¶ Balance Client Acquisition and Quality Work
Hello and welcome to the Boss Responses podcast . As business owners , we frequently get busy with doing all of the things . We have client work , we have marketing , we have prospecting , we have all of these fun things , and if we get too busy , our business is what suffers first . We drop the marketing , we drop the prospecting and we focus on the client work .
That can be really detrimental to your business . You need to make sure that , no matter how busy you get , a certain percentage of your week is spent marketing for new clients . We talk about that with today's question and this is one of those topics that I really hope you will walk away with something that you can directly apply to your business .
So spend the next 10 minutes taking notes and getting ready to apply this to your business . Let's jump into today's question . If you're a freelancer , business owner or anyone who deals with clients , you're in the right place . I'm your host , Teresa Edmond .
I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt , imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client ask a question . I wasn't ready for . I created this podcast to empower you with the Boss Responses . You need to grow your business .
Each week , my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights . Monday through Thursday , we answer your questions , and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embraced their role as the boss of their business . Welcome to Boss Responses . We are back for day three with Ed Gandia .
Ed , how are you feeling about this week so far ?
I'm feeling great . These are wonderful questions .
I know I have the best listeners , All right , so what is the question for today ?
The question is what strategies do you suggest for balancing client acquisition with delivering quality work , especially when one is a solo operator ? It seems like I spend more and more hours marketing for each new client , and that cuts into my creative slash work time , so what are your thoughts on that ?
One . I think this is probably more a scheduling issue than a marketing issue . Scheduling can be really hard for people who come from the corporate world , where everything's nine to five or eight to five and then all of a sudden you have all of this time and we forget to block time for work . So time blocking is huge for me . This is what I personally do .
I have specific days that have specific goals , that have specific blocks of time for client work , and that's when it happens . And then Fridays , because I know by Friday I'm pretty much dead . I have a giant block of time that I focus on business marketing and business tasks . Can I use some of that for client work ? If I'm running behind ?
Yes , but I try to make that an exception rather than a rule . But I really block out specific time for specific types of work and then within that time , I use a tool called Llama . Have you seen that ? It's pretty awesome .
No , not familiar with it .
It lives in your browser and you can put what tasks you want to accomplish in there , set a time limit on them and it will flash a red alert whenever you approach that time or have gone past it . And when you click off a task it celebrates with you . There's confetti and a little dancing llama and it makes me happy .
But within my time blocking , I try to say structured . Sometimes I have four hours today for client work and I know I'm going to be writing for all four of those hours . But if I don't schedule breaks , I don't take them . So I still schedule my time .
I give myself leeway if I go over , if I missed a break or if I'm in the groove and I don't want to take a break , but I still block my weeks out . Someone once said to me if you're not scheduling your time , your time is scheduling you .
And it's such a weird statement , but it makes sense because that's how you lose time is by not knowing what happens . I'm also time blind , so I forget that time is passing , especially when I'm doing a creative pursuit .
So if I don't have something like an Apple Watch or a program on my browser that flashes red and says , theresa , you need to get up and take a drink or you need to take a snack break , then I really struggle with that . So time blocking . Very important Part of my time blocking is marketing and we mentioned earlier this week .
The biggest part of my marketing is relational , so it's finding my clients , interacting with them on social media , touching base with people that I've worked with before , see if there are any new referrals out there , and then I spend less time on the marketing tasks that I don't like , like LOIs , because they make me incredibly uncomfortable and my best clients come
from relational . So figure out what works for you , leverage your time on those things and then spend less time on the other things . The important thing , I think , is to make sure you're doing it every single week . Some people do it every day and that's what works for your schedule . Then do that . How do you handle it , ed ?
Well , first of all , we're very much aligned when it comes to I don't like to use the term time management , because you can't manage time , you can only manage yourself , so I like to call it focus management . Good point , right , because all we need is more periods of focus . So how do you manage your focus in , more specifically , your energy ?
I'm big into getting clear on your energy levels and how to fluctuate during a day . So not just you mentioned the flow of your week , but also during the day , and I have tracked this and it's just all anecdotal , it's not scientific , but I can basically chart how my energy fluctuates and what I do is based on that .
I schedule tasks during certain times of the day that are appropriate for that kind of energy and it works beautifully for me . So , and that's for everybody , if you take the time to do that , because you're gonna be able to get into a flow state much more easily for any one of those tasks if you have the right kind of energy .
