25 Things I'd Do to Build a More Profitable Business With Fewer Clients

I've had over 1,000 clients in the online space.

I've consulted with billion dollar companies.
And I've been paid to travel overseas 100+ times to help companies grow.

What I'm about to tell you is the OPPOSITE of what everybody is teaching.

You don't need more clients.
You need LESS.

Here's 25 things I'd do to build a more profitable business with less clients.

1.I'd ask myself one ridiculously simple question:

Do I actually like you?

Not:

Can you afford me?
Do you fit my avatar?
Could I sell you something?
Do I actually LIKE you?

Because if we're going to work closely together for the next year, that's pretty important.

2.I'd ask myself whether I could spend a week with you and not get bored.

Some of my clients fly out to Thailand and we hang out for a week.

We eat together. Talk business. Hang out. Have conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with work.

So one of my qualification criteria is genuinely:

Would I actually want to hang out with this person?

If the answer is no, why would I deliberately build a business full of them?

3.I'd ask whether I'm sincerely the right person to help you.

Not whether I CAN sell you.
Not whether I can squeeze your problem into my methodology.

Do I sincerely believe I'm the right person to help you get where you want to go?

If the answer is no, I'll tell you.

I'd rather lose the money than take somebody's money knowing there's somebody better suited to helping them.

4.I'd want to hear that you're trying to achieve something that excites me.

Of course I'll help solve problems.

That's automatic.

But I don't just want to hear what you're trying to get away from.
I want to hear what you're moving towards.

What are you building?
What do you actually want?
Where could this go?

When you tell me what you're trying to achieve, does it make me want to be part of it?

I want to work with people building things I find genuinely exciting.

5.I'd want you to be low maintenance.

That doesn't mean I don't want to give you attention.

I'll give an exceptional client enormous amounts of attention when it's valuable.

It means I don't want to have to manage you.
I don't want to chase you.
I don't want to repeatedly motivate you.
I don't want to convince you to do the things we've already agreed need doing.
I want clients who can operate without me.

My job is to make them better, not keep them functioning.

6.I'd want to spend most of our time looking forward, not backwards.

Of course mindset comes into the work.

Energetics comes into it.

Sometimes we'll go incredibly deep because there's something underneath the surface that's affecting everything else.

But ultimately, I want to invest the majority of our time in strategy.

Where are you going?
What's the opportunity?
What's the next move?
What are we building?

If every conversation is spent revisiting the same problems, we're not moving forward.

I'll happily go deep when we need to.
I just don't want us to live there.

7.I'd want you to already see yourself as successful.

This is important to me.

I want to work with people who have already created something.

They already know they're capable.
They don't need me to constantly remind them that they're good enough.

Of course they'll have doubts.
Of course they'll have difficult days.

Everybody does.

But underneath that, there's a fundamental belief:

I'm going somewhere.

Not, I’m stuck and constantly in survival.

My job isn't to create that belief for them.

It's to help them turn it into something considerably bigger and give them the tools required to achieve this result.

8.I'd want you to be self-aware.

This is massively underrated.

I've worked with entrepreneurs whose businesses were clearly heading in the wrong direction.

Their team was struggling.
Their numbers were deteriorating.

Everything around them was telling them something needed to change.

Ask them how things are going?

"Brilliant."

That's a problem.

But the opposite is equally difficult.

Somebody can be doing exceptionally well and still tell themselves every week that everything is terrible.

Neither is particularly useful.

I don't need you to always have an accurate view of yourself.

That's why I'm there.

But I do need you to be willing to question your own view.

Because if your business is telling us one thing, your team is telling us another, the data is telling us another, and you're still convinced everything is brilliant...

There's not much I can do with that.

You don't need to always see it.
But you need to be willing to see it.

9)I'd need my clients to be coachable.

One of the worst clients I've ever worked with would literally ask for feedback and then turn the feedback into a drama.

I learned the hard way from that.

The best clients I've worked with are open to being challenged.
They can hear something uncomfortable without immediately becoming defensive.
They can separate feedback about a decision from criticism of them as a person.

My clients don't pay me to agree with them.
They pay me to see what they can't.

10.I'd want you to trust the data.

Business can be emotional.

But I don't want to run a business entirely on emotion.

How do you FEEL sales are going?
“Amazing”
Now show me the numbers.
“Great”
How do you FEEL the marketing is performing?
Now show me the numbers.

I'd happily ask a client to spend two minutes a day tracking a handful of important metrics.

Because the more emotional things become, the cloudier our perception can become.

The data gives us something objective to come back to.

I don't want to spend six months discussing how we think the business is performing.
I want to know from data you can read in 8 seconds.

11.I wouldn't work with clients who need me to function.

I don't want dependency.
I don't want somebody who can't make a decision until they've spoken to me.
I don't want somebody who needs constant reassurance before taking action.

And I definitely don't want somebody expecting me to care more about their business than they do.
I want independent people.

People who will make decisions.

Take action.
Make mistakes.
Learn.

I want clients who would be successful without me.
My job is to help them become considerably more successful with me.

12.I'd have an application process.

Not because I want to manufacture exclusivity.

Because I actually need information to decide whether I want to work with you.

