Finding Your Ideal Clients with Josh Muller

Join us on "Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together," the podcast where we dive deep into the common challenges entrepreneurs face across all industries and uncover how they can overcome them. Hosted by Chris Imman and featuring insightful guests from various business sectors, we tackle the nitty-gritty aspects of entrepreneurship, offering real-world stories, expert insights, and practical solutions to help you navigate your journey.

In each episode, we explore topics such as finding your ideal clients, maintaining focus on your core offerings, effective client management, leadership tips, scaling challenges, and financial management. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale your existing business, this podcast is packed with actionable advice and valuable lessons that will empower you to thrive.

In this episode of "Struggles," hosted by Chris Imman and featuring guest Josh Muller from Maple Creek Coaching, the conversation centers on identifying and prospecting for ideal clients. They discuss the importance of aligning clients with your core offering and ensuring that these clients are enjoyable to work with and fulfill agreed-upon commitments, such as timely payments. Josh emphasizes the need for structured interactions where clients come prepared. They suggest evaluating current and past clients using a scoring system to identify those that contribute positively to your business and those that don't. The episode concludes with advice on continually reassessing client relationships to foster a more productive and satisfying business environment.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:06] - Introduction to Ideal Clients

• Chris outlines the importance of identifying and targeting ideal clients to build a sustainable business.

[00:02:04] - Maintaining Focus on Core Offerings

• Josh emphasizes the significance of aligning your client base with your core business offerings for maximum impact.

[00:03:04] - Avoiding Overextension

• Learn why spreading yourself too thin can be detrimental and how to stay focused on what you do best.

[00:05:09] - The Importance of Enjoying Your Clients

• Discussing the value of working with clients who bring positivity and energy, rather than draining your enthusiasm.

[00:06:26] - Clients Who Pay on Time

• Josh talks about the critical nature of having clients who respect payment timelines and how it impacts business relationships.

[00:07:39] - Preparedness in Client Meetings

• The necessity for clients to come prepared to meetings and how it affects service providers.

[00:10:17] - Clients Who Promote You

• Emphasizing the importance of clients who are willing to act as advocates and refer your services to others.

[00:13:11] - Evaluating Your Client Base

• Steps to systematically evaluate and score your current and potential clients to focus on those who are the best fit.

Tune in to hear Josh Muller of Maple Creek Coaching share his strategies and tips for aligning your business with clients who support and elevate your mission. Don’t miss out on these invaluable insights!

