Personal Story: My First Client

A reader recently posted the following comment: “I was thinking how helpful it would be to hear about how you got your VERY first client, what exactly lead up to that moment and what happened afterward?” While I usually answer questions via email, I thought this one worth sharing with everyone.

For those interested in my recommendation of how to get your first clients, please read The Best Way to Get Your First Clients. For my personal story, read on!

Back in April 2007, I had been networking for a few weeks while finishing up my business plan, finalizing my stationary, and building my website. In the process, I had come up with a list of 10 strong leads and almost a 100 weaker leads. The strong leads were wealthy individuals recommended to me by friends or family who were willing to let me drop their name in my initial letter. I didn’t know any of the leads, only that they needed my help and were considered wonderful people to work for.

When I was ready, I sent out handwritten letters on my Cameron Concierge stationary to those 10 leads. I don’t have a draft of that note, but it included my name; that I recently started a concierge company; a quick explanation of some of the services I offer that I tried to align with what I knew about the individual; that “so-and-so” recommended that I contact them and that I’d love to be of service; and then I thanked them for their time and said I’d call in a week to see if I could be of service.

A week later, I called the 10 leads. A couple loved my business idea, but were shortly leaving the country for summer vacation (most of them became clients in the fall), a few didn’t read my letter before I called and asked me to get back to them later (about half of these became clients in the end), two didn’t understand why they’d hire me and I didn’t successfully sell the idea to them, and three of them were very interested in having me help them immediately. One of the very interested individuals became my first client and also my favorite client to this day. For the sake of this story, I’ll call her Cindy.

My father is a landscape architect that had designed her yard so she immediately knew who I was when I called. Cindy was in her late 60s and it seemed to me that she just wanted to talk. She asked me all about the services I offered while bringing up possible projects that she was overwhelmed by, why I wanted to be a personal concierge, and how many other clients I had. All of these questions were very conversational and she seemed truly interested in me and my business. We ended the call with a date for me  to come out to meet her and look at the projects she had in mind for me. While she had thrown out many ideas, the first project she was interested in hiring me for was organizing her basement storage/laundry room (I swear that organizing is a great opening service!).

I was quite nervous as I drove out to Cindy’s home. It was much further out of town than I had wanted to go, but I couldn’t say no to my first client! I turned into a heavily developed suburban community and wondered what I was driving to as all the matching houses rolled by. Then I turned onto a private drive hidden between two matching homes and drove through the private gate. Suddenly I’m in a different world. Large swathes of beautifully manicured land on both sides of me, a large pool house, pool, three car garage, and a beautiful house overlooking the Willamette river. I pulled up in my old little Honda CR-V, straightened my professional-yet-casual outfit I had spent too much time thinking about and walked up to the house.

Cindy opened the door before I could ring the bell. She was on the phone so I walked into the living room and looked at the incredible view of the river 300 feet below. When she got off the phone, she was very complimentary of my outfit, asked about my father, and offered me a bottled water, which I accepted. We then went down to the basement and looked at the project she had in mind. It was a massive room with shelves full of everything you could imagine, shoved in however humanly possible. I estimated it would be about 5 hours for my assistant and I  to organize the space and take away the culled items. I recommended that she be around as I’d have her come down at certain points during the project to review piles and confirm what was to toss and to keep. She showed me some other potential projects and we set a date for the basement organization job.

A week later I arrived with my assistant, a great deal of Crate and Barrel storage boxes, a couple labelers, and we set to work. The job was quite successful and left us with a great deal of interesting stuff the client didn’t want. My assistant was thrilled at the “bonus” stuff she took home and I was happy the job went so well. I spoke with Cindy about the other jobs she had talked about and we arranged future dates. That first month was a flurry of big organization jobs followed by a huge 3-day family reunion she had me plan and run two months later. Over the course of the first couple months, I became irreplaceable in her eyes as I took over all household management (including book-keeping, repairs, and overall organization), ran all of her errands, managed her events, and essentially managed her life. After 6 months we set up a monthly retainer and I’ve been on that same monthly retainer (with a few price increases) with Cindy since 2007.

I feel so lucky that Cindy was my first client. She made it possible for me to be profitable that first month and introduced me to many of my clients over the years.

If anyone else would like to share their story, please do! Either below as a comment or email them to me (cameron@personalconciergeinfo.com) and I’ll do up a post with your stories and links to your businesses. While the stories of failures are probably better lessons to share, all stories have something to teach others.