Client Acquisition

How to keep your practice from stalling: get as good at winning clients as you are at the work. Being brilliant in the room won't make payroll on its own... took me years to learn that. Full conversation: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA …more

The 24-hour close made her cringe every time. Elizabeth Greenfield's fix wasn't a better script... it was trading selling for service: just helping someone see if you fit. Want to talk it through? https://calendly.com/foclarity/30min …more

What did nobody teach you about going out on your own? For most it's winning clients. I got that wrong for years too, across four exits, one as a founder, three as an advisor. Book 30 free minutes, bring one question, get honest feedback: https://calendly.com/foclarity/30min …more

How far are you making a future client travel to find you? I spent years asking people to come to me... took me too long to just go where they already are. That's Inspiring Founders — the room your clients are already in: https://inspiringfounders.com …more

You think the thing holding your practice back is that you don't have enough. Enough budget. Enough network. Enough runway to survive a mistake. I've told myself that story too. Then I listened to Saeed Amidi, founder of Plug and Play. Early on, he flew to Jeddah with a borrowed suit, his father's credit card, and money for exactly one trip. No safety net. No plan to come home empty-handed. In his words: "I'm not coming back till I sell something." Having no Plan B didn't slow him down. It focused him. He stretched that one trip into 45 days and closed his first two deals. Comfort never makes you that sharp. Constraint does. Watch Saeed tell it himself here: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA. It's the clearest case I've seen for why fewer resources can make you more resourceful, not less. What constraint have you been treating as an obstacle that might actually be your edge? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent …more

“Vitamin or pain killer?” - advisors love to ask this question about your product. And they love to tell you it has to be a pain killer, because it’s easier to sell. But the truth is less about pain and more about understanding your customer. When I was 23 I worked at Threshold, one of the largest distributors of vitamins and supplements to the industry. They easily sold hundreds of millions of dollars every year into supplement stores all over the country. What made them special wasn’t their inventory. It was their sales organization. Every sales rep would spend time on the phone with their customers, they knew them by name, they talked like old friends. But more than that they spent time educating. And in turn their customers, the shop owners, educated their own customers. What they created was an environment of conscious empathy and learning for people who didn’t want pain killers. So here’s the question for your business: Are you chasing the same customers as all your competitors? The ones looking for pain killers? Or are you building a community that’s tired of popping pills and wants a real, long-term solution? Selling “vitamins” isn’t bad, it’s just very different from selling “pain killers” …more

Why isn't more content winning you more clients? Often it's not a marketing gap... it's fuzzy positioning nobody can repeat. See how I'd untangle it: https://mashley.com …more

For a month I've been sharing what I've learned about going out on your own — positioning, reputation, winning clients without feeling salesy. Here's the part that only works in a real conversation. So I'm opening my calendar. Book 30 minutes and ask me anything about your business. Your positioning. A stuck offer. Why the right clients aren't finding you. Whatever is actually on your mind this week. Let me be clear about what this is and isn't. It is not a discovery call in disguise. No pitch, no slide deck, no "and that's why you should hire me" at minute 28. You bring a real problem, I bring 25 years of building companies and a habit of finding the root fast. You walk away with a quick win or two and a clearer read on where you stand. It's for coaches, consultants, and advisors who are brilliant at the work and building a practice of their own. The people who were never taught the client-winning part, because inside an organization the work found you and the brand vouched for you. Out here, that's the part nobody handed you a manual for. Why free? Because a month of value earns it, and because the best way to know if we'd work well together is to actually work together for half an hour. No commitment beyond that. Book 30 minutes with me — link in the first comment. And if you're on the fence: what's the one question about your business you'd bring to a conversation like this? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Solopreneur #GoingIndependent #Positioning …more

