Proven Strategies to Attract Your Ideal Clients (Business Bootcamp PT. 2)

create some criteria and score all of your clients then get rid of your bottom two and keep doing that and you just rebuild all of your clients constantly this never stops it's how you evolve as a company so score your clients from A to B or a to F and then fire the fs cherish the A's and try to get more clients like your A's but like when we were making commercials and music videos we didn't always show the one that we finished for the client we'd show our version the director's cut yeah because the other the next client doesn't care I don't care it's your portfolio you do with what you want so let's say they said you know make the logo 18 times bigger you're like okay I got to do it then the one that you put on your website is the one that's the appropriately sized that's all I don't know where what what design school you guys want to where they told you you must show what the clients you don't the video you're about to watch is a business boot camp tuneup for our members where we did an eight- hour Deep dive if you want to learn more on how to level up your business and TR trct better clients check out the link below you know what Tim told me he's like we're like waiting for coffee or whatever it's like I don't know why it wasn't freaking so obvious and now it's so freaking obvious right and I would love for all of you to reach some level like God that was obvious why couldn't I see it was just right in front of me and oftentimes that's the case so it's Ian right yeah Ian asked me a question here you go Ian about this whole pivot that I made so ask that question I'll try I was just I think you hinted in it in your intro so are you saying you know the original I guess uh context of where you were headed with educating helping creatives is now going to shift to helping business businesses or business owners that was just I want to make sure I understood that okay let me explain that and we can get into that and then I think it'll I think it's relevant to what we're talking about here like who your Market is are they hungry they're looking for a solution to a problem they they feel an urgent desire to solve right so I think for the first um eight or nine years of the future I was trying to help creatives learn business and then I realized fairly recently that there were businesses or business people trying to learn art or design and that we're actually not two different people we're just two sides of the same coin and that's that was the Epiphany for me I just didn't even know they existed cuz every suit I've ever met the like the least creative person and they have no desire to be creative right it's an Indulgence that they might explore in other things but not really in their business and I'm not saying that the business is now no longer going to serve creative people it will continue to I'm just focusing some of my new energies on bringing the business people into the world of design and art and there's a benefit here if you can already see the dots being connected what do creatives want businesses who need creative help and I would love to be able to just hand feed you all of them and every once in a while if you're active in the future PR group you'll see that I post job leads I don't want any jobs I don't want to sell any services so some people are able to take those down some aren't if you're just looking at the leads some of the jobs are like five grand for an X some of them are H 100,000 and you just have to pay attention to what's going on so people naturally reach out to me and I'm like okay let me see if I can find somebody but you have to tell me the budget and you have to tell me what it is you want if you don't tell me the budget I'm not going to share it with my community some of them will say ridiculously low number relative to what they want I said that's not going to work the the jobs that I post in there are already qualified at a certain budget I'd love to just be able to feed you a steady stream of them because imagine if all these entrepreneurs come in they need help with their design because they think it sucks they need help with their strategy their social media they need help with their Ecom or running ad campaigns so those of you that are smart will start to position and develop your websites so it's super clear and you have the case study and the language so that when they look at your site they will buy that's it now I I think it's a pretty interesting exercise when you see a a position for like a new client who applies and just I don't even understand why people don't do this look at who's saying consider me Chris and you'll see like anywhere between three to 13 people and you can clearly see from the websites where you stack in that order in terms of can you land this client what becomes obvious is a couple different things one is if your website uh is it looks like a WordPress template and it's horrific and the language is unclear and you can't find more than one example of what it is that you do I'm just wondering if I was in that group it would be very clear I need to be more like this person and less like that person but they don't change their website they just I I put put up another position they submit their website again they don't get selected it's just that straightforward so when we get clear on who we want to serve then everything becomes really easy so let's get clarity around that now I know it's not that simple not all of us sell money with a no risk offer right so Ian to answer your question no I'm still going to do the pr group I'm still writing courses and there's a bigger master plan here besides just taking money from Rich entrepreneurs that's part of the I do like money you know I'm not going to say no to it but I think it's to connect our Two Worlds cuz it was like I didn't know this place existed and then you're like tripping