Hello! Enjoy this post from a blog friend. Finding your first client is probably the hardest part about freelancing. With Jesse’s tips below, you’ll be on track in no time!
Hey readers, I’m Jesse Gernigin. You might remember me from my last post where I talked about how to increase earnings. I want to say thank you to everyone who reached out to me! I met some amazing people and built some great relationships.
Most of my relationships started with people asking me the same question: how to get clients.
My suggestion is freelancing. Freelancing is super easy. You don’t need a website, a portfolio, or a hundred testimonials. To get started freelancing, you need a skill that solves people’s problems. Are you a great writer? Perfect! You can write emails, ghostwrite serials, and create content for blog posts. Are you a photographer? Awesome! You can manage visual design and branding for blogs and websites. It’s that easy!
So why don’t more people freelance? Getting started can be confusing. There are a lot of voices about how to do it and even more places to look for work. People don’t know how to get started freelancing.
To get started in freelancing, you need to do one thing: get clients. Working with clients is the fastest way to get better. It reveals your strengths, exposes your weaknesses, and helps you grow. If you’ve tried freelancing in the past, you probably felt overwhelmed. Everywhere you looked, it seemed like freelancers were working all the time while you couldn’t get a single response to your emails.
How did these freelancers do so well? What were they doing that you weren’t? Simple. They were focused on getting clients. Most freelancers don’t focus on getting clients; they focus on getting work. There is a big difference between getting a client and getting work.
When I started as a stage hypnotist, I made big mistakes. I didn’t charge clients enough. I didn’t value my services high enough. I didn’t see how to create continual streams of revenue once my show was over. I was blind to the business of being successful. I was fixated on getting shows instead of cultivating clients. Success in a service isn’t in purchases. Success in service lies in getting clients. I got a mentor, and he taught me to generate clients. I stopped trying to ‘close’ sales, and everything changed after that.
We need to change how we think of clients. Resist the urge to see a client as a pile of dollar signs. Correlating clients to money makes the client an end to a means. Clients are not an end to a means. A great client can be an ongoing source of income and an introduction to other clients. Unsuccessful freelancers see clients as cash deposits. They find a client. They remove the money. They move on.
If you want to be a freelancer who constantly gets work, you have to change how you see clients. Let me share with you a trick I learned in my stage hypnosis business. As a stage hypnotist, you usually work with a client once a year. Most clients become lifelong clients. Once a year bookings can continue ten years in a row. That means clients who hired you for their event aren’t paying you $1200. No. That client that hires you ten years in a row is worth $12,000. How differently would you treat a client worth $12,000 than a client worth $1200?
I’ve included a three-step guide to getting your first client. Each step comes from my experience in booking clients, both as a freelancer and as a stage hypnotist.
Step 1) Solve a client’s problem: If you want clients, you have to go where they are. Are you a freelance writer? Consider trying out Fiverr or Upwork. Want to work with businesses directly? Find out what organizations, meetups, and group events they attend. You need to go where your clients go to satisfy their needs. You need to find a shared space where you can interact with clients.
Here are some examples: A massage therapist networking at their gym. A cross-fit trainer using his network’s email list to promote a webinar about healthy eating to sell clients on his nutrition planning service.
Step 2) Don’t try to sound smart: I’ve lost freelancing and stage hypnosis clients by trying to sound smart. Clients don’t want a freelancer more interested in sounding clever than solving their problems. Clients want to hear their needs spoken back to them in their language, offering them clear solutions. My mentor helped me increase my stage hypnosis bookings by training me to speak to a client’s needs. Successful freelancers know the solutions clients look for. Tell your clients in easy-to-understand terms why what you offer will benefit them. If you are a copywriter, you don’t win clients by telling them you craft organic SEO-rich content. A great copywriter wins clients by telling them the article you’ll write for them will get readers to join their email list. Learn what a client wants and sell it to them. Use the language your clients use. How? Read two and three-star book reviews for books in your specialty. The language the reviewers use reflects the language your clients will use.
Step 3) Make proposals about the client: When I started freelance writing, I made the mistake every freelancer makes. I tried to sell clients myself instead of my service. Good proposals give solutions to a client’s needs. If a client needs someone to write an awesome email, don’t tell a client that you write emails all the time. Don’t tell clients you love writing emails. Don’t tell the clients about YOU. If your client needs you to write an awesome email, tell the clients what will be done for them. As a stage hypnotist, my clients want fun, laugh-filled events that both parents and students will love. Do a search for stage hypnotists in your area. None of them will say they offer safe, fun-filled events. The stage hypnotists you’ll find tell you how fast they are at hypnotizing people. They will have silly names and try to impress with outlandish claims. World’s Fastest. World’s Most Successful. World’s Funniest. I book more shows as a stage hypnotist and get more clients as a freelancer by focusing on what a client needs instead of what I need. Great proposals focus on what you can do for a client and not what you have done.
You have everything you need to get started! Freelancing is a lot of fun. My suggestion is to start small. Pick a goal and clearly define what you want to accomplish. I would suggest getting one client. Why one client? If you can get one client, you can get three clients. If you can get three clients, you can get eight clients. Eight clients a month for twelve months is a full-time salary. Are you ready to take the leap? Was it hard finding your first client? What scares you about starting a side hustle?