Training Newsletter

How to Find Good Clients How do you find good clients? Well, here's something interesting that most people don't really think about, but it's blatantly obvious the more you think about it. We find what we're looking for. You know, there's rare occasions where there's surprises, but what we're looking for is usually what life will create for us. If I were to tell you, “I want you to look for a quarter on the ground”, and you just constantly looked for that quarter, how long do you think it would take you to find that quarter? It depends how hard you looked, right? But if you never started looking for the quarter in the first place, you’d never find it outside of random probability. So how do you find good clients? Well, first things first, we need to figure out what we're looking for because the term “good client”...well, what does that mean? They pay you and don't ask for anything? They give you dry handjobs in the parking lot of a Dennys? What specifically is good? Traits? Characteristics? Actions? We need to get specific. When you actually set your focus towards WHAT YOU WANT, I think it's a lot easier to land these people as clients. Shocker, I know, yet so many people are like a prostitute, they’ll work with ANYONE because they got bills to pay. (I’ve had my fairshare of Denny’s parking lot clients, trust me, there are much better clients out there) Since we're talking about clients, I'm gonna talk about dating, because dating is the ultimate metaphor for sales. Let me tell you a story… I remember this just like it was yesterday. It was probably about two and a half years ago, probably two and a half. I had met a girl. I was really into her. We had both committed to each other and said that we don't want to see other people. I felt on top of my world, and I felt like a big G…or at least I thought I was the big G. Long story short, what ends up happening is she went on a girls trip, comes back from the girls trip, breaks up with me, says, “hey, I think that we should take a break.” Translation A: “I cheated on you on this girl’s trip, and I don’t want to feel bad about it” Translation B: “My girlfriends convinced me that you’re not good for me” I just ended up ending things with her, didn’t beg for her back or say I was okay with “taking a break” I was really hurt by that. And I remember being down bad and sad while thinking about her for days after the break up. What stung the most was that this wasn't the first girl who had done something like this to me. With the past 3 girls I had dated, as we started to form a deeper and deeper relationship, they would get scared. The commitment was too much. They didn't want to be in a relationship (with me), and they wanted to go back to having fun and dating around and being with their friends most of the time. I also started to see how I kept running into really bad behavior continuously. This one thought it was okay to cancel dates with 30 minutes notice. This one asked me tons of materialistic questions because she just wanted me for my money. This one would ghost me for a month and then come back into my life acting like that was ok. And so I had to ask myself, what about me is causing this to happen? Why am I attracting this awful behavior? Why am I attracting these girls who just want to go on dates, but don’t want to get (and stay) in a committed relationship? And when I was really honest about it, I realized that I actually didn't know what type of girl I was looking for. It was basically any girl that was hot. I had not gotten clear on what I wanted from a woman, so I was getting the attractiveness…but I wasn’t getting anything on the behavior side of things…because I wasn’t clear on it! Because I was not clear on who I wanted, I was just accepting anyone as that archetypal mold for that girlfriend, and then I was sadly disappointed when it ended up not working out. You should probably have standards for who you'd like to allow into your life as a girlfriend or into your life as a significant partner, right? Do you want… 1. Really hot girlfriend that is a total piece of shit human being 2. Really hot girlfriend that is a CIA operative 3. Really hot girlfriend that eats her own shit 4. Really hot girlfriend that is an all around good person and cares about you Probably D, right? Specifics matter. So I got specific. I wanted her to be classy. I wanted her to be beautiful. I wanted her to be kind. I wanted her to be a romantic like me. I wanted her to be local. I wanted her to be ready to get into a relationship, not just wanting to fuck around. I wanted her to be smart. I wanted her to be king. I wanted her to have her finances figured out. All of a sudden, when I set my sights on those traits, I'm attracting girls that have those traits. It's because, again, we attract what we're looking for and we find what we're looking for. The more specific you are on what you're looking for, and the longer you are looking for it, the higher the likelihood of you actually being able to find it. I'm here to tell you today, guys, the same thing goes for clients, guys. You can't just allow everyone through the door. You have to be specific with who you want to work with…and most people are sadly NOT specific. They say, “Well, I want to work with B2B coaches who are doing $100k a month.” That is the equivalent of me saying… “I just want a really hot girlfriend.” Maybe you're in a place where you've got enough experience to know what you like and don't like in a client. Maybe you're still figuring that out. Either way, I think