Your Biggest IEC Content Creation Mistake [Free Lunches Don't Exist]

Have you ever handed a client a great piece of content created and branded by another company?

Like that really awesome free guide to the Common App that floats around the internet each year? What message do you send to your clients when you distribute it?

Have you ever actually sat down and thought about the image that you’re projecting to clients by giving them something with another company’s logo on top?

You might as well hold up a sign that says “These people do a better job than me!” or “I have more confidence in these people than I do in myself!” or “These people have more resources than I do!”

And after your clients actually read it? Forget it. They will drop you like a hot potato, or at least lose respect for you.

Why would anybody want to hire the guy handing out another company’s free guide to the Common App when they could just go straight to the source and hire that company directly?

After all, they now know that company because of you and they now trust that company because of you.

Sometimes it feels kind of lose-lose, doesn’t it?

There’s no way for a sole practitioner to compete with however-many people a larger company must employ to create a professional piece each year. So you can either spend hours upon hours to create your own, which is not really possible for most IECs because of time restrictions; pay a fortune for someone else to do it for you, which doesn’t make sense for something you’ll distribute for free; or, lastly, you can withhold a useful document that your clients might find very helpful because you don’t want to have to deal with the aforementioned drawbacks related to distribution.

I have struggled with these questions for a long time.

This year, I decided to pay one of my staff to create our own unique guide to the Common App and Coalition App. Let’s just say that it was not an inexpensive endeavor. At all. And then I had to go through and edit a lot of it myself to make sure it was perfect, which took forever. There has got to be a better way, I thought.

I was wrong, actually. There was not a better way.

BUT THERE IS NOW!

Check out our templates for purchase here.

You can download them and stick your logo on top in a minute with no concerns about professionalism or plagiarism.

With each template, you get a non-refundable, non-exclusive, non-transferrable, limited commercial use license that expires two years from the date of purchase. Downloading the file gives you permission to save, print, and distribute as many copies as needed to your own client base without attribution for that period, but you can’t share outside of your client base. That’s fair, right?

It’s your responsibility to edit these documents to your own satisfaction or adapt them if needed, but they are the exact same ones that I use with my own clients (and I am a complete perfectionist).

Some legalese to keep the lawyers happy: As with anything, you need to verify that these documents meet any legal requirements that may exist in your jurisdiction. DC College Counseling, Educational Advisory Group, and their affiliates, subsidiaries, employees, agents and contractors are not responsible for any disputes or damages that may arise as a result of using these documents.