TT121 SEVEN STEPS To Attracting Great Clients with Drake Nightenhelser

Ever thought about the power of saying no to the wrong clients?

Wondered about the secret to landing great clients without draining your energy and resources?

Get ready to explore these questions and more as I dive into an enlightening conversation with client quality consultant, Drake Nightenhelser, author of "Seven Steps to Landing Great Clients."

Join me as I navigate Drake's journey from working with small businesses to becoming a digital nomad, and his unique insights into the pitfalls of accepting all clients, regardless of the potential negative impact on your business.

We'll also delve into Drake's strategies for eliminating unprofitable clients and the significant role of financial stability in this process. Hear about his unique approach to transitioning into a more profitable venture and his cautionary advice against the allure of a "magic pill" for overnight success. Drake shares the importance of surrounding yourself with the right team to foster growth and success, offering real-life examples from his experience transforming a wrap company into an industry leader.

Tune in as we further discuss how to create a unique business experience for clients, exploring everything from the need for transparency in marketing to the value of building solid relationships. I'll examine Drake's proactive approach to eliminating negative client energy, which can impact not just your mood, but your bottom line.

Finally, we'll hear about Drake's upcoming book, his future plans, and how his strategies can help you level up your business. Don't miss this chance to fundamentally transform your approach to client acquisition and business development.

Enjoy!

Ready to get crystal clear on how to start landing great clients?

Head to http://resources.profitcollective.vip/3simplesteps

This training walks you through 3 of Drake's juiciest secrets for landing amazing clients that are a uniquely perfect fit for your business.

You can also purchase Drake's book, 7 Steps to Attracting Great Clients, here:
https://amzn.to/3Fr6Kkz

Links:
Roberto on Instagram http://www.instagram.com/robertorevillalondon
Tailoring Talk on Instagram http://www.instagram.com/tailoringtalkpodcast

Credits
Tailoring Talk Intro and Outro Music by Wataboy on Pixabay
Edited & Produced by Roberto Revilla
Connect with Roberto, head to

Chapters

• 9:41 Business Development and Client Acquisition
• 24:28 Strategies for Cutting Out Bad Clients
• 32:35 Negative Clients Impact Business
• 37:02 Landing Great Clients
• 46:31 Creating a Unique Business Experience
• 57:22 Maximizing Sales and Marketing Efficiency
• 1:07:13 Sales Integrity and Boundary Maintenance
• 1:22:29 Travel Plans and Show Promotion

Transcript

Roberto Revilla: 0:10

Welcome to the Tailoring Talk show with your host, roberto Revilla I'm a spoke Taylor menswear designer and owner of Roberto Rivilla London custom clothing and footwear. I activate your superpowers through the clothing I create and the conversations. On this podcast will meet self starters and creators to learn about their journeys, while they share valuable lessons to help you be the very best you can be. Please support the show by subscribing, and it helps so so much if you take a few seconds to leave a rating and a review. Today's guest is a client quality consultant who helps business owners land better clients and level up their business to be more attractive to high quality people. He's here to help us identify the seven steps to landing great clients and we are also going to make sure we talk about his amazing new book. Taylor and talkers. Please welcome Drake, knight and Hellser to Taylor and talk Drake. How are you?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:07

doing Wonderful Thanks for having me.

Roberto Revilla: 1:09

You're welcome. So you're kind of a bit of a digital digital nomad at the moment. So first thing, tell us where your wonderful accent is from.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:21

The United States of America.

Roberto Revilla: 1:23

Yeah, but where? Because the United States is like oh Indiana countries, go Indiana.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:29

Yeah, welcome. So if you like corn, we've got you covered, yeah. I don't mind corn, but that's about it.

Roberto Revilla: 1:37

I prefer corn, where someone's actually taking the stuff off the cob for me, rather than eating it on because it gets stuck in my tooth and stuff Anyway. But you're not in Indiana because you're kind of a digital nomad, because you're in your partner are traveling around the globe. You're currently calling in from South Africa, correct, have you?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:58

seen Jaws I have. I think we're actually going to go great white shark cage diving while we're here.

Roberto Revilla: 2:07

No way, but have you seen any already?

Drake Nightenhelser: 2:10

Oh, no, no, oh, I haven't.

Roberto Revilla: 2:13

Oh, but you've seen two movies I've seen, like the movies Sorry. This podcast gets better. So you haven't seen any sharks yet, but you are going to. You are going to get to it.

Drake Nightenhelser: 2:27

I think it's whale season right now. Oh OK, from what I understand, those two don't mix. It's either whales or sharks, don't the sharks eat the whales? No, the whales eat the sharks.

Roberto Revilla: 2:40

Oh like is it orca season.

Drake Nightenhelser: 2:42

Yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 2:43

Yeah, you've heard this thing right with the orcas, their assholes. So they, oh yeah, apex predator thing. But they've got this thing with great white sharks. They apparently the liver of the great white is a delicacy for them. So they literally just like side swipe these great whites, take the liver and then just leave the rest of it floating in the ocean.

Drake Nightenhelser: 3:04

Yeah, it's a real thing. Orcas are like I don't know. They like the cat and mouse game of the ocean. They literally just like to play with their food and just like mess around with people because they're bored yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 3:20

Exactly. As you can tell, I'm fascinated by all this stuff. Someone asked me if you came face to face in the sea with a great white or an orca, which would you rather fancy your chance with, and I was like I'm not falling for that free, willy nonsense. I'd rather take my chances with the great white. So anyway, but speaking of sharks, orcas playing with their food and so on, we're here to talk about sales. In essence, today and I'm just kidding, yes, your new book too. Is that out? Yet Seven Steps to Landing.

Roberto Revilla: 3:54

Great Clients by Drake Nightingaleza.

Drake Nightenhelser: 3:57

Yeah, it's on Amazon and it's available on all the major Amazon sites Wherever they do print on domain. Yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 4:10

Brilliant. I'm going to buy it right now.

Drake Nightenhelser: 4:12

Awesome.

Roberto Revilla: 4:13

And then we're going to give our audience a little flavor. We don't want to give everything in the book away, but I'll make sure that I also put a link to it in the show notes at the end of this.

Roberto Revilla: 4:24

So, landing great clients often it's something when we start businesses we don't realize, because most of us when we start a business we're not taught any of this stuff. We realize it as we go along. But most people when they start a business, they then have got this thing. So they need to go out there and get people to trade money for whatever it is that they do for them. And we generally most of us will take anything that comes along and we will do it at whatever price we think we need to in order to get that customer. We really bend ourselves to acquire that client.

Roberto Revilla: 5:09

And then, a few years down the line, as our business is hopefully growing and flourishing, when we look across our client base, we have got our favorites who we will do anything for, who generally are not price sensitive and let us do our jobs. And then we have this whole myriad of clients quote unquote who are kind of at the bottom, who are the people that when the phone rings we're just like, oh my God, I really don't want to speak to that person because it's just a whole world of pain. Why the hell did I take their business in the first place? Oh, I remember it's because I just started my business and I was desperate to get everything in. Is that something that you hear a lot? Is that something that you have found to be common in all your research and experience?

Drake Nightenhelser: 5:58

Oh yeah, I've worked with a lot of small businesses over the years. I've never really been the corporate type. Corporate just doesn't do it for me. So before I went out on my own, I always worked with small businesses like your mom and pop shops that are like five to 10 people right around there. That was my sweet spot and you see that a lot, because I think so many people that start businesses start it because they're really good at what they do. They think, oh well, find this good, I can have business. And then they go out and start the business and a little ways into it they're like, oh, I need to learn some business stuff too. And in all of the stuff that there is to learn on top of trying to manage your business and maintain your clients, this is just one of those things that seems to slip past people.

