Need more clients - Listen in

Sam Varner (: 00:01

Okay, can I even tell you how many times in a week I hear or am asked directly the question of how do I find more clients? Alright as a profit coach, obviously I have to teach my clients how to find more clients so that they can make more money and become profitable. Which of course my end goal is always more money in your pocket. Your business is meant to be the supporting cast of your entire life.

And in order for that to even be possible, you have to have more clients. So I want you to hunker down, get ready, and today we're gonna talk about exactly how you can do it. And I already know, no matter who it is that's listening to this podcast today, no matter what you're doing, folding laundry, walking the dog, whatever it looks like, you too can increase the number of clients that you have in your business. So grab a cup of coffee.

or a pile of towels and let's get going. I'm Sam Varner, the host of the She Needs Grit podcast and I'm really excited that you're here this afternoon to listen to this. I know how critical clients are and I want you to understand that it's not, it doesn't have to be as hard as it seems. Now, some of this is gonna come across like, oh sure, that sounds really easy. It's not easy, but it's not complicated either.

So we're going to chat a little bit about this, but before we do, I wanted to just give some of you a heads up. I've got a couple of new things in the works. First and foremost, this podcast is going to be getting a little makeover. I'm very excited. You're going to be doing some rebranding. You're still going to get the same fantastic content. It's still going to drop on Tuesday mornings, but there's going to be some changes. So I want you to watch for that and I'll keep you in the loop as we go through the process.

Second thing, listen, I speak about this all the time, right? Profitability in your business. She Profit School, which is my group program that is designed specifically for business owners who feel like they need some help in the areas of finding clients, figuring out the finances, getting really comfortable, getting better at selling, all of those pieces, if that is you. If you are early stage in your business or middle stage in your business,

Sam Varner (: 02:26

I want to invite you to join us for the February cohort. February 28th is gonna be the day that we kick off She Profit School. Now, here's some very, very brief things that you absolutely need to know when you're making a decision about whether or not Profit School is the right place for you. It is absolutely the right place if you have bigger goals than what you achieved in 2023, and you know that one of the things you need is some accountability. This group is...

built exactly to create accountability, both from myself and also from the other participants in a way that feels supportive and loving and just enough ass kicking to get you into gear. We are not gonna have another whole 12 months go by where you do not hit your goals. And profit school is exactly where you're gonna learn how to do that. I have my crush formula. I talk about it all the time. It is the five key pillars you need.

to be successful in business and or to scale to the next level. So all of us will go through plateaus in these areas. We're talking the core. The core of your business is the why. What is the thing that motivates you to get out of bed every single day and keep going? That's really critical, right? And it's critical day one of your business and it's critical the day after you make 100 grand.

We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna nail it and we're gonna review it as often as necessary. Number two, the second pillar is the revenue. And that's just the placeholder for all of the financial knowledge you need to run a business properly. It comes with a financial spreadsheet and a dashboard that you'll be able to track your numbers. I will teach you how to do it in a way that does not feel like fifth grade homework or pulling teeth, okay? I promise. You can do this.

and it is so empowering to understand your numbers and then be able to make fantastic decisions from that place. Number three, we're gonna talk about utility. So in my world, that is automation and delegation. You need to learn what is out there that can make your job easier. When is it time to hire? How can you hire in a way that feels comfortable? And then how can you make sure that both the automations and the delegation that you've done is working?

Sam Varner (: 04:46

to create ROI in your business all the time. Every single thing you do in your business should be generating you a return on investment, a return on your investment of actual dollars, a return in investment in terms of time. That's what we talk about. The fourth pillar out of five is gotta be one of my favorites. It is sales and promotion. So I'm gonna teach you how to be better at selling. I'm gonna teach you how to embrace the fact that you are the salesperson for your business.

and that you can step into that in a way with a strategy and a plan that you feel really, really comfortable selling all the time. And it is okay. We can do it without feeling sleazy, without feeling gross, and I'm going to teach you how to do that. I'm also going to talk to you all about promotion of your business. So when I think about promotion, I think about visibility. You need to get out there and share the message with the world, and you will hear today in the episode some of the pieces that I talk about.

That's the fourth pillar, sales and promotion. The fifth pillar is headspace, okay? So we have the crush formula and the H is headspace. It is all of those mindset pieces that we all know the number one reason we're not hitting our goals is because we're in our own way. And I'm gonna teach you exactly how to start managing your mind in a way that allows you to get the hell out of your own way and be successful.

