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So, you're thinking about starting a business because you want to earn an independent income on your own terms, but you're wondering how the heck to get your first client? How did you get your first client? Because of my best friend. Well, what was your approach to this? I just kept in touch and we started 3 weeks later. And how did you get clients 2, 3, 4, and 5? 2, 3, 4, and 5 actually started with. That's what we'll talk about in today's vlog. Okay, so we're here in Thailand on a team training trip, and we have an online business school called Lifestyle Business Academy, where we help everyday people, like working
professionals, start their first business. And we communicated as a team, because we have many of our Lifestyle Business Academy coaches and facilitators here. And one thing that almost all of our students really, really struggle with is just getting that first client, which is the hardest part about starting a business. For example, if you are starting a business and want to make money, coming up with an idea is quite easy these days. There are many processes, but how do you go from the paperwork of developing an idea to finding someone who will actually give you money for your product or service? So, if this question interests you, then hopefully by the end of this vlog
you will have useful answers. Oh, okay. So, we just got back from all those ziplines. And so, now we're going to have lunch, and I'm going to invite a few of our Lifestyle Business Academy trainers and people from our team who have run their own businesses in the past. So, we'll start by talking to Carol, who is one of our Lifestyle Business Academy trainers. Carol worked for 20 years as a VP of Marketing at various large corporations, but then she left corporate America and started running her own leadership and team coaching business, which she ran for 5 years before I was able to convince her to join our team as a coach at Lifestyle Business Academy to help other people do the same. So I asked Carol how she found her first client.
Carol, so you ran your own leadership coaching business for about 5 years. How did you get into this business? Namely, since you found your first client? So, I stayed in corporate America for 3 years before I made this leap. Three, three or four years actually. My company started when I got my first client. And the first one, uh, I did a lot of free trials, and without, you know, just doing team dynamics, team coaching, and Gallup Strengthfinder sessions. And I remember making it for a colleague, and she, uh, really liked it. She really enjoyed the session. And I said, " Hey, I'm going to start my own LLC and start charging for it." If you know anyone who 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. A. His name is Caleb. And my first client was a B2B client. So, since then, 80% of our business has been B2B. I like it. Yes. Perfectly. Yes. Thank you. So how did you get customers like two, three, four, and five? Two, three, four, and five actually came, uh, on another warm recommendation. Uh, I asked Caleb if he wanted me to do something like this for something else. So, he
was part of this, uh, UX design team, uh, at a big bank in the US, and both of his colleagues hired me to work on their teams. And then, after that company, a lot of the people I did it for, I just kept contacting, and every time they moved on to a new company, they had a new team, so they wanted to do the same thing for this new company. So I realized that my client was a new leader who could figure things out with his teams. Okay, this was Carol, one of our awesome Lifestyle Business Academy trainers. She got her first paying 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
interaction, and then customers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 came on the recommendation of this one manager. And it's quite interesting, and I'm sure that as we talk to other people on our team who have experience running their own businesses, you might start to see a certain pattern in how people tend to get their first few clients. Okay, so it's time for lunch, and then let's find someone else to talk to. Okay, so now we'll hear from Nathan, another one of our trainers at the Lifestyle Business Academy. Nathan spent the early part of his career working for various companies in Australia, first in web development, then video production, and then joining a mortgage brokerage company as a marketing manager. Before he left the corporate world and started his own
business, providing marketing services for other businesses. So we'll talk to Nathan and ask him how he found his first real paying client? Nathan, how did you find your first client? So, with my first client, I just happened to go to a local Chamber of Commerce event where there were a bunch of business owners, some small, like freelancers, but there were also big companies. I just started talking to people, and they all just wanted to rate their websites. I'm like: yeah, cool, I can help with that. Yes. Oh, well, great. So you went to that event thinking: I'll get a few clients and offer my services? Or: what was your approach to this? As for me, I was new to the city, so I like to talk to business owners, so I initially
just went there to meet people I could get to know a little better. And so, it was as learned more about their business and their challenges that I realized that my skills intersected with what they were facing, and that's how the conversation naturally evolved. Surprisingly. Then you go for coffee with this random guy. Yeah. and discuss more about the hardships and stuff. And then he says, "Hey, let me give you some money to help me?" As for us, I just understood his problem, and after a while I thought, "I can help with this." I will conduct an audit, determine exactly what you need, and then we can talk about the price. like it. And how did you find two, three, four and five clients? Yes, this guy was a church member, and he ended up just
recommending me to a lot of people in his church who were also business owners and such. Yes, it was a small town, so many people knew each other. Yes, that's how I started getting a lot of clients. Perfectly. Thank you very much. Okay, one key thing I've learned while running this business is that being busy is not really the same as being productive. For example, if you sell things online, you could spend your entire day responding to comments and private messages, but you might not actually get any sales for what you are trying to sell.
