Work doesn’t just land on your lap. You’ve got to go out and find it, ask for it. Unlearn desperate energy. People can smell it a mile off. What works better is taking a genuine interest in what they’re dealing with, offering solutions, not products.
Staring at the calendar today I thought, okay, where are next month’s jobs coming from? Time to go back to the basics. I made a little checklist from a discussion this week:
• Volunteer and be properly involved in the community. Not performative, just show up.
• My website, kept simple and up to date.
• Google searches for “near me”. People still do this heaps.
• Referrals from satisfied customer advocates. This one compounds.
• Networking groups, when I go with the mindset to help, not to collect business cards.
• Focusing on ideal customers. Not everyone needs to be a customer.
• Local business associations – offer workshops, be a mentor.
Visibility is the unsexy part. It’s not one big campaign, it’s a bunch of small reminders that you exist. I’m still learning this, and honestly I have to nudge myself to do it when I’m busy, not just when things go quiet.
• Give something away that’s genuinely helpful.
• Support local, because people notice who backs the community.
• SEO and the newer GEO and AI optimisation stuff, plus watching analytics and tweaking pages.
• Following up leads with at least five points of contact. Most people stop too early.
• Being authentic:
o Doing what I say I will.
o Focusing on helping people.
o Saying no when I can’t help, then referring them to someone who can.
For service businesses especially, I keep coming back to quality over quantity. It comes down to knowing your ideal customer, knowing your value, and being brave enough to price fairly.
Only you really know the cost of delivering what you do, but the market info is sitting right there in conversations with customers, suppliers, happy clients, unhappy clients, employees and partners. Listening properly, pricing gets simpler. Not easy, simpler.
One last thing. Trust matters more than clever marketing. People want to do business with brands they trust and people they like, and that’s especially true in a coastal community where your reputation travels faster than ads. If you can connect with customers in a real way, price becomes less important and you don’t have to hard-sell anything. Do good work, then make it easy for people to find you again.
(Excerpt from a session between members of the Independent Board facilitated by Tracey Floyd – Ask your accountant)