Ascend 101

Lessons about building a one-person business, writing, and self-improvement

From Zero to Hero: The One-Person Business Roadmap to Landing Your First Client

Let me start off by saying this isn’t the only way to do things.

There are a multitude of methods and strategies that you can use.

But this is the one I use and the one that has the most leverage to scale in the future. My goal is freedom. My goal is independence.

This is the one that has the most potential to get me to my goals.

I’m known for not liking cold outreach and not spending any time doing so.

Do you want to go down that route without building yourself a personal brand? Perfectly fine. But then this roadmap isn’t for you.

With that said, let’s get into it.

Step 1) Your brand

As I’ve said. We’re going to be building a personal brand.

But what is a brand?

Well first, your brand is NOT your Twitter profile. It isn’t the color scheme in your profile picture, banner, website, or products either.

Your brand isn’t even the type of content you write.

Your brand is your story.

It’s the vision, mission, and values you have. It’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, how you got here, and where you want to go.

That’s what makes a (personal) brand so powerful. And what 90% of people on Twitter get wrong.

They create an account, pick a random color, select a niche, and become yet another ghostwriter, growth coach, email copywriter, graphic designer, or fitness coach.

Only to end up as copies of one another.

But they don’t have a brand. They have a traditional business. A soulless one at that.

People often talk about being “authentic”. Yet fail to be authentic.

That’s because they missed this vital step.

You can’t be “you” if there’s no “you” infused in your brand. Simply sharing your opinion isn’t enough. People have no clue whether you’re actually authentic.

Being authentic means being consistent with the story you’re telling. It means fighting for your values while defending your vision. And doing everything in line with your mission.

You can only “be authentic” when you’ve carefully crafted (and shared) your story, vision, mission, and values.

Step 2) Profile optimization

Now that you’ve got your brand. It’s time to build and optimize your profile.

And please don’t skip this. I don’t care whether it’s right or wrong. But people judge a book by its cover.

So it’s up to you to accept the fact and make your cover as flawless as possible.

A winning Twitter profile needs 3 things:

It needs to be immediately understood (who you are)
It needs to offer value (what you do for them)
It needs to have a unique angle (why they follow you)

How you do this is up to you.

This is an extension of your brand. So play around and use your creative freedom. But don’t go overboard.

Remember that it needs to be clear, not clever.

Don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time around. It won’t be.

You simply need to get your first iteration out ASAP. You can (and will) improve it later on.

Step 3) Your content

Your content drives your business forward.

It’s what educates your audience, grows your brand, and proves your authority.

But first, you need to know what to write about. And, you guessed it, this comes from your brand.

Your real brand. Your mission, vision, and values.

Throughout your journey, you’ll have different goals, obstacles, systems, and benefits from those systems.

These are the things that’ll shape your content.

You talk about your goals and share why you care about them
You talk about the obstacles you’ve faced and how you overcame them
You talk about the systems you’ve used and why they mattered
You talk about the benefits your current lifestyle got you and how others can get them

If you talk about all of those, you’re already halfway there. The last step for great content is talking about it from different perspectives.

Not all content serves the same purpose after all. You’ve got content for growth, authority, and authenticity.

All of which are important. And all of these can include the same big ideas that we’ve listed above.

Step 4) Building your audience

You won’t have enough followers early on to get eyes on your content just by writing tweets.

You’ll need to work on building your audience. Which you shouldn’t confuse with simply posting content.

We’re talking engaging and networking with other creators. Borrowing their audience, hosting spaces, and even liking tweets of smaller accounts.

The ultimate goal is for your customer to find you. This saves you time, energy, and effort that you’re able to put into other higher-leverage activities.

I won’t go too deep into building an audience in this email. There are 1001 different growth coaches with their own courses to teach you all about it.

Step 5) Crafting Your Offer

This is where the fun begins.

Crafting your first offer. I called it step 5 for simplicity, but ideally, you’ll start doing this from day 1.

There’s not a single reason to wait before you craft an offer. Having an offer from the start makes it easier to grow, in fact.

You need to have a project to work on. Some type of progress to share on the timeline.

