Jess SOLO episode
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[00:00:00] Hello, you're listening to She's the Business podcast. Today, the story of how a client once tried to blackmail me, and what happened next changed the trajectory of my entire business ever since. Hello, I'm your host, , Jessica Osborne. I'm a marketing coach and strategist, , for women who sell their expertise.
You may be a coach, you might be a practitioner, you might be a consultant, but that is who I help to have a relevant message, the right offer, and a repeatable sales system. The three Rs that I firmly believe in what you need to have a profitable, sustainable business that fits your life, what you want to do, is successful, fulfilling, and gives you the freedom to live the way you want.
I started this podcast to enable more women to have a voice that others [00:01:00] can hear, to share their insights, to share expertise, and to share them for the rest of us, for people just like you and I. So this podcast is made by women, for women. It's a daily dose of motivation and inspiration, covering everything that you need to be successful as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and live your best life.
So I hope you enjoy it. All right, today's episode. I decided to tell a bit of a story. I was talking, or interviewing actually, recently for this podcast, a storytelling expert, and you know, she mentioned a few things. And while I was listening to her I thought, "You know what? I always thought I didn't have any crazy stories or any mic drop moment ty- type of things," , but actually I do.
I do have a couple of wacky things that have happened to me on my business journey. My first business I started back in 2010, , back in the days, you know, when people were sort of [00:02:00] doing websites and SEO and there was not much happening on Facebook, 'cause Facebook was only three years old, so not a lot of businesses on Facebook back then.
, And you know, things were very different to how they are now. , Fast-forward a couple of years into that business, and one day, I, I remember it exactly. I remember I was in my kitchen getting a cup of coffee. I had a little baby, my son, who was around. I probably was a little bit sleep-deprived. And I got this email from a customer literally attempting to blackmail me.
She wanted to get around the policies that were in place, the, the return and refund policy. She thought, "You know what? I don't like that rule and I'm going to try to blackmail this person into giving me," you know, whatever she wanted. And in that moment, I sat there stunned that this person could be so [00:03:00] bra- ugh This person could be so brazen, especially after the huge lengths I had gone to make sure that she was happy, to actually provide a service that was above and beyond.
And she had been a difficult customer the whole time, and then to get this. I thought, "That is the final straw." And I actually stood there for a minute thinking, "Is this it? Is this the sign? Like, is my business over? Do I have to close it down? I don't know if I can continue." , I was in the doom and gloom, , after that.
I was angry, frustrated, , but, you know, I let my emotions ride for a day or two. Thought, "Okay, we'll see what comes out of this." And, , I wasn't going to submit to her demands, let's just say that, , because she was being quite unreasonable. And, you know, i- in the end, I came to a resolution. I decided I was just going to let it go.
I was going to, , you know, play a part in it, [00:04:00] mostly just to get rid of this client. And I also came to the understanding of something very important, and that was not all clients are great clients. And I'd had some amazing ones, and then here was this person who was despicable Through nothing that, you know, that wasn't a, a normal, , scenario at all.
I'd had mostly great clients, but, you know, I, I started to reflect and I thought, "There is something that's happened here. I have attracted this person into my world." And in that moment, I realized that I needed to choose my clients. That was 100% something I had not done. I'd been taking on anyone who, you know, got in touch and wanted to, to work with me, and up to that point, I'd thought that that was the right way to do it.
I thought, you know, there's [00:05:00] a customer, they want you to serve them, you say yes, and that's kind of how I'd always been trained, right? The customer's always right, always say yes, serve them to the best of your ability. But, you know, I thought if this happened again, I don't even wanna be in this business. I don't want to be doing this stuff.
This is not fun to deal with somebody who's just so crazily entitled beyond, beyond entitled. Like, she wanted to have the cake, the cake box, and the entire cake shop. , And was threatening. You know, what sort of person does, would that sort of thing? And that was the moment I decided I have to choose my clients.
