The Zero Client Challenge

When I was a new life coach, I was working on my free resource to provide to potential clients (commonly known as a freebie). This is when I wrote the two eBooks in the Downloadables section and when I wrote them I was pretty proud of myself. In the eBooks I mentioned something called the Garbage Post Challenge, which is a concept my sister Simone Grace Seol teaches. After reviewing my work she suggested something to me that I finally got to after two years: why don't you come up with your own challenge instead of referring to mine?

So here it is: The zero-client challenge. The name is like this because this is ideally a challenge for a service provider who have zero clients. When you see "challenges" in social media, they normally require you to do something challenging for a period of time. The unique thing about this challenge is that you do something for a period of time and the challenge is to try and stay at zero clients because as long as you do this, I'm fairly certain you won't stay at zero clients. In other words, this challenge is my best recommendation for any service provider who's starting out.

The challenge is this: Start by setting up your profile with a link to your offer. Then, 

• When: For 108 days, 

• Where: on an online platform where you normally spend time as a consumer,

• Who: on another person's post or comment asking a question, 

• What: comment your answer, and create content based on that answer.

If you spend a lot of time on Facebook as a consumer, you go on Facebook groups you frequent and read through people's posts and comments. When you see a question that you can help with, you provide your answer as if you were providing a paid service to that person. In case the reader wants to read more about your answer and your approach, it helps if you have a more elaborate version of the answer on your profile: so you go ahead and create that on your profile.

Now that we defined the when, where, who, what, now it's time to talk about the how and why.

What is the #1 blocker for a new online service provider? It is that there is no audience. When you ask questions about not having an audience you get the typical answer "you always have an audience". This statement is true because you can always start talking to your existing social network, but depending on your personality your nervous system might not have the capacity to show up to people in a different way they're used to. 

Another blocker for a new online service provider is that they don't know what to talk about. If there was a client in front of you asking specific questions you have no doubt you'd be able to help them. But when nobody's actually in front of you, you just think of vague ideas of thoughts you can talk about but they end up being so vague it sounds pointless. How can you post every day when you don't know what to talk about? How can you just show up when you don't know what to say?

This challenge, by design, removes those two blockers. You build an audience one by one by answering a specific question who actually asked the question. This guarantees AT LEAST one eye on your profile, assuming people ask questions because they want answers. What happens when they read your response? They might...

• Not like it: Good! They weren't your people, and you both found that out by experience. You can cleanly move on to other people and go about your day.

• Love it enough to start following you: Great! Congratulations, you have your first follower!

• Like it, but not enough to start following you: This is still good, and you may lose this person for today. But guess what? You have the next 108 days to show up again and again on this platform and the more they recognize your name, the more they are likely to be your audience.

The challenge part is this: try and stay at zero clients doing this. If your ONLY blocker in getting clients is the specific hurdles of having 0 clients, then this will obliterate those hurdles so you can get to full sprinting. It's not a hurdle jump anymore! Even if you already have clients, how many of us worry about "what if I get no more clients? What if after this contract everyone doesn't renew?"? The great thing about this challenge is, it provides a wonderful safety net for you start building up your client base again. When you have this assurance that you can ALWAYS go back to the zero client challenge, you can proceed in your business with confidence you never thought possible.