This Entrepreneur's Secret for Going From Bartender to 7-Figures a Year Instead trying to get hordes of customers, he focused on getting a few who pay top dollar.
By Serenity Gibbons Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Let's say you run a business, or you're an entrepreneur, or simply a freelancer. You offer a service, a great one, and you want to make a lot more money than you actually do. You built yourself a website, a blog, or a podcast to market yourself a little better, but you still hardly make ends meet. You need to attract more clients to get more money, right?
Wrong.
You need to attract fewer clients, who pay you more money for the job you do. Try to imagine the heights your business would reach if all the clients you had were exactly looking for the service or product you offer. How could you do it?
Russ Ruffino, founder and CEO of Clients on Demand, and one of the most influential, no-nonsense-allowed business coaches in the marketing industry has. And he's going to teach us how to grab the right clients who're going to pay you the right price.
Ruffino's method surely has a point – probably even more than one. Its model is, hands down, tremendously effective. Starting from being just a bartender with $500 in his pocket, he earned $250,000 in just five months by selling his first video courses. And that was even before Clients on Demand was born.
Related: When You're Comfortable With Your Prices It's Time to Start Charging More
Q: What's wrong with a traditional marketing model?
A: Conventional marketing models are based on referrals. The idea is that you try to attract the highest amount of prospects by placing basic, volume-based ads – which are nothing more than a less invasive form of spam. And just like spam, even with the most finely-tuned market segmentation strategy, they will never aim at a specific client.
They're like dragging a huge fishing net on the bottom of the ocean, hoping to grab as many fishes as you can. Yes, you got a chance to grab a whale-like lead that is worth a hefty amount of money each month, but mostly you will end up with your net full of cheap mackerels (supposing you don't simply end with an empty net).
So, even in the best-case scenario, you'll have to deal with many low-profit clients, which, in turn, will translate into a ton of issues to solve, complaints to sort out and details to micromanage. You will have no free time left, and you're going to be a slave to your own work. There is a saying in Italy "work to buy a car you will use to go to work." Also, with these obsolete models, you're definitely not going to buy yourself the expensive car you dreamed of.
Related: When Setting Prices, Ignore Your Gut and Pay Attention to Big Data
Q: Why does your unique business model stands out amongst competition?
A: First and foremost, we're not going to provide results eventually. We're going to provide them right now. This one may look like a bold assumption, but our whole marketing strategy is focused on a powerful, high-octane approach with a very short (24-48 hour) sales cycle. Let's put this straight: long-term content marketing strategies like books, blogs or podcasts rarely (if ever) work. It's a multi-year commitment that doesn't pay off – you just need to give a look at your numbers in place to understand that you're literally hoping that someone who's not a spambot will ever read your blog.
The second thing is that we want to provide you with customers that are finely tailored to your needs, and not the opposite. The more a client trusts you to be the exact right choice for what he needs, the more money he will be willing to pay. We teach how to instantly build a real connection with your audience with high-impact methods based on a practical and customized approach instead of a run-of-the-mill strategy that shoots blindly hoping to find a target.
The marketing strategy we teach is so effective that it's able to catch clients at $3,000 - $10,000 or higher, immediately and consistently.
Related: 3 Lessons About Setting Your Price Learned From a Vegas Prostitute
Q: How does your method work?
A: Client on demand will teach you how to command the rates you want, and reach out to people who really want your services. The plan is to work with 40-50 clients per month, charge them $3,000 - $10,000, and work with them 100% online.
The first step is to reach them with a consistent method that targets the right audience – usually, we use Facebook advertising to pinpoint the right demographics. The ad must be properly planned though. If you want to price high, you need to show the rest of the world that you are an expert, a thought-leader, and one of the best in your field.
You must cultivate your brand by developing your online charisma, and usually, the best way to do is with a short, high-impact, 45-minute webinar. A webinar combines the accessibility of a blog, the friendliness of a YouTube video and the authority of a well-written article together. After many tries, we found it to be the best way for you to evolve from a simple service provider to a real social influencer.
The last step is consolidating the lead. To do so, you want to establish a connection on a personal level – you need human contact. Talking with every potential client on the phone instead of letting them click on an impersonal button provided us with the best results. However, we moved away from outdated phone selling scripts that just sounded… phony. Much of these scripts currently used employ 1980s, high-pressure, "boiler room" tactics. We built a new strategy that helps build a link with your clients instead of pressuring them. And we keep testing and perfecting new alternatives every day.
Related: How I Went From a Cellblock to a Penthouse
Q: What is your best advice for people who want to run a successful business?
A: The first thing is knowing what you do not want to do. You don't want to blast everyone with your messages; else you will end up fishing for non-relevant prospects. Second, you don't want to discount your prices, or you will simply bring in low-quality bargain-hunters that will pay you pennies.
Related: 4 Tactics for Making Your New Business Seem More Established
Q: Your coaching method being based on human contact. Why do you think it is so important for business?
A: Whenever you talk with a client, you have to remember that you must provide them with something that they value – you must offer solutions to their biggest problems. Whether it is a webinar, a blog post or a video, your charisma is what drives them to follow you. You must think of yourself as a brand, but you also want to talk them directly and put your expertise in front of them as much as possible.
That's why our Support has always been SO MUCH hands-on. We will help you through every step of the process, by writing the webinar, to setting up your Facebook campaigns, but that's not all. We work on a human level too. We coach and support all our clients until they overcome all those psychological barriers that prevent them from being successful. Our team includes some of the most terrific personal performance coaches such as Lisa Toste, Jayne Jewell and Marc Von Musser – they know how to help you deal with overwhelming pressure, procrastination, fear of taking risks, etc.
Keeping your head in the game is vital. Most coaches will just throw in some clichés to make you feel better, but who else has a FULL TEAM available to provide you with ongoing mindset support?
Related: How to Determine What You Should Charge Customers
Do you think your coaching method to be truly life-changing then?
A: Absolutely so, yes. We're talking about a simple process that includes four steps: Facebook Ad --> Webinar Registration Page --> Webinar --> Phone Call. Four steps are all it takes to generate around $700,000/month in revenue, and that's the same method we use to find new clients.
What's better is that we run our whole business 100% online, so we do not trade time for dollars, we are able to work from home or anywhere in the world – and we obviously teach this to our clients too. Think about how much money you're going to save if you don't need to account for all the expenses of a physical office.
You will be amazed to know how this model can work in such a huge variety of niches, from relationships, to health, to service businesses, to, why not? even coaching itself. Because you know what really sets us apart? That our step-by-step strategy is 100% SCALEABLE. How many other coaches can provide you with that?
After all, knowing what currently works and what doesn't work anymore in your business isn't always the simplest thing. And any wannabe-entrepreneur or freelance can't but take a huge leap forward by tapping the seemingly endless source of energy and motivation that stems from Ruffino's Client on Demand coaching model.
