table of funtents

1. 👋🏼 it’s me, hi

2. 🎉 how I landed my first (ideal) client

   1. 💩 all the things we need to get wrong

   2. 🤝 the story

3. 🚀 your challenge

👋🏼 it’s me, hi

PSA MISFITS (!!!!)

It’s Pisces season - meaning I’ll be that girl for the next month 🐠

To the 6% of minority misfit readers who marked themselves as Pisceans in our welcome survey, IT’S OUR BIRTHDAY ERA Y’ALL 🫶🏼

Now I won’t shout my exact birthday out because let’s just say - you’ll know.

Fun fact: did you know there’s still an ongoing debate about how to pronounce Pisces? Peeps will find anything to argue about these days.

ICYMI: last week’s episode was all about how f*cking up tests our systems for scale - using my recent f*ckup as an example.

Today’s agenda is a throwback for the books: this time last year, I started working with my first ideal client. 

Unfortunately, I think there’s still a LOAD of waffle out there about how founders obtain clients. Today, I’ll share the no BS story of how I landed mine and the critical skills I still apply to prospecting as a result.

I hope they’ll help get you to your first OR next ideal client even faster.

Let’s dive in 🌊

🎉 how I landed my first (ideal) client

It took 6 months to land my first ideal client.

• August 2023: started building keshty

• October 2023: launched it to the world

• February 2024: landed my first ideal client

My gripe is people still bang on about it being easy. There are plenty of predator businesses out there capitalising on founders who aren’t making money, promising results that simply can’t happen overnight.

Here’s what LinkedIn bro + sis will tell ya:

Sooo, wherein lies the actual truth?

💩 all the things we need to get wrong

I’M FLIPPING THE SCRIPT TODAY AND DOING NO BS BEFORE THE STORY (she’s wild).

That’s right, folks: before we hop into what I did right to land my first ideal client, I gotta tell you everything I did wrong to get there.

Because the wrong is just as essential, if not more than the right.

1. only building connections with colleagues

I accidentally doomed myself from the start when I built keshty.

Having been an “OG” at Multiverse for 5+ years, I’d both hired + worked with some of the smartest people on the planet.

Trouble is I neglected any network outside the business for FIVE YEARS.

FIVE YEARS. HALF A DECADE.

Despite the credibility and reputation I’d built at Multiverse, the truth was 95% of those people were still there and couldn’t vouch for me outside the business.

I went out to market with zero social proof, and as a result, I had no choice but to class everyone as a cold sales lead.

2. diluting your own offer

I really, really sucked at communicating my offer at the start. And I think that’s entirely crucial* for as long as it takes until you’re kinda good at it.

*so crucial, in fact, there’s a whole episode on the journey to nailing my offer

My key issues were:

1. as a dynamic, generalist ops leader, I could do a lot of things

2. I was SO keen to get going, I tried to offer something to everyone

Trying to do everything for everyone meant I did nothing for no one.

3. expecting cold leads to hand you all their money

Folks, let me be loud + clear: NO ONE IS RUSHING TO GIVE YOU ALL THEIR MONEY.

The advice everyone and their mothers gave me when I started out was “NEVER do any work for free.”

With this in mind, I actually did end up working for a few paid clients before my ideal one, but it was:

• work I could do, not work I wanted to do

• way below what I should’ve charged

It’s well-intended advice - don’t get me wrong.

But I tried and it simply DID NOT work for my personality. One of my core personal values is to give without expectation, and logically-speaking, I had ZERO MARKET CREDIBILITY at the start.

Ultimately, it didn’t work for me long-term.

I wanted to be a network-driven brand and founder working primarily off referrals:

• when people think “Fractional COO” - I wanted to be on their mind

• when a founder stresses about “scale” - I wanted someone to say “you should speak to Neda” in a room I’m not in

To me, these are repeatable, scalable success metrics.

And they come - inevitably - from giving more than we take.

🤝 the story

Q: so, how did I actually land my first ideal client?

A: by getting all of the above wrong so many times until I started getting things kinda right - especially that last one.

Here’s the story:

I met my first ideal client serendipitously. They were co-hosting an event a friend won free tickets to and took me as her +1.

They were the definition of my ideal client: a minority founder leading a tech-for-good with ambitions to build / scale a team.

After the event, we connected on LinkedIn. I posted loads on scaling high-performing teams, as I do. We engaged with each others’ posts, then agreed to meet for coffee.

And here’s where I almost f*cked myself out of the job.

During coffee, they mentioned feeling the need to hire someone, but were new to building teams and didn’t know where to start. I asked questions about their pains and challenged them on the right role to hire for.

They asked me if I’d written a job spec before (I have - hundreds, in fact) and whether this was something I could do for them.

AND I TOLD THEM THEY’D BE SILLY TO HAVE ME DO IT FOR THEM BECAUSE I’M TOO EXPENSIVE AND WOULDN’T TYPICALLY DO SOMETHING ONE OFF LIKE THIS (???)

Here are just a few things wrong with that answer (JUST A FEW):

1. I thought I was being a beacon of high integrity by not f*cking them into paying me for a job I could do in my sleep

2. I’M TOO EXPENSIVE FOR WHAT I DIDN’T HAVE ANY LEGIT CLIENTS (???)

3. I didn’t realise this was the perfect in to quickly solving ONE pain point on their mind, then once trust is established, working on others

I left coffee and headed to dinner with a friend, who I proceeded to explain this story to.

Friend: “Just do the job spec for free. You can bash one out in 20 minutes.”

Me: “I’ve been told not to do ANYTHING for free.”

Friend: “But this is your ideal client - what if this one free thing leads to months of working together? They don’t know you and can’t vouch for working with you - this is your opportunity to show how them how effectively you deliver high-quality results.”

So I bit the bullet and arranged a second coffee.

“Why don’t we meet again and spend 20 minutes just bashing out a spec? It’ll be one less thing on your to-do list, and I seriously enjoy writing them.”

We met up, bashed out the job spec and I left them with a template for future.

“Oh my god - that was so easy. How can we do more of this together?”

And the rest is history.

🚀 your challenge

Getting from 1-7 clients (where I’m at now) has been a snowball.

But 0-1? Killer AND essential.

Now, here’s my challenge to you:

Pick ONE action from below that’ll help future, client-stacked you.

If you’re currently in a full-time role:

1. codify 1 topic you know a lot about (for future content!)

2. ask 3 colleagues to write you a LinkedIn recommendation

3. reach out to 5 cool people on LinkedIn + start building a small network

If you’re currently doing your own thing:

1. ask 1 client for a testimonial

2. pitch your offer to the next 3 people you see + get feedback

3. add free, genuine value via 5 LinkedIn comments on others’ posts

PS: let me know which action you choose moving into March 👀

and that’s a wrap, misfits 🫶🏼

as always, I’m only an email away for questions and future episode ideas. I lurv hearing your thoughts (and genuinely read through every email + poll 🥲).

catch ya next week,

xo neds