Watch This to Get Your First Client

So you are thinking of starting a business because you wanna make an independent income on your own terms, but you are struggling with the question of how the hell do you actually get your first client? How did you get your first client? Through my best friend. Well, what was your approach to it? I just kept reaching out and we started three weeks later. And then how did you get clients two, three, four, and five? Two, three, four, and five actually came from... That is what we are gonna be talking about in today's vlog. All right, so we are here in Thailand for our team's offsite and we've got this online business school called the Lifestyle Business Academy where we help normal people like, you know, working professionals to start their first businesses. And we were talking amongst the team because we've got lots of our coaches and facilitators for the Lifestyle Business Academy here on the offsite. And one thing almost all of our students really, really struggle with is this thing of just landing that first client, which is by far the hardest part about starting a business. Like if you're starting a business and you wanna make money, coming up with the idea these days is relatively straightforward. There are lots of processes, but then how do you go from like the paperwork of coming up with an idea to actually landing someone who's actually giving you money for your product or your service? So if that question is interesting to you, then hopefully by the end of this vlog, you should have some useful answers. Oh, all right, so we've just come back from all of the zip lining. And so now we are about to have lunch and I'm gonna bring in a bunch of our Lifestyle Business Academy coaches and the people in our team who have run their own businesses in the past. So we're gonna start by talking to Carol, who is one of our coaches for the Lifestyle Business Academy. Carol spent 20 years working as a VP of marketing in various big corporations, but then she left corporate America and started running her own leadership and team coaching business that she was then running for five years before I managed to talk her into joining our team as a coach for the Lifestyle Business Academy to help other people kind of do the same thing. And so I asked Carol how she got her first client. Carol, so you were running your own leadership coaching business for like five years. How did you transition into the business? Like specifically, how did you get your first client? So I stayed in corporate America for three years before I make the jump, three to four years really. My company started when I got my first client and the first, I had done a lot of free trials and without, you know, just doing the team dynamics and the team coachings and the Gallup Strength Finder sessions. And I remember I did it for one peer that she loved it. She loved the session. And I said, hey, I'm about to start my LLC and I'm gonna start charging for it. If you know anybody that would be interested, let me know. And she's like, hey, my husband actually, my husband's boss needs your help. And I'm like, great. She introduced me to her husband who introduced me to my first client. His name is Caleb and my first client was a B2B client. So from there we just became 80% of our business was B2B. I love it. Yeah. Great. Thank you. And then how did you get clients like two, three, four and five? Two, three, four and five actually came from another warm referral. I asked Caleb if he wanted me to do this for anything else. So he was part of this UX design team at a large bank in the US and both of his peers hire me to do their teams. And then after that company, a lot of the people that I have done it for, I just kept reaching out. And every time they moved to a new company, they had a new team. So they wanted to do the same thing for this new company. So I understood that my client was the new leader that couldn't figure out their teams. All right. So that was Carol, one of our wonderful Lifestyle Business Academy coaches. She got her first paid client by talking to one of her friends and colleagues who introduced her to her husband, who introduced her to his manager. And that was the first paid engagement. And then clients two, three, four, five, and six all came from a referral from that one manager. And so that's kind of interesting. And I'm sure as we talk to the other people on our team who have experience running their own businesses, you might start to see a little bit of a pattern about how people tend to get their first couple of clients. Okay, so it's time to grab some lunch and then let's find someone else to talk to. All right, so we are now gonna hear from Nathan, who is another one of our coaches in the Lifestyle Business Academy. Nathan spent the early part of his career working at various companies in Australia, initially doing web development and then doing video production. And then he joined a mortgage broker company as a marketing manager before he then left the corporate world and then started his own business doing marketing services for other businesses. And so we're gonna talk to Nathan and ask him how did he get his very first actual paying client? Nathan, how did you get your very first client? Yeah, so with my first client, I ended up just going to like a local chamber of commerce event where there was just a bunch of business owners, some small like freelancers, but there was some large businesses as well. And just started chatting with people and started wanting to just rank their website. So I'm like, yeah, cool, I can help with that, yeah. Oh, wow, nice. So did you go to that event thinking I'm going to get some clients and pitch my services or like, well, what was your approach to it? For me, I was new to the town. So I kind of like, I like talking to business owners. So I initially just went there just to meet people who I could just get to know a bit more. And yeah, just as I was learning more about their businesses and what their