There is one thing worse than a full calendar – an empty one. When I don’t have messages, part of me really likes it because I get a break, but the other part is left wondering what happened.
You always want to be in “generation” mode. I have clients that start up consulting practices and I tell them to go do work and they say, ‘What do you mean, I don’t even have my marketing plan ready.” I say go do work. They ask me how do they do that? I tell them, give it away, but go do work. Work begets work.
Here’s the language you might want to use:
“Hello Mr. Smith, I’m putting a structure around my services and I was wondering if you’d be willing to be a guinea pig? I’ll come in and do work for you for free.”
Eight out of ten will say sure, come on in. Now, you’ve got to show them that you’re not going to harm them, of course. And you want to do impeccable work. Once you start working, this client is going to start talking about this person that they have testing something that looks pretty cool and they’re getting it for free.
The other thing that’ll happen is the client will say, “You know what, I think you and I should put an agreement together.” It happens over and over again.
There’s no such thing as not working. Waiting by the phone watching reality TV is not a fun day in the life of an entrepreneur. It’ll happen to all of us, but you have the power to create something different. Start with some heavy lifting and go do work.
What are some of the actions you took when you were first getting your business up and running?