Roberto Revilla: 6:55

And then one day they wake up and they're like, oh, I don't like my business, I don't enjoy my business anymore, and they don't know what to do about it and they're stuck because what they've done is starting a business and it's all the reasons, Like I don't want to answer to the man or do the nine to five and have to punch in and punch out and be told when I can go on vacation.

Roberto Revilla: 7:20

Holiday Freedom is probably the Freedom and making more money is why most people probably go off on their own and then they kind of find five, seven, 10, 12, 15, 20, if they lost that long years down the line that they didn't actually start a business, they just got themselves another job.

Drake Nightenhelser: 7:40

They're just doing the same thing, it's just yeah, I think you see it a lot in the trades roofing things like that where people go out and they learn the skill and they spend 10 years getting really good at running crews and doing whatever it is. Then they go. Well, why am I getting paid a fraction when I can go out and do this on my own and make all the money? And then they set out and like, if just the roofing industry for instance, I've got a brother-in-law who's in the roofing industry. In that industry you see wild amounts of turnover in businesses. Like 90% of the new roofing businesses that start go out of business in their first year because the folks get out there and they realize, oh, there's all this business stuff too.

Roberto Revilla: 8:30

What were you? Sorry, I'm just going to skip back a bit, because I probably should have asked you this before, because our audience is sitting there thinking this guy sounds more Well, definitely more intelligent than me. How did Drake get to here today? Author, helping people with these very big problems in business? Just give us a little bit of background and a little bit of your superhero origin story, if you like.

Drake Nightenhelser: 9:00

Yeah, so the really sad part of that story at the beginning is that I spent like 10 years jumping from job to job trying to figure out what I want to do and all that stuff, and eventually I landed in sales and this was in 2016.

Roberto Revilla: 9:16

Sorry, it's like most of us that have no clue what the hell we want to do when we're younger. Right, Right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 9:22

So in 2016, I got this job running the sales department for a vehicle wrap company that was doing around seven figures, but I had no experience in sales. All I knew was that I had the gift of gab, I was good at communication and I had a lot of customer service experience. So, because I didn't have the sales background, I showed up into this company to run the sales department and started asking the idiot questions Like, hey, why are we selling that? Why are we working with this guy? Because I'm looking around and I'm seeing these things that we're selling, that are just making the team miserable, that aren't making that much money, that are really sucking up the most valuable resources that our team has to offer on the people who aren't returning clients, that were not making money on their projects, that much money on their projects. So I'm saying, hey, what are we doing? Let's switch this up. And this is a business that's been around for 20 years and just kind of fallen into that pattern that we were talking about, right, where they're like, hey, we figured this out enough to get by, they're not doing bad, they're doing well, but they're certainly not thriving right. And I just kind of started looking around and asking those questions and it sparked something in the owner and he and I started working together and three years later the company was an industry leader that was expanding out into five states. We had dropped all of our bad like difficult clients. We dropped all of our low value projects. We were really focused on providing one thing to one type of client and we were doing really good at it, and because of that the amount of revenue coming from returning clients went up by like 233%. So whereas around 30 something percent of our revenue used to come from returning clients, three years later over 70% of our revenue is coming from returning clients companies that are just coming back saying, hey, I need another Van Rep, I need another one, hey, whip up that invoice, run the card you have, and they were all just easier to work with.

Drake Nightenhelser: 11:44

So from there I went out into high ticket sales and I sold business opportunities, marketing services, divorce coaching, and eventually I got to a point where just doing the phone call after phone call after phone call just was too monotonous for me and I started realizing that I wanted what I had at that rap company. I wanted to get my hands in and play and dig, and that led me into the question of well, what did I really do there? Right, because I always looked at it as sales. But then I started looking at all the business development things that I helped them do and to try to understand it. I went through a deep process of dissecting what it was, and part of that process was actually writing the book that we talked about to try and filter it out and figure out what it was, and from that I dissected the system that we used in that three year period and turned it into a process that I can go in and help other business owners repeat Can we just cancel this call early so I can go through your book please?

Roberto Revilla: 12:56

I mean, that is actually what I am going to do when we do finish. That's amazing and what was the actual? So I asked everybody this question sorry who has written there first, but what was that process like for you? What was the actual process like for you of sitting down to do this thing?

Drake Nightenhelser: 13:16

Awesome question. So the first draft was something that I just had to get through because I didn't really know what the book was yet, I didn't really know what the process was yet, so the first draft was just kind of vomiting it all on paper. I created an outline that I was semi-happy with and just sat down at a coffee shop and just started banging out chapters. Yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 13:43

Because had you started with the end in mind, like the problem that you wanted to help people to solve, or did you have a few things in your mind based on your experience, and it was trying to really work out how to get there and what that was going to look like Little bit?

Drake Nightenhelser: 14:01

of both. So I had an idea of what it was based on, what I knew we'd accomplished at that wrap company, but it was also a process of discovering what the process or the recipe that we went through was. Yeah, and I was like, what did it really accomplish? No-transcript, there were so many things that it did. How do you take this and encapsulate it into one goal or one statement of achievement?

Roberto Revilla: 14:40

Yeah, see, and then. So I got to be careful with how I break this, because I promised everyone that we are going to go through seven steps to landing great clients, right, but we don't want to give everything away. We want to kind of headline it and then kind of give some outline or some help, guidance, just to set people on the path. And then I want you a lot to buy his book. Okay, support this guy.

Roberto Revilla: 15:07

So where do we begin? And I don't even know whether it's better to kind of take this from a clean slate point of view. Well, I guess it doesn't matter, right, because it doesn't matter whether you are starting your business today or you have been in business for a couple of years, or five years, or 12 years, like me, or even longer. We starting, you know, it's like when's the best time to plant a tree? Right, yesterday? When's the next time best time to plant a tree? Well, today, so well, I don't, I'm not sure, yesterday, like 30 years ago, I think it's 30 years ago, right, yeah, when's the best time to plant a tree 30 years ago? When's the next best time? Today? So we can all start planting this tree today, like we? You know, I'm actually so I think I was.

Roberto Revilla: 15:54

I was telling Drake, as we were in the process of setting this call up today, and he very kindly I had to shift him around a little bit because we're we're going to be. I think I can say this now by the time this episode goes out, because it's kind of a secret at the moment. See, this is how much I trust you, just based on our limited communications so far. This is how awesome you are, but we're opening a new location and a very prominent part of London, which is very, very exciting. Very, you and your other half make it out this way at some point. Are we on your itinerary at some point when you wind your way back to the USA?

Drake Nightenhelser: 16:34

There are so many places to hit. There are a couple of places that I want to hit and I do have some other friends in the UK that I want to see, so I'm trying to set it up.

Roberto Revilla: 16:47

So we're open this new location, we're moving our kind of admin side of the business there as well, and that inevitably is going to involve bringing over the two fighting cabinets of voluminous client files that I have. And what I've decided over the next three weeks running up to the move is that I don't want to take. It's like, is it catharsis? I don't know I need to. Where's my dictionary? It's like I'm taking this opportunity to plant my tree now. So nothing is coming to the new place with me that I don't want to continue doing. None of those cycles are coming with me, none of those habits. I'm leaving it all behind.

Drake Nightenhelser: 17:36

That's awesome. So nothing like changing into a new environment to set new boundaries.

Roberto Revilla: 17:43

Yeah, exactly. So who's Marie Kondo? Is it Marie Kondo who does the how to sort your wardrobe? You close it out. Have you heard?

