To answer this question, start by separating your clients into three groups (I suggested this in an earlier “Things You Can Do” sidebar):
A, B, and C.
• “A” clients are the people who can afford to pay premium fees, who appreciate that you’re an elite professional, who are easy and enjoyable to work with, and who are willing to give you referrals.
They might total 15 percent of your client base but provide 50 percent of your revenue. These are the clients you want to keep.
• “B” clients are less able to pay big dollars, are more likely to waste your time with complaints or silly requests, and are generally more stressful. They’re not bad, but you don’t want to build your business around them. They’re probably about 35 percent of your clients and produce 30 percent of your income. You’d like to jetti- son them from your practice in the next six to nine months.
• “C” clients are cheap and stressful, and you spend 50 percent of your time keeping them happy. They’re a pain in the neck, and even though they’re 50 percent of your clients and take up 60 percent of your time, they generate maybe 20 percent of your revenues.
You want to kick them to the curb in the next three months. Good riddance.
By identifying the qualities that make your A clients your best clients, you will tailor your Personal Brand to attract more of them.
At the same time, by cutting loose your B and C clients, either by referring them to colleagues or simply by no longer servicing them,
• Make sure your sales techniques and those of your staff fit your brand. Personal Branding gets prospects in the door, but when they’re in your office, it’s time to sell and close the deal.
• Don’t copy. If a competitor launches a branding campaign, don’t emulate it. You don’t want to be the follower in a category; you want to lead your own category.
you’re going to have more time to care for your best clients. But because your A clients deliver much more income, you’ll be able to increase your revenue while servicing fewer clients who are easier to work with and don’t demand as much of your time.
Most professionals will be able to identify their ideal clients based on the following characteristics:
• They’re educated and understand what you’re telling them, even when it’s complex.
• They appreciate the importance of working with a highly qualified professional.
• They’ve got the money to pay higher fees for premium service, and they know that what you offer them is worth the money.
• They’re self-starters who educate themselves and don’t waste your time with silly questions and panicked complaints.
• You have something in common with them and enjoy their com- pany.
• They’re more than willing to refer you to people who are like them.
• When you tell them you’re becoming more exclusive, they appre- ciate and understand what you’re trying to do.
Identify the clients who meet all these criteria; they are your ideal clients. Your mission is to clone these people and bring in more of them. For example, let’s say you’re a physician who’s sick of dealing with insurance companies, Medicare billing, and all the rest. You de- cide you want to start a “concierge” practice, in which you have a small group of affluent clients who are willing to pay $10,000 a year for exclusive access to your practice and a package of premium ser- vices. So you identify the 25 patients you currently see who can afford to do this, start referring all your other patients out, and launch a branding campaign to attract more ideal patients. The transition takes a year, but at the end of that year, you have a base of 100 afflu- ent concierge patients who generate $1 million in gross revenues.
You’re spending less on billing and bureaucracy, so your net income is higher and you can spend more time actually practicing medicine and more time with your family.
BRAND CASE STUDY The Brand:Wyland
Specialization:The world’s leading environmental artist Location:Laguna Beach, California
Channels:Art, music, Whaling Walls, marine activism, education Highlights:Painting nearly 100 marine life murals all over the world, starting his own record label, becoming the bestselling environmental artist in the world
Online:www.wyland.com, www.wylandfoundation.org
The Story: Wyland is the world’s foremost marine environmental artist. Based in his spectacular Laguna Beach studio/bachelor pad with a 180-degree view of the Pacific, this midwestern transplant has built one of the art world’s most powerful personal brands and
THINGS YOU CAN DO IN A WEEK
1. Begin scheduling meetings with colleagues to whom you might refer the clients you no longer want.
2. Send your new business cards and letterhead out to your current A and B client base.
3. Have one of your staff contact local sports teams, schools, youth sports leagues, and so on to ask about sponsorship opportunities.
4. If you don’t have a staff or an assistant, consider a virtual assis- tant at www.ivaa.org.
5. Work with your Web developer to create a new structure and con- tent map for your new online presence.
6. If you have profiles on social networking Web sites like LinkedIn, delete them and replace them with new profiles that reflect your Personal Brand.
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franchises with his evocative, soulful paintings and sculptures of whales, sea lions, and other marine life. But the friendly, laid-back Wyland is much more than his paintings and his famous paint-signature logo: He has built a brand on goodwill, global eco-awareness, educa- tion, and his latest passion, his own jazz label. With 2008 the thirtieth anniversary of the Wyland Studio and the fifteenth anniversary of the Wyland Foundation, the artist has a lot to celebrate.
How It Started: “The first thing I did when I came out here was starve,” says Wyland from his oceanfront deck, adjacent to the hotel parking lot where he painted his first whale mural. “As it turns out, I was in the right place at the right time, as Greenpeace and Jacques Cousteau were coming on. That’s when I started working on my goal of being a marine-life artist.”
