6 Ways To Get More Clients In An EXTREMELY Competitive Industry

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 231

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place.

Hello, and welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thank you so much for giving the show a chance.

You are at the right place. If you are a creative, and you are either already earning six figures a year, or you were trying to get to six figures a year, and you are maybe lonely, maybe confused, maybe lost along the way, you're at the right place. Especially if you believe that it takes more than just passion to become a 6 Figure Creative, or you're at least open to the idea that it probably takes more than just passion to become 6 Figure Creative. If you're a returning listener, or if you are on YouTube, thank you for coming back again. And again, it really means a lot to me. I have been kind of getting settled back in after my wife and I's long trip. We were gone abroad for 60-something days. Got over jet lag, getting back in the groove here, and it feels like I'm finally back in the groove work-wise and life-wise and sleep-wise. Right as we gear up to take time off for the holidays. This episode is scheduled to come out the week before Christmas, which is, by the way, my favorite holiday of the year. I'm the kind of person that's singing Christmas songs in the middle of July. You can ask my wife. I'm cooking or cleaning and just randomly singing Christmas songs. And I like it a lot. It's happy, there's light, there's presents, there's friends, there's family. I get to take some time off at the end of the year where nobody bothers me.

And I'm looking forward to it. I don't know about you. Hopefully you have some plans with your friends, family, whatever, for the holidays. And if not, you still got me. You can binge through the last 230 episodes that you missed at this podcast for you new listeners. I'm also about to go away to do one of my favorite things that I get to do after Christmas every year. On that week after Christmas when nobody bothers you and there's nothing else really going on, I do my year-end retreat. This is now becoming a routine and will eventually become a ritual. I go to Chattanooga, which is like two hour drive from here.

And I book a room at the Reed House, which is like a really nice hotel in downtown Chattanooga to kind of separate myself from my normal day-to-day life. And I do like a year-end planning retreat there. And I got this from, I mean, there's multiple people to do this, but the person that inspired me to do this was actually Graham Cochran. And he has an episode on his podcast called The Graham Cochran Show, where he talks about what he does on his year-end retreats, just like that. I've literally just copied everything that he does, with exception of, I went through last year the book, Vision Driven Leader. I think I've talked about this on the podcast. I came up with a five-year vision, and then I broke that down into like a one-year, or what things I can reasonably do in 2022, and then brought those down even to smaller chunks for like quarterly objectives, and then like monthly and weekly. It gets really granular, and the more granular you get, the less fun it becomes.

But this is the time of the year where I just come up with, what if my five-year vision do I want to actually accomplish in 2023? So I'm about to go do that. Maybe I'll do a podcast episode on that, if you're interested. Otherwise, honestly, just go listen to Graham Cochran's show. Go find whatever episode it was where he talks about his year-end planning retreat, and that'll pretty much give you everything you need to know. Although there are some new things I'm trying this year, based on my experience last year. And if any of those work out or are cool or good takeaways from that, I'll bring it back to our audience if anyone's interested in hearing that.

Let's actually dive into the topic of the day, because our topic today is not year-end planning retreat. It's more on the topic. I'm more of what I consider an expert at and something that I talk more and more about recently. This is something that was actually in our feedback survey that a lot of our listeners have filled out that they want to hear more about client acquisition. How to get clients in a really competitive industry, something where there's tons of competition and it's hard to stand out. What can you do to get clients in that sort of environment? That's an environment that many creatives are stuck in right now. And if you're a regular listener to the show, that's something that we call in the show a commoditized service. You're a commodity, just like salt. When I'm looking on the shelf, maybe there's a brand that I trust, I don't really know. But in the reality, I'm just gonna pick the cheapest salt that matches the needs and the size that I need. I'm gonna go on my way. Salt is salt. It's gonna taste relatively the same. No matter what brand I pick, that's a commodity. And in some industries, even in creative industries, it can be about that competitive where you don't make a difference. You're a butt in a seat. You're gonna do something for me that I need done, and I can maybe go on Fiverr and find that service for a really cheap amount of money. If that is you, you're in a commoditized service industry. You are not standing out from your competitors, and you're gonna have a really tough time to make ends meet. Now that being said, you can get clients as a commoditized service. You can make 6 Figures as a commoditized service.