Where Wealthy Clients Gather in Your Town

Imagine a math tutor named Owen Tate who wants to teach the children of wealthier families in his city. Most of those children go to two independent schools across the river. One evening in August, Owen pays $600 for an online ad shown only in the three richest ZIP codes.

The ad gets a few hundred clicks and two inquiries. Both come from families on the far side of the city. Each wants one cram session before a test, at the lowest price Owen will take. Nobody from either school writes. In September, Owen has the same students he had in June.

Suppose instead that Owen spends a Sunday afternoon with a pad of paper. He writes down the places where families from those two schools spend their time. He lists the two schools, the hospital foundation, a tennis club, and three streets near the university. He also lists St. Mark’s, a church that families from both schools attend.

Owen has gone to St. Mark’s for years. He has never thought of it as part of his business. In September, he offers to run the sign-ups for the church’s fall fair. He does the job every week, and he talks about tutoring only when someone asks. In the spring, a mother on the fair committee asks whether he has room for her daughter in the fall.

Owen’s tutoring was the same both times. The ad went out to thousands of homes, while the map gave him one place where the families he wanted already were. So map the few places where wealthy households in your town gather, and choose one where you have a reason to be. Here are the places to look for, and how a dog walker in Manhattan found her first clients through doormen.

Wealthy households in a town use the same few places

A household with one to five million put away needs what any family needs. It needs a school, a place to play on the weekend, a cause, a home, and often a congregation. Here is the course’s view of where those needs take a wealthy household in most towns:

A school for the children, and there are usually two or three that families with that kind of money use.
A club for tennis, golf, or dinner on the weekend, and there are usually one or two.
A cause, such as the hospital foundation, the museum, or the land trust. The family might hold a seat on its board or help plan its yearly benefit.
A street or a building. Homes at the same price tend to sit together, on a few streets or in a few buildings. Every real estate agent in town can name them.
A congregation, if the family has one.

The same families keep meeting each other in those places, at school drop-off, at the club, and at the benefit. So the households in one town use the same people, and they compare notes on who they use. A name heard in one place is soon heard in the next.

You do not need to be known across a whole city. Five or six places make a map, and you can name them from the pages those places publish.

A Manhattan dog walker found her first clients through doormen

Susan Beauregard is a dog walker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. On a podcast about her business, she described how it began. She started by walking dogs for a pet store owner. When she set out on her own, she had one client.

“I started giving my business cards out to the doorman and chit chat with them,” she said. “They’re bored out of their mind.”

“The cards would go out. I would start to meet people. Those first 2 or 3 clients would refer me.”

Beauregard went full-time in 2001 and later had about ten clients a day. She called her clients “super-wealthy,” and she set her price by the home. “I’d size it up and be like, ‘This is a Mercedes kind of house.’ I would charge them more.” She had a website for a while, and in her words, “I wasn’t promoting my website at all.”

Beauregard’s first clients came through the doormen she talked with, not through a website. A doorman sees the households in his building every day. He can pass a card to any resident who needs a dog walker. So on your own map, a building or a street is a place, just as a school or a club is.

A place on the map works only when you have a reason to be there

Once you have the map, choose one place from it. Choose it only when you have, or could have, a reason to be there that has nothing to do with your business. You might be a parent at the school or a member of the club. You might go to the congregation or volunteer on a benefit committee.

Joining a place to find clients can feel like pretending. It is not pretending when your reason to be there is real. Your part is to do a job the place needs, such as running the sign-ups for the fair. Owen did not join St. Mark’s for his business, because he was already there. What changed is that he took on a job there.

The people in that place learn your name and see how you work before they learn what you do. That takes time, so keep doing the job and give the place a year before you judge it. Leave the other places on your map alone for now.

Why writing to the names on your map goes wrong

Imagine Owen a week after he draws his map. He opens the hospital foundation’s annual report on his phone between two lessons. The chair of the board is Mrs. Langford. Owen knows from a school newsletter that her son is in eighth grade at one of the two schools.

Owen has 10 minutes before his next student. So he writes to Mrs. Langford. “I saw your name in the foundation’s annual report,” he writes. “I tutor math for students at your son’s school, and I have two openings this fall.”

Mrs. Langford does not know Owen, and she did not ask for a tutor. She deletes the email. In the spring, a friend at St. Mark’s mentions Owen’s name. Mrs. Langford remembers him as the tutor who wrote to her from the annual report.

Owen turned his map into a mailing list. Even a careful email to a board chair he has never met is an offer from a stranger. Only the address is better. In the version that works, Owen closes the annual report and goes back to the sign-ups for the fair. The map tells him where to spend his time, not whom to write to.

How to map your town in an afternoon

List the independent schools within half an hour of you. Look at each school’s tuition page and its parents’ association page. Mark the two or three that the kind of client you chose is most likely to use.
List the boards of the local causes, such as the hospital foundation, the museum, the symphony, and the land trust. On each website, find the events the board holds every year, such as a gala or a trail day.
List the clubs in town, such as the country, tennis, yacht, and university clubs. Look at each club’s events page and the charities it supports.
Ask a real estate agent you know which streets and buildings to put on your map. For example, you can say, “If a client asked you where the most expensive homes in town are, which streets and buildings would you name?”
Note the one or two congregations in the neighborhoods on your list.
Write all of these on one page. Five or six places make your map.
Choose the one place on the map where you have, or could have, a reason to be that is not your business. Write down the job you would do there. For example, a private chef might write, “Keep the volunteer list for the land trust’s spring trail day.”
When a name on a board page catches your eye, leave it on the page. Do not write to anyone on your map whom you have not met.

Next: You will see how a client decides your tier from what they find before the first call.