Drake Nightenhelser: 17:51

of her. I saw the hype about it a few years ago when her Netflix show or whatever it was or was like really popular. But I never really got into it because I've been a minimalist for a long time. I was already like I don't have that much stuff, I'm good.

Roberto Revilla: 18:06

Oh man, I wish I was more like you. I'm no, I am going to be more like you Anyway. So her thing is right is, when you're sorting through your closet, your possessions, whatever if it, if when you hold it in your hands, you kind of really look at it and if it doesn't spark joy, get rid of it.

Drake Nightenhelser: 18:25

Oh yeah, 100%. Right, I mean, I haven't used it in three or six months.

Roberto Revilla: 18:30

Yeah, if you're not yet exactly, that's right. So, and I tell people that with clothing right when you're, you know, when you're looking to get a new outfit, it doesn't matter whether it's from me or anywhere else or you're in a store. When you're looking at something, if you love it when you see it, go for it because you're going to love it and you're going to use it. If it's something you're not sure about, don't do it. Now, you apply that principle to when we're trying to find clients, right, and so so for me, step one is existing when I go through each one of those files in alphabetical order, because I'm going to be packing them to take with me. If I hold one in my hand and I'm really kind of being repelled by it because I'm like God, really, it goes in the shredder, I'm not taking that with me. Yeah, now, obviously, if that I've got the second problem to deal with a few months down the line, when that person actually calls because they want something and it's like, okay, we're going to have to renegotiate our thing here and you're going to talk about that, because I know that's something that you do cover. And then the second thing, which I've already started working on is taking that same principle of.

Roberto Revilla: 19:44

You know, does it spark joy, energy, let's call it. You know, I had someone call me last week and through the conversation the communication was a little difficult. I wasn't really feeling the energy and I had something go through my head that an old boss told me that the principle is that being in tune with how the first interaction was, because that probably is going to set the tone for the rest of your relationship. So if the energy is flowing and you're getting on well together, the communication is great, you get a really good feeling from this person. You can probably guarantee that five, 10, 15, 20 years down the line it's going to be like that. It's going to get even better. If, at the beginning the communication is difficult, you're kind of not really feeling it. You know there's something off about the whole thing. Well, guess what? It's probably going to be in that way, or even get even worse as time goes on. So just stop it there right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 20:46

You know what my favorite thing was? When a customer would say all right, I'll pay this much, but if I do, all right, bro, let's just not do this.

Roberto Revilla: 20:59

Yeah, let's just stop this now. Yeah, you can have your credit card back.

Drake Nightenhelser: 21:03

Yeah, go be somebody else's nightmare.

Roberto Revilla: 21:06

Yeah, and it's kind of a ball of move to do that right, Because not many people do it, so people aren't used to someone saying that to them. The end result is that person then kind of thinks about it and says, actually now I want to really work with this guy, which then causes the next problem. But anyway, you know, when we're going out to find people, how do we make sure that we're getting the right, the people that are the right fit for us?

Drake Nightenhelser: 21:32

Wonderful question. So the first thing I always like to tell people about this type of work is that it's going to go against the grain of what a lot of business owners are used to, because we're so used to being sold as business owners is that the solutions to our problems are sales and marketing. Right, the solution to all of your business problems is a better marketing process or a different marketing process. So the next new, flashy right, where the whole new versus old framework in marketing is used on us so much and it's almost always sales or marketing to improve our businesses, this stuff is not about sales or marketing. It starts to move into that. But what we're really doing is we're going into the foundation of how you make choices for your business and what choices, what you're willing to accept into your business and what boundaries you're going to set around your business, but doing it through a lens of actually using data to decide that so that you end come out the other side with a business that is prosperous and feels easy and doesn't.

Drake Nightenhelser: 22:49

It's not something you have to force all the time. So while it does, like I said, eventually move into the sales and marketing, most of it is really just shifting how you think about your business and what you're willing to accept into it. And like raising your standards. I tell almost everybody that I talk to about this that you know if you're hitting a growth ceiling, if you're dealing with a lot of difficult clients, if you're not happy with your business for whatever reason, that are the standards that you have really great for getting you to where you are in business. But those things are indicators that those standards aren't going to take you any further and it's time to raise the bar.

Roberto Revilla: 23:38

And not be afraid, right, right, because you know that's the other thing. I have this conversation with people and they say, well, okay, fine, I get that. I need to probably get a blank piece of paper and write down, you know, the things that aren't making me happy and then the things that do make me happy and make me actually love my work, and what it is about those people that I'm working for, the characteristics and so on, what it is about them so I can start to build up my I don't know, you know people call it different things, but for the purposes of today's conversation, we'll call it our ideal client avatar, right? But in the process of doing that, once I've got that, then we're saying that I need to cut all those people that aren't making me happy, but they're still bringing in some revenue and I don't want to lose that, and people are. So you know, because, for me, I remember having this conversation with Wade Galt, the three day weekend entrepreneur, and I really do need to.

Roberto Revilla: 24:35

I mentioned you to him in our pre-talk. I really need to get you two together, wade. If you're listening to this, look this guy up, okay, because you guys are going to hit it off, and you know I said, I said to Wade right, I was like you know, some of these guys are a pain in the nut to deal with but you know, at the end of the day they're still adding to our bottom line.

Drake Nightenhelser: 24:58

Right, their money's been the same.

Roberto Revilla: 24:59

Yeah, I said if I just go and get rid of them, you know what am I going to do. And he's like, well, use the time. I mean it talks to me like are you stupid? Well, just use the free time to go out and find more of the people who are actually going to keep you moving forward and help you to grow and flourish and make you enjoy your life and you work.

Drake Nightenhelser: 25:21

Improve the business overall right. It opens up time to work on the business, not in the business. I love that you're bringing this up, though, because one of the things that I address in the book at the beginning, if you want to successfully implement these steps, is that financial stability is key. If you are in financial scarcity, it's really difficult to say no to any money If you're not sure how you're going to pay your light bill next week. Saying no to anything that is going to pay you is difficult, but when you have financial stability, it's easier to say no to what does not meet your standards to make room for more opportunity to say yes to what does. But it's really important that, as you go through the process of cutting out those bad clients, that you don't do it to such a severe degree that it puts you back in financial scarcity, because then you're just going to start the process over again. It's just you need to figure out what your personal comfort zone with doing that is. With that RAP company.

Drake Nightenhelser: 26:31

When we first decided to make those changes, probably around 30-40% of our revenue was represented by all the stuff we didn't want to do anymore. We didn't just go chop it all off because the 30-40% that was all the profit. We wouldn't have had anything left because we had a team to pay, we had a facility to pay for, we had equipment and materials to buy and all this stuff. We just said, well, what's the worst of the worst? We lopped that off and then we waited a little bit. When we were able to replace that revenue with the thing that we wanted to be selling, we went back to that list and chopped a little more off, and so on and so forth, until three years later we were really selling Like 95% of our revenue. Was that one thing we wanted to be selling? I think so much of us get this idea.

Drake Nightenhelser: 27:30

I have a grudge against modern marketing a little bit, because the way we like to be marketed to gives us the wrong idea that everything needs to happen overnight. You're going to get this thing and poof, it's going to change. It's made us so that we don't recognize the value in slow but short change. Yeah, everyone's looking for that magic pill, that magic easy button, because that's what marketers sell us. But if you can keep that mentality at bay and focus on making this process a marathon rather than trying to run it like a hundred yard dash and focus on the change you can create with this in your business over a year rather than a month.

Drake Nightenhelser: 28:25

Right, because all the marketers are like how I can help you do this in your business in just 30 days? Yeah, right. But if you focus on that year and just slowly but surely chipping away a year later you will look up and be like whoa, this is amazing. I don't even recognize my business from what it was a year ago, and I know this because that's what I did. I experienced it. It was one of the most rewarding moments of my life.

