Sorry that this newsletter is a week late! Last week was crazy busy, but I’m back to regular scheduled programming.
Now, on to this week’s newsletter.
Today’s topic might be helpful if you’re trying to identify your freelance business’ target customers:
Earlier this week, I chatted with a lady who runs wellness programmes. She has a small, established customer base of expats.
She’s thinking of expanding her customer base to include “the masses”, i.e. locals, because they’ll also benefit from her programmes.
But from her experience, not as many locals are aware of the branch of wellness she practises or see the value in them. Should she still try to sell to these customers?
She could, but it’ll be tough.
That’s because you can’t help everyone
You can help only those who:
- Recognise they have a problem, and
- Want to do something about it.
I learnt this many years ago while speaking with my mentor. I was telling him about a friend of mine who was miserable at work. I thought she would benefit from his career mentorship, but she didn’t seem keen to take that step.
While I don’t remember his exact words now, his response was startlingly blunt—along the lines of “Then we can’t help her. She doesn’t want to be helped, so let’s wait until she comes find us for help.”
With that, he moved on to the focus of our discussion—i.e. helping me.
I was stunned. But what he said was true.
As that saying goes: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
If a person doesn’t think they have a problem, or if their problem isn’t painful enough to make them want to do something about it, then you’ll have a hard time getting them to take action (e.g. buying your solution).
That said, “getting the horse to drink” isn’t impossible
If the wellness coach I spoke to really wants to sell to “the masses”, she could educate them on her programmes’ value. But doing this might take a lot of effort as these people are completely new to what she offers. And there’s no guarantee that effort will pay off.
So, it’s not the best idea for a fledgling business.
Instead, if earning revenue is the priority, the more strategic move might be to focus on growing her established expat customer base—which already sees the value of her programmes and will need less selling to about it.
Then, once she’s maximised the revenue from this customer base, she can explore selling to customers with different profiles.
Until then, these people would lose out on something they might benefit from.
If you’re in a similar position, this can be a difficult fact to swallow, especially if you’re passionate about what you sell.
But…I’d say running a business is like that. Businesses come and go all the time. If you want yours to succeed, then you can’t afford to be too sentimental.
Make the decisions that help keep your business profitable and sustainable for the long term.
More freelancer news
Free coaching clinic for freelancers
Sign up for free 30-minute coaching chats organised by the NTUC Freelancers and Self-Employed Unit to get advice on anything related to freelancing!
The coaching sessions are conducted by a fitness coach and the director of a photography assistance network, and they’re happening on 24 Apr 2025 from 1pm to 3pm.
If you want, you can pull a friend along to join you for the session.
More details + registration link available here.
This post was first published in my email newsletter on 17 Apr 2025. If you liked it, sign up for my newsletter here:
