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Lesson Info

Finding Three Perfect Clients

how to find your 1st 3 perfect clients. My name this intentionally? Because if you have no clients yet, you know, you just have an idea. We've already talked about how to find an idea. A profitable idea. We've talked lightly about how to test that idea. Now, if you already have clients, you may have the wrong type of clients. We've discovered that here today, in the room and online. So how do you find the perfect clients? So, wow, this could make a lot of people mad, But most people do wrong is they spend time on things that they think they should do that actually will never lied to clients. Okay. And I'm gonna be pretty critical of a lot of areas of waste that I see here. How many people online have an idea for a business? Maybe even a one or two clients and their on Twitter Facebook. They bought business cards. They've maybe got incorporated their company or they've gone to networking events in the last one month. Okay, How many clients paying clients is that lead to to anybody? Zero...

. Anybody say zero? Okay. They're not even raising their hand. Which means I know it's true, Um, when you start your business and your focusing on finding paying clients to validate that you're doing the right thing to start understanding client psychology. There are so many things you could do, right? You could do this. This this is it's just like those big wins we talked about yesterday. And being a cop in a miser, you have to focus on only the things that will lead you to three paying clients. That's it. That's why people go through my earn one K course. And that's what you guys are watching today because I'm not promising to make you $100,000 by the end of the year. For most of us, that's unlikely. But it can happen. And in fact you saw Jackie. It can happen. But what I can tell you is that it's likely for you to be able to raise your rates dramatically and find more Paying clients. Three is the number. Like I said, 12 might be a flute. Three. Israel. It's validation. So what most people do wrong is they create all the they start doing all these things they somehow magically think will lead to clients down the line. And if you ask him two or three questions, everything falls apart. Okay, you started a Twitter account. Why? What people say when you say, Why did you start a Twitter account? I should have Twitter accounts. Everybody told me I should. That's number one. Correct? What else? Something really big about. How, like social media is this thing now that people do? Yeah, you like. I had to be in the conversation like I kept hearing about social media on the radio. Exactly. And anything else, like, they'll use increasingly vague things, like I just needed to engage in the conversation. I need to be in front of where these people are. You look at their Twitter account there, like 38 followers, and 16 of them are bots like Oh my God! So now it's possible to get clients off Twitter. Kathy, you did it. That's good. Was it off Twitter? It's not possible to get climbs up. It's possible. But is it the most likely? No, definitely not. I had a student mind Jenna, and she was, If you google REM eat satay. Freelance, stop wasting time. I think you'll find this article I wrote it on someone else's site and, uh, she she was like, really frustrated about her business. She was a freelance writer and she was like, I do I'm doing all this stuff. I'm so busy, and I just like I'm not even staying afloat. It's a very common thing for us, right? Like I'm doing all these things. I'm so busy every day. But I'm not actually speaking any money. And I said, OK, well, like, what are you doing? And she told me, She's like, I'm on Twitter. I update Facebook all the time. I went to all these networking events and I said, Okay, well, let's break it down. You go to his networking events. She's like, Yeah, I drove like, an hour to get there. I said, OK, so first you spent like an hour and 1/2 to plan it, agreed to it, schedule it, etcetera, driving our. That's 2.5 hours. You come back, you know, that's four hours. What could you do in four hours? Couldn't you study four or five potential clients go out to coffee with them, email them, Couldn't you if you discovered who you might want to be pitching right. Amazing emails to them, discussing how you can help them. I'll show you those scripts in a minute instead of going to some networking event where everyone else is unemployed as well, right? And they're all handing out business cards to each other in the weirdest echo chamber of all. Why would you go there now? Now people get mad at me. Remain. You could know networking events or good like you have to build your network. That's true. But I would rather network by seeing one person that I really admire, studying everything about them emailing them, showing value, meeting them in person or on the phone or whatever and getting to know that one person. Wouldn't you rather do that for one person? That's amazing than 50 people that are handing their business cards? What do you do with those business cards anyway? Throw em away. Let's get brutally honest with ourselves, right? We're always like doing all these things that everyone tells us to do. But if you were to actually eliminate all the time wasters, you'd have tons of time. So your buddy, who is totally right he believes he has no time. Actually, it's probably just wasting it on stuff that will never pay. And