Roberto Revilla: 28:56

Yeah, and I've complained about that whole snake oil selling kind of thing and the number of prominent figures who previously were quite respectable, who are now jumping on the whole buy tickets to my seminar. I'm landing in Colorado this weekend. You see it all over Instagram and so on and I will promise you that by the end of that weekend your life will change and you'll be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from literally the next day, et cetera. And obviously people eat that stuff up, right, because I guess why wouldn't you? I've always lived by the maximum.

Roberto Revilla: 29:37

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is that saying if something everybody should keep forefront of their mind, especially in this day and age. But I mean, there are different ways to do it for different people. So I know I was sounding quite harsh earlier when I was saying that I'm going to look at my client files and then just start a bonfire in the existing place, chuck the ones I don't want to take with me. That's not really what I'm going to do, right, some of them will be going in there, but then there are others who will need to be part of that kind of change business.

Roberto Revilla: 30:10

So, for example, I was in the workroom this morning and one of my newer clients came in. The moment I met him. The moment I met him and shook hands with him and welcomed him, I just knew. I just knew through every part of me that we were going to get on like a house on fire. He was the type of person that I would literally run to the ends of the earth for to give him the very best experience that I could. That's who you want to be working with.

Roberto Revilla: 30:44

Yeah exactly that's it. But he came in today and he had another try on of his first set of clothes. He was so happy and he was so excited to be there. We'd done the initial first fitting a couple of weeks ago and there was still some things that weren't quite right, but he was still so excited and so happy and he's like no, I totally appreciate this, this is part of the process. We've only started working with each other. I said to him I promise you, we've just got one more set of tweaks to do and then you're good to go. Then he placed another order there and then I said to him okay. I said, but I'm not going to deliver this one till next week. He was like no, it's fine, right, like, no questions, nothing. My workroom is a mess at the moment. I couldn't even write up his order. And I said to him is it okay if I send the paperwork to you later? And he's like yeah, fine, just like. Paid what he needed to pay.

Drake Nightenhelser: 31:41

Just turn your card on file, man.

Roberto Revilla: 31:43

Just yeah, like when you're in the rap business and you got it to that stage. And then I said to my head tailor, I said, right, we need to get these tweaks done, so they're ready for next week. So we get them over there for him, as I promised. I said I really love him, I really love the fact that he lets me do my job. And you know, I think and then the words just came out of my mouth and I hadn't even prethought it I instinctively said you know, what I hope and I think is going to happen is, in time, he's going to replace person who shall not be named.

Drake Nightenhelser: 32:20

The person who comes in does his fitting and is like ah.

Roberto Revilla: 32:24

Yeah Well, luca said to me what is this?

Roberto Revilla: 32:28

When I said person who should not be named, let's just call him Voldemort.

Roberto Revilla: 32:35

So when I mentioned Voldemort's name, luca, my head tailor, said to me you don't want to get rid of Voldemort? He's like one of your best clients and I'm like you know, the last time I saw him and it's happened a few times to a lesser degree, but the last time I saw him, dude, I left his home and I felt like absolute shit. He made me feel like dirt and I know how much he spends, and so that's the other thing, guys and girls listening, we're not just talking about, like your clients who don't spend much money with you. We are also talking about the other ones that might spend a ton of money with you but they make you feel like you are not worth any more than the dirt that comes off their front door mat, and that's how he made. And I was just like you know, one day I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, like Dobby with his socks, I'm going to release my, I'm going to free myself from you, but I'm going to find someone who's actually you know, am I making any sense whatsoever?

Drake Nightenhelser: 33:42

So much, so much. So I know exactly what you're talking about and the thing that I think a lot of people don't recognize until they experience it I think a lot of us fail to really stop and take stock when things like that happen, how much that bad energy that they've brought into your life takes to dissipate completely and get you back to powerful, good, energy version of yourself that's doing what your business really needs.

Drake Nightenhelser: 34:17

I would be willing to bet that if it were me for an experience like that, it's probably going to be like the rest of the day before I'm like kicked, like even even remotely back in, like the zone, and it's probably going to be another two days after that before I'm able to like completely shake it and get back to 100%, because I'm going to spend the next few days thinking about it and thinking about what I should have said and thinking about what I should have done and thinking about what a jerky is and all these different things.

Drake Nightenhelser: 34:50

And there's not to an extent I'm not going to like ruminate in it to an extent where it's like debilitating, but it's going to. It's going to be kicking around there in the back of my head and if I write some copy for my business or I hop on a sales call or, you know, I help on a coaching call with clients or I review something for a client, I'm not bringing my best energy to that, which means I'm not building the business that I actually want, but also because the way that we naturally react to those sorts of situations so visceral.

Roberto Revilla: 35:25

It's like I don't know if it's like chemical reactions going on and physical reactions and stuff, but you just feel like a bag of crazy marbles or something and you start second. Even weeks after you it's like a splinter in your brain and you start second guessing everything that you're doing just based on that one person and the way that you were treated and made to feel. You start second guessing everything you do. So the impact for some people, if you're the sort of person that's just like. You know, whatever, put a hand up, you know we're done, I'll get on with the rest of my life. Great, that's great for you.

Roberto Revilla: 36:05

When you're someone, I mean, like me, I'm an empath, which is a real problem a lot of the time, because I really feel and it can affect me for weeks and weeks and weeks. I had one, in fact. Actually it was the same guy when I first started, six months in, we went on a complete rebranding exercise because of that one person, because that it affected me that much. Oh, wow, my wife was like are you crazy? Like we've got like the logo and everything's really good, like people like it and I said, well, like's not good enough, and I know I can't get 100%, but I need to get to at least 85. And we're going to put the money in and we're going to change this. And she's like where's this coming from?

Drake Nightenhelser: 36:53

Because this is it's like I'm going to show him.

Roberto Revilla: 36:56

And it exactly that's exactly what it was. Yeah, it's crazy, but I guess the point. I was trying to use that example from my own experience to sort of say to people that we're not just talking about. You know the people that come in and they argue about discounts and so on. It can even be those guys who, on the surface, are your ideal client because of, maybe, the money that they spend or the level of product they or service that they get from you. But it's not just about the transaction, it's about everything around that, because most of us are in a relationship. We're in relationship businesses where we serve people, and that's a two way street.

Drake Nightenhelser: 37:41

Not only that the most, one of the most important parts about the relationship your relationship with clients and what you allow to exist in your business. What you allow to exist in your business is what it's going to continue to attract. So if you allow clients like that to exist in your business, you know. If you work with clients that you don't want to be working with, if you sell a product or service that you don't want to be doing, or if you're selling it for a price point that you just don't want to be selling it for, it's not worth it to you, that's what you're going to continue to attract in your business People like that who want to buy that thing for that price.

Drake Nightenhelser: 38:27

One of the prompts that I use with clients to help them shift their perspective is if you could only get paid after your client got their desired result, what would that person have to look like in order for you to be willing to take that bet? And when we stop and think about that person, we think about somebody. That's that. That person that we end up thinking about is very different from the person that you think of.

Drake Nightenhelser: 39:02

If you were asked the traditional avatar exercise of like stop and think about who you want to work with. Tell me what they look like, how old are they, where are they from? All those things right, this gets into like the core of it, like and when we take that and simplify it down into three characteristics, meaning three things about their situation that makes them easy to work with. And three mindsets, meaning ways that they think that are going to make them easy to work with and easy to deliver results to those three characteristics and three mindsets that you're left with. You're left looking at somebody that you're just thinking, oh my God, if that was all I worked with, if all I worked with was people like this, business would be so much easier.