You build authority by showing your results. And you can only get results by building something.

The easiest way to know what to build/offer is to start by looking at your own problems and looking for a solution.

Then all that’s left to do is talk about your solution and how it improved your life.

You’ll naturally attract people similar to you who are a few steps behind you and who’ll probably have the same problem in their lives as well.

All that’s left to do for you is to package up your solution into a compelling offer.

Keep in mind the 4 factors of The Value Equation:

Dream outcome
Perceived likelihood of achievement
Time delay
Effort & sacrifice

Add in some psychological tricks as a cherry on top and we’ve got your offer.

The easiest type of offer to start with is a high-ticket one (freelancing, coaching, or consulting.)

It pays the best, gives you the most amount of experience the fastest, and it’ll be easier for you to build a course/cohort curriculum out of it afterward.

While I’m not covering email lists and newsletters in this email. After you’ve created your offer is the perfect time to create your email list.

It’ll allow you to practice writing copy and it’s so much easier to know what to write about.

Step 6) Getting leads & prospects

Everyone thinks you need a fancy landing page and some sick copy to get leads for your high-ticket offers. (I used to think the same)

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s all done in the DMs. Even Kieran Drew said so in a recent webinar of him.

And don’t worry. I’m saying you’ll have to send 100 cold DMs a day.

No. I’m talking about sliding in the DMs of your warm audience.

The people who already know and like you. Those who already respect you as an authority and have shown interest in your services through your content.

And no you don’t need thousands of followers for this step. All you need is a few people who engage (like, comment, retweet) with your educational content.

The next step is to get them on a call via my 8-step framework:

Find someone to DM
Send the first message
Transition into uncovering their goals
Identify the roadblock(s)
Dig deeper into their problems
Pitch your offer
Send a form or calendar link
Follow up

Step 7) Closing your first client

This is what you’ve all been waiting for in this roadmap.

Closing your very first client. It’s always exciting the first time you hop on a sales call.

But the funny thing is that, if you followed all the previous steps, this is actually the easy part.

Once people arrive at this stage, they’re already interested in your offer. They already made up their mind to improve their situation and get help from someone. That someone being you.

All they want is a bit of information about how things will continue.

Nobody jumps on a sales call without some part of them willing to pay for your services.

You’ll have no trouble closing them with my 7-step closing framework:

Start the conversation
Frame the call
Discover their motivations
Understand where they are
Understand where they want to be
Show them the promised land
Close’em

If you think you’re at this point and not able to close any of the leads you get. Then you skipped some of the earlier steps.

Chances are you skipped the very first one.

Skipping step 1 turns you into a commodity and people feel no difference between working with you and another person offering a similar service.

The goal is to become a category of one. Where there’s simply no one else who’s able to offer the exact same thing as you.

Wrap-up

I’m going to wrap this up here.

I know I said that I’ll include practical examples of readers who sent me their current situations. And I still intend to do so.

But this mail is already much longer than I anticipated and I don’t feel like turning this into a 3,000-word email.

So I’ll keep the case studies for next week. This way it’ll get its own newsletter issue and go deeper into every single one.

This also means that you can still reply with your current situation if you didn’t do so last week. (and thanks again for those who already did)

So once again. If you want me to look at your situation (and feel ok with me sharing it with my email list) then send me a big picture of what you’re doing right now.

What strategies are you using? What’s your offer? What results were you hoping for and what results are you currently getting? And lastly, what do you think is the biggest obstacle holding you back?

P.S.

Whenever you’re ready. Here’s how I can help you:

Hop on a Clarity Call with me: Remove all of your uncertainty. Get clear on what you have to do, when you have to do it, and how. Let’s get you on the right track to achieving the freedom you deserve.
Work 1-on-1 with me: We’ll determine where you stand and where you want to go. Then we’ll devise a roadmap to get you from A to B. And get you there in the next 30–60 days.
Download all my products for FREE: Ranging from every resource I ever read to everything I know about content creation. It’s all waiting for you to claim it. Start your journey to financial freedom the right way.

And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition of Ascend 101.

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