challenges were, I could see there was an overlap between my skillset and what they were dealing with. And that's kind of how the conversation naturally evolved. Amazing, so then you go out for coffee with this random guy. Yeah. And talk more about the challenges and stuff. And then how does he end up like saying, hey, let me give you some money to help me out. For us, I was just like kind of understanding his problem and after a while, I'm like, I can help with this. Like I'll do an audit, figure out exactly what you need. And then we can talk about price after that. Love it. And then how did you get clients two, three, four and five? So yeah, so this guy was part of a church and he ended up just referring me to a lot of people at his church who were also business owners and stuff like that. Yeah, it was a small town. So a lot of people kind of knew each other. Yeah, that's kind of how I started getting a lot of clients. Brilliant, thank you very much. All right, so one key thing I've learned from running this business is that being busy is really not the same as being productive. Like if you're selling stuff online, you can spend your entire day replying to comments and DMs, but you might not actually get any sales for the thing that you are trying to sell. Now, this is where ManyChat comes in who are very kindly sponsoring this video. ManyChat is a wonderful tool for social media automation. So if for example, you go on Instagram, you'll often see like big creators doing that thing where they say, hey, comment the word books and I will send you my free guide to books or comment the word course and I'll send you my course on whatever the thing might be. Now, especially if you have lots of comments, doing that stuff manually is a total nightmare. And even if you don't have that many followers, still doing that stuff manually is a total nightmare. But the great thing about ManyChat is that it's an official meta business partner, which means you don't need to worry about this kind of automation banning your Instagram account, which would probably be pretty bad. But instead what you can do is you can go on ManyChat and you can create these visual automations within a few minutes. So in our account, we've got loads and loads of these automations that offer people free resources or signups to my email list. And even some of these automations that actively sell our products. And so what ManyChat can do is that it can take comments and DMs and story replies. And if they trigger a particular keyword, it can run automations based on that, which is insanely helpful. The really cool thing is that it can even act as your own follow-up system. So for example, if people are asking questions about your product, it can answer those questions instantly using your own knowledge base. It can point people in the right direction of the support email or whatever. And it can show people exactly how to enroll in your product and even collect emails along the way, which is great for building up your own email list. Because to be honest, especially if you're trying to create stuff online, like as you know, building the product is just the beginning. Selling the product is way, way, way harder and way more of a long slog. And that is where a tool like ManyChat can really help. So if you are looking to grow your business or your audience online, then try to comment the word empire on literally any of my Instagram posts. And using ManyChat, I will send you a completely free resource to help you with audience building and also give you a link to 30 free days of ManyChat Pro. Alternatively, if you don't wanna go over to Instagram, there's a link down in the video description. And if you go to the checkout on the web, you can use the code Ali Abdaal for that free 30 day trial. Thanks again to ManyChat for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it. Alrighty, so Nathan was brand new to a random town in Australia. He did not know anyone, but he went to the local entrepreneurship event with the Chamber of Commerce. While he was there, he got into a casual conversation with a business owner, which then turned into a coffee conversation. Nathan was able to be helpful and then this business owner eventually ended up hiring him to do a paid project. And then crucially, Nathan did a good job for his first client. And so the first client actually referred him to clients number two, three, four, five, and six, all of whom were part of the same church. And so again, I want you to log this as a data point and we'll see by the end of the video, can we spot any patterns in the data? All right, next we are speaking to Catherine. Catherine is another one of our wonderful coaches at the Lifestyle Business Academy. Catherine spent 10 years working at various corporations from marketing to PR to hospitality. But then Catherine decided that she was gonna start her own business. And so she ran her own coaching business for five years where she was an executive slash life coach and they were paying her to help them navigate that process. And so I asked Catherine how she got her very first paying client. So Catherine. Perfect. How did you get your first client? Great question. So I was a part of a women's professional network and there was a Slack community where folks posted in there about all sorts of different things. I shared that I was going through coach certification. Actually not even as a way to get clients, but just as part of an update I was sharing. And someone reached out to me directly and said, oh, my son in his mid twenties could really use something like that. Could I put you in touch? We had a conversation and I thought he would be perfect for this workshop idea I had. And so I ran him through it as the first test case. He paid $75 for that. And then said, I think this could really work for me. And he became my first long-term client. Oh, amazing. Were you expecting that that would land you some clients or like what was the? Not at all. And the person who reached out to me I