Successful Blog

How Do You Get the First Client? Five Critical Steps

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No Tells Us That

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As I talk to new entrepreneurs, I find that one burning problem is their biggest frustration.
The problem cuts to the basics of growing a thriving business. It applies every business online and offline. It’s the most important question and the one that least often gets mentioned.

The problem came up in a conversation I had at SOBCon NW in Portland. The conversation went like this …

Me: Did you get a chance to talk to AJ about his business?
New Entrepreneur: Yes.
Me: So, it seems like what he’s doing correlates well to where you want to be.
New: Yeah. True. He told me a lot about where I want to be, but what I want to know know is …

What did he do in the first six months? How did he get his first client?

5 Critical Steps to Getting Your First Client

We can know we’re good at something, but not believe it. We can know our expertise, but not have the previous clients to show that we can deliver. That gap can seem like the difference between hugely succeeding and falling into the abyss in which our rent goes unpaid and we find ourselves looking in the mirror wondering what were we thinking?

People say a leap of faith and a lot of passion will get you there, but we’ve all seen faith filled passionate action go crashing. Here are the five critical steps to making that first client happen with less risk and exponentially more chance of success.

  1. Decide on a job description that fits you. Rather than reconfigure yourself to fit a pothole or a problem, figure out what you’re most suited to be going. Your past successes will tell you what you’re good at. look for the crossroads of your [expertise, experience, talent and skillsets] and your [favorite ideas, people, enchantments, and work-like things that you find fun.]

    I see and connect things differently and with great speed. I tear ideas apart and put them together in old ways and new ways and adjust them faster, easier, and more meaningfully for any audience you put in front of me. My successes all included leveraging opportunity, traditional teaching, innovative thinking, strategy, business growth, strong networks, branding, marketing, and community building and I loved doing all of it.

    Job description: I use opportunity thinking and relationship strategies to connect businesses with their customers in irresistible ways. [No, I never actually say that. Who actually recites their job description? Still it’s good to know it.]

  2. Define at least one clear, concrete offer that you know in your bones you can deliver — in case someone asks you. A job description or even an elevator pitch is not an offer. An offer is a defined, discrete, reasonable, work transaction that can be presented for acceptance.

    An offer: I offer a 2.5 hour workshop called, “Who’s Talking about You?” In the ideal scenario, it’s three parts:

    1. 45 minute presentation with Q&A
    2. 30 minutes of teamwork to immediately explore the information and set it to action
    3. 30 minutes of building on what the teams have recommended to give feedback and apply the concepts teams have been exploring even more deeply
  3. Identify the people who already have an interest in you and the kinds of things you do. Reach the reachable. The goal is one first client.

    4. Value their attention. Listen to what they’re saying.
    Value the time they spend. Get to know what they invest their time in.
    Value their time when they listen to what you’re saying. With that in mind …

  4. Don’t ask how you can help! That question makes the conversation about you not them. When someone I’ve never worked with asks, “How can I help?” the best answer I can give is “I don’t know.” The question itself puts the burden of thinking on the person being asked. That person has to scan and sort:
    • all of the possible places he or she could use help.
    • what possible expertise, talents, and experience you have
    • how the two might fit together efficiently.
    • the risks, rewards, and possible outcomes of trying it out.
  5. Instead, ask “What are your goals for the next 2 quarters?” Make the conversation about them not you. Then listen actively — ask clarifying questions as you do — until you can visualize and articulate exactly where the potential client wants to go and how he or she is thinking about getting there.

    6. Keep listening and asking questions until you can say with credibility, “Here’s how I can help you get there faster, easier, and more meaningfully.” Then suggest one small bit you might do to show him or her what you mean.

Most offers — first or hundredth — don’t work because the size of the offer is too big for the amount of trust that exists.

What that first client wants is what the 100th client wants — a professional who considers it their mission to be mission critical to the client’s goals. Proving that you can listen long enough to hear exactly where the client wants to go also proves that you’ll listen when you work together on a project that the client wants to get done.