over bricks of gold and like maybe I need to tell other people this thing exists we'll find out still pretty pretty early on but I'm getting Clarity around this and it's very exciting to me like every day I talk to a prospect I get more more clarity and then you can just imagine what's happening in my brain I'm going to connect the website to exactly what they say until until they all just line up to buy until it becomes a no-brainer offer okay all right let's continue on here so Tim has clear client hungry now we need to add some layers to this right I forgot your name it's it is it Dan Dan you said what what if this happen so let's throw Dan the mic and we're going get to you in the back because he had his hand up and we took the mic from him Mo and then we never gave it back to him it was rude I know he has one but didn't give it back to him you just walked away with it go ahead so when formulating an ideal client and then I'm looking at like my past history and I came out of some situations where you know uh there was some existential circumstances that made the the projects they sort of diminished all the net positives right like so the case in point like I was a creative director for a startup cpg brand we launched from zero to an $1 million valuation but the company went nowhere because of the reputation of the CEO and so how do you separate yourself from the success that you create for a company when the company just wants to you know get in its own way if that makes sense yeah okay it's a very specific question I think I can address this one pretty straightforwardly there are things that you can take responsibility for and things you cannot you can say cpg is consumer packaged Goods right uh you can say I helped with this but the rest of it you can't take ownership over that the good or the bad what I think you have to learn in your life if this keeps happening is why you keep working with people that are shady as hell well and then so there there's another example that is consistent but different right in that it was actually one of my best friends had a Distillery so he needed to steer that in another Direction then his Partners sort of they dissolved in litigation all the good work there's no results to sort of measure right so what's your question there how do you build that case study like what do you show it you can show the work that never happened in fact that is one of my strategies on marketing by the way okay so here's the catch22 and all of you are familiar with this how do I get a client in an industry that I've never worked for because they'll only hire people who've worked in that industry so what you do is you do speculative work you design your own case study and you don't try to pass it off as that was your client what results are you promoting if they're this one for for what we do is very specific like I designed this package for this thing here's what happened it never went to Market but you can see my thinking the strategy the design the concept and we got it all the way to proofs or whatever we got it to but that's where it stopped okay you're selling creative Services right yeah then that's what you show so for me I'll tell you this this is kind of weird it's kind of like I'm talking out of school I want to do car commercials no one will hire you to a car commercial unless you shot a car commercial it's that simple too much risk right so I sat down with I guess my former student and at that time like my prote we designed a storyboard she produced most of it and then we started to show it on our demo reel I never claimed it to be for Mini Cooper I just put it on the demo Rael next thing you know we're getting work that looks just like that if anybody asked I'm like it's a spec project we even entered the work into commercials uh uh into award shows and all kinds of stuff as long as we read the rules and we didn't feel like we were like Crossing the line we would enter it and want a bunch of awards too so you're saying there's gray area there's always gray area there there's what my my wife and I is like is this a term there's this gray moral ambiguity I used to be a guy on the white side there's people on the black side like illegal hacks and then I was like I'm a Boy Scout over here and these people are eating my lunch yeah what am I doing I'm playing about rules that I imposed upon myself so how comfortable am I in the moral ambiguity I turns out pretty comfortable I didn't know I discovered this pretty late in life yeah K you want to say something so you can present anything just don't lie sure yeah what happens is if you start to lie you dig yourself into deeper lies so if anybody asked spec project spec project that was a spec project we we we Finance it you could do it for that much money yeah not for you but we did it for ourselves for that much money we got a bunch of projects from that so my friend Aaron from Farm design okay I'll tell you the quick story and we'll get to Kio okay Aaron was a guy who literally worked in his house in Santa Monica in an apartment that he rented and he did this for decades he didn't think like an entrepreneur and then one day I'm talking to someone and I share the idea that they shared with me which was what they did was they um bought like uh handcrafted ice cream like small batches from this gourmet ice cream maker they packed it in dry guys in a container and they would send it out to prospects and they would design the heck out of it right and then The Story Goes they sent it to somebody that worked at Apple one of the marketing people and she was on vacation so when she came back it was gross it was melted and rotting and sour and she opens this and it's icky and everything and she had a good laugh she still gave them the opportunity though because they made the effort she just said next time figure out my schedule before you send me something like that so they sent another batch so