every freelancer needs to go through a few shitty client experiences to learn what to avoid - it's like a rite of passage. But to save you some time and aggravation, let me share a few key traits to look out for: Avoid clients who micromanage and can't let you do your job. You want clients who can give clear feedback and direction, then step back and trust you to do what they hired you for. Avoid clients who don't pay on time. The moment a client is late on a payment, you need to address it directly. Letting it slide only sets you up for more headaches down the line. Avoid clients who are constantly in crisis mode. If their business is a sinking ship, there's only so much you can do to bail them out. You want clients who are stable and positioned for growth. Avoid clients who don't respect your time. If they're always late to meetings or expecting you to be available 24/7, that's a bad sign. Your time is valuable, period. Avoid clients who always want more than they're willing to pay for. It's one thing to throw in a small freebie here and there. But if a client keeps asking for substantial extra work without paying, that's not okay. Avoid clients who can't keep their word. If you can't trust what they say, you can't build a solid working relationship. So here's my challenge to you - grab a piece of paper, and on one side, write out a detailed description of your nightmare client. What traits piss you off the most? What kind of behavior makes you want to tear your hair out? Then on the other side, paint a picture of your dream client. What qualities do they have? How do they communicate? How do they treat you and your time? What makes you excited to work with them? Really take the time to flesh these out. And once you're done, start directing your focus and energy toward manifesting that dream client. Because the more clarity you have on what you want, the easier it becomes to attract it. That's all I've got for today. Remember - specificity is your friend. Get clear on your standards, and don't be afraid to hold out for clients who truly value what you bring to the table. You need to be thinking to yourself, what client traits do I not like? Right? What client traits do I like? Now, for some of you maybe have enough experience that you can set this up on your own. For others, it actually may be something that you don't have a ton of experience and you just want to be able to understand what those things are. Now, I would never want to rob anyone of the justice of going through shitty clients to learn what shitty clients are so they can learn to avoid it. I think it's a rite of passage of every freelancer to work with shitty clients. But, you know, out of the utility of this newsletter, I'm just going to tell you some things that are useful for you to know. Okay? So number one, you want a client that does not choke their business to death. You do not want a client that constantly needs to have their finger in the pie. Always. You want someone who comes in, approves your stuff, says it looks good, and then moves on. They don't want, like. And if they do have feedback, it's very minor feedback, and it's usually just based on corrections, not preference. So that's a big thing there. You want a client who allows you to do your work. There's nothing worse than clients who don't let you take on that. Just, like, choke the process to death and feel the need to be in every. It's essentially just they're using you as a proxy to create the shit where it's like they're essentially just hiring hands to help them execute on it versus hiring an expert to do it for them. There's a very big difference in doing it with them and doing it for them versus letting them actually do it for you. Right? Very, very different. Other way around. You do it for them, like, very different. And so you want a client who does not choke the process to death. Next thing pays on time. This is a big thing. What you don't want as clients that think it's okay to delay payments, want to jerk you around, owe you money, don't pay up, all that type of shit. You need to call that shit out so fast. If a client does that, hey, man, we're a week behind on payment right now. This isn't something that I'm usually used to with clients. And at this time, I mean, if we can get this squared away, awesome. But if not, man, I'm going to go ahead and need to pause services. I can't be doing it where I don't have a consistent billing cycle or whatever, you know, I think not only that, but even clients who, you send them an invoice and they don't pay and they wait a week. Like, guys, you have to really think about what this is saying. You want clients who are. And this kind of leads to number three. Like, you want ones who are excited about working with you. You don't want ones who are, oh, my God, if you please, save me. Right? Like, that's not the right person to go after. So another trait of, obviously is, like, the person is in a stable position. Like, just like with girls, how you don't want to be playing, quote unquote, captain save a ho. Like, you don't want to be playing captain save a business. And so I think that's super important that you don't want to work with businesses that are failing now. Businesses is down bad, or maybe they're experiencing a sales slump or things aren't working out to the degree that they need to be working out to whatever it is. If any of that's happening, that's fine. You could still work with a business that way. They just need some help there. But you don't want to be working with businesses that