This is where ManyChat comes in, very kindly sponsoring this video. ManyChat is a great tool for, if you go on Instagram, for example, you often see big creators doing this, saying, " Hey, comment on the word 'books' and I'll send you my free book guide." Or comment on the word "course" and I will send you my course on any topic. Especially if you have a lot of comments, doing it manually is a real nightmare. And even if you don't have that many followers, doing it manually is still a real nightmare. But the great thing about ManyChat is that it's an official Meta business partner, which means you don't have to worry about such automation getting your Instagram account banned, which would probably be pretty bad.
Instead, you can go to ManyChat and create these visual automations in minutes. So, we have a bunch of these automations in our account that offer people free resources or sign up for my newsletter. And even some of these automations actively sell our products. ManyChat can accept comments, private messages, and replies to stories. And if they activate a certain keyword, it can trigger automations based on that, which is incredibly useful. The coolest thing is that it can even act as your own follow-up system. For example, if people ask questions about you, it can instantly answer those questions using your own knowledge base.
It can point people in the right direction to a support email or something else, as well as show people exactly how to sign up for your product, and even collect email addresses as you go, which is great for building your own mailing list. Because, honestly, especially if you're trying to create something online, as you know, creating a product is just the beginning. Selling a product is much, much, much harder and much longer, and this is where a So, if you want to grow your business or your audience online, try commenting the word "empire" literally under any of my Instagram posts, and with the help of ManyChat, I'll send you a completely free resource to help you build your audience, as well as a link to 30 free days of ManyChat Pro. Or, if you don't want to go
to Instagram, there's a link in the video description, and if you go to checkout online, you can use the code Ali Abdaal for a free 30-day trial. Thanks again to ManyChat for sponsoring this video, and let's get back to business. Okay, so Nathan was just recently in a random town in Australia. He did n't know anyone, but he attended a local business event with the Chamber of Commerce. While he was there, he struck up a casual conversation with the business owner, which then turned into a conversation over coffee. Nathan was able to help, and then this business owner eventually hired him to do a paid project. And then, most importantly, Nathan did
well with his first client, and the first client actually referred him to clients number two, three, four, five, and six, all of whom were part of the same church. So again, I want you to record this as a data point, and we'll see by the end of the video, can we see any patterns in the data? Okay, next we'll talk to Catherine. Catherine is another of our wonderful trainers at Lifestyle Business Academy. Catherine spent 10 years working in various corporations, from marketing to PR and hospitality. But then Katherine decided she was going to start her own business, and so she ran her own coaching business for 5 years, where she was the executive/life
coach, and they paid her to help her through the process. So I asked Catherine how she found her first paying client. So, Catherine, great. How did you find your first client? Great question. So, I was part of a women's professional network, and there was a Slack community where people were writing about all sorts of things. I shared that I was getting certified as a coach. Not even as a way to attract customers, actually, but just as part of an update that I was sharing, and someone contacted me directly and said, "Oh, my son, who's about 25, would really need something like this." Can I connect you? We chatted and I
thought he would be perfect for this workshop idea I had, so I took him through it as a first test case. He paid $75 for it and then said, "I think this might really suit me." And he became my first long-term client. Oh, great. Did you expect it to bring you clients or anything like that? Not at all. And I didn't really know the person who approached me We didn't have a personal connection, but there was a great community within this professional network. The reason I did this is because people often shared news. Oh, what do you do? And I was so passionate about coaching at the time, so I talked about it, and I'm glad I did Incredible. And how did you manage to get clients: two, three, two, five? So, after that, I
went to a small conference actually through the same organization. I did n't know anyone, and the idea was to just hang out after the pandemic. I really found common ground with one woman, and we were talking about coaching, what it gives people, and she had this idea before that five people on her team really needed a coach. And she said to me, " Hey, maybe we could work something out." Could you come up with an idea of how you could work with… Yes?" So right after the conference, I returned home. I sent her an email with what I thought it might look like. Yes. And we started three weeks later. Oho. Incredible. Yes, okay. So, customer number one came through this random Facebook group? Or something like Slack.