So I don't want you to miss this opportunity. You have the ability to join me in the February cohort of She Profit School. This is exactly what you've been looking for if you are ready to hit your goals and scale your business to the next level. In this program, there is a very unique guarantee. I guarantee you, you're going to hit the goals that we set in our original meeting. We do an onboarding meeting where we come up with the goals for the program together. And I guarantee to you,

you will hit those goals in the six months with me in profit school. And if you don't, I will keep working with you until you do. This is basically an absolutely no fail way for you to grow your business this year. If this is something that you are like, hell yes, I need this right now, then I want you to go to the show notes and I want you to hop on in there, click the link and book that call with me, okay? It is right in the show notes.

Sam Varner (: 07:08

I need to go back and book that call. But for right now, we're gonna hop into how can you create more clients in your business today? And we'll talk more about profit school next week. So, okay, I'm really jazzed about profit school, you guys. I cannot wait to have a whole cohort in February starting this off ready to just take the world by the horns. But I know that for some of you, that might not be where you're at yet.

And I wanna talk today just about how do you get more clients in your business? What exactly do you need to be doing in order to increase, of course, revenues, right? More clients, more revenue, more profit, whoop, more excitement. So first and foremost, this is gonna sound really obvious. You need to identify your client. Now, you need to know who they are, exactly what they're seeking, right?

So in order to do this effectively, you have to have done the work on the backend to know exactly what it is that your business is solving for. What problem are you promising me you can fix? You need to know that and you need to be clear about that. And this is where we get into trouble. We can say, hey, I'm helping, well, here, let me use profit school as a example. So with profit school,

I know that my market is service-based business owners who are female, who are dealing with a frustration around the fact that they're not making enough money, they're having trouble balancing everything that they have going on, they don't understand their finances, and it makes them feel like they're potentially not even a real business owner. They're making money, but it's not feeling equivalent to the amount of effort that they're putting in. And it feels like...

They should be doing better. They should be getting more for their hours that they put in and they're concerned that this business isn't really getting to where they want it to get to. But my audience also knows they have a vision. They have client sales already. They know exactly that they can. They know that they can do it. They just need to figure out a better system, some strategy, some support so that they can do it more. Now,

Sam Varner (: 09:35

I don't necessarily think of my business owners as shopping at a certain store or whether or not they have kids or not or a certain age bracket. For me, my audience is service-based business owners that are wanting to get to or wanting to grow from a six-figure business. Now that encompasses a lot and I'm actually thrilled about that because I have thought about that because my program addresses that.

I don't have a specific industry that I deal with. I am dealing with service-based businesses. So the joy of my program and the joy of what I get to do is that I get to deal with people that are in all sorts of different fields. Real estate, finance, marketing, lawyers, growing businesses, all sorts of areas of business, but they're all a service-based business. They're all helping clients with a service provided. Okay, so.

Let's go back to you now just for a second. Who are your clients? Who are the people that you love working with? Maybe it's who's the industry? Is it men? Is it women? Is it anybody? Is it kids? Are you a therapist or a chiropractor or somebody in that space, a wellness space, that is really specific into prenatal or postnatal? Like what are you dealing with? Who are you talking to?

Go through the exercise of write down 10 things about your audience. 10 things that make you know, yes, you're my audience, no, you're not. And force your brain to work here. You're gonna say, I've got three, that's good enough. No, I want you to really engage. Who are you talking to? Okay, so I'm gonna assume.

You paused everything, got a pen and paper, wrote those 10 things down. Now you're real clear. If you haven't done that, no big deal. Just when we get to the end of this episode, come back to this spot, okay? And do the work. You guys can listen to me all day long, right? You can hear what I say. You can be driving along and think like, that is fantastic. Sam makes a really good point. I should do that and not as clear as I wanna be. If you do not take the time to do the work,

Sam Varner (: 11:55

you cannot get the progression that you're looking for. And this is that accountability that we're talking about. This is why I created a group program, because we need the accountability, not just we get that dopamine hit of like, I learned a new thing and that's the dopamine. That makes you feel like you did the work, but you haven't done the work yet. You just heard me talk about what the work is and you agreed with me that it's great work, but we still have to actually do the work in our businesses. So remember to come back to this.

