“Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway” – John Wayne

Think very carefully about WHO you want to fill your practice with.

Dan Kennedy has a line he says, “most business owners’ idea of their ideal client is anyone with a wallet and a pulse.” If that’s you, you have some thinking to do.

It’s human nature to want to help everyone. But you can’t. Better you choose WHO you want to serve, than leave it to chance. Build your business to be “for them” with appropriate products, pricing, and service levels for them. Build an experience for your ideal client and forget about everyone else.

Nobody wants to lose a customer. But the truth is, there are some customers you NEED to lose if you are going to build a thriving, successful, profitable practice. Better you attract the ones who will appreciate you, and repel the ones who don’t appreciate or can’t pay for what you do.

The clearer you are about what you do and who you are for, the easier it is. You’ll attract your ideal customers. Your unprofitable customers, your ‘D clients’, will simply stop coming. And that’s a good thing.

Let me try to convince you of this. Here’s how I think about it. I do NOT want every patient in my city. Nor do I want every sale. That would be my worst nightmare. My practice would be overrun with every Specsavers patient, every Boots patient, every Vision Express patient, etc. They wouldn’t want to pay my prices. We’d have massive capacity problems. Our service would go downhill like an avalanche.

I understand this, and therefore I am very selective about the kind of clients I try to attract. And I feel fine knowing that we are not for everyone. You need to be ok with that too. In trying to please everyone and attract all types of customers, your offering becomes bland and ‘for no one’.

When I bought Jones And Co., I made a lot of changes that I knew would alienate some of the previous lower-end clients. But I knew at the same time it would attract more of our ideal clients. And that’s exactly what happened.

Normally, this doesn’t involve any confrontation at all. But it does require courage. It takes courage to build your business for your ideal client base. It takes courage to say No to certain clients. It takes courage to build the business YOU want to have, that serves your needs and wants. Now, re-read the quote from John Wayne.