I didn't know how I was gonna do that, but I went back to sort of my foundational pieces of the business and thought, "I'm going to really look at my positioning, at my offer, and what am I putting out there that is attracting this kind of person?" Even though, [00:06:00] yes, she was a once-off, I didn't have multiple people trying to blackmail me.
But, you know, this quality of person has been attracted, and, , it was very obvious when I started to look, and I thought, "You know what? I can fix this straight away." I know who I want to attract. I had had some amazing clients. I'm like, "I want more of them." And I decided I would focus my business on the, the 5% of clients that I really wanted.
They high quality, they would pay really good premium rates, they were very great to deal with. A great pleasure, fulfilling for everybody. You know, they were happy, I was happy. That's what makes a happy business. And with some changes that I made to my offering and then to how I was positioning and putting it out there, you know, the way that I was, , even inviting people into my business changed, and with it changed the people who showed up, and that was such a moment.
I had been on the brink of literally closing my [00:07:00] business down, thinking I'm not gonna run it anymore, and within a month, maybe six weeks, it had changed remarkably And I was able to put that little experience to the side and say, "Well, that was fun. , I hope that never, ever happens again." But what happened was, this was in my first business, so it wasn't what I do now.
I was providing a service to, to clients. And in, when I started coaching, you know, I thought, "I need to be specific here as well. I, I really want to invite in the right clients." And guess what? Even though I had that lesson, I didn't get it right straight away. I still got it wrong a little bit to begin with of my first couple of years.
And in that time, what I was doing behind the scenes was actually adjusting[00:08:00]
And in that time, what I was doing behind the scenes was adjusting my Profile. I, I built out a very specific profile of who my ideal client was. Not just who they were, but why they were going to buy, where they were right now, all of this detail that allowed me to really understand where they're at, what's going on in their head, what's stopping them from taking action, what was stopping them from saying yes, and what would actually get them to say yes.
Like, what it was that was gonna stop them in that indecision, sitting on the fence, procrastinating, and actually get them to say, "I'm doing this. Let's do it," right? So I built out a, a profile, and I kept on adjusting it as I learned, as I had more lessons, more learnings, more insights over the first [00:09:00] couple of years of this business.
Until I got to a point where I was like, "This profile and the questions that I've asked and what I'm answering is spot on." And I was using it with my clients as well to help them with their business, because I'm a marketing coach. That's what I do, is help you to un- really understand who the right customer is for you and how to attract them.
Now, you don't know how to attract them unless you're very, very clear on exactly who that is. And to be honest, a lot of people think they're clear until they get into this level of detail with me, and they're like, "Oh, I don't know." Like, "Okay, we need to talk about this." And they'd never answered these questions before.
They hadn't even thought about them. And that's why one of my, you know, I put this into a tool that they use. I called it my I- Ideal Client Avatar Worksheet, you know, really fancy name there, obviously. , But the number of people who were working with me that told me, "This is just not like anything I've [00:10:00] ever seen before," I created it as something that other people could download, and I actually have it as a free download right now on my website.
It has been for a number of years. I'm about up to 10 years running this business, and this tool has been available for at least seven of them. , And it's my most popular download by f- a long shot. L- so many people get it. And I actually had someone recently who joined me on a podcast as a guest, and they said they found me years ago through my tool, this custom avatar profiling, , worksheet, and that they've recommended it to so many people, , because they're like, "This is by far the best one" that they'd ever seen.
And I thought, "Wow, that's really interesting, isn't it?" So great to hear that feedback. , And that's why, you know, if you're somebody who thinks, "Maybe I'm not choosing my clients. Maybe I need to get more specific about who I'm actually reaching out to to pull in," because [00:11:00] it's not, a paying customer is not a paying customer is not a paying customer.
They're not all the same. You do want to get the ones who are the right fit for you and are going to help you have a- Profitable, enjoyable, fulfilling business, , then you need to do this level of profiling. It's something that I love doing with people because helping them to kind of take pieces of information and then envisage it as an actual person, put, , a personality to it, you know, really get inside the head of the person and, and feel where they are, see where they are, it means that you're able to meet them in the place that they are right now, which is not where they wanna be, right?
