Today we’re talking about how to secure paying clients.

I’ll show you a way to walk into this step by step which is perfect if you are new to pitching. We’ll go nice and slow, building upon each step.

Let’s get started:

Start small

First up I recommend doing your workshop for free or low cost.

You want to:

• get in some practice

• get some early testimonials

• start word of mouth

Reach out to local companies, charities, co-working spaces and networking groups offering a session. Price is to cover your costs or just do it free for the reasons above.

Make sure to get photos of you facilitating! And follow up to get testimonials from the organisers.

Also use the survey method I’ll talk about in the next Part to get before and after information from your students - you’ll be using this to approach paying clients.

Acquiring full cost clients

There are two basic pillars here: inbound and outbound.

Inbound and outbound

Inbound is where people see your content online, like what you do and contact you to book time with you.

I personally get most of my inbound from Tiktok then LinkedIn.

What happens is that people at businesses will see my Tiktok video and think “huh who’s this guy?”. They will then go and look me up on LinkedIn and contact me there!

Your inbound channel will depend on where your particular niche hangs out. Which depends on the industry. Because you are (ultimately) selling to businesses though LinkedIn is powerful.

Inbound is crucial. But it takes a longer time to build up. It’s taken me 9 months full time to build an audience of 150,000. It’s doable but a lot of work and not instantaneous.

As such I recommend immediately starting with outbound too.

Here’s the message I send:

Hi {firstName},

I won't beat around the bush. I dislike random LinkedIn messages too! So here's it it:

I’m running London based workshops about how AI is changing business and how to stay ahead of the curve.

I’ve recently [list of recent companies trained]

As great as all that travel is I'm looking I'm doing outreach to London based companies and organisations to see if there's interest!

I write a daily newsletter to 50,000+ professionals and educational video content for 150,000+ on social (primarily Tiktok interestingly!) and have written 8 Amazon bestsellers on the use of AI in business. I've also got an MBA from NYU. So this isn't just vague AI handwaving - I teach how to combine business, entrepreneurship and AI.

I have two basic workshops
-one teaching staff members how to start using AI
-another for leaders on how to deploy AI across the organisation
-or a longer combined one

Currently booking in one workshop per week.

Would this be of interest?

If so let's chat! I can send over details + pricing etc.

No silly business wasting your time on sales calls. I'll just send over a one pager..

Kyle

If they respond with a yes I ping them over a one pager with details about the workshops and pricing.

Very simple but effective. And more than enough to get started with.

Set your filters to:

• your location

• industry you want to target

• job titles / roles in training and professional development (in large companies)

• founders in smaller companies.

One pager

When you get your first hits I’d recommend hoping on a call with them.

Even if you don’t sell anything you’ll be gathering super valuable intel about what they are looking for.

You want to ask them about what they need, what problems they want to solve, what they fear.

Let them speak. And take note of the language and vocabulary they use.

You’re then going to echo all of this back to them in your proposal.

I’ll be sharing my full one-page, proposal and emails (and the actual slide deck!) in the AI education course I’m putting together. Should have more details next week! Email us if you are interested in accessing all this though so we have an idea of how many.

Pricing

Here’s the big question!

How much do you charge?

It’s really hard to give a hard and fast number here because it’ll depend on:

• your location

• your target industry

• your personal experience

• track record

• confidence asking for money!

The last is the issue I see the most people run into! People tend to undercharge. I’ve been (very) guilty of this.

Remember though the value you’re going to be dropping. It’s worth a lot to the company hiring you. Potentially hundred of thousands or millions if they get on board with AI before their competitor.

If you still struggle I like to think about the per person model.

Charging one person $50 for an hour would be cheap right? Yes!

Let’s say you are going to talk to 30 people.

Just charge 30 x $50 and that’s $1500/hour. That’s your rate because you are teaching lots of their staff at the same time.

I have an upcoming 1 hour presentation which is $4000. That sounds like a lot for just one hour of my time right?

But it’s to 400 people. It actually works out that each person is getting the workshop for $10! ($4000 / 400 people = $10 each).

Cheap as chips!

Once you disconnect it from your hourly rate and start thinking about how much value you are delivering to a large number of people it become easier to charge much more.

If in doubt though start lower. And each time someone says yes your raise your price. My first paid workshop was $500. They said yes immediately. So for the next I went to $750. They said yes immediately - so we went up to $1000.

Wrapping it up

You do not need an all singing all dancing lead generating machine.

You need:

• an outbound method like LinkedIn outreach

• a message to get attention

• a one pager

• a proposal document

• a pricing chart

That’s it for now. And you don’t even need them all to start. You can create as you go along: get that first lead, use discussions with them to make the one pager. Create as you proceed.

In the last Part we’ll talk about the actual facilitation: preparation, on the day and post-event