I tell Aaron this and I said you need to think as a marketer not as a designer so here's what he did because he does a lot of U packaging right he convinced a local printer that we we both know he does a lot of work with them he's like I want to do a promotional thing a self-promotional packaging would you be willing to go in on this with me it turns out printers also need capabilities so they agree to do some of the most expensive printing that you can order from them for free he found in Pasadena a um like an artisanal ice cream Pop Shop like fruit juice frozen very healthy artisanal and what he did was he designed the packaging for it and then he went around and hand delivered it to all the local businesses to the result of zero new business he's like dude it didn't work I'm like it didn't work for you it's not that it's a bad idea here's the thing he has a young woman working for him who's a recent grad and she's like shouldn't we be posting this stuff on social media he goes what's that so she's I'm going to do it anyways so she puts his work up on beans as Adobe is acquiring beans right and what happens is somehow somebody sees it or wins something on bance and then it catches the eye of the director or editor of the Dial line if you're in the consumer packaging good you need to be featured on the dial line they feature the package on the dialine his phone never stopped bringing since so there's a lot of ways to get to success you have to find your path and what works and sometimes it doesn't work the first shot but it eventually worked now I think he has six or seven employees he's making more money than he's ever made doing better projects he ever done and working less than he's ever worked I told him what took you so long he finally decided to put on his big boy pants and be an entrepreneur so in in a situation like the one you're talking about you just have to learn how to make the most of not a great situation as long as you don't lie you're probably okay but you have to figure out where you net out on that spectrum of moral ambiguity right between I always played by the rules color within the lines or I'm going to break laws and get arrested somewhere in between is where all of us net out some of you might be criminals I don't know I'm not I'm not here to judge you that's between you the authorities and your maker right okay so you can show the work you can talk about the work you can talk about how you were so sad that it never came to life don't throw those people under the bus here's one rule in business never talk bad about your former clients never talk bad about your former clients new clients are what's going to happen when it doesn't work out with us it's not a good kind of character so present it in a way that's truthful that you don't hurt other people but you're allowed to show the things that you do so one of the things that I wanted to do was to to assemble a book uh on all the projects all the storyboards all the ideas that we produced that were never made I was going to call it stillborn just a bunch of story Wards and that's all you would see to show people the level of creativity that our team had okay you'd buy it we you wouldn't buy it now because it's all old work but it's kind of a cool concept right I like literally up your story on oh thanks okay all right did you want to say something Kine yeah and then we're GNA go to we're going go back and where it will okay so it's just a quick question going back to what Dan said with like not having the case study and like how do you show results could you or could we show like how the are like how we solve like how we could solve the problem or how like hypothetically how we solve the problem yeah there's a lot of creative ways to generate interest in what you do without actually having a client there's tons I've shared this story before I don't know if I've told you guys in in the boot camp or not but uh there's a woman I want to say like she's Asian-American working in Silicon Valley she was fed up with one of these big Silicon Valley app companies and she go I just redesigned this thing and it was such a a market Improvement that the internet went bananas and then she got so many job offers it was just ridiculous and it was just one of these things she's frustrated it was a problem right so there's an expression whatever your complaint is it's your calling if you feel so passionate about something about a home a website Ecom thing whatever it is an app if you complain about it so so much you're so angry about how bad it is you go fix it and you can write about it no one hired me to do this but here's what I think would be a vast Improvement on X or on Instagram or SnapChat this this one thing kills me about this and then other people take notice you have to be in the business of solving problems and learning how to present those problems to to prospective buyers that's the name of the game okay that's it if you can do that well you get a business let's go all the way in the back remind me your name again Scott Scott go ahead Scott um yeah so I was just ask uh weren to ask about dialing in the Avatar uh hi Tim uh we we had talked at the start of uh boot camp and I know that he wasn't doing furniture makers I think at that time so maybe I'm wrong you guys know each other yeah yeah we talked okay keep going um so just about dialing in you had asked to pole so sorry Tim uh but just exactly what that Avatar is so is it only furniture makers in the midwest who make you know you're asking a super specific question to Tim right now yeah but but then also about how to you know how to pick this group because I'm in the place where I have several different groups I could serve um and so it sounds like with what you're doing Chris where you're also changing groups where you went from you know creatives and now you're switching to the business people need the creative I'm adding not switching