I don't just use pay to me financially. I mean psychically. Okay, all right, So let's That's what most people do wrong. Let's talk about I like talking about what people do wrong. Let's talk about what they do, right? Going right. Doing things right is about saying, Look, I have a simple goal. Three paying clients. I want a deeply understand who My clients are what they want. I wanna offer them some type of value in exchange for some type of compensation. And if that doesn't work, I'm gonna go onto the next one next one next and learn from each one. It's really quite simple, but everything I do has to lead to three paying clients. So if you're getting business cards, does that lead to three paying clients? I would argue no out Are you know, I wrote a post on Yahoo. Everyone on Yahoo got really mad and everybody hated me. There they're like, is ridiculous. I use business cards all the time, and I'm like, I don't really believe you, and I think that maybe you do, But I think that there are things that are much more important than business cards. Yeah, At a certain point, you might want to get business cards, but to get your 1st clients, No. So you can focus on reaching out to the right people, understanding what they are like studying them, changing the way you talk instead of talking about yourself, talking about that. So we're gonna go through this system right now? Very simple. Three steps. Identify who they are. Reach out directly and chat with them. It's really quite simple. And I'm gonna show you the actual scripts to do that. So identify. We've talked about sort of back of the napkin ideas of Who's my client? What gender are they? What age are they? One of their hopes, fears and dreams. Remember, we kind of stereotype this right, and we are going to test it in a minute. Can we do a quick exercise with personal organizers? You guys know what a personal organizer is? Kind of like someone who comes into your house and they don't like their cleaning your house, but they're setting up systems to, you know, if your keys get lost in your kid's stuff is all over the place. They're gonna set up systems how to do it. I want to walk you through example how to identify my client. Okay, so I'm a personal organizer, and I want to find clients, and I want to find clients. I'm really good at what I do, and I've been doing it for 15 years, but I'm not making that much money. I know I can deliver value. So I want to find clients who will pay me for what I'm worth. And like, they're willing to pay their willing Teoh value my services, walk me through it. Who is my client? Professional man or woman? Women. Okay. How old? Mid to upper thirties. Maybe, like 32 to 35. Okay, hold on. Right there. On that thought. Before we get into all this, what most people would have done is like, I'm just looking for people who have messy houses That doesn't say anything. Just like if you're a photographer, a writer. I'm looking for people who need content. You don't even understand who you're looking for. That's what we're doing. We're identifying who we're going after. Okay, so we started with gender which is always a really easy one age. You said 32. Anybody here? Think of 32 year olds gonna pay for a personal organizer. Now. How old forties? Correct. Why everyone here? They're like, Yeah, forties. Why all the women in here just said they were nodding their heads. Why's that? I don't think the young they're probably not gonna be financially stable enough. Oh, and they're also probably not gonna have a lot of the same time, career and family challenges that you get later. So good. You you deeply understand this client already just intuitively that you intuitively applied the pay certainty technique could really use you totally understand, because you are that person. That's amazing. Now your goal is to be able to do the same for your clients, to become that bride for that brief moment and understand every hope here and dream she has, like, I'm about to show you. So the other issue that someone has brought up is that the 45 year old probably actually has a home. Ha, Right. Do I care about hiring a personal organizer for my random apartment with four roommates? All right, so I'm now a let's say, 45 year old woman. Am I married? Yes. Yes. And do I have kids? How many kids? Two. Great. We're assuming we're assuming to It doesn't matter to three. Whatever. So I'm a 45. And by the way, if I can't afford your premium services, do I work? OK, so I work. So let me get this straight. I'm a 45 year old mother of two and wife and I work my husband. Does he work? Yeah. So you're saying what? That I'm like I'm really busy. I'm a busy working woman. Busy working mother. And now? Now we're getting into it right now we're starting to understand his client. It's not some random. It's a It's a real person. I come home from work. I opened the door. This is what you have to. You have to get deeply into their world. I opened the door. What do I see? Their toys all over the living room Floor dinner hasn't started. You forgot to pick up the dry cleaning. Beautiful. You know this This is great. It's so fascinating. By the way, how? Look at this. This example is hitting so closely home that were just breezing through this example, right? All the guys are like, I don't understand this example. It all on all the women are like, Yeah, yeah. Okay, so she comes home. It's a complete mess. And she How do I feel right now? I'm the woman again. How do I feel walking in