I also love what you said about basically time blocking and having , I call it , themes for your days , so knowing when you're gonna do certain activities like marketing and batching , clustering tasks , doing really nice focus sessions like you talked about . I have very specific . I work in two hour increments with a big break in the middle .
So all those things I've always said look , give me your schedule , let me sit next to you . I guarantee you I can find 30% productivity improvements overnight . I mean , I know that sounds crazy , but literally I can help you in a day or two . We can get you 30% . So that takes care of a big part . So I'll talk a little bit more about the marketing side .
One is you need to systemize what you do and when you do it . You talked about the when , but let's talk a little bit about what you do . So obviously this person is already doing quite a bit of marketing . It sounds like and that's the problem is like this takes a lot of time . Well , free up some time , but then , okay , focus on what's working .
I'd be honest with yourself what seems to be working more than something else , even if it's not what other people say you should be doing . If it's working for you , yeah , and just do more of that , okay . So systemize what you do , systemize and standardize when you do it , and you need to treat it very methodically .
I focus more on the consistent execution of certain tasks than I do on the outcomes . I'll give you a quick example . Outside of this , everyone that tries to meditate wonders am I meditating right ? Am I doing it right ? Am I doing it right ? And if you , that's your concern . You're never going to do it right .
So what I do is I don't really care if I'm doing it right . I sit there with my eyes closed , focusing on my breathing using a guided meditation app , but very limited guidance . I just care about maintaining my win streak , my run streak .
I want to make sure that I'm doing this every single day , that I can check the box , and if you just focus on checking the boxes consistently , day after day , week after week , then it just becomes so much easier . If you do that , the result will come . But if you obsess over the outcomes , that's going to be really difficult .
And then the last thing I would say is you need to have a rule in terms of how much time you're going to spend on it , and I'm big on percentages . For that , I say allocate 10% of your work week , which is great , because that adjusts , no matter how much time you put into your business . If you put in 40 , 45 hours , guess what .
That's four to five hours a week . If you only work 20 hours a week , then that's two hours a week . But commit to that and then have a plan for how you're going to use that time , which would be the obvious next step from that it's don't just OK , I'm going to spend four hours this week . Great On what ? When is it scheduled ?
Is there an alert set to it ? And , by the way , are you willing to treat those time blocks like your wooded doctor's appointment ? And if you do all those things , the stuff is going to happen , it's going to get done . Bottom line your business .
Time is important . Working on client work is important . Don't underestimate the importance and say , well , I could just do it later . Treat it like an appointment . I set appointments in my calendar . I have appointments for specific work and it has to happen .
Then , like tomorrow , I am working on a case study and it's blocked out already and that's when I have to work on it . So I'll hold myself to that . Now , if you're not following Ed on LinkedIn , you should be number one . But , ed , a week or so ago , like I said , I'm time blind .
You talked about rating your clients and I was so intrigued with that and I'm going to start doing it . So if you're my client , please know I'm providing or I'm assigning you a value from now on . But when it comes to marketing to your clients , how does that rating kind of play into that ?
Do you say these types of clients are usually rated higher because of specific things , so I'm going to market more closely to them , or does that even play a role at all ?
Well , if we're talking about clients or prospects , so existing clients
¶ Impact of Existing Clients on Prospects
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Yeah , do your existing clients and their quality impact who you're looking at as prospects ?
Oh , absolutely , because I'm trying to model that and I'm trying to find more like them and if I really understand who my ideal client is and the ideal , you never quite achieve that . To me , the ideal has always been kind of an amalgamation of these people , who , that there's no single person who embodies all of these qualities .
But I use that as my guide and I'm looking for more people like them and it absolutely shapes who I go after . And fortunately , some of these factors are invisible , right ? Nobody is raising their hand or putting something on their LinkedIn profile saying how great they are to work with because of these reasons , right ?
So you have to kind of look at outside factors and then make a determination . But it's not until you get into that first conversation . That's when you really know and that's when you can ask better questions because you know what you're looking for .
Right and those initial conversations . It all comes back to relationships , but one of the ways I think that we can really make our marketing time more effective is by looking at the clients we already have , that we really enjoy working with and finding more clients specifically like them .
We know who they are , we know what they respond to , we already know how they work and we can directly apply that to our marketing whether it's building those relationships , interacting with people on social media or even what you say when you send someone an email to make it more effective .
So build on what already works , like you had already said , but consider who the clients are as people and your rating system , if you have one , and make sure you incorporate that into your marketing in some way , and I think it'll make it much more effective . All right , that was day three with Ed Gandia . Come back tomorrow for day four .