to but yes okay adding yeah fair enough um how would you know which one to pick yes how do you know exercise yeah and then how how much to dial that in okay right have you done Allan dib's exercise the PVP no okay we we've talked about this before yeah so I don't want to write here but let's just do was this covered in the course in the positioning module yeah is like what are you I think uh passionate about I think that's a p I'm just pulling this off the top of my head I could get some of the letters wrong here passionate and then value to Market which is the the v um maybe it's passion and purpose something like that right it's what makes you happy and then p is profit it doesn't really matter what letters you use or what variables you just create a system a criteria for how you're going to measure what Market you want to work in so if there's a market that's super valuable and high profitable but you got no passion or you don't feel aligned with your purpose then screw it as a creative person I would say that if it doesn't pass the first test forget the rest you all didn't choose to suffer through a ridicule of your parents and everybody in your community to then just go make money doing something you hate there's no point okay most of what you do has to be driven by your by your passion fueled by your purpose otherwise there's no point okay so create anything um I think David C Baker writes about this also in this book The Business of expertise several people do this and and Ron jbaker writes about it in implementing value pricing create some criteria and score all of your clients then get rid of your bottom two and keep doing that you just rebuild all of your clients constantly this never stops it's how you evolve as a company right so score your clients from A to B or a to F and then fire the fs cherish the A's and try to get more clients like your A's okay now I don't think Tim literally is going to work with midwesterners only but he understands a profile and this is the beautiful thing as we talked to aan he talked to Blair NS it's the same thing the market is bigger than your target like he'll he'll do furniture makers and then next thing you know it's like accessories or some other thing but there's a core there and you start with the core you know what what aan said he's like it's kind of weird years ago when Steve Jobs came back he they they do this campaign with shy day um you know here's The Crazy Ones the square pegs and the round holes uh and think different they're still selling to the same group but how many Rebels are out there not that many it turns out but the market is ginormous because it's aspirational they Define a core market and they're building up for bankruptcy and they just focus on that they're like let's go all in on that could you imagine if there a bunch of suits and ex type saying like Steve what are you doing why would you focus on this Market they have no money this is not going to go anywhere it's too small we should be focusing on what Microsoft is doing what a disaster that would be now luckily he's a CEO and he's stubborn so he gets to make the decisions so he decides we're going to do this because we've lost our way they find their way back to the rebels The Crazy Ones the artists the the creatives the Mavericks they find their voice and who doesn't want a little bit of that inside them right it's the same reason why Nike can sell so many shoes to non-athletes because they make you this promise like we're all connected to this potential of greatness in all of us Michael Jordan does his flying through the air tongue hanging out dunks the ball in the hoop and it's like be like Mike you can't do that but it's aspirational it's aspirational okay um where were we moving the mic to will we're moving to will so just toss right behind you so I just wanted to add to your conversation to Dan Dan okay go for it um so I'm in the political space in communication specifically and so the only thing I'd add to the the case study conversation is just don't volunteer any any information you don't have to um you know you can you're going to have opportunities in the conversation to uh circumvent uh the topic of the results you know you can talk about the process you can talk about all these other things and so you could gear yourself up uh I guess it's an accusation audit is that what Chris you could make that and so you could set yourself up to you know show your product and not necessarily the result of it and that's good advice I think for anybody especially if you've done a lot of work that isn't necessarily panned out the way you'd like you know there's good qualities to every project I'm sure and you can focus on that have that conversation I don't know if you guys know this but like when we were making commercials of music videos we didn't always show the one that we finished for the client we'd show our version the director's cut yeah because the other the next client doesn't care they don't care it's your portfolio you do with what you want so let's say they said you know make the logo 18 times bigger you're like okay I got to do it then the one that you put on your website is the one that's the appropriately sized that's all I don't know where what what design school you guys want to where they told you you must show what the clients you don't and and to Will's thing just to kind of remind you all don't say more than you need to say it's annoying first of all and it feels like super suspicious we just did this that's it and only answer the questions that you're asked otherwise you know it's like one of those things you guys ever watch like the the cops highlight on Tik Tok it's hilarious you know that TV show the co Cops Bad Boys Bad Boys you know they show these things and every single person they talk to tells them too much information you're like oh my God why would you do that and then the newer versions of these