How to put clients at the center of your business.
That's what we're going to talk about today.
And when you think about it, we are only in business for as
long as clients are paying us.
So it makes sense to put your clients at the very, very, very
center of what you do and to build a business around their needs.
So you're able to create value in a mutually profitable way, in a
way that benefits both parties.
Now in order to be the most successful, a great mindset to have is by starting
with the client, starting with the customer and working backwards
from, from them, their needs and building all of your services around.
And even your mindsets around adding value to them
because when you add value to
They're going to add value to you.
That's how you're going to make a profit.
And so all this is intuitive, but there's a few different ways that as
an advisor, you can add clients to the center of your business model.
And it shows up in your business model model that shows up in your marketing,
it shows up in your, your methodology.
And what you want to be thinking about is a few different things.
So I'm going to get into the five main ways to put clients
at the center of your business.
Because at the end of the day, that's the thing that's going to help you
to be most successful and to grow a sustainable profitable business.
This is number one.
This is true as an advisor.
It's also true if you're doing freelance and agency work as well.
Is to be a fiduciary.
So I tell this story quite often, but there's, I used to have my investments
at a bank and I had a, at a balanced mutual fund as the, the thing that I,
that I started with and the bank put me into asked what I should invest in.
I want to be balanced.
They gave me the know your customer.
Questionnaire.
And they basically put me in what's called their balanced fund.
And long story short.
That was fine because I had no idea what to, how to invest my money.
But eventually a few years later I wanted to be, I wanted
to do self-directed investing.
And so they basically changed my account from being sort of under their scope,
where I had to talk to an advisor to make any changes, to being able
to make my own investment decisions.
And the first thing they said once they converted my account was, Hey, by the
way, you can still keep that fund that you were in the balanced mutual fund.
However you're going to get, you would actually get one Mo 1% less in
management fees, which was like, I think the fees were 3% or Regardless of
performance, that would take 3% of my assets, um, as a management fee, which
is crazy to me, but it is what it is.
And so now I can have it for like 2%.
But the thing that's funny is that.
First of all To her is I never had, I never asked them for advice after that
first purchase decision, if you will.
And I just kept dumping money into this balanced mutual Which frankly
didn't really perform very well anyway.
And yet they were taking the 3% fees and now I'm getting charged 2% and not three.
And you know, so the whole thing was funny because I wasn't actually getting
advice, but they were taking that fee.
And so what it taught me was that the bank is really there to
give you one of their products.
Right.
Not any product because there were way better funds and options
out there with much lower fees.
So they were just, they were doing, what's called a suitability standard of advice.
Which is to give you something that's suitable for your risk
tolerance and is good enough.
Uh, unlike say a fiduciary standard of advice, which is what I'm advocating
for you, which is the fiduciaries.
Uh, number one principle is that they have to act in your
best interest above their own.
So any investments that they're making, they need to disclose.
They can sell any product or offer any products or suggest or
recommend any product under the sun.
They're not limited to whatever's available for them to sell
under, within their own company.
And they take a fixed fee versus a management So there's all these
differences, but the number one thing is that they basically act in
your best interest for a fixed fee.
And that's a really interesting dynamic, another quick example that
I'll talk to you about, and this is just to kind of demonstrate.
Not the ethics of any of this, but the experience for the client.
And that's really what we're trying to get at is the client experience and
also the value that's being created.
So the second story I'll tell you is about the nutritionist that I worked with in
the past, where there were a holistic, uh, health person, something or other,
but part of what they did was nutrition.
And so then, you know, after working together, they did some, what felt
like very much woo-hoo, you know, checking my frequencies to see what
I was allergic to kind of stuff.
Anyway, um, He ended up recommending a bunch of supplements that
would help various things.
And, but then he suggested that I bother them through his online portal.
It was kind of like a drop shipping thing from a reputable nutrition source or call
Uh, and then the question then came as to like, okay, he's like, you can get
them anywhere, but mine are really good.
So you may as well just get them for me.
Which kind of felt like.
Kind of felt like neutral advice.
The only thing is that they, that by, I kind of begged the question.
Do I really need.
All these supplements and when do I not need them anymore?
Do I have to go back to the, back to him and say, Hey, do I still
need these so-and-so supplements?
And are they working?
And.
And, you know, it's very vague as to what, you know, you can't always
see the impact of these things and.
And I wished I wished, and this is again about the experience, not the ethics.
There's nothing wrong with the ethics.
And probably he did have an, a reputable They were fairly priced, all that stuff.
So it was a service to me, but it made me wonder whether I could
take his advice, whether I should be taking all the supplements.