are just fucked from the start, you know, like, I'm talking about someone that has, like, a handstand business or, like, how to. How to. How to get started as a gymnastics coach, or some stupid shit like that, where it's like, there's no. I don't see the likelihood of this offer working. But you still work with them regardless. Not a good trait. Okay. Another bad trait from a client. Always late to meetings. Okay. Someone who's always late to meetings, they don't care about you. They don't respect your time. Right? They don't respect your time. Those types of people, you need to discard them as fast as possible. You. You can't be working with those people. Reason why I say it, guys, is because, man, oh, man, oh, man. It's just like, you only have so much time, and this is a time based business. It's a currency. And so what it's saying when someone's constantly late to every meeting is they don't value your currency. They don't. Because I tell you fucking what, bro, if you were the CEO of stripe, okay, and you were getting on a call with someone, and this person's getting on with you think someone's gonna be five minutes late to the call with a CEO of stripe on the line? No. It shows they don't value you. They don't respect you. And there's a teasing way for you to call this out. Be like, hey, dude, you know, about five minutes late on this one, or, hey, man, about ten minutes late. There's an acceptable window where within five minutes is not late, in my opinion. I don't think five minutes is late. It could be that they need to take a piss. They needed to get on. They were just wrapping up another call. Whatever past five minutes, in my opinion, is late. So if someone is ten minutes late to a call and they have not let you know ahead of time, hey, I have this pop up, or, hey, just really need to use the bathroom or something like that, like, again, that happens, right? And people need to get to use the restroom, and so they'll come back to call when they're ready, whatever it is. I just think unless someone has let you know if they're more than five minutes late, you need to. You need to call it out and you need to have a conversation around it, or just realize you don't need to work with that client. So there's that. And then as well, super tight deadlines. Always, I need this done this time. I need this done by here. I need it done now. Always, like, constantly attacking you for the deadline. Okay. Another one is never wants to pay for ship. So these are the people that expect free work. They paid you for one thing, and then they step over the line and ask for more. Now, there are certain instances where I think if the amount of time that it takes for you to do it is minimal, it's okay to include that. Right. But however, if the amount of time is actually substantial quite a bit, and it's going to take you quite a bit of time to accomplish it, then you need to charge separately for it. Again, I just do. Based on how much time is it going to take you? If it's under an hour, I would say that it's okay to do it for free. If it's over an hour, you need to charge for it. That's kind of my heuristic on it that I think is useful there. And so the whole point here is that you want clients who, when they ask for other stuff, they're okay for paying for other stuff. I have a web dev agency. I love these guys. I'm constantly asking new stuff. Like, right now, I'm thinking about building out a community platform for ourselves because I fucking hate school. I fucking hate school. I hate all these platforms. They're fucking gay. They're super lame. I don't want to use them. And I was like, why don't I just build my own system? And they were like, yeah, we can fucking totally do that. And so I'm like, all right, well, how do we go about executing that blah, all these type of things, like, and I'm asking them, how much do you think it's gonna cost? They're saying, this much. Cool. All right, why don't we go ahead and let's just bill it. Let's go ahead and run it. Like, I know it's gonna cost money when I ask for stuff. Nobody like, in what reality? Okay, think about a restaurant. You don't ask the restaurant for stuff, and then it doesn't cost extra. Of course it costs extra. Like, it's. There's extra. You're asking for more. So a client that doesn't accept that is not a good client, in my opinion. That's someone who is a needy taker. Okay? Last thing is, you know, there's. And these are more so traits in how they act with you. Okay? Now, the other thing, this is one of the last one is goes back on their word. Okay? There are going to be certain times in your business where you make a handshake agreement to stuff. Okay? Various different instances have happened to me here. If someone cannot have. If someone cannot stand by their word, they're not someone that you need to be interacting with in a business manner. It's just you don't. And the reason why is because that's not someone you can trust. You need to do business with people you can trust. And so these are just a few traits, guys, and we'll talk more about this week on the video newsletter, and I will talk about this in depth. But, you know, guys, the key here for you to understand is you need to actually go and create the dream client and what do they look like? And we're going to be talking about how to do that this week. Okay? So here's what I would recommend you doing. Take a piece of paper, split it on the left side and the right side. And what I want you to do is draw out your nightmare client. And you may have already had this client,