In a conversation, you demonstrate how you can work together with professional ease. Now you can offer a sample or a small first job that has a chance of success, because you’ve built trust for the offer to sit upon.

What first client stories do you know?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Beach Notes: What’s Missing Here?

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

In life some things are better in pairs like shoes, earrings, and gloves. Also “lifeguard on duty” red and yellow flags.

In Australia, the area between two of these flags is the safe area for swimming as it is patrolled by lifeguards. One flag alone does not show the safe “swim between the flags” area that the lifeguard sets each day at the beach.
Is there something in your life that needs a pair?

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Don’t Miss It!: Rise of the Blogging Scholarship

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A Guest Post by
Brandon Mercury

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Successfully Working From a Home-based Office

As the cost of a college education continues to soar students and parents are under increasing pressure to find funding. Scholarships are one the best ways to avoid student loans and excessive debt. There are several traditional types of scholarships, including merit, athletic, religious and ethnicity based. With the rise of the “blog” in the last 15 years, the time has come for a blogging scholarship.

Your Local Security is offering $1,000 for the best blog post answering the following prompt: “As the nation approaches its 57th Presidential Election, we’re asking the future leaders of this country, students, to define the single most important political issue in this election. Tell us not only what that issue is, but also tell us why and how you propose we come to a solution that benefits the majority?” Full details can be found at http://yourlocalsecurity.com/scholarship

Additional consideration will be given to how well the post is promoted through “tweets”, Facebook “Likes”, “Stumbles”, and Google “+1’s”. The winning blog post will have both compelling ideas and social support, neither one can independently guarantee a win. This scholarship represents a great opportunity to earn cash for college by flexing your blogging skills.

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Author’s Bio: Brandon Mercury (@BrandonMercury) is a regular contributor at In Good Measure .

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Have You Thought about Surrendering and Living It Up?

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about surrendering and … living it up.

I’m not a knight or a warrior. I can’t fight another person’s fight.
Every time I do. I end up wrong.

I can’t wear their clothes. They don’t fit. I look silly.
I can’t walk in their shoes. When I try I fall down.

I only sound right when I sing my own song.

It’s not a selfish thing. It’s a surrender to who I am.

It took me a while to figure out that I can toss and turn, stretch and skew an idea, but I can’t change the way my brain works. I can walk all the way around and through a thought or a belief, but I can’t change the chemistry or the electricity of a single synapse — slow them down maybe — but not reroute and remap the system to work as someone’s else might.

I’m always going to be the one who sees an angel in the clouds.

Living up to who I am is a far better use of my life than trying to become something I’m not.

Have you thought about surrendering to your life and living it up to who you are?

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How the Football Captain and the Guitarist Sold Out the Stadium!

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It Starts with Someone Who Cares about the Audience

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When I’m asked to do an off-site, I sit down the with event planner to discuss what the people attending might want or need to know. Hands down the most requested topic is how can they use social media to get people talking about the brand and their products?

It’s all about stories.
We’ve been hearing and telling stories all of our lives.
It shouldn’t be that hard.

5 Critical Steps to Spreading an Irresistible Social Media Story

If you remember back to university, you know the power of friends sharing stories. Good news, bad news, rumors and truths can fly through a school fast enough to make any news network jealous.

Here are the five critical steps to making that happen for you in the social business community.

  1. Build your network before you need it. It all starts with community. No matter how irresistible our message, we’ll have trouble sharing it without relationships. Building a network is more natural and easy, if we do before we need them to do something for us.
  2. Be known for one thing. Sure you can do many things, but many things are hard to remember. One thing stands out and is easily shareable. To go back to the college analogy, if I say he’s the captain of the football team or she’s plays lead guitar in the coolest rock band, you already know that other kids into sports they want to connect with him and other kids into rock want to connect with her.