videos are ones like the people who know their rights like do you have a warrant do you have a de what am I being detained for I know my rights it's this code and I don't say nothing and that's what you guys are you're like the drunken criminal so you gave them way too much information it looks horrible just watch some of those things and look in the mirror like am I acting like this person or this person and you have to make that decision okay so Tim's got a clear profile will did you want to say something else oh no okay so Tim's got a clear profile who's got another profile and let's figure this up okay we'll throw it all the way in the back okay she's got it thank you it's Abby so let's go Abby um how do you Niche down or Define your client or customer if you've got two avatars or two personas that are codependent so you need both of them to make what you do work I'm going to challenge you okay you can't just say they're codependent you have to tell me what it is so that I can hear it and we'll probably it'll fall apart let's see sure I was trying to keep things simple because I have what is one profile and why are they codependent okay so first profile is uh I like building communities so I assist the small business sector in business development so I help them find uh funding and Partnerships for cool initiatives innovations that kind of stuff pause do you do pitch decks uh yes that's how you help and find funding uh I leverage relationships that I build okay so you know a lot of rich people yes which is the second avatar so I need the relationships to have that much engagement and continual investment in that those relationships okay to um but the demographics are polar opposite right so you've the CEO of a less than $200 million company versus the government entity or large multinational that's got billions okay so Abby knows a lot of Rich philanthropists and then she also knows causes who need money yeah more or less uh large corporates that are obligated to give back to their Community different they're guilted into giving money y written to their bylaws kind of yes okay I don't know if you guys know this it was a recent discovery of mine not that long ago that several corporations have it written to their bylaws they must uh hire a certain group of people and give them certain money away and it's freaking awesome and so there's like that's why um diversity Equity inclusion consultants and advisers make a freaking lot of money CU there's not enough people who know how to do it and there's huge demand for it everybody know who does Dei stuff they're just like just making a bank yeah it is true right you okay yeah I only know a handful like they're just falling over money it's awesome so once you know how Corporate structures work then you can you can help them help liberate them from their money and give it to other people so you're you're solving two problems right so your business model the way I understand and it works because you need to know the corporations who need to get rid of their money and connect them to things that they feel good about giving money to right okay so what's the problem now well how do you Niche so to sorry um to communicate so launching a website the language used to attract um and The Branding used to attract a small business sector you need to be really engaging and accessible and approachable because it scares people off if you're not but with the corporate you need to almost be the antithesis of that you need to be ballsy and you need to be pushy and so I don't know how to Niche because they both want different things or to be communicated to in different ways it's pretty easy okay okay hold on I'm so glad I flew all this no I love it I love it okay it's it's super cool you know how it is like I can't figure it out and and like where are my glasses they're like right here has anybody seen my glasses everybody can see the glasses okay so you guys understand her problem she has she's a connector and there are two very different types of profiles or avatars what's an Australian Aussie girl to do what do you guys think two websites I'm curious if you would just do two Brands why why don't you speak to that this yeah yeah she like what what am I talking about yeah you have to speak into that yeah I would I would build two Brands okay okay that's what you do okay so there's two websites two Brands what if she doesn't want to I'll put the constraint you can't build two Brands and you cannot build two websites what would you do kzia go there's an elegant solution I would find the common problem that they both have and speak to that okay okay and any okay throw throw it it's Ellen right Ellen yeah I think you communicate to the money okay so we're hearing a couple options here Abby let's do one more throw it to her what is your name Canela Canela kandela kandela okay there's a D in there got it yeah um what about what U you know when you log into the app and you're like are you a driver or a passenger sort of thing 100% right there just ask them to make a decision like a landing page that's like my Cost needs help or I want to help a cost sort of thing like question 100% that's all it is so the landing page says make a decision are you this are you that as soon as you click on that it takes you to that page if you this it takes you to that page and you can tailor the language to be very different doesn't affect the brand has to be okay okay it's going to sound to totally different right and you're the you're the bridge between the two you see there's an elegant solution you just have to wait for Candela to light you up worth the flight done thank you done right easy see the the challenge here is all of you are like I can't figure it out there's nobody can solve this problem and within three minutes like there it is all right we have five more minutes before we go to eat something here we'll go ahead we're still on the Avatar