Like, "Oh, great. Yes. Perfectly". And then, client number two, from an in-person event where you just interacted with people, you found someone in a good mood, and you saw what happened. Yes, these were customers one through six. Oho. Perfectly. And then, what about the next step? Have you ever had to do any content, advertising, or anything like that? So I didn't do any advertising. I was making a lot of content and getting very little return from it. So I remember client number seven came because very early on I was involved in a small men's group and there were three guys in it. Yes. There were three guys in it, and one of them reached out to me and said, "Hey, I could use some individual support." "And so, he signed the contract."
Perfectly. Yes. Thank you very much. You understand. Okay, this was Catherine, one of our Lifestyle Business Academy coaches. And again, I would like you to pay attention to the pattern that is emerging here. Katherine got her first client by posting in a Slack group with other female entrepreneurs. And then she got a bunch of follow-up clients, actually going to in- person meetings, like e- meetings, starting conversations with people, connecting with someone, helping them, and then that person referred her two, three, four, five, and six clients. So, an interesting pattern to note, again, and let's just keep asking a few more people to see how we get our first customers.
Okay, so now we're going to hear from Andrea, who is another coach at the Lifestyle Business Academy. Andrea spent the first half of her career working for various corporations, mostly in marketing, and then as a project manager for a large corporation, before Andrea decided to start her own business. So, she started her own boutique marketing." agency, and she ran this business for 3 years before I managed to convince her to join our team as a trainer at Lifestyle Business Academy. So, let's now hear from Andrea about how she got her first client. So, Andrea, how did you get your first paying client? Yes, because of my best friend who worked in sales. So he knew a lot of people, and I told him I was starting a boutique marketing agency, and he
said, "Hey, these guys need paid advertising for their new business. Do you want to do this? And I'm like: "Of course." "They called me, I booked them right away. They already trusted me because they trusted my friend. So it was very easy, very quick, I made a quick proposal, I made a quick presentation, and we started working in about a week. Oho. This is incredible. How did you manage to get clients from two to five? Then I worked at Upwork. During the pandemic, there was a boom in people looking for marketing agencies. About people started their own businesses. Yes. So I applied to about 10 jobs on Upwork about every two days.
Yes. And so I got clients two and three. And the rest through the previous agency I worked with. And I contacted them and said, "Hey, I'm starting my own project." And they replied: "Yes, of course. If we have smaller clients that we can't handle, we'll refer them to you." And they just agreed to it, just found you clients? Yes, they greeted me. They said, "Oh my God, it's so great that you're doing your own project. This is great. They will definitely help you, because I have been working with them for a long time. Perfectly. Yes, people often worry when they approach their current or previous employers because they say, "Oh my God, they're going to think I'm a terrible person."