    The same works now … If you are known for one thing, that one thing you are jumps to my mind when I meet someone who might need that one thing. If you’re a freelance blog writer, every time I meet someone with a growing blog, I’ll mention your name. If you’re one of a million writers who writes for blogs, magazines, websites, menus, and whatever. I’m less likely to remember exactly what you do and far less likely to share your name. When you’re one thing everyone knows what they can count on you to do and how you connect to their universe.

  3. Make folks feel proud, important, part of something bigger than then are alone when they do. Talking in the language of the people you want to help you. Make the message about them, not about you. The football captain who frames his message “Are you ready to rock the game tonight?” gets a better response than the one who says “Come to our game tonight. Show your spirit!”

    The savvy football captain says, “The team goes all out when you’re there! You rock the stands. We’ll rock the field!! RockTheGame!!”

    Let’s stay with the savvy football captain … he shows Booster Club how it’s in their interest to donate $500 worth of iTunes and permission for a concert by pointing out that they’re all on a quest to get folks to the big game. Then, he contacts the girl lead guitarist and persuades her band that a sell-out game would make a great after-concert venue.

  4. Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share it. The Booster Club enlists the campus TV station to announce a contest for the entire school. Every ticket sold to the big game will be entered into a raffle for that $500 iTunes gift card to keep rocking.
  5. Reward and celebrate the people who do. When the game beats attendance records concert by the coolest rock band — after the game in the school quad to rock the school spirit!

We all value our friends’ attention.
We all value the time we spend with them.
We all value it when they engage with us and listen to what we’re saying.
It’s a natural next step to make it a value for them to invest in us too.

All we have to do to get them to share our story is to make them proud to be part of it.

How are you making your friends, colleagues, customers, and clients part of what you’re trying to do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

What If You Don’t Know What Your Passion Is? Where to Look

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True Story

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This is a true story related to me by the guy in the story. He told it to me in 2007 and I’ve been retelling it ever since. I’ve changed the names for his privacy, because well, this is my version of the story. Let’s call him Rick and her Julia.

Rick was driving Julia to client meeting about an hour from their office. They were talking of dreams, missions, strategies, and life goals. Highways and passing scenery provide a perfect backdrop for considering such things. The topic had gotten on to doing what a person is meant to do … the “follow your passion” thing. And Rick, the one who had found his path, was doing his best to avoid that over-used shallow description of what he felt he was doing.

But Julia was passionate about finding out how to find her passion.
And so she kept asking, “What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I hate that question,” Rick said.

“But you know the answer, don’t you?”

Rick started singing along with the radio.

“Listen to me!” Julia said. “I need to know. What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I’m not going to answer you,” Rick said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll get mad.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. Just tell me. What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“I’m telling you … you’re gonna get mad.”

“I’m gonna get mad if you don’t answer me,” Julia said deliberately. “What if you don’t know what your passion is?”

“You do.”

“WHAT?!!”

“You know what your passion is — maybe you won’t admit it or you’re lying to yourself — but in your cells you know.”

“I think I hate you.”

“See, I told you you’d get mad.”

What Rick was saying is that our “passion” is the purpose written in our cells.

That thing that people keep telling us to follow is what we were built to do and what we naturally do well. Part of the problem in identifying it is that because

  • it’s so natural that we have trouble recognizing that it’s a value.
  • it’s something that comes so easily to us that we think that everyone can do it too.

Sometimes it’s easier to find and define if we kill the word passion and just look for

  • the helpful thing that we can’t quit doing.
  • the problem that seem to be solving for person after person because “it’s what we do.”
  • the subject that we get blissfully lost in exploring and innovating on.
  • the activity that ties to the people we most enjoy
  • the one thing we do that we would miss most if had to give it up.
  • what we’re doing when lose track of time and all self-consciousness

Look for your passion in the thing you do that makes you feel like the best version of yourself.

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!