Roberto Revilla: 39:52

Business would be great. It's a question that I actually asked myself the other day.

Drake Nightenhelser: 39:58

That's amazing.

Roberto Revilla: 40:00

Yeah, no, totally, I mean, and fun enough, it was actually one of my. I love this guy. I don't even know if he listens to the. I'm going to name him James Reader because he's so awesome. But you know, I asked the question of myself because he asked me that question. He said to me. So I said to him, I told him about this big step that I'm taking with the business and he was so happy for me.

Roberto Revilla: 40:30

He worked his way up in the industry that he's in and eventually bought the business that he worked his way up in and then he sold it a couple of years ago. So he's kind of just in that sort of exit thing at the moment. He's living his best life in every way, shape and form, but he's just also just such a great human being. I love being around him, the energy and so on, and he's so gracious with me as well. And you know he actually stood there across the other side of his kitchen island and he said to me he said you know, this is it now? This is you taking a big step? And he said you're at the stage now where you can start to choose who you want to work with.

Roberto Revilla: 41:17

And then he gave me all the characteristics of the people that I hate working for. He's like you don't want to be working for people who do this or do that, or who stand you up or who make you do all this work and then they don't pay on time and so then it's a whole bunch of blah, blah, blah, and I was just thinking I was just like I really wish I should be writing all of this down, but he basically was challenging me as well. Those are people I love working with. They've got a growth mindset. Their impact is themselves and they want that for the people that they have in their lives, that they are paying money to do things for them, like me. So, yeah, we probably need to actually start putting some flesh on the skeleton of what we've been doing. And, again, without giving anything away in your book, let's go one, one, three to seven. What's the drape knight and helser sort of view of landing great clients?

Drake Nightenhelser: 42:15

Yeah. So step number one is all about figuring out what product or service you really want to be focusing on, by looking at things like how much net profit does it have, does it energize you, is it easy to sell, is it deliver, and things like that. When we do this, we will first off. The reason why it's important to do this is that so many business owners end up in the cycle where they get a product or service off the ground and then they move to another, and they move to another, and they move to another. Or well, I'm already doing this thing and this other thing is so close to it that there's no reason why I can't do this one. So they start offering it. And then, all of a sudden, they have all these different products or services that require different fulfillment, different sales, different marketing, now, and every one of those is essentially a business in and of itself, right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 43:07

So with the RAP company, we had personal customizations, the guys who wanted racing stripes on their Camaros and stuff like that. We had people who wanted full body panels, like, hey, I want my whole hood to be carbon fiber. And then we had the people who wanted their whole car color change right. Then we had business owners who wanted to wrap their entire vehicle or their company right. So we ended up focusing on because it made us the most money. They came back time and time again. They were willing to pay a lot more from it for it because they got an ROI from it, so it just all made sense.

Drake Nightenhelser: 43:49

But what is the one thing that makes the most sense to pour your energy into and focus on that one thing and get really good at it, right? So that's step one is figuring out what that one thing is. Step number two is figuring out who your best buyer is, which we do using the prompt I gave you and going figuring out the mindsets and characteristics. Now we know what we should be focusing on selling people to, because the thing we're selling to them is if it's easy for you to deliver and it's easy to sell and it has high net profit, they're probably pretty good at it. And if you're pretty good at it, then it probably taps into your strengths, right? So that's going to be the best thing to build your business around.

Drake Nightenhelser: 44:41

And when we're selling that to the person that is so easy to work with and easy to deliver results to, we naturally start setting ourselves up for a successful business. So that's like the first thing I do with my clients is take them through those two processes and then have them grade all of their sales for the past three months or their past hundred sales, based on those criteria, did you sell your best payday to your best buyer? Step number three is going back and refocusing our messaging to sell that best payday to our best buyer. We have this tendency to really vaguely talk about what we do or to try and word it in a way that's attractive to everyone. We don't want to do that anymore. We want to talk about it in a way that is very attractive to that best buyer and not attractive to everyone else.

Roberto Revilla: 45:39

Right, so Drake just probably listeners heard a little, just a micro pause in Drake's voice and it's because I'm grinning like a stupid idiot and it's because I feel like a stupid idiot because a lot of what he's saying is stuff that I've basically done or I'm doing, and so I'm going to be his best student. I promise I'm looking kind of sheepish as well, sorry, and continue. Master Night in Hell's Up.

Drake Nightenhelser: 46:11

That sounds really cool.

Roberto Revilla: 46:12

That sounds really cool, by the way. Thank you, master Night in.

Drake Nightenhelser: 46:16

Hell's Up.

Roberto Revilla: 46:17

I'll have to put it on my business card. I mean it depends on the time of day You're giving your business card out, because it could be taken out of context. But anyway, continue.

Drake Nightenhelser: 46:31

So step number four is about going back and being fearless in how we're being transparent in our marketing around what we do, what we don't do, who we work with, who we don't work with, what results we're good at delivering at. If there's an elephant in the room, getting out in front of it, right, because these things are all things that people are going to find out about eventually, especially the elephant. If there's an elephant in the room, somebody's eventually going to look over and be like what, why? So being really openly transparent about that stuff is going to attract again. It's going to attract the right people to you and it's going to repel the wrong people, people who don't match what you've identified that you want to allow into your business.

Drake Nightenhelser: 47:25

The next step after that number five, we're going to go in and we're going to reimagine our policies. So there's three different types of policies that I talk about. One is designed to protect us from the client. The second is designed to protect us from each other, us from the client, the client from us. And the third is designed to protect the client from us, what we have a natural tendency to do as business owners when we're creating policies. We have a problem in the business, with a client or something. So we create a new policy and it's designed to protect us. The problem is that it can usually be seen for what it is.

Drake Nightenhelser: 48:07

And even if this isn't what it is, it can come off that way as the policy saying you know, I didn't really care to get good at running my business, so instead I just created this policy so that when things do go bad, they swing my way Right and the high, the high paying, high quality clients that we want in our business run from those policies. When they see them, they're like, ah, no, thanks, I've been down this road, I'll go over here to this guy. Then we have policies that are designed to protect you know, protect both parties from each other. You see this a lot in the coaching and consulting world with, like, conditional guarantees, Right, hey, so if you show up to all the calls, you do all the work, you can show that you put in a true effort and you still don't get the results, we'll refund your money. Right, it protects the client from a poorly conceived system and it protects the company from a lazy client. But the best type of policy are the ones that protect the clients from you. These are these say. They really just showcase your capabilities and your commitment to them, and you know an example of this with the vehicle wrap company.

Drake Nightenhelser: 49:25

What we ended up doing. All of our competitors were out there saying Let me back up just a step. The clientele that we were serving were business owners who were getting vehicles wrapped for their business, right. So they really cared about the image of their company. The clients that we wanted really cared about the image of their company and how the public perceived them, and they were willing to pay good money for that, right. What our competitors were doing is they were saying design for your wrap is $150. You get three concepts. You choose one, just A, B or C, flat out, and then you get three revisions. After that, if you still want to keep going, we'll charge you an hourly rate of $75 an hour, right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 50:17

So a lot of business owners are coming that that policy is clearly designed to protect the company from people who might use up a lot of the designer's time, right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 50:28

But all the people who really cared went ah, you know, I just want to know that I really love what I get and I don't feel that way. This policy does not make me feel like I'm going to get what I want. So what we did is we created a design guarantee. It just said hey, you come in, we'll give you two to four initial concepts and from there we'll design until you're happy period, right? So the business owners who really care about their company and what it looks like out on the road and are like I just want to know we get this right, they're like really drawn into that. But what we did on the back end is we implemented procedures to make sure that that didn't bite us in the butt and cost us money, right? So on the forward side we're saying, hey, we're going to protect you from us, and then on the back end, we're creating internal procedures with how we operate to make sure that our own policy doesn't bite us in the butt.

