Clients want you to solve their problem

Last time I had you compare the skills you have to a client’s problem. The reason you want to do this is because clients don’t need someone with a skill in isolation.

They need someone with a skill to solve a problem they have.

I also mentioned that I’ll give you a detailed example of this based on my own business.

Back in 2007, I started using a project management system called Redmine for my business. I did this because I wanted an open source way to keep track of my clients’ projects and it seemed to work the best.

After using it for a few months I wanted to streamline my own workflow and automate some of the system that were requiring too many manual steps, like logging time. At that time Redmine had just released a set of plugin APIs so I wrote my automation as a plugin.

About a year later in between client work I kept writing plugins for myself and releasing them publicly. I was starting to make a name for myself as a developer who really knew Redmine. And to top it off, I was also a freelancer available for hire.

I slowly started to get requests from companies to write code for their Redmine installations. At first it was simple things like I did to mine: tweak the workflow here, automate this portion over here…

Right around that time I decided to specialize my freelance business into one that provides custom Redmine software and services. And boy, did business take off.

By describing exactly what I could do for clients they were able to easily pick me. Need something done with Redmine? Call Eric.

Once I committed to specializing in Redmine, I had clients banging down my door. It got to a point where I had 2-3 long-term clients using all of my availability and I was still getting several new client leads each week.

I’ve designed my business so that I wouldn’t hire employees (long story) so I wasn’t going to scale up by hiring people. Besides, most of my clients and potential leads were wanting to hire me specifically. They wanted Eric.

I’ve outlined my journey to coming up with my ‘what I can do for them’, but you might notice that it took me a while to get to it. This is because I wasn’t deliberate about defining it and kept referring to myself as a ‘freelance Ruby on Rails developer’ (my skill). If I committed to specializing in Redmine earlier and defined exactly what I did for clients right away, I’d have had more significance earlier.

That’s why I’m stressing so hard about you defining this for yourself.

Put in the hard work now, and you’ll reap the benefits later.

Eric Davis

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