# 3 Things Clients Notice Before They Hire You

Channel: Adam Erhart
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el_9-7Sl1HY
Duration: 16 min
Language: English
Words: 3542
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/el_9-7Sl1HY

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[0:00] Every person who has ever landed their first client did it with zero testimonials, zero case studies, and zero previous clients. That sounds obvious. I mean, everybody starts from zero, but most beginners still tell themselves they need proof before they can start reaching out to clients. So, they keep polishing the website, reorganizing their notes, and watching just one more video. And the message that would actually get them the client just never gets sent. I know exactly how that goes because I remember one specific Sunday night. I can still picture the desk, the laptop, the exact chair. This was going to be the week that I finally sent a real message to a

[0:33] real business. I opened the doc, reorganized my notes one more time, watched one more training video, you know, just to be safe, and then I closed the laptop at 11:00 having sent absolutely nothing. Just like I'd done every single week before that for as long as I can remember. I called it preparing, but it wasn't. I was just scared. Scared of rejection, scared that somebody might actually say yes, and that I'd be called out for not knowing what I was doing, scared of all the things. Since then, I've built three seven-figure agencies, worked with over 1,500 small businesses, run thousands of campaigns including for companies like

[1:04] Google, Amazon, and Meta, and today I do it all as a one-person agency with zero employees. And here's the single biggest thing all of that taught me. Clients don't trust you because of how experienced you look. They trust you because of three specific signals. Signals that they read in the first 10 seconds, and signals that you can control right from day one, even with zero clients. Actually, especially with zero clients. And the first time I saw those three signals work, it honestly felt a little unfair. Like I discovered some kind of cheat code to the game of business. So, today I'm going to show you those three signals. I'll give you

[1:36] the exact first message to send, and I'll walk you through and help you avoid the three traps that keep you stuck at zero. Plus, why confidence only ever shows up after you take action, not before. That last one's a killer. So, let me show you exactly what this lamp has to do with all of this as it's going to help this make a whole lot more sense. First, let's kill the lights. I I you to picture this lamp on your desk in a completely dark room. You sitting right in front of it. I want you to keep that picture in your head because everything else in the video comes back

[2:03] to it. You're sitting there in the dark and you already know exactly where that chain is, but you're waiting for the room to light up on its own, waiting to feel ready before you'll let yourself pull the chain. That's what waiting to feel ready actually is. Sitting in the dark, arms crossed, demanding that the light turn on before you ever pull the chain. But the chain is how the light turns on. The room was never going to light up on its own. Pulling it is the only way that that happens. I mean, sounds obvious to say, but that's just not how lamps work. And it's not how

[2:31] confidence works either. Instead, you reach into the dark, you pull the chain, and then there's light. Action first, light second. Every single time, no exceptions. All right, let's turn these lights back on. In this metaphor, confidence is the light in the room. The message you keep not sending is the chain. And just like the lamp, you don't

[2:50] get one without doing the other first. Sadly, most new agency owners spend months sitting in a dark room waiting for a light that is mechanically incapable of turning itself on until they reach out and pull the chain. So, if you've been sitting in the dark waiting to feel ready, don't worry. It's not your fault because the advice industry has sold you a completely different theory, which is that the secret to success is to work on your mindset, to say your affirmations, to visualize the success until you feel it, to journal about the person that you're becoming. And look, some of that is pleasant, but so is scrolling your phone

[3:21] for an hour. But nobody ever landed their first client by scrolling their way to confidence. And this isn't just my opinion. There's real research underneath it. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. A psychologist named Albert Bandura spent decades studying exactly this. The belief in your own ability to pull off a specific task. He called it self-efficacy. And in 1991, researchers Multon, Brown, and Lent reviewed the whole body of work and found this one belief accounted for roughly 14% of the difference in whether people actually succeeded. 14% may not sound like a lot, but all of this came from just a feeling. But, here's the

[3:55] detail that almost nobody quotes. Bandura also ranked the ways that belief gets built, and it's not even close. Watching someone else succeed helps a little bit, and being told that you can do it helps even less than that. What wins, and by a mile, is what he called mastery experience, which is actually doing the small thing yourself successfully, even once. In other words, you don't get confidence first and then act, you act first and then the

[4:20] confidence shows up after. Congratulations, you now understand confidence better than the guy screaming rise and grind at 5:00 in the morning in his rented Lamborghini. So, let's name what's actually happening here. I call this the confidence switch, and the whole idea fits in one sentence. You don't think your way into confidence, you act your way into it a little at a time. So, let's get into the three traps, because each one is a different way of sitting in that dark room, and you'll probably recognize yourself in at

[4:45] least one of them. I know I sure did. Trap number one, you think you need proof before you reach out. It's going to be a portfolio, a testimonial, uh real clients already under your belt. But, remember how we started this video? Nobody landed their first client because they had proof. That's just what a first client is. The client you get before you have anything to show. Waiting for proof is like waiting for your first testimonial before you've ever delivered anything. The testimonial doesn't exist yet because the client doesn't exist yet. Trap number two, you're waiting to feel confident about messaging a business before you've ever messaged a