Roberto Revilla: 51:29

Yeah, so you guys then took responsibility, without putting that on the customer or making them feel like they could potentially be a problem.

Drake Nightenhelser: 51:42

Exactly. We gave them certainty that they were going to get the desired result that they wanted, which was a wrap that they would be proud to have represent their company. And so our competition was charging $150 for design. We were charging $500, right? So even though we were charging far more because it had that guarantee, they were like hey, I'll pay the extra money if you're going to promise me that I'm going to get what I want, right. But then we also had better designers than our competition, so that made sure that we were able to get better designs in less time than our competition.

Drake Nightenhelser: 52:23

We also implemented a policy, that is a procedure that said hey, if a wrap reaches X point in the design process and we have not nailed down Y, they need to sit down and have a one on one with our designer. No more of this back and forth stuff through email. They either need to get on Zoom or come into the office and sit down with a designer with their designs and in like one hour with the designer, all the problems would disappear, right. So we had this to make sure this procedure to make sure that we were protected, that this policy didn't bite us in the butt. Cool thing is because we did all the stuff we've already talked about on the front end. We only really had to use that like 5% of the time. It was a pretty rare occasion. So that's step number five.

Drake Nightenhelser: 53:15

Step number six is really just about making sure that they have an amazing experience, and the number one thing you can do to make sure that your clients have an amazing experience is have a solid onboarding process. So many companies leave clients flapping in the dark. They sign on the dotted line, they give you their credit card and they're going. So what happens next? Do I do something? Do you do something? Am I waiting to hear from you or what's going on? Right, that is the moment where they decide how they're going to show up for you as a client, right, yeah, when the sales process is how you show them how you're going to show up as a company, the onboarding process is how they decide how they're going to show up for you. And if your onboarding process leaves them feeling like we just talked about, that's how they're going to show up and you're going to have problems.

Drake Nightenhelser: 54:12

But by creating a better client experience and really just going in and consistently looking at how we can make things a better experience for them. People are experiential, emotional people. We buy for emotional reasons. We wrap it in logic when we can make it a really amazing experience. Those are going to be the people that go out and sing our praises to the world and leave great reviews and attract other people who want that same quality experience into our business. The people that don't want those experience that high quality experience, those are the price shoppers. Yeah, right, those are the people who are like I don't care about all that, can you do it for half? No, sir, we cannot. Yeah, it doesn't matter, like that, right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 55:03

Number seven is all about going through a process of consistently refining fulfillment to continually deliver better and better results.

Drake Nightenhelser: 55:14

Right, we're looking for ways that we can improve things during their time with us or as a result of what we do for them.

Drake Nightenhelser: 55:24

So there are problems that occur during the process of what we're doing and then after we successfully do what we're doing for them.

Drake Nightenhelser: 55:31

That's a new problem, right, if we're going to custom tailor a new suit for a guy, then he's probably going to look down at his shoes and go I think I need some new shoes. Right, that new suit introduced a new problem and the same thing is true for anybody else's business, when we're looking both at how we can make the suit be the best possible suit, but we're also looking at all the problems that that great suit creates and how we can solve those too. So we start to create a business that our competition doesn't know how to compete with, because when we package all these seven steps together, we get a signature process, your way of doing things, of serving your specific type of clientele around your strengths, in a way and at a level that your competition can't compete with. And that's when you start being able to charge whatever you want. With this wrap company, we charge anywhere from like 30% to 200% what our competitors charged.

Roberto Revilla: 56:37

And we didn't worry about it. That's amazing. So I have a question.

Roberto Revilla: 56:41

So, in step seven. She said it's looking at the experience and the problem that you're probably taking the suit as the example, and this does happen a lot. Right, they put my suit on and then they'll look at something else usually their shoes and go, okay, I need to do something about this. We launch footwear If you take anyone else's business, so a new problem is introduced, but then if you go find a new product to offer to solve that new problem, are you then not desecrating the law of step one, which is to find that one thing?

Drake Nightenhelser: 57:17

So the one thing? That's an amazing question. The one thing is what we want to focus all of our energy on. Selling in market Doesn't necessarily mean it's the only thing we offer, right? So with the, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to sell. Just if I'm you, I'm not going to, I'm not going to market the fact that we sell shoes. I'm going to market and I'm going to sell you a suit and on the back end, I'm going to sell you shoes. It keeps everything. It keeps it. That keeps this. The marketing process, the sales process and the fulfillment process are really simple. And then the end of that fulfillment process. You're just going oh hey, by the way, did you want this too? And they've already paid, paid, paid, bought something from you. They already love you. So they're just like oh yeah, I do have that. Yeah, just how much is it? And they don't ask questions yeah, they don't go. Well, I could get that for 10 bucks cheaper down the road, right?

Roberto Revilla: 58:15

No, it's just like oh, wow, okay, I can solve that here too Great. I didn't know that. It's almost like a bonus, Right, right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 58:24

There's also other ways you can look at doing that right. So instead of you can solve the problem in a different way. So if they look down at their shoes, you don't have to sell them shoes. You can say, ah, I have a guy, let me go pick up the phone and make a. Make an appointment with you at Augustos. He does a bespoke, like handcrafted bespoke shoes that you will love and he gives all my clients 25% off their first pair. You're still solving their problem.

Roberto Revilla: 58:59

Yeah.

Drake Nightenhelser: 59:01

And they're still.

Roberto Revilla: 59:02

You become a facilitator, then if it's something that you don't want to take on yourself.

Roberto Revilla: 59:07

I mean, I like the idea that you focus on that one thing because it makes it so much easier from the business owner's point of view in terms of how they're channeling their messaging, their marketing and so on and so forth, because the problem that we have is we do so much because we can literally top to toe there is an argument that we should actually be messaging it as that, but anyway, that's a story for another time and then, from the customer's point of view, it eliminates confusion from them because they're initially coming to you for that.

Roberto Revilla: 59:42

They don't know about all the other stuff that you do, but then generally we don't need them to, I guess, because that can lead to confusion when they're like oh, okay, right, well, actually, because I do get this from people in my industry when you get customers like oh yeah, I went to this Outfitters and then I went in and then I walked out again because I just didn't know where to start, because I thought I was going there for that, but then there was all this other stuff and then I didn't know which problem I needed to start solving. Wow, that's a real kind of shift in thinking.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:00:20

Well, the hardest part about business is sales and marketing right. The place where people fall flat is they never. A lot of businesses don't go in and actually really refine their marketing and their sales process to be clean and smooth and attract the right people, especially because they're trying to sell and market seven things. You have the bandwidth to do that and to do it properly and to learn the skills that you need to learn and to find the experts that you need. You have the bandwidth to do all that when you're only selling one thing, but you can also. I just had a brain fart. I forgot what I was going to say.

