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If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you want to grow your business fast. But if you want high-paying clients, then you must be willing to go against conventional wisdom.

Not everyone can be your client. If you say, “Anyone is my client,” then you’re in trouble.

Many new entrepreneurs think everyone and anyone with money is a potential lead. But for you, you must be more selective.

Most advice out there recommends that you talk to everyone you know, get involved in local business communities, optimize your website, and get into as many social media platforms as possible. But what happens if you try to catch a fish with a tiny net in an enormous sea?

You’re lucky to catch a fish or two! So if you’re patient enough to grow your business slowly, if you want to talk to dozens of people to get your first client, then follow those conventional strategies that require a high degree of time and effort. Eventually, you will find your first client. But your troubles don’t end there.

You’re new and no one has heard of you, so your first client doesn’t want to pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars. You might even have to offer some advice or service for free, just to get your first testimonial. Meanwhile, your rent and your phone and electricity bills are waiting to be paid. So what can you do to cut through this slow and painful growth stage? Is there a way to fast forward this process?

Back when I was running my one-man advertising agency as a copywriter, I was trying to get clients from all over the place. I would do the work for anyone who would hire me. As long as the client breathed, they were good enough for me. Everyone was my customer.

However, over time and with more experience, I realized that to grow my business, I had to use one powerful strategy which I’m going to teach you today to get that ideal high-paying client fast.

Watch this video to learn how to grow your business faster.

The Kingpin Strategy to Get Clients

Here’s the problem. If everyone is your customer, then nobody is your customer. What I needed was that one account that would improve the quality of my clientele. I didn’t need dozens of clients paying me a few hundred each for my services.

I just needed a couple of high-ticket clients paying me thousands for the same service. My goal was to make the same income with fewer clients. So what I had to do was find the kind of client I would attract when I had more experience… and attract that client now.

When I was struggling as a copywriter, I came across a book called Guerilla Marketing. It’s a very famous book series on small business and marketing written by Jay Conrad Levinson. Now Jay has sold over 20 million books worldwide for the Guerrilla Marketing series. He was one of the most well-known educators and marketing gurus of our time before he passed away. So I approached Jay.

At the time, Jay was marketing a Guerilla Marketing Association membership. I went to his website and saw what he did so I rewrote the entire page. I sent it to the Guerrilla Marketing Association and got a reply from Jay personally. He thanked me because I had delivered value before asking for anything in return.

“Wow, you know what, young man, that’s very nice of you,” he said. He actually used the material and it helped him to generate more sales. Afterwards, I asked him, “Hey, Jay, since you’re getting value, is it okay if you give me some kind of recommendation and endorsement?” He said he was more than happy to do that. And he did.

That was my first Kingpin client.

By getting Jay Conrad Levinson, a well-known marketing guru with credibility and authority for so many small business owners, I could approach potential clients differently. I could say, “I have an endorsement from Jay Levinson who wrote Guerilla Marketing, who sold 20 million books.” That reference impressed my next client.

At the beginning of your career, when you’re establishing credibility and reputation, don’t chase everybody. Decide on the one person or company that will launch your career and serve them.

For example, in the tech world if you could work with Google or Amazon or Microsoft you could get then get other high quality clients. Everybody else will look at that account and say, “If you’re good enough for them, you’re good enough for me.”

You skip that learning curve and grow your business much faster. You can also use this technique to draw in more customers at one time.

The Kingpin Strategy To Get Clients Fast

Let me give you another example of the Kingpin Strategy from a different perspective. In the United States, they have these huge events. The Learning Annex back then was doing massive conferences with 5,000 to 25,000 people using this Kingpin Strategy.

They would bring in “Kingpin speakers,” such as Donald Trump before he was president, Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, and Bill Clinton to draw people in.

They paid them a huge speaking fee to have them show up at the event. At the same time, platform speakers or platform closers who aren’t paid to be there will offer their programs or products. They would make a 60-minute or 90-minute pitch on stage to draw in the crowd.

These events don’t make money from 5 to 20 thousand people’s tickets.They make money from these platform closers. The event organizer would do a split with anything that the closers sell. Imagine if someone is speaking to 10,000 people and he is selling a $1,000 package.

If he sells 500 of them a day, a multi-day event would generate millions of dollars. The platform closures would get a 30 to 50 percent commission because the organizers are the ones spending all the money. The organizers made millions upon millions of dollars from these conferences going around North America, even the U.K. That’s how the business model works.

That’s the Kingpin Strategy from a different perspective. So ask yourself the question. Who is that one company, that one organization you could get that would change everything. From then on, you leverage that one person’s name or that organization’s name for the rest of your career. Before you know it, you go from a nobody to a somebody.

How will you apply the Kingpin Strategy to get new clients? Comment below.

