A short YouTube interview excerpt in which Ramit Sethi advises Tanya on how to land the first three paying clients. Key recommendations: (1) understand customers by asking them about their experiences and pain points; (2) choose a specific target audience (examples: newlyweds or busy mothers for interior decorating); (3) reach them via friends and family referrals, Craigslist ads, or by hosting free talks at community events. The segment emphasizes using concrete language tailored to each audience when pitching.
So how do we get the word out then? How do we get those three paying clients that we have no contact with?
Okay, so you want to. In order to get these clients, you need to understand them. Now I'm going to just give you an example. Let's say that you are really good at interior decorating, right? You know how to put a place together. You know how to use furniture. It looks beautiful. So you want to figure out how to turn that skill into income. What I would do is I would start off by talking to some of my friends and say, hey, I'm thinking of starting this idea. You know, you recently moved into a new place. How was that? Was it painful? Were there any things that you didn't like doing? Would you ever consider paying someone to help you? All of a sudden now you've got ideas, now you're speaking their language, and now you know, you have clues on how you can turn your skill into income.
So how should we approach answering these questions that you propose?
So these, these questions are the ones that are generated by, you know, these people. They're saying like, oh, I don't know, I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about that. Or what I would suggest is first starting off and saying like, who am I targeting? So I'm going to ask you a question, Tanya. Let's say that you are that interior decorator. You're really good. You think you can earn some money. Who do you think your customer is?
Hmm. Well, I would say maybe newlyweds who are moving into their first apartment and have no idea how to integrate the. His. Her furniture that's coming in.
Beautiful. That is a great. So that's a great idea. That might be one. Another one might be, let's say a 40 year old, 40 to 50 year old mother, right. Who's really busy, works somewhere and just moved into a new house. She needs it to be decorated, she wants it to look good. She doesn't have time. So either one of those are great. Now you know who you're going after. And now you can start speaking their language because those two audiences speak very different languages.
Okay, so now that we know who our customer is, how do we go about finding solutions to their specific problem?
Yep. So you want to know, first of all, where are these people hanging out? And I'm going to give you three ideas. Three ideas for where you could reach these people. One is just friends and family. Like you might say, you know, tanya, hey, like I have some friends. Do you know any newlyweds who are moving into a new place. So you'd be surprised how many referrals you get that way. 2. Craigslist. Anytime I'm looking for something, I need some help. Sometimes I'll post an ad on Craigslist and I get a flood of responses. And then this is a third one. This is a little bit different. You can actually, if you know a community center or you know something that's going on with newlyweds, like a newlywed event, you could throw a little free talk saying how to decorate your first home, and all of a sudden they're coming to you instead of you having to go to them.
And so I think I'm beginning to get, get the feel of it here. I'm getting the gist of it. So you want to be with your pitch as specific as possible. You want to say, you know, are you newlyweds and you can't figure out how to integrate his ratty couch with your floral wallpaper? Come and I'll show you how.
That's exactly right. And that is going to speak exactly to that newlywed audience. Whereas the 40 to 50 year old mother, it's not going to speak to her at all. That's good. You want to be as specific as possible.
