Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christine Campbell Rapin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Christine , appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

My first client came quite unexpectedly during a meeting where I thought we were going to record a podcast.

My client and I were members of the same networking group.  During an event breakout room, we connected and she had invited me to be a guest on her podcast.

At the start of our meeting she was asking me questions about my business. I knew she was working with a mentor already so thought she was just gathering backround info to help guide the conversation during the podcast. That was until she asked me directly – what does it look like to worth with you? Are you accepting new clients? I need to work with you.

I was slow to recognize she was genuinely interested until she pressed me to give her a quote on the spot. I bumbled through an offer and she immediately said yes. We never did get to record the podcast episode in that meeting although we did record an episode about a year later.

After we got off the zoom call my head was spinning – had this really happened? I sent a recap of the offer by email along with the invoice to secure her commitment. She made payment the next day and I was dancing around my office with a huge smile on my face, eager to get started helping her to reach her goals.

Christine , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My goal when I started my business journey was to simply be a successful business owner.

My first business began as a side hustle where I dedicated 1 hour a day on top of my corporate role and family commitments. It was through consistent effort that my business continued to grow month after month and my peers started to notice. I was asked repeatedly “what was I doing that was creating the consistent growth?” My answer was always the same: “I treat my business like a business.” What I didn’t realize at the time was that most business owners don’t have the business skills, experience or expertise that I had to know what to focus on that would create consistent results. As a consequence business owners weren’t seeing the desired results and were often overwhelmed and frustrated trying to figure out what where the magic pill was.

Business is in fact elegantly simple – 2 actions predict revenue and 3 focus areas are non-negotiable to create consistent client growth. I would share these foundational insights with business owners and would lay out the roadmap to repeatable success. Peers began to ask me to mentor them to implement the roadmap and be a sounding board with various strategies they were considering. This was the birth of CLEAR Acceleration Inc. and the Business Scale Accelerator Mentorship Program.

Today, I support service based small businesses who work with high ticket offers to achieve consistent client growth by improving client conversion rates resulting in more income and impact without working 24/7. There are 3 foundations that we build to create scalable success.

Firstly, it begins with creating demand for your services, getting visible and into the right rooms where people are actively searching for solutions and are ready to invest in getting support to achieve their desired results. We focus on developing and implementing 3 low-tech, high touch, high impact strategies to get in front of more people, more ways, more often. Speaking, networking and events are all experiential and scalable in nature and therefore are often the strategies we begin with.

Secondly, we focus on mastering the marketing message to stand out from the sea of sameness, spark curiosity and cultivate connection with ideal clients. Creating a message that connects with your ideal client leads to movement of the prospect towards the business and separates dream clients from those not interested in your services. For businesses this makes the whole sales process more efficient and effective.

Finally, we craft an offer that dream clients consistently invest in. The key here is understanding what results your ideal client is seeking and to ensure that you are viewed as the must hire guide to help them achieve the results they seek. Positioning of the offer where value exceeds the investment level is essential in order to accelerate growth and speed up client conversion rates.

When it comes to creating more impact, we embrace a philosophy whereby when you get clear, you gain confidence and results follow. Having a seasoned business mentor to guide you on building your roadmap saves time and money and brings the joy back into the journey of building your dream business to support the lifestyle you seek.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

One of biggest lessons I learned early in my business owner journey was the importance of focusing on building the right audience vs getting caught up in vanity metrics where I focused on the audience size rather than being targeted to those who would value what I was offering and be willing to invest in my services.

When I hosted my first event, I shared the event with everyone in my network.

People registered as a show of support for me personally and not because the topic was something they needed.

I had over 120 people register.

On the day of the event, only 3 people showed up.

One was an ideal client, one was a friend who left 30 minutes into the event and one was a peer who offered similar services that was mostly interested in knowing what I was offering to see how it compared to her offering.

I was so disheartened and disappointed after the event was over. I wanted to give up and never run another event. In truth, I threw myself a pity party until I realized what an impact I had made to that one person.

This realization came when they sent me a personal thank you note the following day.

They shared with me how the roadmap I provided was exactly what they needed. It helped them to know what to focus on and helped them find the courage to get into action towards the results they were seeking.

I had made a difference and learned about the power of showing up for 1.

Building a targeted audience vs getting caught up in vanity metrics which don’t translate into building a thriving business was key to creating impact.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

One of the most impactful books on my entrepreneurial journey is “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson.

Reading this booked reinforced the importance of focusing on incremental steps vs giant leaps.

I knew from experience that if I could commit to focusing on the 1% long term that eventually this small consistent action would be the game changer that success would be built upon.

That was why, in my first business I committed 1 hour (non-negotiable) to building my business every day.

Interestingly what I observed with most of my peers who were struggling with new client growth and revenue is that they preferred to go for the giant leaps. They were constantly stopping and starting (I jokingly teased them that they were doing the hokey pokey) in their business. As a result of this inconsistency, they frequently felt frustrated by the pace and results.

Today when I’m mentoring clients we establish and get clear on what are their non-negotiables. I remind them of the simple law of physics that states an object in motion takes less energy to stay in motion than constantly starting from zero. While we each choose our own speed, consistency really is the magic ingredient when it comes to exponential growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.christinecampbellrapin.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/christine.campbell.rapin
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/chasingdreamsandmakingapositiveimpact
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/christinecampbell1
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@christinecampbellrapin

Image Credits
McTurtle Photography