Russ Ruffino: Why More Clients Doesn’t Always Equal More Profit
In this interview, Ruffino discusses how conventional marketing wisdom may not be the way to go for service businesses as sometimes, it’s better to work with fewer clients.
Who are you?
My name is Russ Ruffino, and I am the CEO and Founder of Clients on Demand. I spend most of my days working closely with my students, helping them achieve their business goals by implementing our world-class client attraction strategies.
Myself and my coaching team assist every one of our students with just about anything you can think of when it comes to running a business, including mindset coaching, technical application of marketing strategies, and offering support and guidance where it’s needed.
How did you get the idea or the concept for Clients on Demand?
Of course, digital marketing is not a new concept; however, I felt like everywhere I turned, I kept seeing the same advice regurgitated time and time again. So-called marketing experts would teach people the latest and greatest strategies to secure as many new clients as possible, without ever implementing any real targeted campaigns.
For me, those strategies are like throwing a fishing net out at sea in the hope of finding that one big catch. Sometimes you’ll come up with nothing, sometimes you’ll catch 100 small fish, and then just once in a blue moon, you might stumble upon the big one you’ve been chasing.
In my opinion, these strategies are highly ineffective, wasting valuable time and resources. That’s where Clients on Demand comes into play, with a different approach.
What problem does your business solve?
Every business needs great clients. If you can’t attract clients consistently, your business is on life support. Clients on Demand focuses on teaching business owners how to finely tune their marketing practices to attract the right clients, at the right price, any time they want.
This gives them more freedom to focus on the other aspects of their business, where they can concentrate on delivering better results to their customers as they don’t need to worry about where the next client is coming from.
What makes Clients on Demand stand out from the rest?
Most people tend to think that more clients equal more profit. However, that isn’t the case. Sometimes the key to scaling your business faster than ever before is working with FEWER clients at a higher price point. In this video, Marc Von Musser and myself discuss about attracting high ticket clients:
We show our clients how to realize their true potential and find the confidence to charge the prices that they deserve. This eliminates the 90% of the daily groundwork that normally would have bogged them down, as their schedule is drastically reduced.
It’s far better for everyone involved if you work with, let’s say, 5 or 6 VIP clients with whom you can provide your 110% best service, rather than spreading yourself too thin over 40 low-paying clients.
Yes, this prices a lot of potential customers out, but that’s precisely why it works. It’s important to remember we operate in one of the most competitive industries globally, yet our goal is to provide our clients with the absolute best service around. In reality, we practice exactly what we teach, it’s as simple as that.
At what point did you realise you had what it takes to become a world-class business coach?
I guess it was around half a year after I quit my job and made over six figures from a product launch. I spent $60,000 of that money hiring top-level coaches to help me refine my marketing funnel, soaking up every bit of knowledge I could get my hands on.
Through these experiences, I started to develop the confidence and understanding required to teach others how to achieve success with their business. After finding more success with my own business and working with some very influential people, I realized that a large part of success is attributed to the mindset and how well we can govern our emotions when times get tough.
That’s exactly why mindset coaching is such a big part of our program at Clients on Demand.
What do you think you would be doing if you never started Clients on Demand?
Before I started Clients on Demand, I was working as a bartender. I fancied myself as an entrepreneur, but I didn’t have much success if I am completely honest. Looking back, it’s easy to see that I didn’t have the mindset or the self-belief to follow through on my goals with any real conviction.
I was fortunate enough to discover the skills I needed to dig myself out of that rut and managed to develop a strong mindset through the power of visualizing success and relentlessly working toward my dreams, bit by bit, day by day.
If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting, what would it be?
Understand the importance of delivering as much value as possible to your clients because business is all about value creation.
If you run a service business, get out of the mindset that more clients are better. It isn’t. You need to be focusing on finding the right clients, the ones that are perfect for your business and the ones who will benefit the most from what you’re offering.
Streamline your marketing campaigns and be very specific about who you want to work with and why. That’s the only way you can scale your business sustainably.