actually didn't know. We didn't have a one-to-one connection but there was a very big community feel in this professional network. The reason I did it is just because people often shared updates. So what are you doing? And I was so excited about coaching at the time. So I was sharing about it and I'm glad I did. And then how did you get clients to 325? So from there, I went to a small conference actually through the same organization. I didn't know anyone. And the idea around it was really just connection time post-pandemic. I really connected with this one woman and we were talking about coaching, what it does for people. And she had actually had the idea previously that the five people on her team could really use a coach. And she said to me, hey, maybe we could work something out. Would you put together an idea for how you could work with? So right after the conference, I got back home. I sent her an email with what I thought something could look like. And we started three weeks later. Oh, wow. Amazing. Okay. So client number one through this like random Facebook group for that or like- It was in a Slack. Like, oh, nice. Awesome. And then number two from like an in-person event where you just got talking to people, you find someone with good vibes and then see what happens. Yes. So that was clients one through six. Oh, wow. Nice. And then what about subsequently? Did you have to do any like content or ads or anything like that? So I didn't do any ads. I did a lot of content and got very little return from it. So I remember client number seven came because very early on I hosted a small men's mastermind and there were three guys in it. Yeah. Yes. There were three guys in it. And one of them reached out to me and said, hey, I could use some one-to-one support. And so he signed up for a retainer. Love it. Yeah. Thank you very much. You got it. Alrighty. So that was Catherine, one of our Lifestyle Business Academy coaches. And again, I would like for you to note the pattern here that is emerging. Catherine got her very first client by posting in a Slack group of other women entrepreneur type people. And then she got a bunch of her subsequent clients by basically going to an in-person networking e-meetup e-type event, striking up conversations with people, having a chat with someone, being helpful to them. And then that person was what was who referred her to clients two, three, four, five, and six. So interesting pattern to note there. Yes, again. And let's just keep asking some more people to see how we get our first clients. Okay. So we are now gonna hear from Andrea, who is another one of our Lifestyle Business Academy coaches. Andrea spent the first half of her career working at various different corporations, primarily in marketing and then as a project manager for big corporation before Andrea decided to start her very own business. So she started her own boutique marketing agency. And she was running that business for three years before I managed to convince her to join our team as a coach for the Lifestyle Business Academy. So let's now hear from Andrea about how she got her very first client. So Andrea, how did you get your very first paying client? So through my best friend who was in sales. So he knew a lot of people and I told him I was starting a boutique marketing agency. And he was like, hey, these guys need some paid advertising for their new business. Like, do you wanna do it? And I'm like, sure. Got on a call. I booked them right away. They already trusted me because they trusted my friend. So it was very easy, very quick. Did a quick proposal, quick presentation. And we started working like a week later. Oh, wow. That's incredible. And then how did you get clients two through to five? Then I did Upwork. In the pandemic, there was a boom of people looking for marketing agencies. A lot of people started their businesses. So I was applying to like 10 jobs on Upwork, like every like two other days. And that's how I got like client two and three. And then the rest of them through a previous agency that I work with. And I reached out to them and be like, hey, I'm starting my own project. And they were like, yeah, sure. Like if we have smaller clients that we cannot handle, we'll send them over to you. Oh, nice. And so they were just cool with that, just giving you clients. Yeah, they actually congratulated me. They were like, oh my God, this is so great that you're doing your own project. This is amazing. Like, we'll definitely help you out because I have been working with them for a long time. Nice. Yeah, one thing people often worry about is like, you know, approaching either their current employer or previous employers because they're like, oh my God, they're gonna think I'm a terrible person, all of this sort of stuff. When I was telling my friends, they were super excited that I was starting a business. When I told my former employees as well, and I kept in touch with all of them through LinkedIn, like birthdays and things like that, or liking their posts. So it wasn't some random thing of like, oh, I've never heard from Andrea in like three years. I always make sure to like stay in touch one way or the other. Love it. So that was Andrea, the first client through literally asking a friend and then subsequent clients basically through her old employer. And so again, just keep a note of the patterns that are appearing here in the process. Alrighty, let me tell you about how I got my first clients for the various different businesses I've run over the years. My very first business was when I was a kid, it was a web design agency. In reality, it was just me, but I pretended to be an agency. So it sounded more legit. And the way I got my first client, his name was Stan. He was the stepdad of one of my friends from school. And I happened to have Stan's email address. And so I sent out an email basically to all of my email contacts at the time. And Stan randomly replied to my email saying, I need a website. And so he paid me 30 pounds