If you're a coach, you're a consultant, you help people to solve a problem. You help them get to an outcome that they're not able to get to by themselves. So they're in what I would like to call on island number A. They want to be on island number B, and there's a whole lot of water in between. So how are you gonna get them there?
Well, you need to design a method to get [00:12:00] them from the island they're on to the island they want to get to, and that is what understanding your client, and obviously the offer that you put together, is the piece that bridges the gap. This is why these two things are so intertwined. People say to me, "Oh, I can find my niche," or, "I do my profiling," and then they just go and put together as, an offer based off what other people are doing out there.
I'm like, "No, no, these things are combined together. They are interrelated. They are woven into one strategy." So for, for it to work well, of course, you can try the other way if you want to, but for it to work well. So understanding the person first, absolute first and foremost. You cannot build a successful offer if you don't really know who you're building it for.
You don't know what it is that is going to work for them, that's going to be what they actually really are looking for. , And you know, a lot of people say, "Well, go out and ask what do people want?" People don't always actually know what they want. They want [00:13:00] a person who can tell them what they need usually, because if they already knew it, they would be doing it.
They would've found a way. Most of the time people want the solution. They know where they wanna get to, they just don't know the best way to get there, and that's where you come in. So- You can download my customer avatar profiling, , worksheet, which is on my website right now. You can head over there.
It's under the freebies section. I'll drop the link in the show notes, , for you so you can go straight to it. , And if you love your AI, what I did recently was built an AI agent that goes along with it. So you can... If you're wanting to upgrade and, and have AI kind of actually create the visual profile for you based on the answers that you give in the profiling worksheet, then you can use my AI agent to do that.
So it's gonna take what you've said and create insights for you, deeper [00:14:00] insights that you may or may not come to yourself, but that's what the agent is for. So it's gonna give you a really rich profile, , which is beautiful, and all based off your input. So this is not something standard. It's not going to exist anywhere else.
It's literally your own unique profiler for your ideal client, and the agent is just gonna help make that a little bit easier for you, speed the process up, and, , and maybe present you with a few things that you may not have thought of yourself. So you can get that on the website, on my website right now.
, It is honestly the best thing that I ever did for my business was deciding to change to focus on who I wanted to bring in Before that, it had been a business that was kind of running along. There was a, you know, there's some profit happening. But once I changed and actually targeted a specific type of client that was right for me, [00:15:00] my business more than doubled, and I was able to hire a business manager who looked after the business for me.
It was still profitable. I still paid myself as well as a whole another person. , And that literally came from that exact change because I stopped being for people who, like, liked me or who wanted to come and work with me and started to go, "You know what? Not all of you are the ones that I want." I really wanted to raise that bar, raise the level, , and by raising that, then it also attracted the clients that were the right sort for my business and ultimately made it far more profitable in the same amount of time.
So you can do the same thing. Every business, I think, can often improve their customer targeting, improve who it is that you're, you're talking to. , Very rarely do I see somebody who's absolutely 100% nailed it and doesn't need to change anything. , Usually there's a lot of breadth and scope [00:16:00] out there that you could tailor and tweak to have more success in reaching the right people.
That's what the profiler helps you to do, helps you to be clear so that they can be clear that you're right for them. , So go grab it. Grab your copy of it, download it now, and enjoy. I'd love to hear from you if you use it, what your thoughts are. Is it, you know, how does it differ to what you've done before?
What new things have you discovered about your ideal client that you didn't even realize was relevant? , And then what are the results? You know, what's happened in your business since you started implementing it? I would love to hear from you and hear back any feedback that you have on the profiler and the agent if you decide to, to use the AI agent as well.
That's it from me. I will be back again next week with an amazing guest episode. Speak to you then. Bye.