[5:17] business. And I know what that sounds like inside your head, because it used to run in mine on a loop. I'll reach out once I finish the course, once the website's up, once I've watched a couple more videos so I don't embarrass myself. But, the catch here is that you're waiting for proof that can only come from doing the one thing that you keep not doing. That nervous feeling you get right before you hit send is just what standing in front of something new feels like. Everybody who has ever done anything new felt exactly the same way right before they did it anyway. Trap number three, and this is the most

[5:47] expensive one. You think waiting is free. You think you're being careful, responsible, smart, but every month you spend in that dark room is a month that somebody less prepared than you reached out to a business in your town and got the yes that should have gone to you. Waiting does have a price. You just never see the invoice, which is very convenient for fear, because fear only

[6:07] ever bills you in invisible payments. Nothing due today, everything due later. And if you want to actually see the invoice, just run the math with me here for a second. Let's say you wait three more months, and say your first client would have been a basic review service at $297 a month. Well, three months at $297 a month is $891 that just never showed up. I mean, nothing disappears from your bank account, the money just never arrives, which is exactly why this invoice is so easy to ignore. And that's just the small invoice. The big one is

[6:37] the confidence that you didn't build. So, here's the move, and on purpose, it's smaller than you think it should be. The mistake almost everyone makes is trying to pull one giant chain. And you know what that sounds like in your head? It's the voice that says, "I'll feel ready once I've got my first few clients already in place." No. Waiting to feel ready that way is waiting forever, because you're waiting for the result before you've done the thing that creates it. The secret then is to shrink that chain down until it's small enough to do even if you still feel a bit nervous. And by small enough to do, I

[7:06] mean, this could be as small as sending just one message to one business today. That's a chain that's small enough to pull in the complete dark. To help make this even more doable for you, though, let me show you exactly what to send, word for word. Feel free to screenshot this or write this one down. Here's what you say. "Hey, name. Noticed your last few Google reviews don't have a reply from you. I've actually got a system that handles that automatically, so nothing slips through again. Want me to send over a quick video showing how it works? No strings." I want you to notice what that message doesn't do. It doesn't

[7:36] ask them to go reply to 20 reviews themselves. Nobody wants that job. That's exactly why they haven't done it yet. The video isn't showing them how to do the work. It's showing them that the system does the work, which is why later, the easiest and least salesy close in the entire world becomes, "Want me to just handle that for you?" So, that's move number one. And it's going to feel terrible for about 9 seconds, but then it's done. And the second that you send that message out, something happens that no amount of preparing could ever give you. You've done the thing. The room gets a little brighter,

[8:08] and the next chain is easier to find. For real here, the first one is always the scariest, and after that, they get infinitely easier to do. So, here's what actually happens. It's not one big moment where you suddenly feel ready. It's much smaller. You send one message, and you're kind of nervous about it, but you survive it, and you realize it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be. And then, the next one feels just a little less scary than that. Send one on Monday, send another Wednesday, a third on Friday. By the weekend, you've sent three messages, and you've survived all three. So, sending a

[8:38] fourth message next week now feels smaller and easier, and a whole lot more doable. And the beauty here is that you didn't become a different person. You just sent the message enough times that it stopped feeling scary, and that is confidence. Exactly what Bandura's research predicted. And somewhere around message five or six, something strange happens. You catch yourself sending off

[8:57] a message without rehearsing it first. No pep talk, no pacing around the kitchen. You just write it and send it in same way that you would text a friend. Now, this is the part where most videos would stop. We'd say, "Pull the chain, take action, good luck." But that leaves one thing unanswered. If confidence comes after action, what does the client see in the meantime? I mean, you might be asking yourself, "Can they tell I'm new? And if they can, does that

[9:20] mean they won't want to work with me?" So, here's the honest answer. In most cases, yes, they can tell if you're new, but it's not for the reasons that you might think. It's not your lack of clients that gives you away. It's the way you hesitate a little, the way you over explain or apologize before you've even made an offer. Those are the actual tells. Some do, but most business owners don't usually check how long you've been doing this for. Instead, they read three signals, usually in the first 10 seconds of contact. And those three signals are almost entirely under your control right from day one. Signal one is speed. When

[9:52] a business owner sends you a question and hears back in 5 minutes, their brain files you as someone who's on top of things. When they hear back in 5 days with some kind of apology about why you didn't write back sooner, they file you as chaos, no matter how good your answer is. And there's real data on how much this matters. Research from Lead Connect found that 78% of buyers go with the

[10:11] first business that responds to them. Not the best business, not the cheapest business, the first one. Now, that study is about businesses responding to customers, but the same thing is happening when a business owner decides which marketer to trust. Fast reads as competent, where slow reads as risky. And it's not entirely fair, but it's how people actually judge you. And here's the crazy part. Speed is completely free. It requires zero clients, zero portfolio, zero experience. A brand new agency owner can out respond a 50-person agency by tomorrow morning. The 50-person agency has layers of people that that message has to go through first. Well, you don't. It goes straight