At all.
And or if that was really how he made his money, because he had a pay, hit
a pay, what you want model, which is a whole other discussion for another
day, I felt obligated All of his fees.
And I actually paid him a little bit more than his fees the first time.
And he was really surprised.
And I guess I had made a dumb mistake there.
Pay what you want meant.
You know, here's my fee recommendation.
Pay, pay, pay less of you.
If you have to.
Um, anyway, so.
My, my, my concern was is he, is that where he really makes his money is the
ongoing supplements, almost like the backend of, of his nutrition advice.
Uh, and so it kinda made me wonder if he didn't sell those.
Those those supplements at all.
I think I would be in a better place to trust that.
Yes.
He's like, I don't make money here.
This is my recommendation.
I think you should do this.
Here's why here's for how long.
Et cetera, et cetera.
Whereas he kind of wrote an open-ended recommendation and sort
of said, yeah, come back to me.
We can talk in the future.
And again, there's nothing wrong with that.
And probably he was giving me great advice, but because there was that.
Financial incentive for me to be taking the supplements as well.
It did make me wonder as to how important those supplements were
and from a marketing standpoint, which is what most of you are.
Not all of you.
Is when you're selling advice and execution in terms of
broad, holistic advice.
In his case, it was holistic health with nutrition as a component.
Uh, but in your case it might be marketing strategy and business strategy overall.
To then say, well, you can get your website from anyone,
but if you get it from me,
It's really good.
And yes, it's convenient and you should pay $30,000 for that new website.
Which is different than say a web designer who's focused on
the web design aspect, right.
Obviously.
You go to a web presenter, they're gonna recommend you services again.
There's nothing wrong with all And going to a web designer is different than
going to someone, giving you holistic business advice or marketing advice.
Where, uh, where there's many parts and you're managing a budget
and that sort of thing, which is what marketing advisors do.
So, it's not that there's a problem with doing implementation and giving advice.
It's just that suddenly you run into this issue where, okay.
Should I, you make the client decide for themselves whether they're
making the right investment decision,
Yes, they trust you generally, and to make a decision, but they also
know you're selling them something.
So you're no longer being a neutral, trusted advisor.
You're kind of a sales person.
Uh, console date of salesperson.
And again, nothing wrong with that.
It just makes a different client experience than if you don't make money.
Uh, from the implementation that you charge a fixed fee for your advice
and don't take kickbacks referrals.
Affiliates, none of that stuff while you're in, in an
advisory retainer with them.
That's to me the best form, because then you're saying, look,
I don't care which way you choose.
I don't care whether you buy the 20 or $30,000 website.
All you care about is getting a business outcome based on your budget.
Here's who I recommend.
We work with.
I don't take fees.
There's no, backends is nothing for me here other than my fees.
So the client can kind of relax from the experience perspective, they know.
Okay.
You know, th something about incentives does change things, at least from the
perception of the client, but also from how you act and recommend things.
It's really hard.
You know, that's my conflict of interest, which is not what I'm talking
about here, but I am talking about conflict of incentives, but that's
my conflict of interest is such a.
A really important thing for the professional services for legal
professionals and financial professionals.
Uh, especially in politicians and other things.
And because the incentives that are operating underneath the
surface really do motivate us.
Even if we have the best intentions.
So, again, nothing wrong with selling, you know, agency services or web
design services, that sort That's the norm and there's N there's no
ethical problem with that whatsoever.
Just the experience.
Of if you're selling neutral advice in this case, if you're selling
impartial, which is kind of what I recommend neutral advice, then you
have to disconnect execution from.
From your own.
Uh, from your own.
Uh, fees.
Uh, so that you can provide fixed fee for your best advice and your best
thinking and the oversight of that.
Uh, and that's The most aligned with the fiduciary standard because
you're putting, you're actually leaving money on the table.
Cause you could probably make mark up and you could make more money from
all these other implementation pieces.
But, uh, but you're not, you're keeping them separate.
And you're saying, I don't care if we do this with that,
but here's what I recommend.
We do.
And that allows you to be the most impartial and to operate in
their best interests at So, these are just a couple of stories.
They kind of accentuate this a little However.
It's totally fine.
If you want to sell execution and advice at the same time, a
fractional CMO will often do.
Um, some, some light implementation, some management and give general advice.
And that's fine.
As long as, you know, maybe there's a fixed fee component to it where
there's a set number of hours.
Or something.
Uh, it just gets a little bit hairy when you're like, well,
should it be a 20 or $30,000 thing?
And you're the one who benefits from a higher price versus a lower price.
