AP 0615: How Do I Quickly Bring in New Clients?

AskPat 615 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody. Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 615 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. For those of you who are keeping up with the episodes, Happy New Week here. We're almost into June, halfway through the year, and I hope you're all doing well as you work through the year to reach your goals.

I just want to give a shout out to Mindy. I haven't mentioned her in a while, but she's probably listening to this right now as she's editing this and I just want to give a shout out to her because she's awesome and she's helping with the show and keeping it moving and Elise, who's also posting these episodes to SoundCloud and iTunes, so thank you team. You guys are awesome and thank you for listening in.

Today, we have a great question from Jeremy, but before we get to Jeremy's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Active Campaign, which is an advanced email marketing, marketing automation, and sales CRM platform that features a simple and easy to use interface.

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All right, now here's today's question from Jeremy.

Jeremy: Hey Pat, this is Jeremy Iverson. I do freelance web design and video production. This last year, I put all my eggs in one basket. I had a great client, I had a ton of work from them. Now they're through with us and you couple that with the ever increasing ease of self-producing videos and websites and I've found myself in quite a pickle. I'm having a hard time finding clients. It's never been a problem in the past, but it's really becoming a problem now.

I've been listening to your podcast for a couple of weeks, actually I found it on the quest for business advice, and it's been phenomenal. I've got so many ideas, I don't even know where to start. Actually, I do know where to start and I've started already, but the problem is that I can see this is going to take a little time.

My question is I need to generate cash now to keep things moving while this new business takes off. How can I quickly generate new clients? If you have any advice on that, I would love to hear it. Thanks, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey Jeremy, thank you so much for the question. I'm sorry to hear that your biggest client is sort of done and that happens sometimes. When you put all of your eggs in one basket as often, sometimes that just needs to happen because you need to devote all your resources to it.

It's a little scary sometimes because yes, they can just be done with you at some point and that's why great to diversify and it's great to hear that you're working on other income streams, but in the meantime, you're right, you might need to make some cash in some way shape or form and I have a few ideas for you that you can use and take with you whatever one seems to be the one that resonates with you the most.

The first thing you can potentially do is sign up as a freelancer, somebody that can help, on a website like Freelancer.com or Upwork.com. You can be sort of a developer there or a video producer there that people can hire through their sort of system that people go to look for help.

You can also sign up for Fiverr as somebody who can produce videos and it doesn't take very long to set up your profile. If you stand out as one of those sort of top producers, you could potentially make some cash on those sites, but I wouldn't recommend going that route, but that is an option. I would consider that a last resort. These other ones may work out better for you. I just wanted to get that one out of the way.

I would ask your previous client that you worked with to see if there was anybody that they knew that needed video work done. There's no better recommendation than one that comes from a friend. That's what Mark Zuckerberg says and if you've provided great value to this particular company or client and they know somebody that's in need, then they're going to feel like they can make that connection and add value to that person who needs your help.

Start with that and referrals, of course, are always best. You can even offer some sort of finders fee or “I'll give you 10 percent of the first job to thank you for the recommendations.” That could always work.

I also wouldn't be afraid to ask those in your network if they need video work done. Send emails out, use your contacts on Facebook. Anybody that you feel like could use some video, you could offer your services to them and that could help you get some new clients quite fast.

Another way to go about it is you could do some Facebook advertising to a landing page where you could then offer some help. That is not probably the most recommended route because you'll need to spare some cash for those Facebook advertisements, but if you were niched, for example, you take the niche that your previous client was on and you get to really know who the players are in that niche, who else is in that space, it might be easier to get a recommendation, a testimonial from that client may be worth more, and you'll be able to get more clients that way because you'll be the video guy for niche X or niche Y.

Niching down and offering your services for those people would be great. This is what Caleb Wojcik did. Caleb Wojcik is a friend of mine. He's my videographer who works on SPI TV and the course videos and he's done the book trailers for me as well. He has niched himself in these sort of online entrepreneur space, helping people create online courses and marketing videos for those entrepreneurs and bloggers like myself and he's done very well going off on his own and doing that ever since he kind of left Fizzle.co, which he was a part of when it was just starting out.

Another thing you could do is, in a niche where you know that there's going to be some people who need video help, you could offer some really amazing free advice when it comes to making video. You even said yourself that it's becoming a lot easier now for people to make their own videos, which is fine, but here's the thing. People still want, even if they have all the information, even if they have the equipment, even if they have the time, many people still want other people to do that work for them.

If you were to provide some unique content on a blog as a guest post or come onto a podcast and share some great insight on creating videos for a particular market, you can then offer your services and people can hear that you're an expert and if they want somebody to do it for them, they could then hire you through those channels.

The reason that works very well is because you're getting recommendations or you're kind of getting an endorsement from those who's blog you are being a guest poster on or who's the podcast host. They're sort of having you come on and provide that information. They're sort of saying to everybody else out there who's listening, “Hey, this guy knows what he's talking about and he's going to provide some great value,” and after doing so, people who are interested are going to continue to want to work with you.

The main thing, no matter what strategy you use here, you need to make it easy for people to contact you. A landing page with a place to email you or to just put in some fields on what their inquiry is about. You want to make that really easy.

You don't want to do what a lot of people do, which is they work really hard on the marketing, they get their names out there, and then it just is a huge rollercoaster to try and get people to contact them.

You might even want to establish some sort of phone number because a lot of clients, in some spaces—not all, but some—they feel more comfortable on the phone.

You could even reach out to small businesses and call them and see if they need any video work done too. That's another solution because a lot of small businesses don't even know what to do in that space and they will have some money to spare for some videos and you might be able to work with them. You might even want to start local, in that sense, if that's a way that you want to go about it.

Again, just to earn some spare cash on the side before you go full-time with whatever this new work that you are doing.

Jeremy, I hope this answers your question or at least gives you some things to think about, starting points, some direction, and I want to wish you the best of luck.
As a thank you for having your question featured here on the show, I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt and we're going to do that free of charge as we do with anybody who's question gets featured here on the show.

Speaking of, if you have a question—for those of you listening—if you have a question that you'd like featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page and you might get featured just like Jeremy did today.

I also want to just ask you guys, if you have a moment and you haven't done so already, head on over to iTunes and leave a review for AskPat. I think there's over 2,000 reviews for the Smart Passive Income podcast, but just under 300 for AskPat, so we need some work here.

Thank you for your support. I appreciate it and as always, I like to end each episode with a quote and this quote today comes from Beth Comstock. She says, “Whether B-to-B or B-to-C, I believe passionately that good marketing essentials are the same. We are all emotional beings looking for relevance, context, and connection.”

Thank you so much for listening in. I appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in tomorrow's episode. Bye.