positioning as an engagement. That was not clear to me at all.