That's where it gets a little bit tricky and then the client has
to then advocate for themselves.
So you want to be a fiduciary because it's the true form of advocacy for your
clients and the best way to do that.
Is by removing implementation from your advisory work.
And, uh, and so we'll leave it at that, but again, there's no challenge.
Ethically or morally or anything with the traditional.
Um, agency style work.
It's just, when you want to create the best experience where you're sitting
on the side of the table of your client and really, truly feeling like
you're on their team and they feel like you're on their team Because they know
you're aligned with their incentives.
Or at least that there's no incentives to.
To spend more than they should, or, or less for that matter.
That's when you can work the best as a fiduciary.
And you're taking a fixed fee versus percent of execution.
For example.
So that's number one, be a fiduciary number two is
having a low self-orientation.
So this is something that if you're nervous during.
Whether it's a, anything from a sales conversation to consulting
engagements to like in, during, during your advisory work.
Uh, even to a podcast appearance, or to writing a blog post, if
you're kind of nervous and you're feeling that imposter syndrome.
If you take that feeling and actually just say, you know what.
It's not about me.
This is about helping someone else.
You know, as Seth Godin says, if someone were drowning in the water,
would you wait to save them to find.
You know, until you had a.
Uh, life, um, uh, like a life card.
Certification.
No, you'd go in and you'd help them.
So by taking the orientation, when your focus away from
And pointing it to your clients and saying, how can I help?
I'm here to help.
I'm here to serve.
That's going to take a bunch of stress off your shoulders and allow you to focus
on your clients and their needs first and foremost, above everything else.
It also then allows you to say, okay, Instead of saying, how
profitable will this be for me?
You get to say, okay, here's what you're trying to accomplish.
Here's the value of what you're trying to accomplish and I can help you.
And, but.
Based on the value that we're going to create together and how long you're
going to take to recuperate that value.
Uh, my fees need to be somewhere in this particular range, for When
I coach advisors it's my fees are significantly less on a per hour basis.
Then I, then it would be when I work Larger businesses.
And that's just because the value I create isn't in the millions.
I mean, it might be, but that'll be over a few years.
Whereas when I'm helping companies, the difference between.
You know, working with me or not might be in the several hundred thousands
or millions in the first year or two.
And so the amount I can charge is, is dramatically different.
But knowing that then I have to sort of work backwards from that and
say, here's the scope of what, what an engagement looks like together.
Here's how, you know, here's how we, how we do it.
Here's the price of it.
And then, and like, you know, the price kind of determines the scope.
So it's really focused on, okay, who's your client?
What are they trying to achieve?
What's the value of that?
Movement.
And then how do I create something for a price that allows them to
capture a lot of value allows you to capture commensurate value.
Um, and then therefore determined the scope of it based on.
Based on the value.
And so that requires you thinking about the client and having a client
orientation above your own so that you can work backwards from that and
create your own scope and services.
So that's number two is having a low self-orientation.
Number three is having unlimited access to you.
And this is a big one.
I think all my, all my advisory services, aside from a one-off
call has unlimited access to me.
The question then becomes.
Who has unlimited access to me.
So higher tiers, more people have unlimited access Um, The
other one is like, you know, how are they going to contact me?
So lower tier ticket?
I typically say it's on our calls and in slack.
And maybe we do one or two calls a month and then it's unlimited
slack access between costs.
So you're able to kind of decide, or it's unlimited, you know, one big call
or two big calls and then unlimited short calls with some slack in between.
Or there's email potentially, or you can call my personal cell phone or text me.
These would all be different ways that they can connect with you and who can
connect with you is the other thing, is that limits some of the interaction
or at least keeps it consolidate.
It keeps it organized.
And therefore restricts the amount of energy intensity that goes into it.
Other things might be like, well, what are you going to advise on?
Or what do you what's within scope or not?
If the client has four businesses, are you going to talk about all four businesses?
Or are you only going to focus These would be other metrics, but,
but generally speaking within the confines of what you've created
within the guardrails, there's unlimited access to use the client.
Doesn't have to think.
Well, is this worth 500 bucks for me to call this person to ask this question
or to our bucks, whatever the thing is.
And that's what you want to kind of avoid.
So I like having this unlimited so that people know, I don't
have to think about it.
If I have a question related to this problem that I get to, I get to call
Kevin or you had to call so-and-so.
And that really creates a lot of peace of mind.
It's all about that client experience.
So they're not wondering.
Jeez.
Like four people showed up in that last agency call them,
like, was that worth $600 to me?
Uh, based on the hourly rate of all the individuals.
And so you don't want them thinking like that at all?
You want, you want to be.
