Adding water and waiting two minutes is the wrong way to get clients
Some years ago, when I was doing career coaching, I realised the core of my work was career storytelling. Everything I did with clients came back to it: how they told their story, how they explained what they'd done, how they made their future boss understand why it mattered.
So I gave it a structure, a process, and a name: the Career Storytelling Kit [link]. It didn't take long to build because I'd been doing the work for some time without naming it. I packaged it and started talking about it, consistently.
I was so excited; my business had a new and solid concept. I expected to put it out there and watch people applaud and queue up to buy.
Well, they didn't.
I posted about it, talked about it, showed it to people. I even started my first round of podcast guesting. And the results I was waiting for didn't come, or at least not right away.
That's when the temptation started: rename it, change the offer, burn it to the ground and do something completely different. There were moments I thought, I fucked up, this isn't working, I picked the wrong thing.
It took a good six to eight months of talking about it, again and again, before people connected me with it. Before I became "the career storytelling guy" and people came to me specifically to solve that problem.
In a recent call with a client who had just finished a sprint of building the concept, less than halfway through the sales sprint, and he was already lining up the next thing to change. I had to ask why, to which he replied: “What I am doing is not working”. He had basically just started with his outreach, going to events, creating relationships - which haven’t yet turned into a paying client.
We talked about how long things take until you see the results.
"Maybe being a bit more patient would be a great achievement, not always be like, okay, just do more and change things"
He's right, and it's much harder than it sounds.
Getting clients doesn't work like instant noodles. It's closer to a slow-cooked stew: you put it on, you leave it alone, and you don't keep lifting the lid to check.
I understand why we're so bad at waiting. We're anxious for results. We have bills to pay. We made a big bet, sometimes with our savings and a good part of who we are. We've lived with the idea for months before anyone else sees it, so by the time it's public, it already feels old to us. And we expect the results to show up like instant noodles: add water, wait two minutes, eat.
On launch day, you're months ahead of your audience. You've had the idea, tested it in your head, written the page, rewritten it twice. But they're seeing it for the first time, and when they don't react, it can feel like rejection, but most of the time they simply haven't caught up with what you do and offer yet.
If you go and change stuff, it resets the clock, yet again. A new name or a new angle means people start recognizing you from zero again. If you rebuild every time the silence gets uncomfortable, you never find out whether the thing worked or not and why.
Look at it from the other side. Think of someone on LinkedIn whose message you now connect with. How long did that take? How many of their posts did you scroll past before it stuck? When did you see them for the first time?
Or look at me. How long have you been reading this newsletter? Have you bought anything from me yet? Some of you have. Many of you haven't, and that's completely normal. People need to see the same idea from the same person many times before they connect the two, and longer still before they act on it.
So patience isn't sitting and hoping, it’s giving a realistic chance for it to work, and if doesn’t you will know why. New ideas will still come; they go in a notebook, or into a fun slot in the week where you explore new, exciting stuff, without changing your business yet. Mine is Thursday mornings.
Try this now: think of the last offer or positioning you put out. Count the weeks since it went live. Then count the times you've talked about it somewhere other people could see it.
If that number is not high enough, you probably didn’t give enough time. You added water and walked off before the two minutes were up. Except here, the two minutes are six months. You only know it hasn't been seen enough.
Tell me what you changed before it had time to work? I read every reply.
If you're looking at something you built and can't tell whether it's failing or just early, book a free 45-minute clarity call and we'll look at it together.
Ricardo
