About 14 years ago, after getting fired by a client and losing a $180K/year retainer because I was naive and the opposite of “street smart,” a much angrier version of my current self sat down and started writing about my trials and tribulations in the world of business.

Each day, I sat down and wrote a short email message about issues I was working through in pursuit of building an enterprise that could support my family and provide the resources required for the life we wanted to live.

I talked about getting clients. I talked about setting fees. I talked about dealing with all of the head trash and self-worth B.S. that we are programmed with inside of the Matrix.

Little did I know that my new form of self-therapy and anger release would eventually lead me to a completely new way to think about business and the art of exchange.

As it turns out, serving people is a valuable thing to do in our world.

And while most business owners are taught to serve only those who pay them, I accidentally (thank you Universe!) bumbled my way into an experiment where I found out what happens if you just serve people without demanding anything in return.

I also discovered that it is possible to scale the creation of deep and lasting relationships. And to broadcast your signal, in a valuable way, to far more people than you could ever serve one-on-one.

The best word I have to describe what happens when you do this clearly, when you do this consistently, when you do this long for a long enough period of time (it’s usually longer than you would choose) is… MAGIC.

Things that shouldn’t be possible become possible. Things they “don’t happen…ever” happen for you.

As it turns out, you can build a thriving business based on giving first. If that’s an idea that resonates with you, then consider this your invitation to join me on the journey.

There are two things you need to know before we start:

First off, if you think that getting clients means you should chase them into a corner, wrestle them down and “close” them, you’re not going to like this path. Get my free daily Daily Journal and read it for about 30 days. If you’re not turned off or completely offended, then come back and read this invitation again…

Second, if you’re not interested in work, this definitely isn’t for you. This method of attraction is WORK. It’s work where you have to spend more time thinking about your prospects than yourself. It’s work where you have to spend more time thinking about what you can give than what you’re going to get. This disqualifies many folks who just aren’t ready to play at that level yet. If you’re just in it for the money, I respect your freedom to make that decision. So no harm, no foul. But you won’t make it here.

This journey is about service.

If you’re still reading, the best advice I can give you is to stop trying to “get” anyone to hire you. I know this sounds crazy. After all, if you work with clients, what else IS the goal except to get them to hire you or buy what you have?

That is the goal, but the direct route just lumps you in with all of the other salespeople who are trying to get attention. So if you want to be perceived as something different and better, you can’t show up the same way as everyone else does.

You Don’t Pursue Clients Directly, You Develop a System That “Reverse Engineers” the Result You Want – The System Brings the Clients To You

In order to do business on your terms regarding fees and working terms, you can’t be chasing your clients down. They have to come to you. Otherwise, you won’t have any leverage in the relationship and you will be perceived as little more than a “vendor.”

This isn’t about having the upper hand just so you can call the shots. This is more about maintaining control of your business so you can have it support the life you want to have.

It is also about generating a level of respect so that your advice, counsel, recommendations and guidance are received in a way that will provide maximum impact.

You never want to live in Vendorland. It sucks.

When you’re a vendor, there are basically only three questions clients are interested in getting answers to:

• Are you competent?
• How cheap can you do the work?
• How fast can you do the work?

These are not the questions you want to be answering.

Really, you shouldn’t be answering too many questions at all. You should be asking the questions. That’s where you want to be. That’s how service begins.

And the way you earn the privilege to do this is to attract interest in the services you provide, not to force it on people.

The Most Powerful Force in Selling

Think about the company Apple® for a moment. Think about their retail stores and how they present what they have to the world.

When you walk into an Apple® store, you don’t stare at all of their wares in boxes up on the shelf. No, you walk right over to the thing you want and you try it out. You basically give yourself a demonstration of the product.

Ask any smart salesperson and they will tell you that demonstration is one of the most powerful forces in all of selling.

Talking about an iPhone® can only make you want one so much. But once you’ve seen what they can do… or have even tried it out for yourself. Well, you just want one.

Demonstration is the route I’ve chosen to go to attract those with whom I work.