Roberto Revilla: 1:01:06

No, that's okay. Let me talk about the analogy that was running through my head, because it's like a movie inside here. I think very viscerally in images and stuff. What you were saying just there is don't pick up a whole load of mud and try and throw it at a wall to see what sticks. Really kind of hone down on what it is that you're about and what it is that you do for people, so that you become like the sniper who sets himself up in the eagle's nest, takes one bullet. Snipers don't put multiple bullets. They don't put a chain of bullets like you do with machine gun people, these images of Stallone and Arnie from the 80s movies. Literally they just run in and they're just kind of blasting the thing all over the place. They put one bullet in one gun, they aim their sights and they hit the target, rather than the scattergun approach, I think 100%.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:02:06

Yeah exactly.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:02:09

I like that and, like we talked about, you can still offer other things, like at the rap company. What we did is we designed logos too. We did what were called wall murals as well, where you basically is a rap for a wall. We used to sell those things on the front end. If somebody called and said, hey, will you design a logo for me? We'd say yeah. And as things progressed they'd say, hey, will you do a logo for me? And the question was well, we only all do logos for existing clients. Are you planning on doing a vehicle rap as well? No, okay. Well, let me connect you with somebody who can help you out then. We don't do just logos, right.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:02:52

But if somebody came in looking for a vehicle rap and their logo was needing some love, you know, I'd say hey. So, out of curiosity, you know this is a pretty big decision and we want to make sure we get it right the first time. You don't have to go back and change it. Are you guys happy with your logo the way it is? Because I want to make sure that we don't have to redo your design and tear your rap off and rewrap a vehicle and go through that whole expense, if you think you're going to go ahead and change your logo, they'd say, well, we were actually thinking about doing that.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:03:28

Great. Is that something you wanted to wrap up in this project? Easy, right, with wall murals? You know a lot of companies wanted to get what was essentially a wrap for, like, the reception of their business that was branded for their company. Somebody calls us up out of the blue and says, hey, I was wondering if you do a wall mural for my office. No, I'm sorry we can't, but if an existing client who's done 20 vehicle wraps with this calls says, hey, I want to do a wall mural, let's go, john, when can I come over and take measurements? Right, you're cleaning up the front end to make sure that it's manageable and maintainable and it's bringing the right people into your business to buy the right things.

Roberto Revilla: 1:04:16

Yeah, so, but that then. So again, using that example in the vehicle wrap business. But that was a result of step number whichever one it was, which was number three, I think, which was defining your policies. Right, because you would have to do that because the guys you were working with that were running that business. They would have been in the habit again of, yeah, we'll do that, yeah, we'll design you a logo, yeah, we'll do your mural, yeah, you want your vehicle wrapped. Yeah, you want, you know, viper Stripes down your Mustang.

Roberto Revilla: 1:04:52

To get out of that habit, you I'm guessing that you that was part of your policy creation process. And then it was like okay, guys, when someone asks you something, take a deep breath, count backwards from five. And while you're counting backwards from five, here's the new policy manual and just kind of have a look at you know, if this, then I say that Is that. Did you have to do a form of that to get people to really get on board with this new way of thinking, doing things and not snapping back into the old yes, yes, yes habits that they were already in?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:05:31

We didn't have to do that, so it was a seven-figured sales department for a seven-figure business, but it was a one-man department so I was doing everything Right. So when I created a policy, it was really easy to keep team on point, you know, because I was the sales team right. But the hard part was convincing the owner that these policies were the right move, because he was so stuck in that long-term money is money, revenue is revenue. You know, don't look a gift horse in the mouth mindset.

Roberto Revilla: 1:06:11

But now? So now I've introduced an interesting question, because if you have got somewhere where there are more people responsible for that, so you've got more people on the front line that maybe are dealing with customers or responsible for client acquisition, or whatever you know, I mean, I guess I imagine that that's what I would have to do. I mean not just for them but also for myself, in my own example, you know, because even today, as much as I learn continuously, as much as I read, as much as I make notes in my new Bible of, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm doing that, I'm going to move to the, you still find yourself in situations every other day where something happens and someone asks you to do something and you go, yeah, sure, and then you'd be like, damn it, why, why don't the? Oh God, I'm going to go and fill it, because I can't call them back and say, look, I'm really sorry, that was old me, but we don't actually do that anymore.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:07:12

The way I would have handled that. When I was in sales I was really big on keeping my word. So if I, even if I, misquoted something on a price, unless we were going to lose money on the price that I quoted, I would do it for what I quoted and I would just let them know. Hey, so I do want to let you know, john, like I messed up on your pricing. So we're going to do this for the price that we said we would, but at this price point it has to be a one-time thing.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:07:39

If you want to do another wrap like this next time, it's going to be this price and I just want to be upfront and let you know that so that if that doesn't work for you, you can make whatever decision you need to right. But along those same veins, I would just call them up and say, hey, so I made a little bit of a mistake. We don't actually offer this anymore. We decided not to offer this anymore and I'd forgotten. We'll go ahead and do it for you, but I just want to let you know that, if you want to, just so you know. So there's no like miscommunication that if you wanted this again, we would keep my word, but I'm going to communicate with you.

Roberto Revilla: 1:08:19

No, and that's great, I totally. But then what if? So now I'm going to go another step further. What if, by making that mistake, you've let a wolf through the door? And I don't like using that analogy, because I actually really love wolves, but you know what I mean right, like the three little pigs kind of wolf. That one.

Roberto Revilla: 1:08:43

Like the bad wolf, yeah, yeah, although I can kind of understand, because he was probably just really hungry, right. But anyway, sorry, yeah, that like you've literally that like, even if, like so, for example, you know someone calls up and it's like hey, you know, can I just do one of this, right? Can I just get you to put Viper Stripes on my Mustang, or can you just do one shirt for me? And you know typically that that type of person is just all shades of trouble. Do you still honor it, knowing that this could lead to a lot of grief, headache and anguish if you don't deliver? Whatever the hell it is that is in their head in terms of expectations?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:09:33

So following through and keeping your word, while communicating that you made a mistake and you won't do it again, is a whole separate issue from our. Am I going to put up with bad behavior from a client? Yeah, okay, bad behavior from a client that like I'm going to decide what my boundaries are for client behavior and if a client crosses it I'm going to let them know they crossed a boundary and that that's not cool. And if they keep doing it or it's so bad that like a warning isn't even warranted.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:10:03

Like we had one guy that came in that was just hyper-ticular and as well, even though our project manager, who was a woman, was the primary client contact, he always insisted on speaking with a man. He would never directly say I don't want to talk with you on a speaker, like because you're a woman. But after so many times you were like, okay, you just don't want it. Like he would come to me because I sold him and be like, hey, blah, blah, blah, that's a her thing, go talk to her. And then the next time he would come back and do the same thing. And after so many times I was like, okay, I think we should just stop working together. We can't do anything right for you and you won't deal with the person that you're supposed to deal with because, as far as I can tell, because she's a woman, so let's just not anymore.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:11:03

I am 100% not against saying, hey look, I don't think this is working out. Here's 100% of your money back. Have a nice day. And in that instance, with that gentleman we also we gave him all of his designs, everything like it's just like a go away. Here's all of your money back, not on projects that we've done in the past, but on whatever we were doing on that project. Here's the designs that we did for you on your past vehicles, everything you need to go find a new vendor and be happy without us. Please go and we just respectfully refund him all his money and send him on his way and say I'm sorry, we can't do this.

Roberto Revilla: 1:11:42

Yeah, wow, that makes so much sense. You might laugh at this. I had a situation once where all sorts of things went wrong. I should probably shouldn't have taken the order in the first place. I set parameters and said, right, if we're going to be able to do this, this is what needs to happen. This is what you need to do. Are you going to be okay with that? Yes, yes, yes, as soon as the transaction happens, all of that went out the window Abuse, abuse, abuse. You know, right, you get this.

Roberto Revilla: 1:12:18

So I said to my wife, I said, because she's my business partner and our finance director. And I said listen, this account here, this is not good. I need to free myself from this situation so we'll fulfill it. But then also, I want to refund all of his money so that he does not have the benefit of any of our further guarantees, customer service and so on. Perfect Right, I love it.