What are you building?
Where are you now?
Where are you going?
What's getting in the way?
What have you already accomplished?
Why me?

I'd want to understand the person before I ever discussed working together.

13.I wouldn't convince anybody to apply.

By the time somebody applies to work with me, I want their decision to be made.

They've seen enough.
They understand how I think.
They know what I do.
They want to work with me.

The application isn't where they decide whether they want me.
It's where I start deciding if they’re there right fit to advise.

14.I'd interview potential clients.

And I deliberately use the word interview.

I'm not getting on a call hoping they say yes.

They've already applied.
They've already decided they want to work with me.

Now I'm deciding.

Do I like you?
Do I believe in what you're building?
Can I genuinely help you?
Are you self-aware?
Are you coachable?
Do I want you in the room?

Then I'll decide.
Yes or no.

15.I wouldn't compete for a client.

If somebody said:

"I'm deciding between working with you and somebody else."

I'd make the decision very easy.

Go and work with them.

Not because I'm offended.
Not because I believe I'm better than everybody else.

Because if you're comparing me with somebody else, you haven't decided you want to work with me.

That's completely fine.

But I'm not going to convince you.

16.I'd remember that the wrong client can cost considerably more than they're worth.

I once had ONE client cost me over $80,000.

One client.
$80K.

I won't get into the details of what happened, but ultimately it came down to poor client selection.

That experience completely changed how I think about who I say yes to.

Sometimes the most expensive client you'll ever have is the one you shouldn't have accepted in the first place.

17.I'd stop measuring my value in hours.

I don't want clients who believe:

More time with Pete = more value.

Sometimes the most valuable thing I can do for a client is spend five minutes sending voice notes back and forth on WhatsApp while I'm walking around a supermarket.

We identify the problem.
Make the decision.
They implement it.

Done.

That's considerably more valuable to me than sitting on a scheduled two-hour Zoom call every Friday simply because somebody believes time equals value.

You're not buying my time.
You're buying the outcome.
Or as one my best clients who paid 5K per month but I barely spoke to said “I pay you because it’s insurance”.

18.I'd write down exactly who I DON'T want to work with.

Who drains my energy?
Who doesn't implement?
Who needs constantly chasing?
Who refuses to look at the data?
Who can't receive feedback?
Who expects me to care more about their results than they do?

I'd get ridiculously specific.

Knowing who I don't want is just as important as knowing who I do.

19.I'd protect the room.

One wrong person in a group doesn't just affect me.

They affect everybody.
The conversations.
The standards.
The energy.
The trust.

I'd rather have 20 exceptional people in a room designed for 25 than fill the remaining five seats with people who make the room worse.

20.I'd realise client selection is part of the product.

If somebody joins my advisory, mastermind or community, they're not simply buying access to me.

They're buying access to everybody I've allowed into that environment.

Every person I accept changes the product.

I'd treat client selection accordingly.

In fact, this is how I’ve ran my Private Advisory for 10+ years already.

21.I'd become exceptionally comfortable saying no to money.

Especially when I need it.

Because that's when standards start slipping.

When your pipeline is full, saying no is easy.
When it's quiet, red flags suddenly start looking slightly less red.

I'd decide my standards when I'm thinking clearly.

Then I'd stick to them when saying no actually costs me something.

22.I'd be willing to say no to existing clients too.

Even clients I genuinely like.

If I'm growing and they're not growing with me, eventually we might stop being the right fit.

That doesn't make them wrong.
It doesn't make me right.

We've simply reached the end of what we can create together.

I wouldn't keep somebody as a client simply because they've always been a client.

23.And I'd expect exactly the same from them.

If one of my clients outgrows me, I WANT them to leave.
I don't want them staying because they're comfortable.

Or loyal.
Or because we've worked together for five years.

If somebody else can take them somewhere I can't, they should go.

I'd genuinely want that for them.
I don't want my clients retiring with me.

The relationship should continue for as long as we're continuing to create meaningful value together.
�AKA, client loyalty is overrated. REAL client loyalty is staying with you because you still immense value to the table.
The same goes both ways.

24.I'd become obsessed with increasing the lifetime value of my BEST clients.

Not by constantly selling them more things.
By constantly becoming more valuable to them.

What are they building next?
What's their next constraint?
What opportunity can I see that they can't?
Who could I introduce them to?
What could we solve together that wasn't even relevant when we first met?

I'd rather create ten times more value for an exceptional existing client than constantly replace them with strangers.

25.I'd stop trying to build the biggest business I possibly could.

I'd build the best one.

I don't want 500 clients just so I can tell a bunch of strangers who don’t care I have 500 clients.
I don't want a giant team managing people I never should have accepted.
I don't want more complexity simply because we've somehow decided that growth always means more.

I want exceptional people.
Doing interesting things.

Who I genuinely like.
Who are self-aware.
Who can take feedback.
Who don't need me, but recognise the value I can bring.
Who are building something that excites me.
Who I sincerely believe I can help.
Paying me exceptionally well.
Getting exceptional results.

And who, if they jumped on a plane and flew out to Thailand for a week, I'd actually be excited to see.

Most entrepreneurs are asking:

"How do I get more clients?"

I think that's the wrong question.

I'd ask:

"How exceptional can I make the clients I already choose to work with?"