3 - The Client Audit

Welcome to the client audit. In this video, I'm going to walk you through how to examine your existing and past clients in order to probe for hidden anomalies for these blue oceans defined by higher level benefits and shared sets of values, even lifestyles that you can expand into, position your business around, and absolutely dominate the benefits for years and years to come. So this is like asking

what blue oceans have you sailed before. If you're in this course, you've been in the ocean, you didn't just set phone in the ocean, and shortly you've had some patches, hopefully you've had some patches of just smooth sailing. Or you just had customers that paid you a lot of money, and then you absolutely loved working with it. If not, we'll talk about that in the next video.

That's okay. But most of you will have had this, and so I want to tap into it. What blue oceans have you sailed before? Let's go find those. You know, we don't have to spend a ton of time looking for a blue ocean if you already know of one. Let's find the ones you've already traveled. The easiest place to find blue oceans is your existing and past

clients. I know. Shocker. Surprising. The easiest place to find blue oceans is oceans you've already sailed, your existing and past clients. So let's dive into. So here is the problem. Here is the problem that this exercise solves. Not all of your current clients have the same ability to pay or willingness to pay. Some of them don't care about price, you know, price is no object, they just

want the best service. Some of them do care about price. In fact, some of you watching this might have customers that are downright stingy when it comes to price. They try to cut costs at every corner and negotiate you down and get good deals and stuff like that. So not all of your current clients have the same ability to pay. And if we're going to hone in

on certain clients of yours, we want to make sure they can pay. We want to make sure that we focus on the ones that can pay, find out who is the most ability and willingness to pay. Now, not all of your current clients offer the same level of fulfillment and impact. Some of them you love working with. I hope if not, we can find ones that you

love working with and we will, we need to. But most of you watching this will have some clients or a client that you just love, you just love working with. You know, you worked a lot for them. You can feel the positive impact that you're creating and it offers a ton of fulfillment and impact. Again, if some of your clients present in past offer more fulfillment than

others and we're focusing in on a certain set of clients, we want to focus in on them. So we want to find the segment of your current clients and existing clients and past clients that has a high ability to pay and offers impact and fulfillment. We want to find an overlap of them. If we can find this, then it could be a great market to build a

blue ocean around. If you can't find this, that's okay. In the next video, I talk about how to engineer it from the ground up, but the easiest way to do it is to pull it from your existing clientele. So here's the solution. We want a niche that has high ability and willingness to pay you. They got plenty of cash and they want to spend it on you.

We want client work that is highly fulfilling and has a positive impact. Again, most people in this course will care more about legacy than simply about currency. So you want work that has a positive impact and that fulfills you that you enjoy. Or because later on, you're going to be managing most of it and not delivering most of it. If any of it, you want work that

you can sit in bed and I'm thinking, you know, my business, my agency does good in this world. So your niche, the area that you've chosen to focus on and dominate and turn into a blue ocean should be in this sweet spot that generates tremendous wealth and fulfillment and impact at the same time. Now most businesses never consciously engineer this. They do not proactively go out and

create this. It's another way to differentiate yourself. Most businesses, again, follow other boats, other businesses into their oceans and just crowd up the ocean and they don't ever sit back and think, what ocean do I want? Where will I have tremendous wealth, tremendous fulfillment and tremendous impact at the same time? We want to consciously engineer this and the easiest way to do that is from your existing

clients. So here's the process and we've got a worksheet for this. We want to list all of your current clients and group them into as many segments as possible based on commonalities. Now you're first going to do this by saying the most natural way to do this is by saying, okay, well, these all bought this service and these all pay me this or maybe these companies are

dentists, these companies are plumbers and they're different, et cetera. That's going to be the obvious ways. Now I also want you to group them into non-obvious segments. For example, some of my best clients of all time have meditated. That's not a way you typically define an itch, entrepreneurs who meditate, but I noticed it was a trend and I made it one of my qualifying attributes. People who

meditate, who have a meditation practice tend to do very, very, very well with me. Part of it is because just meditation creates amazing human beings, part of it is because I meditate a lot. They resonate with them a lot. Part of it is probably stuff I haven't consciously identified, but for whatever reason, people who meditate do really well with me. You want to find hidden commonalities like

this. Group them into as many segments as possible. Then put a star next to those that pay. Somebody who just opens the floodgates and cash comes pouring on you, put a star next to them and then put a check, some different simple next to those that offer fulfillment and impact. Any segments that have both a star and a check that fulfill both criteria are potential blue oceans

for you to own and dominate and build a lifestyle, brand based around a higher level of benefit and shared values. You want to find segments that offer both fulfillment and impact and that pay you plenty. Now, if none of your current clients or existing clients fulfill the criteria or they do but you still want to pivot, you feel a need to enter into a new market, that's

okay. In the next video, we'll show you other ways to identify blue oceans. There are other ways. They take a little bit more like work but you can do them. The easiest way is your existing clients which is why we start with that. You don't want to just sail into the unknown in search of a blue ocean. Again, you want to use existing validation in some way.

You don't want to piggyback off of it and bump into it but you want to use existing validation to tie it into the metaphor of following boats into a blue ocean. You don't want to just follow them. You don't want to just pick your existing clients and say that's my niche but you do want to hone in on existing clients, past clients that pay you a lot

and that you love working with because those just could be your blue ocean and then you could be done with it and you can find their secrets and your sailing head. You want to use past experiences to shortcut the process if possible. If not, again, that's okay but this is the fastest way. That's it and I will see you in the next video. Let's go audit those

clients.