A 'Stupid' Mistake Many Agency Owners And Experts Make

A favorite line from the musical Damn Yankees occurs when a baseball player complains the manager thinks he is stupid.

The manager replies, "I am not calling you stupid--exactly..."

This is a something-stupid-comeback story, a rebirth of a career by a career expert.

“I did something really stupid about 10 years ago,” said career thought leader Brenda Abdilla. “I told my consulting clients that I was changing my business model and then I shut down all aspects of my business except for the executive coaching part.”

You are not stupid, but you too might be making some stupid mistakes.

Is that harsh? Well I have made some stupid mistakes too.

Abdilla is a respected and sought-after career and leadership coach. We met when I helped her edit her fourth career book, Outsmarting Crazytown.

Today she works with corporate leaders who want more effective strategies for team accountability and collaboration, and with professionals who are navigating a change in their high-level careers.

In fact, more than 90% of her coaching clients get promoted, land the role they desire, or address their core issue within 12 months of engaging her.?

But there was a time of struggle.

“As I said goodbye to the business that earned me six-figures as a speaker, trainer, recruiter and occasionally as a coach, I eagerly began to network in my local market,” said Abdilla. “Guess what happened next?”

Nothing.

“It was alarming to realize that I had no professional credibility in my local market, the greater Denver area,” said Abdilla.? “I quickly realized that I had never really taken the time to develop my local network since my consulting clients were all over the country/world.”

Abdilla can now say she has a thriving business and truly loves her work and her clients. Here is the main strategy she used:

Work for free until you can work for a fee.

“This is an old adage I learned as a pro speaker and it works,” says Abdilla. “As you meet people and make professional connections offer to do your work for free in the form of workshops, lunch-and-learns, presentations."

Unless you prefer to cold call and collect rejections, this method will work but it takes time.

Put together a one-to-three-hour program with your best material and offer it for free or a very low fee to your budding network.

"You won’t have to stay in the free zone for long if you really deliver," says Abdilla. "This concept works well if you are trying a new added service to your business as well.”

For example, a few years into her executive coaching business Abdilla decided to add career coaching to her services. which was serving a different market entirely.

So, she put together a super low-priced package and got a few clients to try it out. It was a hit.

(I have been inspired to do the same. I take a cohort of five would-be authors each quareter and work with them for a fee that is one-tenth of my normal rate.)

“My current fee for that segment is approximately 22 times what that initial package cost my first few test clients,” says Abdilla.

Bottom line: One of my favorite networking authors, Harvey Mackay, says we need to dig our well before we are thirsty.

In my studies on business development, two of the top five ways to attract right-fit clients involve networking.

Relationships are the secret weapon that wins the war of attracting new clients.

What are you doing to build relationships from the stage (even virtual stages)?