All sorts of things like that. When I told my friends, they were very happy that I was starting a business. When I told my former employers, I also. And I kept in touch with all of them through LinkedIn. For example, birthdays and things like that, or likes on their posts. So it wasn't something random like, "Oh, I haven't heard from Andrea in three years." "I always try to stay in touch one way or another. I like it. So, this was Andrea, the first client I got literally through a friend, and then the next clients were essentially through her former employer. So again, just remember the patterns that emerge here in the process. Okay, let me tell you about how I got my first clients for the various businesses I've run over the years. My first business was
when I was a kid, it was a web design agency. It was actually just me, but I pretended to be an agency to make it sound more legitimate. And so I got my first client, his name was Stan, he was the stepfather of one of my friends from school. And I happen to have Stan's email address, so I sent out an email to pretty much all of my email contacts at the time. And Stan accidentally replied to my email, saying, "I need a website." "And so he paid me £30 to design a really awful website for him. And so I designed a really terrible website for him at 13 years old, and that's how I got my first client and my first review. A few years later I started my first business, which was really successful, about 5 years later when I was a
first year medical student at Cambridge University and started a business teaching other people how to do well in the BMAT, which was the medical entrance exam at the time. And I got my first clients by posting about it on Facebook. I was a member of a Facebook group called WHSP Medical Society, which was the name of my educational institution. And I still have this post. We'll just put it on the screen. This was a post I published. I basically wrote in the post something like, "Hey, I'm teaching a course for this particular exam. It will cost about £50 per day." "I called out the competitor's name and said, you know, scolded him a little bit, said they weren't very good. And four people saw it, and it was liked by Manu
Srivastava, who I think is now a consultant neurologist or something at Oxford. That was cool. So Manu was one of my first students. And then my brother, who was studying in a course younger than me, had a few friends. And so, you know, it all started with a tiny class of four kids in our living room, who were all either friends or friends of friends. And then, in the following years, I got my first clients for this course this way: I just asked people who had taken this course before. I emailed them and asked, "Hey guys, if you know anyone who is applying to medical school this year, could you please give them some details about what I do?" "I started doing online marketing for my course business literally 5 years ago when I first started my
YouTube channel, and that was the original purpose of my channel. If you scroll back and ignore the music videos, the first real video on the channel was BMAT Section 1, how to succeed in this business. These are, you know, videos that teach people how to do something, and then they signed up for my course. But it was years after I got my first few clients, launched the business, and even grew it to a six-figure income, largely by first asking people I knew, then asking people they knew, and then getting referrals for good work for our existing clients. And the last thing I want to talk about is another kind of part-time job that I had when I was in medical school.
It was towards the end of medical school, I was designing user interfaces and medical technology companies. And I got this job thanks to participating in a hackathon. A hackathon is a kind of event where you team up and create something like a product prototype." And I happened to attend a hackathon held by the Society of Plastic Surgeons. I had two plastic surgeons on my team, one of whom ran a medical technology company that needed user interface design. And another guy was also managing some medical technology projects and needed user interface design. And I was the youngest on the team, because I was, you know, a 23-year-old medical student. But because I took responsibility for creating a PowerPoint presentation for our proposal, and it looked
really good, these guys said, "Wow, this guy is really good at design." "And when I chatted with them throughout the day, they both spontaneously asked me if I could help them with the design work needed for their specific business. And so by going to this in-person networking event, showing up and adding value, being a good designer, because I'd been doing this for many years at that point, that's how I was able to land two of these clients and ultimately make tens of thousands of pounds from these two individual clients, while I was still a medical student and still trying to grow my course business. And this was actually before I started the YouTube channel. So, that was the story of my first few clients for various business projects I've implemented
over the years. Let's talk to some other team members. Hooray. Okay, now we'll hear from Owen, who is once again one of our team members. And Owen is a marketing specialist who works at Lifestyle Business Academy, so he gives advice to many of our students, for example, on how to improve your marketing and how to increase sales. Owen's career began working at." A B2B technology startup. He then moved to a branding agency and then worked in the nightclub industry in Hong Kong for a few years before eventually deciding to start his own marketing agency. So let's ask Owen how he found his first client. Good. So, Owen, how did you find your first paying client for your marketing agency?
I found my first client from my existing network. So this was my old employer during my university vacation. I would come home, work a summer job or something, and it was sports coaching. So I didn't really think about it at the time, but I just, you know, worked for him as an athletic trainer. Yes. And then when I finally decided that I wanted to try to start my own business and freelance first with the goal of turning it into an agency, I just tried to reconnect with my, uh, my old network and see if friends of friends knew anyone, or if there were any business owners in my network Yes. Well, so you write to your old boss, what did you say?
I. basically showed that I was like, " Hey, I'm doing this at my full-time job right now." Here are some of the results I was able to get for this company I work for. "I'm actually looking to take on a few clients right now, you know, freelance with my own clients, so would you like me to maybe do a quick audit of your current marketing?" And he replied: " Yes, of course, happily." So at first it was a small free audit. I looked at the ad he was running and gave him some feedback on it, and then we met for coffee, and, uh, he said, "Cool, how much would it cost you to come in and help us with this?" " Great. And how did you get two, three, four and five clients?