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Transcript

0:00

Because you get to a point where, you know, the business that you're about needs to fit your ideal situation. Really what you provide. Well, like, what's your core offering? What's the thing that really drives you? What's the thing that wakes you up and makes you feel good about what you're presenting? You know, and we all have those things. Maybe you're making something and that's your product you're offering, or it's a service you're putting out there. Welcome to another episode of Struggles, presented by ncbi, the podcast where we navigate challenges together. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Struggles, presented by ncbi. This is Chris Emmott with Idea Cleveland, and joining me today is Josh Muller. With Maple Creek Coaching. So, today we're going to talk about ideal clients, who they are in your world, and how do you prospect to find more of them? Because as we all started off our businesses, it probably was clients that we regretted that we worked with. There's clients that we currently work with that we regret, maybe that we work with. And so what we have to do is figure out who do we like to work with and go out and find them. Definitely. Yeah. So, you know, like, when we first start out, we're just hoping to get somebody breathing, has a pulse, shows up. You're so excited when you get that first check. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you see people, you see restaurants and other coffee shops, they post their first dollar right on the wall and they're excited about it. Well, pretty soon you move beyond the excitement into the reality of, oh, man, I gotta deal with these people over and over. And so it's really good. I think, when you're starting your business to go out there and you just grind and find people, and you're doing your best to find them anywhere and everywhere, but eventually it comes down to you really want to kind of limit who you're interacting with a little bit more, but you really want to target your ideal clients, not your everybody. Right. If you're solving everybody's thing, I don't think you're solving much of anything. So really, you should get really specific and hemmed down. So kind of thinking through, you know, what are the core things you need to think about? Number one, I'd say is probably your core offering. You know, do they fit your core offering? If. If what you do is one specific thing really, really well, your clients should reflect. Your client base should reflect that core offering as much as possible. Because as soon as we start, like, going outside of that, we start, you Know, I have one guy that I used to work with. He would like, try to get clients really hard. Like, he would be overdoing it. Kind of like a leaner in a bar, right. Like, he's like way too. He's just going too hard for it. So he would, you know, he'd do projects for them in it. He would clean their building, he would mow their lawn. I was like, why are you. I mean, it's great that you're a person of service, but that's not what you're made to do. You're made to do this. So do that. And then go find another person that wants. That don't do too much for that is a problem. Because if you find people that are willing to pay you at something that maybe you're not the best at, or maybe it's not even what you want to do. Right. When you start off, you just start taking every job. Right. But if you have an established company, at a certain point, you have to be good at something. Right. And you need to figure out what that is and what, how you fit into the marketplace with your competitors and your clients and where you can thrive. Right. And if you say yes to everything, you actually are devaluing the thing that you're good at. Right? Yeah. I mean, you really want to do what you're good at. And what's life giving to you? Right. If at the end of the day you go home and it's just like your life has been sucked out of you, that's not good. I mean, that's not really what you're aiming for. You're aiming for life giving moments with your clients and with what you do and interact with on a daily basis. Right. As much as possible. I mean, there are things we have to put up with that we have to do that I'm sure are not our favorites. But in general, if we can stay in that zone of genius as much as possible that we're really good at, why wouldn't we try to do that? As long as we have the client base for it? Yeah. There's a big difference between it and mowing grass. Sure. Yeah. The next thing that you should really consider is that you want to like these people. Right. In general, they shouldn't be someone who rubs you the wrong way, that every time you meet with them, you like, cringe when they're walking in. That's a sign that you probably shouldn't work with them. Right. Or after they leave, you feel like you just got to have a venting session to one of your co workers or a buddy of yours. If you have to go sit on a bar stool and drink for two hours after you work with a client, I mean, have to, not just because you do that regularly, then it means that you're probably working with the wrong person. Right. And so I would say it's a big idea to try and work with people you enjoy and get along with. That's true. I mean you'd spend so much time at work, so much time with your business. If you hate being there and you hate the people you're working with, what's the point? That's really life sucking. Especially if you're the one that created the business. It's one thing if you're working in someone else's business, I can see that being a little bit more of a thing that you'll put up with a lot more because they're just a client someone else is making you work with. But if you can have any kind of control, and that's one of the reasons we got into business for ourselves, is to have a little more control over when and where we could do things. I would try really hard to find people you enjoy being with. The next one would be, and this is one that always gets me, is like you start working with people and they might not pay you on time. I would say if it's the right relationship, the person will pay you when you've agreed to be paid. And maybe that's a structure you need to set up better in your business. And I think we all can improve on how we collect money. But if you haven't agreed upon spend for the project or for the system or for the service, if the people pay on time, you're going to like them a lot more and you're going to have a lot better relationship. And it doesn't obstruct the relationship, let's put it that way. Absolutely. The next one I would say is a big one for me is if you want to have life giving moments with your clients, you want them to come as prepared as you are to work. If a client shows up and they're disheveled, they can't find their stuff, they can't. They said, oh, I forgot that this