How do you get your first client?
everybody would agree regardless of
where they are in their career
that the hardest part of starting
anything worthwhile, whether it's a
career or an internship,
is having the experience to say you know
what I'm qualified for the job.
When you start a company and you have a service and you're selling yourself
how do you get the first client? How do
you have someone say you know what
I'm willing to pay you what you are e
asking for because I think you're worth
it. Right, in my opinion we're programmed by
society to think you know what,
you need to go get an internship, you
need to go to school, you need to do all this stuff right.
The reality is in my opinion, is that you
should just work for free for someone
and say
"Can you train me?"  "Can you mentor me?"
That's why internships are so good right?
And that's why
when I was an engineer, everyone would say you have to go get an
engineering internship to learn things
but then
they won't pick me. It was interesting
when I was in college, I went to school for Civil structural
engineering.  The first internship I got at
the utility company,  I
was not a fan of the utility company
whatsoever, but
um you know the reality here was that
the reason I got that job was because
the hiring manager loved that I had
worked at a grocery store for five years
and he knew that um I knew what it was
like to fucking stock milk at 3 AM,
manage an engineering curriculum and then also
be a landlord of an apartment.
So when I did that he was like you know
I'm gonna hire you right, it was great I
made like $21 bucks an hour.
Um you know and from that point forward
I got kinda pigeon-holed
unfortunately into being in the utility industry
which is you know great, I mean if you if
you like that life you like the
that type of work, that's cool, but i
always wanted to
work for myself. Right I mean I just
know for a fact I was gonna work for
myself
and so uh one of the most humbling
things of my life
when I started working for myself was
how do you get someone to actually want
to pay you man. Like what the fuck like
it's so fucking hard everybody who's
fucking on social media
or says that they're an entrepreneur
blah blah and they like sliding the dms
on Linkedin and first of all, I think
LinkedIn coaches are fucking full of
shit first of all okay
um you don't get clients by saying hey
let me pitch you and fake it till you
make it
Fuck that okay. The way that I got
all of my clients
was I provided so much value and bled so
much in front of them
and gave them so much value in the
skills the services the results I said
here's the deal I don't want anything
for free I just want to list you as a
reference
and I want to use you as a case study
for my portfolio.
So I tell everybody when you're looking
to start any business
and you're looking to do something
instead of trying to think you know what
I'm worth a hundred dollars an hour
I'm worth what you know everyone else is
making now you know what you should do
is you should go
find a bunch of people even maybe even
hiring clientele
right and say you know what all I want
to do is just learn from you.
I know the marketing, I'm good at
digital marketing that's my specialty
but I don't want to charge you anything
I just want to learn
and so for about I mean when I
started my agency it was kind of out of
desperation
and even when I was in my most desperate
times and I was completely out of money
and my credit cards were imploding in
my face every day because no one fucking
reminds you how much you fucked up more
then American Express motherfuckers okay!
American express fucking will blow your
phone the fuck up okay
and so I remember um you know
thinking okay I need to get clients but
how do I get a client that's worthwhile
so all I did for a while was just work
for free
I literally worked for free when I had
no money which sucked because then i
was like working like my ass off but
eventually what was interesting is
because I built such a good portfolio
got so many results and got such great
experience in different industries.
Learning from roofers, from cannabis
companies
learning from chiropractors, massage
massage therapist business I have
um you know all these different
industries and just being like you know
what all i want is a couple free
massages you know
I want some free CBD you know throw me a massage a chiropractic adjustment a
float tank
whatever it may be i built a phenomenal
portfolio but what I did more than
anything
was I was able to implement the playbook
that I had been writing that I have
learned with Medical Bill Gurus
and kept implementing across the board
So before I even had a digital marketing
agency website for myself
I was I didn't even have a website for
myself for the longest time okay
but what I did though is I went and got
so many amazing results for people said
i'm gonna work for free they said well
oh you know this other guy wouldn't
charge me $500 bucks I said well fuck
that other guy okay
i'll do it for free i'll fucking knock
it out of the water and then homeboy is
going to come fucking work for me
because i'm going to fucking kill it
and that's what i fucking did and so um
you know what was interesting was that i
kept doing this and doing this and in
Denver
a lot of people know me as the digital
marketing guy but i was able to close
literally six figure deals for digital
marketing without my own fucking website
okay and the reason i was able to do
that was i said here's the deal if you
go look me up online you're not gonna
find anything
I typically do deals on a contingency
because I'm so confident in myself that
i'm gonna get results
but you know the more i kept doing the
more i kept doing it people were like
dude this guy fucking kills it
he got this chiropractic business number
one on alexa front page google would
quadrupled their top line revenue within
three months you should go higher you
should go hire them and like i can't
find anything about this guy
so just going back to getting your first
client i got my first client because i
worked for free so much
got such good results got such a great
portfolio that when people say daniel
you know why are you worth it why why do
you think that you could charge these
prices for what you do i say
well you know you're not going to find
anything about my agency online
but you uh you can go find quite a bit
about my other clients that i did
and you know look at those results so
that's what i did so i encourage
everybody if you know what you know i
it's hard because for digital marketing
like well no work for free
you know whether you're a photo video
guy whether you're um
you know just doing any business model
the best way to get your first client is
do what no one else is doing
and swallow your pride stop thinking
you're worth a fucking hundred dollars
because if you're not getting a hundred
dollars an hour or 40 hours a week
you're not worth fucking hundred dollars
okay
what you need to do is go work for free
build a fucking baller ass portfolio
and then what you're gonna find is
people said you know what I'll pay you
that double because you seem like you're
fucking worth it.
So um that's kind of just the reality
and you know I feel very humbled because
every day
when i wake up and i look at some of the
clients i work with uh
right now i'm in florida and visiting
one of my top
clinics that I work with and I just feel
humbled every day that when i walk
through that door
i can call them a client I'm grateful
that they
saw the value what I brought to the
table and they're willing to
continuously invest in me
but i wouldn't have been able to get
that conversation i want to be where i
am today
if i didn't work for free for the smart
guys and do something that i didn't want
to do because who the fuck wants to work
for free but
I did it for a couple years you know
what it paid off.