We want them to be okay with the fees.
Knowing the end result.
And then, um, and then having sculpt that makes it really easy so that
they're not like really thinking about.
Uh, how to use you and when using what not to do, ideally, it should feel very
flexible within the confines you create.
So that's, that's three is having unlimited access to you.
So we've talked about being a fiduciary, which is a form of advocacy.
In my mind, we've talked about having a low self-orientation
being very client focused.
Number three is having unlimited access to you.
Number four is trying to solve the entire problem related to what you do.
So a lot of people.
Mistake advisers for being people who kind of wave their hands, tell you what to
do, and But it's really your job to say, okay, here's the right recommendation.
How are we going to solve this?
And maybe it's not me that goes Does all these things, but at least we
break down the problem together.
And the best advisors bring templates.
They bring training, they bring resources, they bring introductions, they bring.
You know, knowledge to the table about how to do things.
And so they may not be the ones to use their hands necessarily.
They may not write the job description, but they might show you a sample
of a recent job description.
You know, or help find something that resembles a job They may bring
in people to do execution work based on their trusted network.
The Rolodex, if you will.
These are things that are going to help the client solve the problem
and not make new problems for the clients based on your advice.
And so that's the main thing is, okay, you're not here to
kind of give, give advice.
You're here to help them make the right decisions.
And then.
And then be able to see it through.
And if they're not able to see it through, help them remove the roadblocks so that
it's easier and more To get the result.
So solving the entire problem about why you do, if the client
is looking for more leads.
And you have all these ideas.
Uh, it's great to have ideas, but it's like, how are you going to help
them actually get this thing done?
So that's the next part.
Solving the entire problem, uh, with training templates introductions.
Resources, et cetera, et cetera.
That's going to really help.
Uh, To own the whole problem so that you're not leaving them with half a
problem And that's the big deal here.
Number five.
Uh, in terms of putting your clients at the epicenter of your business to create
that experience that is so critical is having a niche or a specialization.
So either you're, you're, you're specialized on the target market or
you're specialized on the problem that they have and you may solve.
A couple problems or you might help a couple of markets, but the more focused
you are on either the problem or the target market, or sometimes both.
The more, you're going to be really focused
You know, in, in business terms of something called vertical integration.
So they pick the target market, for example, and then
they offer software hardware.
Services, they offer all the different things that that would go towards
number four, solving the entire problem.
But they're able to stack all these solutions up because they know
their target market, for example.
And so they're able to solve many, many problems because they're
focused on a very clear target
And so if you're doing, whether you're doing.
I focused on the vertical, the type of clientele or the
type of problem you want to.
The more you specialize the more effective you're going to be at
understanding and addressing the nuances.
That are involved in getting a business resolved and that's the
biggest kind of challenge there.
So at the end of the day for focusing your clients, one of the best ways you can do
that is through specialization and focus.
And obviously you can borrow examples from other industries and other
examples, but then contextualizing it and applying it to that industry is really
where your core skill comes into play.
And so the more you can over time specialize on the
problem and or the audience.
The, the more client centric you're going to be at the end of the day.
Because you're going to have all those little sub varying answers ready, and
at your So just to summarize quickly, uh, five ways to put clients at the
epicenter of your business to create that remarkable client One be a fiduciary
to have a low self-orientation be very, client-centric make it about them.
And it kind of removes all this internal dialogue you have going on.
And.
And a confidence challenges and whatnot.
Number three, I have unlimited access to you and constrain that, or keep
guardrails on that in certain ways, but then create, make it unlimited so that
people know within these highways, I'm able to flow back and forth as much as
Now before solve the entire problem.
So if you're a content strategist, well, how do you help them get writers?
How do you help them create topics?
How do you help them create keywords and SEO?
How do you solve that entire problem related to what you do?
Then number five is try to own a, a niche or a specialization
in a vertical or a problem, and that'll really help you solve it.
Abundantly well, versus trying to be a generalist and then kind of helping
everybody just a little bit, which is Which is still helpful, but obviously if
you want to be the most client centric, create the best possible client experience
with, with them, for your clients.
Uh, these are some of the tips that have worked best for me.
So hope this helps
And, uh, I'll leave it there for As always, if you get value out of
this podcast, recommend it, share it with a friend in the notes.
There'll be a link to the, to the blog post I have related to this audio.
You could either just cop, uh, share this, this link with them or, uh, or,
uh, or, or send them to my website and get them on my mailing list.
Cause it was a really cool.
A crash course, right on the homepage on selling your expertise on your hands.
So i'll leave it there my friends and i look forward to chatting
with you next time bye for now