I don’t try too hard to sell… I don’t spend much time trying to talk about what I do. Instead, I choose to demonstrate what I do and know in a very leveraged way to a lot of people at once.

I do this through something called a Media Platform. I didn’t name this thing, and I really have no idea who did. But I can’t think of a better name for it, so I’ll just use the one I’ve got for now.

What is a “Media Platform?”

A media platform is a fancy name for a newsletter, a podcast, a blog, a video series or some other publication you put out into the world on a consistent basis that demonstrates the value you offer to the world.

This is deceptively simple and extremely powerful.

It is rarely exciting, however. Which means, should you choose to pursue this method of client attraction, you will most likely have very little true competition.

This path is simply too much work and far too slow for most people.

The Scarcest Resource in Most Service Businesses and How a Media Platform Can Help

When you’re a solo service provider or a small business, building leverage into your operation is something that can improve your profitability and overall quality of your life.

Most service providers have zero leverage. They don’t have leverage in the delivery of their service and they don’t have leverage in the marketing of their service.

This leads to overworked, underpaid, and barely sane business owners.

Ideally, you could press a button, clone yourself and be able to serve 10X the number of clients you currently can manage.

Until that happens, you can build a media platform to provide some of the leverage in the marketing of what you have.

A platform keeps you in touch with an ever growing group of qualified prospects.

Month after month (or even day after day), these people hear from you in valuable ways. At various times, certain prospects step forward and express interest in working with you.

You don’t really care when an individual steps forward, all you care about is continuing to add value to their lives over time.

When the first day of each new month comes around, you’re not starting your marketing efforts from scratch.

Instead, you just watch and wait as a new prospect on the receiving end of your platform “matures” into a client.

You don’t have to “go out and get clients” because they will come to you. It can be a very graceful process if you do the work required to get momentum going.

Take a look at your own business in its current state.

I have no idea how many prospects you are talking to at any one time, but just imagine if that number went up by a factor of 10… 20… 100… 1000?

That’s what a platform can do. And once that happens, one of two outcomes will eventually appear:

• You’ll get more clients.
• Or, you’ll get better clients.

Sales is a numbers game, but that doesn’t mean that bigger numbers require more work. Bigger numbers, when done well, mean bigger results and better results with less effort. That’s the goal.

Building a platform is slow and steady and it’s something where the momentum can take a while to build.

But we’re not digging ditches here (thank GOD), so when I say “real work,” it’s relative. It’s mainly relative to the general state of laziness in society when something doesn’t promise immediate payoff.

There’s a Smart Way to Build a Platform and a Not So Smart Way To Do It

The key, really, is to design your PLATFORM in a way that makes you an invited and welcomed guest into the world of your prospects.

If you don’t do that, you end up being noise. You end up being a bother. And you end up getting grouped in the same “salesperson” bucket as everyone else.

But when you build your PLATFORM the smart way, you’ll find your prospective clients actually asking you to send them your “marketing” materials. Take a moment to really understand what that could mean for your business.

In fact, eventually you get to the point where they actually MISS YOU when you don’t show up. And that’s exactly where you want to be.

But here’s the problem…

Even the Smartest Client Attraction Platform is Worthless Until It’s Actually DONE

The Platform Lab is a 90 minute, 0mph to 60mph process for getting your Platform designed and off the ground. In the span of a single 90 minute presentation, I’ll walk you the process for strategizing, focusing and building a media platform that works. In addition, there will be plenty of time for Q&A should you choose to attend live.

This session of the Platform Lab happens on Tuesday, June 17 from 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM Eastern U.S. time. It will be recorded for anyone who cannot attend live.

The media platform helps you engineer a status in the marketplace that will slowly and surely separate you from any and all of the other choices. The media platform provides the raw materials to help you become more valuable than money to those you serve. When that becomes true, there’s no limit to the success you can create.

If you want to stand out, if you want to do something different, if you want to become a trusted advisor to far more people than you could ever serve, the media platform is a powerful way to do it.

P.S. Does the media platform strategy “work?” Here’s a quick case study from someone I helped create a media platform: