Get Your First Ten Clients In Five Steps

A Fool-Proof Guide To Growing A New Business

Step 1: Understand The Five Stages of Business, Where You Are At, And Where You Need To Go Next

a) Business Idea

You set up a nice social profile, call yourself CEO, maybe build a website, design a logo, and more. You are getting ready to be a business owner. This still probably feels more like a dream. Until there is a cash exchange, you just have an idea for a business. Since you have no income, everything you invest in your business comes from your other sources of income. Your focus is on figuring out what you want and how to make it happen.

b) Freelancer or Gig Worker

A business doesn’t exist until someone pays you. Then you can call yourself a freelancer. Freelancers operate from project to project, usually in timeframes of less than 3 months in less, so they can’t count on the money in their business. They also can’t plan vacations unless they charge very high rates, which is usually tricky in the early days. Your focus is all on the hustle.

c) Beginnings of a Business

Even when someone pays you, it is only freelancer status until you have recurring payments. Recurring should be six to twelve months minimum but ideally ongoing (forever and ever). Usually at this stage, a person doesn’t have clear systems and instead, wears many hats and still does almost everything themselves. Your focus is on building processes and a team to help you.

d) Full-On Business

You have a full-on business when you have recurring payments, systems, help, and a growth strategy. You can rinse and repeat each month and you have a good estimate of your income.

e) Legacy Business

Now you have built something to last, something of value, that you can sell or pass on to your kids. You made it. This is the entrepreneurial dream.

Review these different stages of business and figure out where you currently are at, so you can strategize where you want to go next.

Step 2: The Market Gap: Finding Your Edge

Most markets are crowded, and even if you are lucky enough to be first-to-market, competitors will soon follow. The only way to ensure your future success is to make yourself different than others.

“Stop looking to the competition. Value-innovate and let the competition worry about you.” — W. Chan Kim, Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant

“Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne presents a strategic framework for businesses to break away from fierce competition in crowded, highly competitive, existing markets (red oceans) and create untapped, uncontested market spaces (blue oceans).

The way they suggest doing this is via Value Innovation, which they describe as creating products or services that offer both higher value to customers and lower costs compared to existing offerings. This combination is guaranteed to keep loyal customers for longer timeframes and lure new customers away from the competition.

I personally don’t fully agree that lowering the cost is the only way to achieve this.

In my experience, the goal of differentiation will be successful when you find a group of consumers who clearly see the Value Innovation.

Take the famous example of Steve Jobs, who succeeded in convincing consumer to pay significantly more for their computers. Another example is Cirque du Soleil, which elevated the circus to a full-on entertainment event, thus charging much higher than traditional circus entries. Many other examples follow to show that the Blue Ocean does not mean lowering one’s rates.

“Blue Ocean Strategy” encourages companies to break away from competition by creating innovative value for customers in untapped markets.

Want to learn more about how you can stand out in a competitive market? Watch my video below.

Step 3: Do The Mindset Work

Tap into your ‘why’, learn manifestation and visualization practices to go deep into your consciousness, heal the past, banish limiting beliefs, elevate your vibrational frequency, and surround yourself with the people who are at the energy level you want to be at.

Every business owner should be working with a mindset coach and investing regularly in personal development.

You can’t skip this step. Do so at your own peril.

People who havn’t done the mindset work with attract the wrong customers, undersell themselves, play either small or too wreckless, burn out, and suffer from various issues that could all be avoided.

Mindset work never ends. It is an ongoing daily practice and commitment to yourself.

Step 4: Build Your Success Team

You don’t know what you don’t know. Ignorance and business success don’t mix well. Unless you are too arrogant or too stubborn, get the help you need to build your business from Day One the right way.

Who do you need on your success team?

This includes six types of people you’ll want on your team if you are in management or to run a company:

1/ Activator. This person has ideas, energy, and creativity, and can get things started. This type of person is great to have in marketing, business development, or sales. They are great presenters and good with pitching to clients. They may be you or your co-founder if you run a company. I personally am an activator.

2/ Operator. This person oversees processes, manages schedules and budgets and keeps projects on-track and within cost. An operator thrives in areas like business analytics, product management, project management, and account management. If you are a small business, this person may also be your assistant.

3/ Executor. This is the person who can create designs and build your dreams into reality. It could be an engineer, a programmer, an architect, or any type of designer or artist. These are the doers, the creators, and the craftsmen.

4/ Loyalist. This is a person who completely believes in your idea and vision and cheers you on. They stand by you no matter what and give you positive energy and encouragement to keep going. This could be an investor, a partner, an advisor on your board,a fellow business owner, or a family member. Employees can also be loyalists, especially the first hires who help build the company or product ground up.

5/ Cheerleader. This is a current or future customer who loves what you are doing and will buy your product now and in the future. They also spread the word to others at every chance they get. They give you the best PR you can hope for since they speak from personal use and first-hand experience and aren’t being paid to market for you.

6/ Partner. This is someone whose audience overlaps with yours but whose service differs. Together, you can partner up on trainings, share one another’s audiences, be accountability buddies, and much more.

If you have a strong success team, nothing can touch you.

Step 5: Set Up Your Sales Funnel

A good sales funnel needs the following components:

1. Bait. This is usually really good free content posted on discovery platforms. The longer and more consistent you are at it, the more you will build an engaged audience.
2. Opt-in. To get people off the discovery platforms and into your world, you’ll need to get creative. Offer masterclasses, challenges, downloadables, discounts, etc. Anywhere they need to input their email address.
3. Easy Yes Offers. I call these no-brainer offers because with a nurtured audience, they will line up to sign up.
4. Social Proof. The more people go through your programs, the more testimonials you can gather. This, in turn, will increase your business.
5. Upsells for Life. Unless your business is called ‘In and Out Burger’, I’m going to assume you want clients to stick around for a long time. That is why you’ll need to listen to their needs and make them more offers, including retainer service agreements, ongoing communities, upgrades, etc.

That’s it! Not hard, is it?

Conclusion

Building a successful business has never been easier than today. Follow these five steps and you should be able to land your first ten clients.

Need Help?

If you are looking for a solid business mentor, apply here to see if we’d be a good fit: https://academy.kristamollion.com/coaching-packages

If you are just starting a business or working only 1:1 with clients, join Profitable Solopreneur Community: https://academy.kristamollion.com/community

If you want to learn how to build funnels to sell your offers (coaching, consulting, courses, books, etc), then check out my 8-Week Business Accelerator Program: https://academy.kristamollion.com/funnelbootcamp-enroll