that door stressed, Panicked. You're late in the game. Needed to leave half hour ago. Exactly. So I said, I sit there and I opened the door and my kids were running around and I Really what do I want to do? Okay. Say that louder, E But I can't write because there too many things that so much spend quality time spent, quality time. Exactly. So? So now we're really getting in their heads right now. A personal organizer who's a novice who hasn't gone through this creative live class for my earn one K stuff. They're gonna walk in and we're gonna start to be. You need to have bins pitching, bullshit. Pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch dark. Done this with clients, blah, blah. You should use, um whatever boxes shot, they don't. You're talking about you. You're not even listening to me What are we selling? Remember, we're putting our client at the center of our world. Everything they need. If they are not right for us, we will refer them to someone else. Will do whatever it takes to make them. And we will tell them if we're right for them in their right for us. What are we? So we're selling a service that gives them peace of mind so that they can spend unlimited time with their family when they get home? You guys air killers. I've done this exercise a few times and it literally takes, like, 23 minutes to get to that. Dudes are like we're selling organization. We're selling productivity and intuitively get that you're selling peace of mind. You're completely right. Peace of mind. That's exactly right. It's not about It's not about me knowing where my keys are gonna be. Yeah, I'm knowing where my keys are gonna be so that I can have peace of mind. You intuitively get this, but you don't intuitively get what your clients want. Think about that You're selling peace of mind when you now talk to your client like this. You know Beth I after talking to you for a couple of days. I think I understand what's going on. You come home from work, and I know you work pretty long hours and you come home from work, you open the door and they're just stuff all over the place. And there's balls rolling around and food over here. And, you know, I could understand that after a long day at work, you'd want to come home and just feel peace. Almost, like, just feel tranquil. You know, I think I can help. You know that one of the things that I do when I work with clients is I really want to study the way that they work. I don't want to come in and change what you're doing. I don't want You have to learn a bunch of new systems, but I want I want to work around you and work with you. So you told me that it's really tough for you to remember which food to pick up, uh, twice a week to make dinner. Well, when I worked with X y Z client, here's the system we designed that helped with that. And she actually just sent me a little note yesterday. And then here's the noted actually said dear raw meat. I haven't like my dinners have been amazing for the last six weeks. Thanks so much for such a happy family. And we're gonna live happily ever after. So, you know, if you're interested, there's a couple things I could suggest. One is that I can come in here and actually designed a system that works for you. So what, That would entail Zaid coming here? Kind of. Just watch for about a day. I show you a list of what I'm planning to do, get your approval and do it. The second thing that I can do when I do this for some clients, not all but some is come back in here eight weeks later. And the reason that some of my clients choose to take this up is you know, there's a lot of concern that Okay, I'm gonna get this system is gonna work really well at the front. But then I'm gonna stop using it after a while. Does this sound familiar to anyone? By the way, everyone kind of understands the idea that systems might fail after a while, so I can come in. If you're interested in that, of course it would be an additional charge, but we could discuss that later. But I am happy to come in and do that and rejigger anything we need to do. What do you think? Accommodating. Totally not trying too hard. Sell anything. Super accommodating, super understanding of what the client wants, right? I'm gonna be there for just one day watching. I totally understand her problems. I understand her aspirational goals. Walking and feeling tranquil. I'm using the words she used by the way tranquil, peaceful, etcetera. And I said, And by the way, I made sure to say, you know, that would be an additional charge. Why did I say that? Because if I've connected with her right, it doesn't matter. In fact, in this whole discussion did price come up ever. It's a triviality. It's nothing because you connected with her and you're actually offering massive value instead of a novice, more worthless personal organizer who would come in there shoving a bunch of boxes, never understanding my actual concerns, thinking that her job was to be a tactician rather than truly understanding my hopes, fears and dreams, and she would leave and I would waste that money and I would feel bad. I would rather pay mawr me as an affluent woman. I'd rather pay more for someone who's going to serve my needs. Okay, that's identifying. Let's move on. So reach out directly. Um, how many of us set up a website or Twitter account? We just kind of like open our arms to heaven and wait for the clients to come. Nothing drives me crazier. You don't deserve to get clients. You don't deserve to have anyone calling. We're