The Client Letter
October 18, 2012
Sedona, Arizona
(Still) Sunny 65 Degrees
I started playing the piano at age 6…
When I was about 11 or 12, I started playing the pipe organ…
From there, I practiced and practiced and practiced.
I got my first church job at 13 and entered a music conservatory at age 18.
The harder I worked at being a great musician, the more all of those advanced techniques and ideas I worked so hard to master started to lose their importance.
The better I got, the more I could see it was the fundamentals that mattered. The better I got, the more the complexity melted away, leaving only that which was necessary to make great music.
The fundamentals of any art provide the strong foundation on which you can build something spectacular.
The fundamentals work. That’s how they became the fundamentals.
Same thing in business. There are a lot of shiny objects whizzing about every day. Things that distract us from the fundamentals.
If you want more clients or better clients, give up the fancy. Ignore the newest stuff. Stick with the fundamentals.
The fundamentals are simple:
Do more people know about you and what you do TODAY than knew yesterday?
Are you engineering DEMAND for you and your services?
In the end, you don’t have to get fancy if you’re just willing to do the work.
The fundamentals bring out the truth. When that’s all you have, you’re either going to do the work or you’re NOT going to do it.
Are you willing to get your ideas and demonstrations of your expertise out where they can be seen? Are you willing to do that on a consistent basis? Or are you simply going to post on that blog that no one visits?
I’ve done that. Over 200 times already. It’s dumb.
When you have the internet at your fingertips, it’s easy to think that there’s a secret way to get something for nothing.
It’s easy to fall prey to the myth that you can just click a few keys and get the clients to come running.
I’ve never had that happen. And I’m at the point where I’ve stopped investing energy in such a fantasy. These days I invest in much smarter ways to attract clients. I reveal a few of those here.
Look at what you’re doing to grow your business and then be honest with yourself.
If what you are doing to grow your business is something that the majority of your competition can do as well (blogging, Facebook®, Twitter® etc.), then you should stop doing that and focus on something better.
Do what they’re NOT willing to do (work) and you’ll get noticed.