sterling in order to design him a really crappy website. And so I designed him a really crappy website at the age of 13. And that was how I got my very first client and my very first testimonial. Fast forward a few years, I started my first business that was actually successful like five years later, when I was a first year medical student at Cambridge University. And I started a business coaching other people on how to do well in the BMAT, which at the time was a medical school admissions exam. And the way I got my first clients was I posted about it on Facebook. I was part of a Facebook group called the WHSB Medical Society, which was the name of my school. And I still have the post. We'll actually just stick it on screen. This was the post that I posted. I basically said in the post that like, hey, I'm running a course for this particular exam. It's going to be about 50 pounds for the day. I named dropped a competitor and said, you know, trash talked them a little bit and said that they weren't very good. And it got seen by four people and liked by Manu Srivastava, who I think is now a consultant neurologist or something at Oxford. That was cool. And so Manu was actually one of my first students. And then my brother who was in the year below me had a few friends. And so, you know, it started off with a tiny classroom of like four kids in our living room who were all like either friends or friends of friends. And then in subsequent years, the way I would get my initial few clients for this course was I would just ask people who had done the course previously, I'd send them an email and be like, hey guys, if you happen to know anyone who's applying to med school this year, can you please give them the details about this thing that I'm doing? I only started online marketing for my courses business literally like five years into the business when I first started my YouTube channel. And that was the objective of my YouTube channel initially. If you scroll all the way back and ignore the music videos, the first actual proper video on the channel was BMAT section one, how to do well in the things is, you know, those are videos teaching people how to do the thing. And then they were signing up to my course. But this was years and years after I got my first few clients and got the business off the ground and even got it to six figures in revenue, primarily through initially asking people that I knew, and then asking people that they knew and then being referred on by doing a good job for our existing clients. Final thing I wanna talk about is another sort of side hustle I had while I was in medical school. This was towards the end of med school was I was doing user interface and user experience design for medical technology companies. And the way I got this gig was because I attended a hackathon. A hackathon is a sort of event where you team up with a team and you create like a prototype of a product. And I happened to be attending a hackathon that was hosted by a society for plastic surgeons. And in my team, there were these two plastic surgeons, one of whom was running a medical technology company who needed UI design. And the other guy was also running some med tech stuff and needed UI design. And I was like the youngest guy on the team because I was just like, you know, a 23 year old medical student. But because I put myself in charge of making the PowerPoint presentation for our pitch, and it looked really good, these guys were like, whoa, this guy's really good at design. And so when I got chatting to them during the day, both of them spontaneously asked me if I could help them with the design work they needed for their particular businesses. And so by attending this in-person networking sort of event, by showing up and adding value, by being good at design, because I've been doing it for like years at that point, that was how I was able to land two of these clients and ended up making tens of thousands of pounds from these two separate clients while I was still a medical student and still trying to grow my courses business. And that was actually before I started the YouTube channel. So that was a story of my first few clients for various different business ventures I've done over the years. Let's speak to some more team members now. Cheers. Okay, so now we are gonna be hearing from Owen, who is again one of our team members. And Owen is the marketing specialist that we've got within the Lifestyle Business Academy. So he ends up giving advice to a lot of our students around like how to improve their marketing and how to get sales. Owen's career started off working at a B2B tech startup. He then pivoted into joining a branding agency. And then he worked as part of the nightclub industry in Hong Kong for a couple of years before ultimately deciding to start his very own marketing agency. And so let's ask Owen how he got his very first client. All right, so Owen, how did you get your first paid client for your marketing agency? I got my first client from my existing network. So it was actually an old employer of mine. During break from university, I would come home, do a summer job or whatever, and it was actually sports coaching. So I didn't think much of it at the time, but I was just, you know, working for him as a sports coach. And then when I eventually decided that I wanted to try out starting my own business and freelancing initially with the goal to then turn it into an agency, I just tried to reactivate my old network and see if friends of friends knew people or just if I had any existing business owners in my network. Yeah, so you messaged your old boss. Like, what did you say? I basically shared, I was like, hey, I'm currently doing this thing for my full-time job. Here are some results I've been able to generate for this company that I'm working for. Now I'm actually looking to take on some clients, you know, work on a freelance basis with my own clients. And so would you be keen for me to maybe do a quick audit of your current marketing? And