What to do when you don’t have enough clients

Many… no, make that most… solo pros have fewer clients than we would like. Business would just be a little easier if there was a larger number of potential clients waiting in the wings (or booking calls in your calendar), wouldn’t it?

The interesting thing, then, is what you do when you’re in that situation.

What I’ve noticed is, most solo pros will do anything other than talk to people. They’ll spend hours reorganising their website. Or write a few more posts for LinkedIn. Or agonise over the wording of a newsletter for an entire day.

It’s not that websites, LinkedIn and newsletters aren’t important; they are! It’s that by spending our time in asynchronous, indirect communication, we’re massively deflating our opportunity to create impact for people.

Mathematically, it’s much less helpful to make 1000 people 0.0001% more likely to buy from you if, with the same effort, it’s possible to make one person 80% more likely to buy from you.

When you don’t have enough clients, your first step should be to talk to people. Try to find yourself in direct, synchronous communication with at least one person every day, and I reckon you’ll find more clients on your books within weeks at most.