don't bring up some new problems here okay no problems just an avatar just love so I worked on on an avatar and that's a startup founder in AI space uh it's his second startup um not the first one second or third startup it's funded at least $10 million do uh he exited from the previous startup um p is industry agnostic uh in terms of the verticals it's probably B2B one and he works in AI That's it okay let's use fewer words strip it down for me just give me the key most important words look at your did you just read this off a list or you just yeah okay look at your list what are the most important words just incomplete sentence what yeah it's second time founder of AI startup that raised more than a 10 wait wait one word at a time okay this is a veteran startup founder a Ser entrepreneur yeah so let's write down the word seral entrepreneur yeah we don't we don't want them to be in business for the first time they're fups they don't know what they're doing yeah right okay Z entrepreneur what's the next variable um it's in AI space AI okay raised more than $10 million okay so funded seral entrepreneur doing AI doing yeah okay what else uh B2B yeah B2B B2B yeah it's pretty clear to me AI is ginormous mhm um people were getting $100 million just because they whispered the word AI at a pitch seems there's enough market seems specific enough to me punch holes in it who can punch a hole in it go ahead who's got the mic or here good catch your name again Jed Jed yeah okay go Jed so where's the pain Point like what I'm looking for there is like the that that how do you target basically where's the pain Point okay that would be stage two we're dealing with the Avatar is there anything wrong with the Avatar yet funded have the money they want to move in AI hot and trending they're Ser entrepreneur they they kind of now can make better decisions than before okay so let's go to Jet's next question then unless somebody wants a poke hole you want to try a poke hole okay Jed throw it the T please oo good catch Sticky Fingers you missed your calling man yeah should been wide receiver yeah uh the AI will make you useless like what like the like the AI start a whole statement here no it's like like what if the AI replaces what you're doing what I mean all of us he he's developing the tools to replace you I I misunderstood what was saying then he's going to build the tools to replace you yeah go got you I misunderstood sorry sort of will will yeah po there's a million people trying to do the same thing you are especially with AI who was before this it was blockchain for that it was everything else and so I think the pain point for them might be knowing how to properly decide the person or the contractor whoever they'll actually go with and so if you can figure out how to alleviate something that just like makes you shine through the competition okay okay so we was offering some some thoughts on some ideas and things like that right so first we're going to take this just one step at a time so if we understand that there's a person The Next Step before we come up with promotion or or thing is like what's the problem before we get to the product now you would think AI is going to be super saturated and as saturated as you think it's going to get I think it's the appetite is insane that's just my guess cuz it's like every day I log on to YouTube I watch another video about a new AI tool and there's a a a website that just talks about all the new AI tools and every single week the list is getting ginormous because it's like the wild west and it's a gold rush and everybody's going out and getting their gold okay I'm involved in two AI projects myself and I'm pretty busy guy in a relatively small space right so I'm going to develop tools because I want to get in on it as well and so people who can help me achieve that Vision they're going to make money we're going to make money together it's just that simple okay so KIRO being in the potential space of working with funded entrepreneurs that are seral entrepreneurs it seems like a no-brainer so what is the problem that you'll solve what is the product and then we'll get into the promotion those are all the creative things that we get to do but I can't see a problem yet with his Avatar he's created all the conditions and I think there's a lot of them out there actually right go ahead you want to say something yeah there is a bunch of them there is no the ux for AI is not yet defined because no one yet interacted with AI on a level that um that defines the user experience and that's the first thing but more importantly there is a tons of the similar startups in Ai and the only thing that they will compete with is the marketing and ux that's it because because the technology behind the AI is pretty much very similar for the end user yeah what are you going to build for them user experience user experience for AI startups okay is there any way you can validate that quickly that that's what they want and what they'll pay for yeah I have seven clients who are including mailla Firefox and a yeah bunch of okay so you already have case studies you already know it's going to work yeah okay so no problem then mhm you're good why you wasting our time then you know getting more insights what inside do you need it's working isn't that what you're saying Carol um yeah it's working yeah are you just flexing on us or what what are you doing I I went to see KIRO in New York he was already in the penthouse suite so it's like what are you doing I got no problems you're like how do I hide my money from the IRS Christ he got no problems he's like I already figured it out I have seven clients case studies all good is it all good um I mean s could be better right that's why we shut the front door if you've enjoyed this video you're getting a glimpse of the insights shared inside our business boot camp if you want to find out more check out the link below