The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 40 Degrees
You know those cheap plastic telescopes you got as a kid? Calling them “telescopes” is probably stretching it a bit. As I remember, you couldn’t see much out of those.
When you flipped that telescope around and put the large lens up to your eye, everything shifted. What was a wider angle view of things got focused down very small on only a very few things.
When I first got started in the client business, I was looking out of the “normal” end of the telescope. I had a wide angle view. If a prospect showed up in my field of vision, I’d basically do whatever it took to “sell” them.
That’s how I got good at selling. You pretty much have to if you want to end up in places you never should have gone.
This might be a smart approach for putting food on the table in the short term, but it’s terrible for making any real (and profitable) progress in your business.
You’re not here to work with everyone.
“So who is your ideal client?”
A lot of people can’t even answer that question. Which makes what I’m about to say even worse…
Answering the “who is your ideal client?” question is only the first step. It’s the easy step actually.
The hard part is training yourself to stick to focusing on and working with those people. The hard part is excluding the rest of the prospects you could work with in favor of your chosen target.
But the reason you do that is because the universe seems to send you more of what you accept. So if you actively reject those who are not right for you, you create a vacuum attracting those who are.
The trick is to be very clear about what you do and how you do it. By definition, that makes it easy to identify those people you shouldn’t be involved with as well. You do this for your benefit, the benefit of your prospects and the benefit of the universe.
Clarity cuts through things like a knife through butter.
There’s a very different feeling you generate when you shift from trying to “get” clients, to moving through a world of prospects looking for clients that fit what you do and how you do it.
The energy is completely different. And people can FEEL it.
When you “flip the telescope” around, your field of vision narrows. You go through life knowing and focusing on what you want. This is STRONG.
The other way, you go through the world trying to become something others want. This is WEAK.
The totally weird side effect of knowing what you want is that people tend to want you more because of it. That, dear reader, is nutso. But it seems to play out.
Answering the ideal client question is easy. Committing to living the answer is where the real work is.