In this interview, we sit down with Russ Ruffino, world-renowned marketer, CEO, and Founder of Clients on Demand (COD). Russ and his team help entrepreneurs all over the world realize their true potential by teaching them the skills they need to find the perfect clients for their business.
Ruffino’s mission is to help coaches, consultants, thought-leaders, and service professionals achieve business success through implementing cutting-edge marketing strategies and developing the mindset required for rapid scaling. The Clients on Demand program has been operating for a little over nine years, and since its inception, it’s gone from strength to strength and is now one of the world’s most successful wealth-building systems. Let’s hear more about the program from Russ in this interview below.
Business coaching and client acquisition programs are some of the most hotly contested marketplaces in recent years. How have you been able to make Clients on Demand stand out from the crowd?
I firmly believe that one of the key differentiators between my company and our competitors is the level of determination we bring to delivering results for our clients. After all, business is all about results, so we make it our number one priority to equip our clients with the tools and skills they need to thrive with their ventures.
Our whole business model revolves around our clients. If they are successful, so are we. That’s why all of the coaches in the Clients on Demand team are willing to work tirelessly and do everything they can in order to see our students’ goals come to fruition. It’s great because this creates an extremely positive culture where we push each other in order to get the very best out of one another.
I mean, all it takes is one look at the industry to see just how much low-quality information there is out there. It’s clear that most people have become accustomed to the industry standard of putting content out into the world and waiting for it to yield results.
These days there are hundreds of coaches teaching entrepreneurs how to attract clients through strategies such as blogging, podcasting, and video creation. And while I am not saying that stuff doesn’t work, it simply takes far too long to see any meaningful returns. And so therefore, it should not be your core strategy for getting new clients. Additionally, the audience you attract with these strategies can be unpredictable and difficult to monetize, which means all your hard work could be for nothing.
In that case, in what time frames do you typically aim for with receiving results for your clients?
We concentrate on getting hard and fast outcomes for the people who sign up for our program right out of the gate. Our program focuses on providing a robust, high-octane marketing strategy with a very short sales cycle (24-48 hours). As long as our students follow our program and are willing to put in the hard work and dedication, there is no reason why they won’t start to see results almost immediately.
Also, it’s important to note that we don’t simply advise our clients to go out there and use our methods to find any paying customer that happens to come their way. We want to teach them how to connect with the clients who are ideally suited to their business so they can establish a mutually beneficial relationship and create better outcomes for everyone involved. I think this is one of the key differentiators between us and our competition.
Throughout your years of experience working with entrepreneurs, what would you say is the most common mistake people make in their businesses?
It’s hard to say what the most common mistake is because each business is different, and we have entrepreneurs coming to us from all walks of life. With that said, one of the things we see popping up time and time again is people undercharging for their service. In fact, this is a widespread issue in the business world in general, especially for new entrepreneurs who are newbies in their industry.
However, undercharging for your service creates a multitude of problems. Mainly because if you charge too little, you have to work with more clients, you have a busier schedule, and as a result, the quality of your service diminishes. Not only that, but you will likely find you’re constantly looking for new clients, spending unnecessary time and money searching for paying customers.
The answer is simple. Raise your prices, improve your service, laser in on attaining results for your clients, and focus on attracting the cream of the crop. Nine times out of ten, you find you end up generating much higher revenue with less time invested.
Customer acquisition isn’t easy, but what is your number one piece of advice for people looking to attract more clients to their business?
Be as authentic and genuine as possible in your approach. What I mean by this is that you should look to create maximum value for your customers at all times. Stop looking at your customers as potential dollars and try and adopt customer-centric processes that solve their problems.
In a sense, it pays to go back to basics. If your entire focus is centered around delivering outcomes for your customer, everything else will fall into place. I talk about this a lot in my YouTube channel, take a look at this:
Across your channels, you frequently mention the importance of developing a success mindset. Can you elaborate more on this?
In my own business journey, I started to find much more success once I paid closer attention to my mindset and the thought processes I used in my daily life. We all have an internal dialogue, and after spending time with many successful and highly influential people, I realized it was the people who proactively tried to work on improving their mindset that got the best results out of life.
Mental skills such as drive, determination, perseverance, and self-discipline all play a key role in how you tackle problems and approach opportunities, yet most of us go through life without putting too much effort into improving these skills. That’s precisely why mindset coaching is such a big part of our program at Clients on Demand.
