A couple weeks ago I talked to a dude, a successful marketer.
On the one hoof, he sells courses and coaching via his email list. On the other, he does bespoke done-for-you work for clients.
I asked him how he gets his done-for-you clients. Are these people who are part of his audience, and just kept ascending from course buyer to coaching student to DFY client?
Turns out no. In the dude’s words:
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It’s funny because the bespoke clients that I’ve worked for or have on retainer, they always come by referral.
They always have. I’ve been in business since 2010 and the big whale clients, they come by way of some sort of referral.
Whether that’s a past client of mine referred them, a vendor referred them, a colleague, somebody like that.
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I’m telling you this because I’m finishing up my first-ever Most Valuable Offer cohort.
I’ve been helping nine people plan, market, and deliver a paid live workshop.
As the first step, I asked them, what’s the next step? In other words, who do they want to attract to this workshop, and what do they want to sell to them afterwards?
One of the participants replied:
“Get more high-quality DTC clients who will implement the work I do for them.”
Well, about that. I’d like to suggest to you, going back to the experience of the successful marketer above, that there are two separate tracks:
A client track and a student track.
Like I said, the two tracks are separate.
At the same time, that doesn’t mean that they are independent.
The two tracks are mutually reinforcing, the same way that train tracks have those wooden sleepers in between them to keep each one in place by connecting it to the other.
Here’s how that works:
DFY client work gives you content, expertise, and standing and with your student audience.
It makes it easier to sell to students and gives you something worthwhile to sell.
The teaching you do via courses and coaching, in turn, gives you reach (including referrals), star glow, and non-neediness when dealing with clients.
It makes it easier to have clients find you instead of you having to prospect… to work with better clients, ones that you like… and to charge more with zero pushback on your rates.
My back-of-the-napkin math is that by having both a client and a student track, you get 500% of the benefit for 75% of the work, compared to having each one alone.
At the moment, I still haven’t finished the current Most Valuable Offer cohort. I am not sure when I will be running the next one.
If you’re interested in creating a Most Valuable Offer yourself, both to monetize your current audience and to make your client work easier, then reply to this email and I’ll put you on the priority list.
At the moment, I’m also not doing any client work.
If you are interested in having me completely handle some projects for you — whether that’s handling daily emails or a weekly newsletter for your business, or advertorials for your cold traffic funnel, or something else you need but I’m not thinking of — then reply to this email and we can talk.