Roberto Revilla: 1:12:55

And she said, honey, right thing to do. It's bad energy. I can see how it's affected you and some of the team. Not a problem, go ahead. So I refunded his card and I wrote to him and I told him and I told him politely why I did it. You know this isn't working. I took responsibility and I said, as I've told you in person, I probably shouldn't have taken your order in the first place. I thought that I'd done everything that I could to avoid the situation that we're in and obviously I didn't do enough, and so I think this is best for both of us and I hope that we just part as friends, and you know, yeah.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:13:35

I'm sure you did this but for people listening.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:13:39

When you encounter a situation like that, the absolute best thing to do is to use language that puts it on you yeah, right, hey. So I'm really sorry. When you came in to buy this, I knew that we weren't going to be the best fit to serve you for your need and I sold you anyway, and I shouldn't have. I'm really sorry. I just you know, there were aspects about this project that I didn't think about at that time and I'm like you know. Use language that just politely puts it on you to move them away. I'm sorry, I forgot that we would not. We are not a good fit for you. You're not a good fit for us. We are not a good fit for you. We are not a good fit for you.

Roberto Revilla: 1:14:24

So here's the thing we'll laugh at. So you know. So if anything happens, like with something I buy, and I go back to the store and they're like, okay, we can't fix this, or whatever it is, and they say we're just going to give you your money back, and you're like, okay, fine, you move on with your life, this one is still messaging, trying to call me like we don't need to get into it. I just wanted to share that story with you because I thought you'd find it both amusing and highly distressing at the same time.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:14:56

A little bit distressing. Yeah, when you hit that last part. Well, he still messaged you.

Roberto Revilla: 1:15:00

I'm just like some people, just yeah, I know I was just like okay, I refunded your money, right, I have released myself and you from all of this, and you're still asking for things to be done in relation to the thing that you now do not actually have any rights over, et cetera, et cetera. I think the point of the story is as well as it's kind of amusing now that times past is that there's always going to be these anomalies in the world. But if you've done the foundation work and you know what your boundaries are and you know what your policies are, you can ride through anything.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:15:39

Yeah, if you implement all seven steps and you stay true to them, you're not really going to experience a lot of those people anymore. They're never going to make it through the front door.

Roberto Revilla: 1:15:49

Yeah, Dude, I have really loved hanging out with you and I'm really conscious of time for you more than me because I could literally I could carry on.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:16:02

First world's first seven hour podcast. Let's go, yeah, let's do it.

Roberto Revilla: 1:16:07

James Bond episodes have gone on, some of them for quite some time. I think we had one that was nearly three hours, oh my, but I'm not going to do that to you. And also, my cats just jumped onto my keyboard, so he's probably telling me YouTube been going on. But I have really just loved hanging out with you and I would love to do it again.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:16:28

Yeah, absolutely.

Roberto Revilla: 1:16:30

Honestly. Thank you so, so much. So everybody who's still here just because a web link that I'm going to put in the show notes and it is resources dot, profit, collective dot, vip forward slash three simple steps and this is where you you get ready to get crystal clear on how to start landing great clients. The training that Drake provides here walks you through three of his biggest secrets for landing those clients that you've always wanted, the ones that are a perfect fit for your business. So you go to that link, sign up. It's just really easy. There's a little YouTube YouTube video that Drake's got embedded there. You can watch that.

Roberto Revilla: 1:17:24

And then there's a button that you click to get your tracker sheet and so on. It's not a sales pitch at all. Drake comes from a place and I know this now from spending well over an hour with him of genuinely wanting to help people and at least provides that kind of guideline framework to get you on the path that you need to be on. And then, obviously, if you then feel like you need extra help and you want to take that step and work with him, then by all means you're absolutely free to do that. Did I hit that right, drake? Anything that you'd like?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:18:01

to add. You couldn't have said it better. I'm a huge fan of what I jokingly refer to as the old show them, you can help them by actually helping them trick. There's nothing better in marketing than actually helping people. Not just giving them the what, not just telling them how, but actually showing them that you can do what you say you can do. It's literally the best marketing out there for a couple reasons, and it's also part of what comes down to attracting great clients.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:18:44

If I want you to go out and go through that training and get results from it and get good things happening in your business, it's designed to be enough. It's not designed to be 50% of it so that you have to come by and go get results. If you like it, if you like what it does for your business, if you like what's in that, if you like the way I do things, if you like my methods, if you like the values that I instill in everything, then you might like working with me. But if you don't, then great. That's wonderful. That means that we're not the right fit to work together and you are now free to go find somebody who is yeah.

Roberto Revilla: 1:19:32

We're in a better way to end it. I'm on board, so I'm signing up for everything and I am going on Amazon right now. As soon as we get off this call, I am putting your book in my basket and buying it, and that will be my reading for the next couple of weeks. Wonderful.

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:19:51

Yeah. One last thing I'd like to say about the book. If you don't mind, this book is about a fourth of the length of a traditional nonfiction book and it's very intentionally written that way. There's no fluff, there's no filler, it's literally getting. Get what you need, get out. Business owners are busy and one of my biggest pet peeves is having to read a book for four hours to get the 30 minutes that I wanted. You should be able to read this book in about an hour.

Roberto Revilla: 1:20:28

Brilliant. Yeah, I'm just looking on Amazon for everybody at home, I know, but it will be available by the time this goes out. We're recording today, on the 15th of September 2023. Amazon is telling me and actually this might be useful for you, drake, over here in the UK, I can get the hardcover on Friday, the 22nd of September, and the paperback I can get it on Sunday, the 17th of September. Oh, okay, the Kindle Edition is available instantly and they're all priced the same. They're all priced at just under 20 pounds. So there we go. I'm going to get the paperback, so I get it five days earlier and then I can carry it with me in my bag for the whole of next week In between all my client appointments. We're just reading a few more pages of seven steps to attracting great clients by the awesome Drake Night and Hells of Drake. Thank you so much. Have you had fun today?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:21:36

Outloads. This is honestly probably the best podcast I've done.

Roberto Revilla: 1:21:41

Oh, thank you. Under the brownness here I've gone bright red, but no, honestly, you've been truly wonderful. I have really loved hanging out with you and I hope everybody listening has as well. And will you come back once I've read your book so that we can talk about that? Yeah, yeah, I will be implementing as well, so we can then get into it from the other side and hopefully, I won't be asking as many stupid questions?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:22:09

No such thing as a stupid question.

Roberto Revilla: 1:22:11

Exactly that's what I tell my wife after you ask a question yeah, basically Brilliant, and she's she's like 100 episodes behind, so she won't get to this until 2029 or something. Great, thank you. Have an amazing time in South Africa, and you will also have to get in touch with me and let me know when you have been shark diving. I want to hear all about it and where are you off to next after this?

Drake Nightenhelser: 1:22:46

We're headed back to Georgia and then we're going to hit Russia for New Year's so that my girlfriend can ring in the biggest, the most important holiday for Russians with her family for the first time in 12 years Awesome.

Roberto Revilla: 1:23:03

Yeah, brilliant. So we will hopefully stay in touch and yeah again, thank you so so much. And thank you all so much for joining Drake and I on this episode. Don't forget we are on Instagram I still don't see the point, but anyway at towing for podcast and you know love feedback, so you can email me the usual place and show notes. Please remember to subscribe right in review and you can also click the share button in your player Very important. So, on this episode, on to someone you know who might get some help or be inspired by what Drake shared with us today, and if you're enjoying Tater and talk and want to support the show, you can go to the buy me a coffee dot com link and show notes. Have a great week, be good to each other and I will see you on the next one.