knock on your door, earn it or get out of business. You need to be proactively reaching out to people so funny we'll talk about this tomorrow. How many people know someone who's like having trouble finding a job or they want a new job and they're sending out resumes. Anybody know somebody like this and or you read about it in the paper and they're like, I sent out 75 resumes. Anybody hear people saying stuff like this and it's like, Dude, if you sent out 75 resumes, you're definitely doing something wrong. Fact you've already lost. Yet they think if I just send out another 75. I'll get that magic hit. No, you're competing against millions of other people who are doing that. You're playing the entirely wrong game. That's what most of us are doing in the creative world when we set out some website that uses generic words like Easy, secure and fast, which no one ever says, and then we just wait for them to come. I would rather you actually reach out to people. And you do this in a variety ways. First, to do the kind of initial research where you've done it on the back of a napkin, you apply pay certainty and a couple of other things. Then you reach out to do ask without selling, right. So you're like, actually studying it, testing your assumptions. At this point, you kind of have, like, a lot of people you've reached out to, and you have identified some potential clients, so there's a whole variety of ways you can start pitching them. I'm gonna show you a couple of actual email scripts. The's air, just one of many scripts you can use, uh, which will help you pitch. Okay, so here's pitching a prospect, and I'm gonna read the script up. Hi, my name is raw meats. 18. I'm a recent Stanford grad. I've been reading your blog's for two years. I love the Post about using virtual assistants and got both of my brothers to start using one. And it's really helped me be more efficient with my work. It occurred to me that you're probably interested in growing your blog's. I might be able to help. I've done video editing, blah blah, blah dot com and Power Point design. Blah blah dot com. Imagine doing a great video using virtual assistance, then distribute it through a newsletter. I could do one for you in about two days. If you're interested. How about chatting later this week? My numbers block or I can give you a call at your convenience. I would say I would rate this script like eight out of 10. It's not. It's not the world's best script, but there's some good stuff going on here anyway. More free scripts like this and I will teach you the rich dot com slash creativelive. But the point of these is you need to be going out proactively. You do this after you've done your homework. After you've connected with a bunch of people, you've done some ask without selling. If you build a relationship, as you've done asked without selling, let's say, with 20 moms you might even like Hey, I'm actually starting to think about offering a violin service for for Children. Do you know anyone I should talk to? Well, if they have spoken to you about violin, you they're gonna raise their hand and say, You know, I'm not interested. Don't have the budget but a couple of my friends who would be happy to introduce you? That's how you get your first prospects. So then the third step is to chat over coffee, lunch or email chatting. So notice what I said in that last email. By the way, that last email had something pretty important, and that is for busy people. You know. You want to make it really easy for them on. I need to explain the power dynamic. I have so many people who want business, like If you want business from someone, you put them in the position of power. If they want to meet at this place, that's where you meet. If they want to have a call at this time. That's when you do it. It's so weird that sometimes people who are trying to get a freelance client there like I can only talk at this time or that time like Okay, then goodbye. So it's really important to make your emails focus on the convenience of the recipient, especially if they're the ones you want the business from. So I like to try to sort of escalate their relationship. Over time. It would be like first chat by email. I don't want to try to, like, set up a phone call immediately, and it's just a little weird. Then I would if we liked each other via email. If you think there's something useful, we may go to phone. If phone makes sense and we're geographic located, I may do in person and on and on on. In fact, some of the deepest relationships happen over text. There's someone's giving you a cell phone in your texting. It's like, Whoa, you're pretty close, right? So the key here is we're not just doing stuff online. How many of us on Lee want to talk to people online? And if you do that your relationship. It will be hard to grow with your client. It stops right there. Think about it. Think about people who you were just colleagues with first and then you You went out to happy hour together. Now you might actually invite each other to the ball game like it's a completely different dynamic. You cannot just do this sitting behind your computer. That's one thing that people who will talk about this tomorrow when they send resumes out, they want to go online to all these resume sites and submit the resume and just sit there and like, OK, give me a job. Get off your ass, get outside and validate your ideas and talk to the market. You have to get off your chair and go into real life.