You have had enough. The boss doesn’t know what he is talking about. He sits around all day while you bust your butt to make profit . . .  for Him! Does he appreciate you? No. If he did, he would mention something other than the one tiny oversight you made today, while over-servicing all of the company’s clients.

Finally you decide to take matters into your own hands, and set out on your own. You are very good at what you do, and you know that your clients really appreciate your efforts. You can tell, because after you tell your boss that you are leaving, he tries to keep you by offering you a raise. But no, you’ve made up your mind. It is time to do this on your own.

So, what now? You have a non-compete agreement at your existing company for a year, so you can’t go and raid your clients from your old company, even though they seem to appreciate you more than your boss. Where do you look for new clients?

The First Step

Instead of figuring out where to look for clients, you want to start by clarifying things for yourself. Here are a few questions to consider.

1. What products or services will you be offering?
2. What makes you any different from your boss, in your customer’s eyes?
3. Why should people trust you, a new entrepreneur, rather staying with a company with more experience? After all, you haven’t even secured your first customer yet!

These areas may be best addressed by answering the following question: What are the results that you will be assisting your clients and customers to generate?

Most people phrase their product/service offering from their own perspective, rather than from their customer’s perspective. If you were an accountant, framing things from your perspective would go something like this:

“I provide accounting services”, or maybe “I do people’s taxes.”

As an alternative, if you look at things from the perspective of the results you assist people to generate, you might say something like this:

“I help people with the task of tax preparation”, or better still, “I help people meet their tax filing obligations, and stop them from paying too much tax.” That’s a little different from providing accounting services or doing people’s taxes.

By addressing things from the client’s perspective, you are more likely to be able to speak to potential clients in ways that are meaningful to them.

This doesn’t get the whole job done, but it is a great start.