While many get into business simply to make money, those that stay in business and see the most financial success have a client-focused strategy. They are often the ones who understand their audience best and care about the results that their customers get from using their products and services. Marquel Russell and Aundrae Gaskin get this at the core and created their online program Client Attraction University teaching the must-knows for client attraction. To date they’ve helped students make more than $100 million in their businesses while scaling their own in a massive way.
We Can Be a Movement Together
Russell and Gaskin first found each other in 2012 while participating in a network marketing program that taught them to leverage the internet to market their businesses. Being the only two Black students, they started chatting and realized that there weren’t many that looked like them in the space and they wanted to change that.
Russell recalls, “It’s white male-dominated for the most part. So here I am coming into this industry, I’m tatted from my wrists to my shoulders all the way up to my neck, I have gold [teeth] and I don’t see anybody that looks like me…then I stumbled across this brother Aundrae and we were in the same program so I reached out to him and I was like ‘Aye man, we’re the only brothers in this thing, maybe we need to link up. I think we can really dominate this entire space if we come together and join forces.’”
Gaskin, Florida born and raised, was kicked out of his mom’s house at 17 years old and was forced to go live with his dad. Once he graduated from high school he went into the military and it was his first sergeant who introduced him to network marketing. “My first sergeant looked at me the first day that I went in his office and he was like, ‘What’s your backup plan?’ which is kind of odd for the first day you’re meeting your first sergeant for the first time. He was like, ‘You need a backup plan because you don’t look like you’re built for the military.’” They ended up becoming really good friends and this was how he was introduced to network marketing.
Gaskin recalls seeing Russell on the online training room and after speaking to him, thinking, “What is this dude talking about? Dominate the space? Man, I’m just trying to make sure I can make enough money to pay child support.” He eventually got on board with Russell’s idea though and they both moved away from the network marketing space to create and promote a business of their own. With Russell’s expertise, getting leads and Gaskin’s ability to get the most out of people, together they created a movement to help coach underserved entrepreneurs.
Client Attraction 101
In Russell and Gaskin’s Client Attraction University, they help students create a winning mind-set, identify their customer, get leads, and create income solving real problems for their clients. They shared that many people come to them and they see them as the Facebook marketing guys and think they can just run ads to get more clients, but what they do is really a lot more layered than that. They teach them that before they can get more eyes on what they have available, they must first identify their audience and know them beyond just the demographics to allow them to create a targeted message that resonates.
Russell shares, “What we’ve found is that the No. 1 thing outside of the [mind-set] stuff when it
comes to marketing is the messaging. Most people’s messaging is way off. It’s not targeted. It’s not speaking to a specific person, it’s not speaking to a specific problem, and it’s not speaking to a specific outcome. So it doesn’t matter how much you spend on ads, it doesn’t matter how many eyeballs you get on what you do, you’re still going to miss the mark.”A key to client attraction is understanding your audience and speaking specifically to them. If you’re trying to write your copy (the words on your website/ads/social posts) in a way to speak to everyone, no one will feel the individual connection needed to convert them into a lead for your business. Russell helps a lot with this. Gaskin helps with the other piece — the mind-set, which they call the “inner game.”
Gaskin shared, “A really big piece is the inner game: their mind-set and mentality. That’s like the least sexy thing in business to talk about but it’s absolutely the most important as it’s foundational.” Gaskin believes simply looking to get more clients is short-sighted.
“The biggest misconception is that more leads, more clients, and more revenue is the end all be all to really improve people’s lives. Not understanding that what they really need is to readjust or reset their mentality: how they look at themselves, their relationship with themselves, and their business. Forgiving themselves for past hurts or past circumstances so that they can be the necessary person that needs to show up every day to serve their clients and to continue to build their business so that they can manifest the vision that they ultimately want.”
Going From Hunter to Hunted
Gaskin and Russell boiled down their clients’ ultimate goals to two things: a better quality of life and to make more money. To get this, in Client Attraction University they teach students how to go from the hunter to hunted.
“Most business owners, especially in today’s society, it’s a lot of like ‘grind 24/7,’ ‘hustle’, ‘sleep when you’re dead’, ‘hustle-your-face-off’ mentality. So you’re always hunting for the next client. Most people rely on word of mouth, passing out flyers, passing out cards, slamming people on social media, hitting people in the DMs, cold email outreach. What we mean when you become the hunted versus the hunter is that now people seek you out. Now you know how to create demand and you know how to take the desire that’s in the marketplace for a specific outcome and you can channel that outcome to your products or services and now you have more demand for your offer, typically more than you can actually fulfill on.”
One thing that they suggest for those looking to go from hunter to hunted is to get crystal clear on the problem that they solve better than anyone else. Once this is figured out, Gaskin and Russell suggest that you must then decide who your ideal client is that you can solve that problem for. Russell breaks it down: “Your easy win clients. Like this is the thing they’re looking for and this is the problem they have and you know this solution can help them to their outcome faster than anything else.”
Becoming the Go-To in Your Industry
Russell teaches that once you’re clear on the problem and your ideal client you must then consider the type of value-based content you can put out in the marketplace as your “bait.” “We believe the No. 1 way that you can show people you can help them is by actually helping them.”
The duo share that you
have to start putting out useful content, helping people for free in advance. Once it works and you’re looking to accelerate it, that’s when they recommend that you get into the paid advertising piece, but only once the other things have been taken care of. “You have the right message and you now know who the right person is, so now it’s just a matter of getting in front of them at the right time.”Gaskin on how Client Attraction University helps with this: “C.A.U. helps you to position yourself in the market the proper way, to get more leads and to attract high-paying clients. That’s what we do. Facebook is just the vehicle we help our clients use in order to get that end result. But it all starts with knowing exactly what your speciality is.”
Niching down with a specialty and providing the value-based content helps you to become the go-to in your industry. Russell and Gaskin refer to this as picking a mountain. “We always tell our clients to pick their mountain. Pick your mountain and climb to the top of that mountain and plant your flag there and position yourself as the best of the best in that particular space…and anyone can say they’re the best but when you can prove it, it helps you stand head and shoulders above everybody else.”
Learning From Russell & Gaskin
If you have a coaching or consultancy business and you want more leads and clients, Russell and Gaskin have a free tool they put together called The Paid Ad Playbook that you can grab at PaidAdPlayBook.com. In it they’ll teach you how to get 50 to 100 leads every single day that actually convert into clients.
You can also learn from them on Instagram @marquelrussell @aundraevgaskin.