Who is your ideal client? Be specific, be all-encompassing, figure out who that person is. Okay, the next piece to this is you need to figure out what problem you solve. Now, that should sound pretty easy, right? Okay, so I'm a chiropractor and I help people with their back pain. But it's not just back pain. It is I help people with their back pain. Maybe the fact that they're not sleeping.

Maybe the fact that they have neck pain. Maybe it's not pain at all except for when they work out or they're trying to run more and they're realizing that they have a lot of structural problems when they're running. There's a thousand things that each one of us does, problems that we solve, but there are particular ones that you immediately go to. For me, you guys all know, I help you with profit. Now, there's a hundred ways I can help you with profit, depending on what your business looks like.

But my problem that I solve is you are either not profitable or less profitable than you want to be. And that is the problem I solve. So now we've clarified that I solve a profitable problem for business owners that are service-based female entrepreneurs that are driven to increasing their bottom line profit to increase and better their life.

Do you see how it's getting easier for you to talk about things? If you have who your people are and what their problem is really clear, it starts to be able to be something you can identify. That's critical because we can't find more clients if we don't know who we're looking for. I once was at a networking event and there was, you know, everybody goes around in a circle and they talk about their business, okay? It's your elevator pitch or your 90 second commercial or whatever, whatever.

Sam Varner (: 14:22

One of the people that was there had a skincare product and they got up and they said, my perfect person is anyone who has skin. And everybody laughed. But what's the problem with that? Are you wanting to talk to my husband about your skincare? Is it for men in their 40s? Or are you wanting to talk to my almost 16 year old with her skincare who's dealing with teenage issues in skincare? Or

Is this actually skincare for plus 65 year old people that are dealing with a lot more frailty with their skin and a lot more thinness and it helps with that. Do you see how people with skin is not great, right? Unless you're like Hannibal Lecter, that's not really your audience. He was probably even more specific than that. So this is why we need to do this work. We need to identify the problems that we solve. Now this, people trip on this, okay?

So what I don't want you to say is, but I also help with X, Y, and Z if they show up in my door. Yeah, of course you do. I help people with profit, but sometimes people come to me and ask for help with social media or help with setting up podcasts or help with other things. This discussion and this clarity that you're gonna get on your audience and your problem doesn't mean you turn business away when it shows up.

It just means that your outward facing visibility and your magnetic pull for people is going to be very specific. You are gonna catch fish you didn't intend to catch and you can decide what to do with it at that point. You don't have to say like, oh, you do not fit my ideal candidate and I can't actually deal with you. That's not what I'm saying. This is for your outward marketing and your outward projection of who your business helps.

the more clear and specific that is, the better you have other people understanding it and allowing them to be ambassadors for you out in the world, okay? So don't feel like it means that if somebody, if a man comes to me and asks me for help with coaching, I absolutely coach men. It just isn't, my marketing outwardly is more to women. That's all. Okay, so we've got who they are and what problem they solve. Now,

Sam Varner (: 16:47

I want you to ask yourself this question, and for me, this question is way more fun. How do you want to interact? What do you want to be doing? No, not what your friend is doing. Okay, we're not promoting our business the way somebody else does it because they seem to have success. I want you to be coming at this from what do I enjoy doing? What am I more likely to be doing if I enjoy it? This goes for a lot of things, but one of the places that I saw this message this week

specifically was my personal trainer. So Nathan wrote a post all about how his clients are more likely to do what they want to be doing regularly, forever, more often, if they like it. If somebody tells me I have to go and do something I hate doing, right, an aerobics class, oh my gosh, I'm so uncoordinated, I'm going the opposite direction, I'm smashing into people, I'm falling off my step, I...

can't get the rhythm no matter how basic it is. It is, it's actually shameful. But if he said to me the only way to hit your goals for health is going to be to go to an aerobics class, I might go a couple of times because I have a big goal. But I'm not going for very long because I hate it. And the same holds true for you. If you hate going to in-person networking, for the love of all things holy, don't force yourself to do it. If you hate...

to do social media and you never want to be on there and you think it's garbage. Don't do it. If you despise writing emails, I'm probably going to tell you have to learn, but okay, so emails might not be your primary. You have to choose things that you are super enthusiastic about and that you're going to follow through on. Right? You can hold yourself accountable a lot easier if you're doing things you actually don't hate. So when you're thinking about...