[10:47] to your phone. You can answer it in 5 minutes. And even better, this one can be automated so you never drop it. Let me show you. Inside HighLevel, which is the software I use to run my entire agency, this is called conversation AI. Someone messages you and instead of that message sitting unread while you're at your day job, the AI answers it on the spot. It replies in seconds, it handles the back and forth, and it covers the basic questions. So, your very first prospect gets the response speed of an agency that's been running for 10-plus years. You could also just be glued to your phone all day, which honestly

[11:17] works, too. The tool just means that, you don't have to be. Signal two, specificity. Broad, vague, general-sounding talk reads as inexperienced, even from experienced people. Whereas specific talk reads as competence, even from beginners. I mean, just compare these two messages. I help local businesses grow with proven marketing strategies. I noticed your last five Google reviews have no reply and the newest ones from March. I've got a system for that. Want me to send a quick video? The first message could come from anyone, could be about anyone, but the second message could only come from a person who

[11:49] actually looked at their business. Signal three, and out of all of them, this one does the most damage. Hedging. Here's what it looks like. Sorry to bother you. I was just wondering if maybe you'd ever be open to possibly chatting sometime? And look, the hedging is completely understandable. You hedge because you're trying to be polite. You're trying to shrink the request so it's easier for them to say yes. But the business owner doesn't read that as polite. They read it as a person who

[12:12] doesn't quite believe their own offer. And if [clears throat] you don't seem to believe it, why would they? Every time you use words like just or maybe or sorry to bother you, it makes your message feel uncertain. But if you strip the hedges, then the exact same offer from the exact same beginner sounds like it came from someone who's done this a hundred times before. And if a business owner ever flat out asks, "How long have you been doing this?" don't flinch and don't make something up either. Just say this. Honestly, you'd be one of my first, which means I'm fully committed to making this work for you. And you'll

[12:43] get more of my attention than anyone else's hundredth client ever gets from them. That answer works because it's true and because it reframes you being new away from a liability and into the actual advantage that it is. I mean, nobody fights harder for a result than someone whose reputation is being built on it. And here's the unfair advantage part I promised you. Those three signals, fast, specific, and not hedging, these aren't personality traits. They're just choices that you make in the moment, which means you don't have to become a different kind of person to have them. You just need to make those three choices starting with

[13:14] the very next message that you send, which means the trust a client feels comes down to one thing. Whether you've done this enough times that the nervousness just doesn't show anymore. That person who seems to have have all figured out, they started exactly where you are. Same nerves, same dark room, they just sent the message anyway. Now, before you go send that first message, I've got three warnings for you. Warning number one, the first few you send are

[13:36] going to feel bad. Not neutral, but bad. Your heart rate's going to go up, your brain is going to give you 17 reasons to wait until Monday. Monday's going to show up with 17 new reasons to wait until next Monday, and your brain is going to read all of that discomfort as evidence that you just weren't ready. But, it's the opposite. The discomfort is what reaching into the dark is supposed to feel like. It's supposed to feel uncomfortable. I mean, if it felt comfortable, the light would already be on. Warning number two, don't fake the signals. Fast, specific, and unhedged only build trust when what's underneath

[14:07] them is honest. If you strip the hedges, but inflate your experience and start making things up, then all you've done is traded nervousness for dishonesty, and that trade is never a good idea. If a client asks how many clients you've had before, then stick with the answer that goes, you'd be one of my first. This one works precisely because it's true. Warning number three, one doesn't finish the job. Sending one message and then just going back to waiting is just a slightly brighter version of the same dark room. The mechanism is simple. Send one message, then the next, then the next. Speaking from experience here, the

[14:39] gap between the people who got one client and the people who built an actual recurring revenue business was never the quality of message number one. It was whether message number seven or message number 17 ever happened or not. One more thing about that Sunday night version of me, the one who was struggling to send that first message that I told you about back in the beginning. If you'd asked him why he hadn't sent the message, he'd have given you a completely reasonable answer. He was being thorough, he was doing it right, he was respecting the craft too much to wing it. Every word he would have told you would have been sincere,

[15:09] but every word would have been that dark room talking. The version of me that finally built three seven-figure agencies wasn't smarter, he wasn't braver, he just done the scary thing enough times that it stopped being scary. Now, if you want the system behind all of this, the templates that make you fast, the automations that respond when you can't, the word-for-word scripts for what to say next, everything runs inside HighLevel, which, as I mentioned before, is the software I use to run my entire one-person agency. When you start a free trial through the link below, you'll get my complete agency OS that you can copy and paste directly into your account

[15:40] with the click of a button. This has all of my pre-built automations, my message templates, a 90-day roadmap, and access to my private insiders community, and it all unlocks the moment you start. Now, the second you decide to send that first message, the very next question shows up. Who do you actually send it to? And how can you be sure that you don't waste this one burst of courage by sending it to a business that's just never going to answer? Well, there's a specific way to spot the businesses that are already primed to say yes, and I break the whole thing down in the video that I've got

[16:09] linked up right here. So, feel free to tap or click that now. I'll see you in there in just a second.

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