time. Or only half the team shows up instead of all the people and you've scheduled. So true. For all the service people. Oh, all the service drives you up the wall. Right. So you're an accountant and you can't get the information from your. Yeah, your client, you know, so all These things that we provide services around, or even if you're having a meeting around a project you're working on and. And the key factors and the points that you need to know are not in the room, it is the most aggravating, the thing that wastes your time the most and makes you hate working with clients when either party doesn't show up prepared. And that's a big part on. On you as a service provider to definitely show up with your A game. But if your clients can show up in a way now, part of that might be you need to tell them how to be prepared. Correct. Which is another form of an agreement. And that might take some education. But it's also just like, hey, this is how this works. So I would say even from the very beginning of the relationship, you need to roadmap those things so that they know how they're supposed to. What the ladder of expectation is, I guess. Absolutely. You have to go back and look at your good clients, your ideal clients we're talking about. How do they come more prepared? Is there a system that you've already created? Or maybe they send you XYZ before meetings that you already get. So now the meeting agenda is already in place. Now you know how to discuss, you know what you're going in discussing. Is it that they share certain folders with you over time? Yeah. Who has. Who has elements of homework access and has homework access. And it's all created at the beginning. So think about who your good clients are. They're good. They come show up prepared. Maybe it's not even something that you created. Maybe it's something that they came to the table with. Right. And you take that and you. I want to have that type of preparation with all my other clients as well. Right. Yeah. And all this stuff is learned along the way. So you're not going to be perfect at the beginning, but definitely evaluate this stuff. Like, how do I work with these clients and how do I get better and how do they get better with me? Yeah. Because this whole evaluation is about taking people that you like working with and making your future people interact with you in the same exact way. Yeah. And which ones do I want to do more with and which ones do I want to say goodbye to? Yes. Yeah. So it's really important. I'd say the last. Really the thing that out of the five, the last one would be probably, are they willing to share you with the world? Are they willing to say, hey, I am working with this really great person. Person, this great team, and I Just want to, you know, if they come across people that might have a need for the same service or have even like to the point where they're putting out a social media post or something that relates to you and they give you credit for something that they help, that you help them with. I just think that that's a really great thing if you can have clients that are willing to share you, to boost you, to say, hey, this is really great, this has been a wonderful interaction and you know, Google review, whatever. But I think whatever positive thing that can come out of that now, of course it has to be a good experience for them. So that might be on the end of a period of time with them. But I think whenever you can find those clients that speak up for you and give you more opportunities, it's a great interaction, 100%. So if you think about it, when you're looking for clients, if you see a company or a business already promoting their vendors, you're like, man, that's somebody you might want to get in the circle of because they're already in that referral promotion. Thought in mind. No, that's a great one. So taking all five of these things, I think it's really important once in a while to evaluate your client base and your vendor base around these kind of things. And this is just a core five questions to think about. There are many more, like distance to my client, cost to acquire them, all those different things, right. And you can put some money around it. But what I would suggest that people do with this is to build a spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be too elaborate or crazy, but along one side, down the left hand side of the margin, you want to take and put all the names of the clients that you work with in the past year and then even some that you future are working on acquiring if you know who those are and even think back even further. Clients that you go back a little bit aways with and then you want to take these five things and add to them and you want to put those across the top and you want to have these categories and you just want to have these things to evaluate and then you want to take and create a score that you score each One of those one through 10, one being terrible, 10 being great. And you want to give each one of these people a score around these categories that you've broken it out by. And then at the far right side you add up all of the numbers across and whatever the score is on the far right side you'll be able to see if they have a higher score in general. That's going to tell you you enjoy this company that you're working with. There's client you're working with and it's going to point out to you there's some companies you're going to get some negative numbers or some sad numbers in and you'll be like, well, why do I think that way about them? It's because they drain my life, you know, and maybe you have some negative things that you put on the top two to kind of balance it all out. But whoever, whatever the scores end up being, the highest scoring people are the ones you want to think about what makes them special and why do I like them. And then you want to go after more of those ideal clients as much as possible. And it might even drive you to make a questionnaire for intake or for how you evaluate people on the front end of working with them. It'll drive some of those questions you want to ask. So I think it's just a really valuable thing to evaluate your clients around these and many more questions and then have discussions with yourself and with your team around who do we like working with and why and then help that to make better decisions in the new year. Excellent. Well, thank you Josh for joining me and thank you guys for listening to another episode of Struggles presented by ncbi. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Struggles presented by NCBI where we navigate challenges together. Don't forget to subscribe, listen and share this podcast with with others who might benefit. We'd love to hear about the struggles you're facing or have overcome and we'd be thrilled to have you as a guest on a future episode. Let's continue this journey together.