How are you gonna interact with your clients? Where are you gonna find them? How are you going to create opportunities to talk about it? I want you to think about how you enjoy showing up. So for me, first and foremost, hey, podcasting. I like talking. I don't mind speaking. I wanna engage with you. So my top ones are I create my own podcast. Here we are listening to it.

Sam Varner (: 19:05

I speak on other people's podcasts that have an audience that will be similar to mine. I love this strategy because it's a little less work for me being the guest than it is being the podcast host and it allows me to branch out and network with more people. I love in-person networking. If you know me in person, you know I spend a lot of time in my days online and in person networking with people. Having conversations. Shooting the shit.

It is my jam. I love it. It's been on my report cards forever. Samantha's distracting everybody else and talking throughout class. Yeah, it's been the MO of who I am for my whole life. But it's not the only way to go, right? You can do videos, so you're not having to talk live. You can do workshops. You could do posts that are on Pinterest or Instagram or LinkedIn.

that aren't necessarily you having to engage directly with a client the same way. You could talk to people in any number of different spaces and different ways. They don't have to be the way everybody else is doing it. Okay? I want you to find the things that first and foremost, you love, and if there's nothing on that list that you love, okay, listen, I can help with that. But part of it is just a bit of a fear thing, right? And I can help you with the fear. The fear is...

allowed to be there. It's allowed to ride shotgun with you. You can be scared shitless before you go and you do that first 30 second commercial at a networking group. You can feel disgusting. Your legs can be shaking, your hands can be shaking, you're sweaty, it's totally fine. 52% of the people in that room feel exactly the same way. Fear doesn't stop us. But we can choose the things that we like to do, okay?

So you're gonna make a list of all the ways you want to engage with people. Number four, and that's it, we only have number four, guys. So you have your offer. I'm assuming that your offer is strong and potent and exactly identifies and solves the problem for that individual. Think back to what I said about profit school. What does it solve?

Sam Varner (: 21:20

It solves that feeling like you're not really a business owner. You're not making money. You don't understand the finances. You want to get better at selling, but you don't know how. You want to create a life that is fueled by and funded by your business. And you're just stuck in the how. That's she-profit school. What is that for you? How can you that clearly and concisely put it out there in the world of what you do?

Okay? And then you go to those places that you said you were willing to do that and you share that clear message. You share it in as many ways as possible. So what I want you to do is you've got your audience, you've got the problem that you solve, and now I want you to write down a list of 35 ways you can talk about your business. The results that you get for clients, what you do for clients, what the individual steps are that you do for clients.

what your methodology is, why you think this way, how it might go against the grain of the industry, or how you really agree with this one philosophy in the industry, I want you to just write a list of all those pieces. And now you know what to say to people. Now you go out and you meet people, you go online and you meet people, and you engage people that are interested in pursuing your exact solution, because they have

the exact problem that you're ready to help them with. And all you do now is rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Come back to that list. What do I do? Who do I do it for? How do I help? Okay. And you go out there and you share that information. I want you to engage in five more conversations this week with people you have not engaged with before, however you wanna find them, I don't care.

but I want you to engage in five more conversations this week with your clear and concise solution to the problem that they have. So find them where they have the problem, have enough conversation that it gets to the problem, but figure out a way that you can start creating those opportunities and do it five times. That's the challenge. You can do this, okay? I know you can.

Sam Varner (: 23:47

If you're ready to be profitable in your business, it is going to take being uncomfortable. It's going to take getting some clarity. It is going to take you holding yourself accountable or finding a space like She Profits School to get into so we can hold you accountable. Now this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I know if you have five more conversations this week about your business in this clear and concise way, clients are coming. I promise.

I'm so excited you joined me for this week's episode of the She Needs Grit Podcast. As always, stay profitable. You've got this. If this is something that you listened to today and thought, well, geez, that's yeah, okay, I need to do that. I want you to do two things. I would so love a review on whatever podcast player you listen to your podcasts. It lights my heart up every single time I get to listen to that. It lets me know I'm on the right track and I'm feeding you guys the information you want.

And most importantly, it lets other people learn exactly the details that I'm sharing here that will help them grow their business. It is important that we all do this from a place of abundance. It doesn't matter if you share this episode with seven people that do exactly the same thing in the same audience as you, you will all grow differently. So lean in, share this episode, write me a review, and I will talk to you next week.