I have been a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant for about 15 months now, and I can say that it has been a real game changer for me and my business. The value of joining the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network continually amazes me.

I’ve been a big fan of John Jantsch and his books, including the Duct Tape Marketing book. I had the opportunity to see John speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston in 2010, and have followed him for quite a while now.

Why I Became a Duct Tape Marketing Consultant

I decided to become a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant for a couple of reasons – I wanted to be able to offer a systematic approach to marketing for my clients, and I also wanted a way to provide my clients even better marketing education.  These two aspects of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network appealed to me because of my background in software engineering and project management, and because I do a lot of marketing education at local chambers and teach social media marketing at the St. Charles Community College.

As a software engineer and project manager that worked on some very large software projects for the US Department of Defense (DoD) and other civilian agencies, the idea of marketing as a system was very appealing to me.  When you build software that runs systems where people’s lives are at stake, you better have a system that is repeatable, measurable, and puts a premium on quality and reducing errors. Errors can be catastrophic.

Being focused on marketing for the last decade, I’ve been searching for a marketing system that I could implement for small businesses – and in late 2014 the lightbulb went off for me when I got my weekly email from Duct Tape Marketing.  I knew that I had to pursue getting certified so I could implement the Duct Tape Marketing System for my clients!

I became certified and joined the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network in December of 2014. I admit, I was a little skeptical of whether it would be the solution that I was looking for, but I knew that if I invested in committing to the system, using it for my business, and using it at a minimum as a coaching/training tool for my clients that I would break even.

BUT I HAVE TO SAY that joining the network has been SO MUCH MORE than that! It has really made my business better. It has made me a better consultant, and it has allowed me to offer even better solutions to my clients. And it has helped my business grow as a result. Here’s how:

1. Marketing Solutions

As a member of the network, we have jointly developed solutions that we can offer our clients. These are more comprehensive than the solution set I was able to offer my clients before I joined. The solution packages that we offer are powerful and effective. With the substantial discounts we get as being a part of the network, we can provide solutions to our clients that were out of reach before. Offering Managed Marketing Systems is a game changer for both my clients and my business.

2. The Power of the Network

This is the benefit that has surprised me the most. The network is just fantastic, and the expertise of the network collectively is staggering. The network provides me with an opportunity to have a community that I can participate in to vet solutions, share best practices, exchange ideas, collaborate on join marketing efforts, seek out help, and a trusted partner of other companies and consultants that I can work with to best support my clients. Do not underestimate the power of this network and the benefits of being a part of it!

3. Authority

One of the benefits of joining the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network is the opportunity to brand yourself as an expert, by contributing to books and writing blog posts. I’m currently working on a couple of chapters for a marketing tactics book, and writing my own ebook on social media marketing. And now when I speak, I have a broader and deeper knowledge that allows me to demonstrate the authority of my expertise.

4. Continuous Learning

We all know the value of what we can all learn from John, but it goes way beyond just John. As a member of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, we get the opportunity to learn from the best. We frequently have private training from marketing industry powerhouses and people who are truly influencers. In the world of marketing today, we have to continually learn, and we get to learn from the best – including other consultants in the network!

5. Personal Touch

John Jantsch and the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network (DTMCN) staff care about you and your business.  I’ve been an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional since 2010, and while I love the resources and experitse that comes with that certification, it was still impersonal. One of the benefits of being in the DTMCN is that you actually get to work with the people who run the DTMCN and learn from them and their experiences. It’s not just a certification, it’s truly a community.

Becoming a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant is the best decision I have made for my business. I am on target to double my revenue this year and I’m offering better solutions to my clients.

I had tried to build a set of solutions similar to the packages that we offer today that we created through the network, but could never pull it all together the way I wanted and it always proved to be too expensive.  I can offer a lot more services to my clients today because of the network, our collective expertise, and our buying power. And we have a much better capacity to scale as a result.

Last but not least is that my business has benefited by applying the Duct Tape Marketing System to my business.

If you have any questions about whether becoming a Duct Tape Marketing Consultant is right for you, please contact me and I’d be happy to discuss the benefits!

This post originally appeared on the Changescape Web Blog