Your first clients came easy. That's exactly why the next ones feel impossible. When you went independent, the phone rang. A former colleague needed help. Someone who'd watched you work for years passed your name along. Within a few months you had your first handful of clients, and it felt like proof the whole thing would work. Here's what actually happened. You didn't build a way to win clients. You cashed in years of goodwill, all at once. Every person who'd seen you deliver inside the org, every bit of trust you'd earned over a career, converted into work the moment you were available to hire. That's a stockpile, not a pipeline. A stock is finite. It draws down. You spend it faster than you notice, because it arrived without any effort you could repeat. When it runs low, there's nothing underneath to refill it. The well was full the day you started on your own. It doesn't refill on its own. A pipeline is different. It refills because you built the thing that fills it. Two parts do most of that work. Positioning people can repeat. Your old network vouched for you from memory. Strangers can't. If someone can't say in one sentence what you do and who it's for, the recommendation stops at "they're great" — which wins no one. Visibility beyond your circle. The people who already know you are a fixed number. Growth lives with the people who don't, and they only find you if you're somewhere they can watch how you think. The trap isn't that you did anything wrong. The first wave working is the very thing that convinces you nothing needs to change. Then it quietly runs dry, and it looks like the market cooled, when really the well just emptied. Genuine question: how did your first three clients actually find you, and has that kept working? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #Positioning #PersonalBrand …more

I will build a free website for any new coach or consultant who subscribes to Radi8 this month. For most coaches and consultants going out on their own, the website is the thing that never gets done. You know it matters. It's where a referral goes to size you up before they ever reach out. But it sits at the bottom of the list, behind actual client work — half-built, and saying a fraction of what you'd say if someone asked you across a table. But a website isn't decoration. It's evidence. It's where the market watches how you think before they decide to book a call. When it's vague, the people most likely to hire you quietly move on, and you never see it happen. So this month I'm doing something about it. Anyone who subscribes to Radi8 this month, I'll build the website myself, no charge. Radi8 keeps you visible and posting consistently. The site gives that work a home the right clients can actually find. This isn't a blank template you look wrestle with alone. We get the positioning right first — who you help and what changes for them — then I build a site that carries it. If yours has been on the someday list, consider this the nudge. Details and link in the first comment. What's the one thing your current website fails to say about the work you actually do? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Positioning #PersonalBrand #GoingIndependent …more

For most people who go out on their own, the first clients come easy. A former colleague. Someone from the old company. A friend who says "you should talk to my boss." It feels like word of mouth is working, and it convinces you that you'll never need marketing. Then, somewhere in year one or two, it goes quiet. Here's what actually happened. Those first clients weren't a pipeline. They were accumulated goodwill — twenty years of people who already knew your work, converting all at once. A one-time asset. Every engagement draws it down, and nothing automatic puts new names in. That's the real source of feast-or-famine: treating a finite stock of warm contacts like a renewable one. Refilling the well takes three things. Positioning people can repeat. "He's great" sends you nobody, because your network can't finish the sentence. Give them the version they can pass along: who you help, and with what. Visibility beyond your circle. A public body of work lets strangers build trust the way your old colleagues did, by watching how you think over time. A reason to be remembered this month. Staying quietly excellent means being quietly forgotten. Consistency keeps you on the list when someone's moment of need arrives. Word of mouth remains the best way to win clients. Building the system that generates it is the actual work. If you've made the leap: how long did your first wave of clients last, and what did you do when it slowed? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #ConsultingBusiness …more

We're halfway through the year. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what's actually worked in my marketing vs. what I thought would. Here's my honest take. What I expected to work: a polished content calendar, consistent posting across multiple channels, well-designed assets. What actually moved the needle: direct conversations that started from a single, specific LinkedIn post that named an exact pain point my audience was feeling. The post wasn't clever. It wasn't visually interesting. It was just specific and true. It got more inbound messages than anything I'd posted in the previous three months combined. The lesson I keep relearning: marketing feedback loops are much shorter than founders think. You can know within 30 days whether a message is working — if you're watching the right signal. Not follower count. Not impressions. Conversations started. That's the metric I watch now above everything else. How many people responded to something I wrote and said "this is exactly what I'm dealing with"? That's the leading indicator that content is building pipeline. The other thing that worked: teaching something specific in every post instead of sharing opinions. Opinions get likes. Teaching gets DMs. DMs become customers. My Inspiring Founders community on Skool is where I share what I'm learning as I learn it — if you want to follow along, join us. It's free: https://www.skool.com/inspiring-founders-5861/about …more