What feels like less than a few days after receiving the verbal approval for our first project, I was asked to meet a different potential client at a building. The owner was not happy with their current engineer and was looking to part ways amicably. They needed someone who could come in, pick up where the other engineer left off, and do it within the remaining budget. Now, this project had a much healthier budget than the first, even with part of it used up by the original engineer. We had a brief conversation about existing conditions. I must’ve given them confidence in my ability to do the project because they wanted me to start right away. I was pumped; the snowball was starting to roll.

I had been very honest with the client and shared that my business was relatively new. The property manager was also a new firm, so clearly, I had either an innovator or an early adopter. As I started to walk away, they called out and said, “Oh, we forgot to ask: What other projects are you working on?” I enthusiastically responded, “I’m working on a leak investigation downtown for a–.” They cut me off. “Good enough. We just want to make sure you have something else.” So, they were an early adopter, which makes sense. They were an established building but needed to be conscious of budget and weren’t in the most attractive geographic area.

That project was a tremendous success, resulting in several more opportunities in that building alone and over 100 more with that property manager over the next decade. As it turns out, the discount I gave on the first project was likely the best marketing money I ever spent. As a friend of mine recently said, “Everybody wants to be the second client.” Landing that first project was crucial.