so he was like, yep, sure, happily. So initially it was a little free audit. I had a look at the ads he was running and I gave him some feedback on them. And so then we met up for coffee after that. And then he was like, cool, how much would it be for you to come on and help us with this stuff? Great, and then how did you get clients two, three, four, and five? All through referrals and word of mouth. So yeah, the nice thing about doing marketing is that it's very visual, you know, customer-facing stuff. And so the client that I was working with, he had a lot of friends who were other business owners. And so they saw the ads that I was running for him. And so they're like, oh, these ads are pretty good. Who's doing his marketing? And so then he would just say, I'm working with this freelancer. And so then he referred me. And that's how I literally got probably like my first five or six clients. Amazing referrals and word of mouth. Love it. Thank you very much. Alrighty, so that was Owen. So as we heard, he got his very first client through just WhatsAppping a bunch of people that he knew in Hong Kong. One of those was his former employer. And so there's a principle when it comes to outreach in particular that has a nice acronym, W-I-I-F-T, what's in it for them. Generally, if you're gonna do outreach for someone, then it becomes a lot easier if you're able to offer something valuable for them, ideally for free. And so he offers a free marketing audit. The guy's like, yes, of course, who wouldn't say no to a free marketing audit. Owen does a great job with the marketing audit. And then literally he gets a paid engagement from that. And then clients two, three, four, and five, word of mouth referrals. So hopefully at this point, you can start to see some of the patterns that we're seeing amongst all the various team members that we've got, who have experience in running their own business before I managed to talk them into joining our team as coaches and as specialists. And so now it is 4.30 PM. We are wrapping up at this very nice zip line place. So we're gonna head back to the villa. And by the way, if you're enjoying the video at this point, I would love it if you can leave a comment down below about what are you enjoying about the video, because we wanna do more of these like casual vlog style things, in particular, where I can bring on the team members that we have, who have their own expertise, in addition to my own, to talk about stuff that y'all are struggling with as it relates to either being more productive, managing your time, achieving your goals, or in the context of this specific video, starting your own business, generating an independent income, whatever floats your boat. So I would love it if you can leave a comment down below with some feedback, because it really helps us out and helps us decide if we wanna do more of these kind of videos. The pattern that you've hopefully seen emerge from the various conversations that we've had throughout this video is, everyone worries about how do I sell my stuff to strangers? But as you'll hopefully have seen, often your first client is not actually a stranger. They are probably someone that you know, or if they're not someone you personally know, they are someone who is a friend of someone you know, or even if you don't know them, they are part of some kind of community, either online or offline, that you are part of. You very, very rarely get your first client by selling to complete strangers. Let's imagine you were starting a bakery. How do you think you would get your first customer for your bakery? Would you do it by running Instagram ads or like advertising on TikTok or like running a billboard? Is that how you would realistically get your first customer for your bakery? Probably not. The way you'd get your first customer for your bakery is that you would almost certainly say to your friends and family in your local area, hey gang, I have just started a bakery. Would anyone be interested in getting a discounted or whatever? That's probably how you get your first client for your bakery. This in our Lifestyle Business Academy is what we call the magic question. Do you know anyone who happens to need X? I'm offering a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Free audit, a free consultation, a free coaching, like whatever, in return. That tends to be how you get your very first client. So then starting a business really doesn't need to be this scary, terrifying thing. Yes, of course, you have a bit of a struggle around like what's your business idea actually gonna be? Don't worry, we've done videos on that. We will continue to do videos on that. We've got our Lifestyle Business Academy YouTube channel, which is all getting our free content for that. And definitely for your first client and probably for your first $10,000 in revenue, you actually do not need to try and reach out to strangers. You can in fact get clients by talking to your friends and family and asking if they know anyone who might need your thing. But the final thing I'd say is that selling to our friends can be scarier than selling to strangers. Even though it's simple, it's not actually easy. The reason it's not easy is because we all have these emotional hurdles and like mindset blockers that stop us from doing the thing. We worry about coming across as scammy or spammy to our friends, we're terrified of posting on LinkedIn because what if my colleagues find out? What if my boss finds out? And then almost everyone really struggles with it, but then they send the first few messages, they realize the world did not end. They realize that actually people were generally nice and generally supportive. Anyway, that's how to get your first client. And if you're interested in a step-by-step breakdown on how to scale from your very first client all the way up to $100,000 a year in revenue, there'll be a video right over here all about that. So thank you very much for watching and I will see you in the next video. Bye bye.