1. Me-Too Business

In the first kind of business, the Me-Too Business, you are the same as everybody else. If you’re put next to the competitors, your message and products get swallowed up before your consumers can tell the difference. You look like everybody else. You provide the same product and service.

For example, there are over 35,000 health clubs in the USA, and at least ten, maybe more, major health club chains, each with 100 to 2000 locations. How can a customer decide to choose your club instead of someone else’s?

Maybe you tell them about your features. Does your location have a workout area? Group exercise classes? Personal training? Not surprisingly, most health and fitness clubs have these exact same features. You need to do more to stand out.

2. Me-Better Business

In the Me-Better Business, you’re better than everybody else. Maybe you’ve been in business longer than your competitors, maybe your packaging is better, or your warranty or your technology is better. It doesn’t matter. In the Me-Better Business, you’re the one saying you’re better.

Your health club is better because there are so many locations that a member can work out anytime, anywhere. Your club has the best equipment and programs for losing weight. Or, your club has more equipment and personal trainers. These are the reasons why you say your club is better.

How can you get your customers to say your club is not only better, but the best because you are different?

3. Me-Only Business

The Me-Only Business is where you want to be because you are the only person in that space that does what you do.

In the 1990s, a women’s health club broke into a market already saturated with health clubs, but it realized there was an untapped market in the fitness industry. At one end, there were high-end, full service health clubs. At the other end were home exercise programs that required little or no equipment. This club found a Blue Ocean somewhere in the middle.

It was different from a typical health club because machines were arranged a circle in groups of ten so members could talk and support one another while working out. The nonjudgmental atmosphere included the lack of mirrors on the wall. Most importantly, the company, Curves, offered value at a lower cost.

It also created a new demand for fitness consumers. And it wasn’t the only company to create new demand in the last decade. It’s possible to find a Blue Ocean in a 200 year old industry that has entertained generations.

It’s a Blue Ocean for a Me-Only Business

Creating A Blue Ocean In A Declining Industry

If you’re thinking you can’t find a Blue Ocean for your new business, think about the challenges Cirque du Soleil had in a declining, centuries old industry: the circus. Children wanted to play video games, and people protested animal rights. So what did they do?

Let’s start with what they didn’t do. They didn’t cater to the traditional end users, the children. They appealed to the traditional purchasers, and charged a lot more for an entertainment experience. Adults and corporate clients who enjoyed the theatre, ballet, Broadway shows, and opera now had another option, but in a circus setting.

Cirque now had an uncontested market space and they had eliminated costs. No more animals to feed and multiple performers to transport. People now came to the circus instead of the other way around. And they were now catering to upscale audiences.

Discovering a Blue Ocean is possible, whether you’re in an old market, or a new one. In the case of iTunes, they entered an existing market and created a new one.

Creating A Blue Ocean By Competing With An Existing Market

Now how does a company create its own market by competing with one that already exists? It can, if the current market is entirely illegal.

In the late 1990s, file sharing programs enabled the illegal downloading of digital music files. A demand for MP3 players to play mobile digital music was answered with products such as Apple’s iPod. After making an agreement with five major music companies, Apple’s iTunes offered à la carte song downloads.

Consumers no longer had to buy an entire CD for one or two songs, which was previously a major annoyance. They could get the specific songs they wanted and recording companies could have the copyright protection they wanted. It was a win-win that started a new trend.

Fast forward to today, when millions of songs, movies, TV shows, books, and podcasts are now downloaded on iTunes. Apple has been dominating this Blue Ocean for more than a decade.

Now I’ve shown you examples of how companies have created their own Blue Ocean, by breaking free from tradition, like Cirque du Soleil did, or by creating a demand, like Curves did. But what if you’re a small company, or a micro business, or sole proprietorship? How can you disrupt the marketplace?

Dan Lok’s Blue Ocean Strategy

I’ve started a lot of businesses in my career. Some were Me-Too. I mowed lawns, fixed computers, and operated just like everybody else with a single employee company.

I’ve also had Me-Better businesses in which I was striving to have better marketing skills, management skills, better service, or better products.

But where I found massive wealth was the Me-Only Business. That’s when you’re the best one in the world at this one thing that only you can do. You may not get there overnight, but you can get a bit closer over time. How I created a Me-Only Business was by creating a certification program.

I founded the High-Ticket ClosersTM Certification Program which graduated thousands of students worldwide in its first year. The concept of a salesperson wasn’t new, but the term “High-ticket Closer” to describe people who close deals for premium products wasn’t familiar to most people. That put me in a Blue Ocean.

Your business idea doesn’t have to be revolutionary. You just have to give the marketplace that perception. That perception they have becomes the reality if they perceive you as Me-Only.

Once you’re doing something nobody else is doing, then you have dominated the marketplace and you have applied the Blue Ocean Strategy.

So, think about how you can find the Blue Ocean and dominate it.

How could you apply the Blue Ocean Strategy to your business? Comment below.

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