All thanks to recommendations and word of mouth So yeah, the nice thing about this kind of marketing is that it's very visual, you know, uh, customer-oriented. And so, a client I was working with had a lot of friends who were also business owners, and they saw the ad I was running for him and said, "Oh, this ad is pretty good. "Who is marketing it?" And then he would just say, "I'm working with this freelancer." And then he advised me. And that's how I literally got, probably, my first five or six clients. Incredible recommendations and word of mouth. I like it. Thank you very much. Okay, it was Owen. So, we heard, he got his first client just by WhatsApping a bunch of people he knew in Hong Kong.
One of them was his former employer." So there's a principle when it comes to outreach, specifically, which has a nice acronym called WIIFT, what do they get out of it? Usually, if you are going to do outreach for someone, it becomes much easier if you can offer them something of value, ideally for free. And now he offers a free marketing audit. The guy replies: " Yes, of course. Who would n't turn down a free marketing audit?" Owen does a great job of conducting marketing audits. And then, literally, he gets paid for it. And then, customers two, three, four, and five, get word-of- mouth recommendations. So, hopefully at this point you can start to see some of the patterns that we see among all of our team members who have experience running their own businesses
before I was able to convince them to join our team as trainers and specialists. So, it's 4:30 PM now. We are finishing up at this very beautiful zipline location. So we return to the villa. By the way, if you like this video at this point, I would really appreciate it if you left a comment below about what you like about it. Because we want to do more of these things, like casual vlogs, specifically, where I can bring in members of our team who have their own experiences in addition to mine to talk about things that you're struggling with, whether it's about increasing productivity, managing your time, achieving goals, or, in the context of this particular video, starting your own business, earning an independent income, whatever it is that you're
passionate about. So I would really appreciate it if you would leave a comment below with your feedback, because it really helps us and, you know, helps us decide if we want to do more videos like this. The pattern that I hope you've seen from the various conversations we've had throughout this video is that everyone is worried about me selling my stuff to strangers. But as you've hopefully seen, often your first client is n't actually a stranger. It's probably someone you know. Or, if you don't know them personally, they are friends of someone you know. Or even if you don't know them, they are part of some community, online or offline, that you belong to. You very rarely get your first customer by selling
something to complete strangers. Imagine you are opening a bakery. How do you think you would get your first customer for your bakery? Would you do it by placing an ad on Instagram, liking a TikTok, or putting up a billboard? Is it realistic to get your first customer for your bakery? Probably not. You would almost certainly say to your friends and family in your neighborhood, "Hi guys, I just opened a bakery. Is anyone interested in getting something at a discount? This is probably how you get your first customer for your bakery. This is what we call the magic question at our Lifestyle Business Academy. "Do you know anyone who happens to need this thing? I offer blah free consultation, free coaching,
etc. in return." This is usually how you get your first client. So starting a business doesn't really have to be something scary. Yes, of course, you have a little difficulty with what. Don't worry, we made a video about it. We will continue to make videos on this topic. We have a LifeTalk Business Academy channel on YouTube, which again has free content for this. And definitely for your first client and probably for your first $10,000 in revenue, you don't really need to try to reach out to strangers. You can get customers by talking to your friends and family and asking if they know anyone who might need your item.
But the last thing I would say is that selling to our friends can be scarier than selling to strangers, even though it is simple. Actually, it's not easy. The reason it's not easy is because we all have emotional barriers and like blockers that prevent us from doing anything. We are afraid of looking like scammers or spammers in the eyes of our friends. We're afraid to post on LinkedIn because what if my colleagues found out? What if my boss found out? And then almost everyone really struggles with it, but then they send the first few messages, they realize the world hasn't ended. They understand that in reality people were generally nice and generally supportive. Anyway, here's how to get your first client. And if you're interested in a step-by-step guide
on how to scale from your first client to $100,000 in revenue per year, here's a video about it. So, thank you very much for watching, and see you in the next video. See you later.