As it turned out, Wyland exploited one of the critical principles of personal branding by accident: first-mover advantage. “The art that was done before was marine art, but what I do is marine life art, a cel- ebration of the life in the sea, not man’s conquest of it,” he says. “So it was really a new art form that was evolving at the time.” Pioneering a new type of marine art gave him an exclusive brand identity in his field, fueling public perception that Wyland was “the” marine artist.
Without any real intent to turn himself into a franchise, Wyland sensed that to promote his art, he needed to promote his love for the sea and its inhabitants. He proved to be a natural. “I didn’t have anybody to mentor me, but by being friendly to people and using my personality, I became well known,” he says. “A lot of artists are intro- verted, but not me. I love people. I love the response I get to my art.
I’ve always been hands-on and very involved, and my brand just started evolving very slowly from that.”
What This Brand Stands For:
• A lifestyle.With his cool beach crib, his travels, and his aquatic ways, Wyland has created a lifestyle brand reminiscent of this singer who lives in someplace called . . . Margaritaville? “My brand is more of a lifestyle, sharing the art and the vision, getting people excited and involved,” he says. “It feels like a Jimmy Buffett thing; kind of conta- gious for people. Doing good things and giving back, people want to be involved in something like that. We have nearly a million Wyland
collectors over the last 30 years. But we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as what it can be. It’s globally recognized now. But it’s still grassroots—one person can make a difference.”
• Passion.Wyland tells anyone who will listen that at this point in his career, when he’s sold millions of paintings, sculptures, and other works, it’s all about what he cares about: educating kids about pre- serving the ocean ecosystem and spreading international goodwill through his many Whaling Walls (huge aquatic murals that are part public art creation, part media circus). If he doesn’t love it, Wyland doesn’t do it. “You always want to stay excited when you’re an artist,” he says. “It’s nice to be able to do things on your terms, because you have only so much time. It elevates the whole thing. Everybody has to do what they have to do to get by, but once you get beyond that, it’s an amazing transformation.”
• Constantly evolving.Art, activism, and conservation aren’t enough.
This guy’s also into music. “I started a record company, Wyland Records, and we just produced our first jazz CD, Rhythms of the Sea,” he says. “Art and music are so powerful, I wanted to try to get the message out that way. The music business was so dysfunctional, I decided to start my own record company with no ob- stacles and create a new paradigm for distribution. I also needed music for the films I’ve been creating for my film and video company.
The theme was the ocean and the art and the message.We’re already working on the second record, which will be the blues. I put together the greatest musicians on the planet, write the melodies and the words, and put it all together.The next one will tell the story of water through the blues: the Mississippi Delta, Memphis soul, all that.”
• Giving back. Wyland’s Wyland Foundation and other charitable work promotes and funds environmental education programs to teach children about protecting and appreciating the ocean ecosys- tem. It’s one of the central reasons he gets up in the morning: to preserve what he loves.
• Business savvy.Wyland and his team have built a sophisticated licensing strategy and a worldwide distribution network for his art, (continued)
which is reproduced in dozens of different forms. They maintain tight control of his personal brand, right down to his distinctive sig- nature and his name, which is always “Wyland.” Never a first name. His brand is consistent and is always tied to the same ideas:
the ocean, marine life, and clean water conservation.
X-Factor:The Whaling Walls. Wyland might have remained a success- ful but regional personality had it not been for his Whaling Walls.
These enormous murals, each depicting an underwater scene of great whales and dolphins, began in 1981 with the Laguna Beach wall.They have become Wyland’s signature, adorning 95 public walls and build- ings around the world. Now, with the end in sight, he’s got some big plans for 100—and beyond.
“I’ll be painting my last four walls in Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sin- gapore, and Beijing for the ‘Green Olympics,’” he says (he’s the official American artist for the 2008 Olympic Games in China). “It will be called ‘Hands Across the Oceans,’ and there will be more than a mile of canvases. But it can’t be about me, so I’m inviting kids from 204 countries to paint with me on 204 canvases.We’re going to inspire these kids to take the inspiration home to their countries and get them involved in clean oceans and clean water—to get these kids to take a leadership role in conservation through the arts. It’s really exciting to do it on a world stage. I will also dedicate the first sculpture I did for the Olympics, three dolphins.
“That’s a great way to finish my quest to do 100 aquatic murals.
And for the next 25 years, I want to do 100 monumental sculptures in cities around the world.” Gee, is that all?
Branding Wisdom:“The core message of the brand is not, ‘Buy this painting!’ It’s to learn everything we can about our environment and use art to educate and inspire people to get involved. At the end of the day, it’s a brand for conservation. Of course it’s pure art, but it’s art with a message. The idea was that people would see the art and the beauty and see the message. I dive in it, take photos of it, write about it, paint it, sculpt it, paint it on the sides of buildings, and now I’m writ- ing songs about it. The investments you make, they eventually bear fruit. I’m like Johnny Appleseed.”