I remember the first year I opened the studio and I was completely preoccupied with the worry and the pressure to find new clients even when I’d land a new project a new client I was thinking alright now this will ease up now that I have a project but I just had a hard time filing that thought away it was probably around the third year when I started to get comfortable with the idea that you know I just couldn't predict when or where the next project would come from but I also got comfortable with the idea that it always just came and I keep a folder to this day with all the projects that I've said no to just kind of as a reminder that there will always be another project you know most creatives architects designers artists you know we aren't taught how to find new clients and I never took a business or a marketing class in college and I really do regret that everything I've learned in business has been by researching other successful entrepreneurs other businesses and just by doing you know lots of experimentation iteration and of course failure so I wanted to take this video to share what I've learned with you and if you're a student you can apply these same principles to finding your first job out of school so my first project like a lot of architects and other designers that I know was from a referral a referral from a contractor and referrals are a great source of new leads and they remain a source of great new leads for my business so the one problem with referrals is that they're kind of unpredictable so you can't control how other people are going to react or even if they're gonna position your business in front of somebody even when there's an opportunity first thing about referrals that you need to understand is that you need to earn the referral you need to have good work right so we're gonna presume that you have good work the next thing is you actually have to ask for them so the best professional referral resources that I found are realtors contractors and other architects so when you're approaching contractors and realtors I think you want to think about how you can save them time and also offer some value so one of the things you can do let's say for the realtor is reach out and do a sample site analysis and help them try and move a parcel they're trying to sell and then you can say, look this is the kind of thing I do and this is the kind of thing I'm hoping to do more of in the coming year and if you see an opportunity for a referral I'd really really appreciate it architects same thing if you approach a larger firm someone who's more established than you are chances are they're gonna be overloaded with work and they're not going to be able to take on the smaller projects which you if you're just getting started you have the bandwidth to handle those now your personal network very similar you have to reach out be friendly be curious you know there's things you're doing throughout your daily routine maybe you're going to the gym maybe you have a personal trainer maybe you're going to the bike shop to pick up some more gear for your hobby you know reach out make connections so my son's drum teacher perfect example of this I take him to a weekly drum lesson and his teacher was just starting to renovate his studio so I sort of pointed him to a few resources and I said here's a couple ideas there's a couple things you might think about while you're doing this you know acoustically you can shape the room like this and you know not long after that he referred me to an exceptional client and that was a client that ended up being a pretty big project for me so, was it because I offered up some free advice to him you know pointed him towards some resources? Maybe, you know you never know where mentioning what you do or actually showing what you do where that will fall on the right set of ears okay so ideally you want clients to find you right and they do that through your website but just because you have a website doesn't mean they're gonna be able to find it so here's what I want to do I want you to go to Google and I want you to type in exactly what you think a client might put in to search to find you okay then you're gonna look at the results and if you're not on page one and chances are pretty good you're not on page one you need to change that and the way we're gonna do that is we're going to start publishing content that directly relates to the kinds of searches that your clients are going to be doing online but first okay so you're probably saying what does buying a camera and an interchangeable lens have to do with finding new clients? Well a lot when you think about it as building awareness so buying a camera for me has been like hands-down the single best investment I've made in probably the past ten years learning how to take good photographs and learning how to edit them is one of those meta skills that's going to pay off in your entire creative life and we need lots of images of your process your work and also your environment your surroundings all this is going to feed into the next steps we're about to take all the gear and the equipment that I recommend the stuff that I started with like the 70D the 80D that's all linked up in the cards here I have a bunch of posts and you can find all the stuff that I used then and now the second thing that I want you to do here is also learn to edit your photos in Lightroom it doesn't take much work to do it but it makes a huge difference when it comes to quality of your work okay so now you're ready to start making content on your website and I want you to start thinking about that search term that you put in to Google to see how your clients are going to find you you need to make content that's directly aimed at that person, right?
So that means answering those first questions that clients always ask you in that first meeting answer those preemptively make an epic piece of content that answers all the questions that you would have if you were in your clients position, right? How much does it cost? What's the schedule gonna be?
What's my team? What problems are you solving for your particular client? Now the cool thing about this is when you do it enough you make enough content you're gonna start to attract your tribe the people that gravitate to your particular voice how you talk about things and your approach but you're not gonna know what that is just yet so you need to try a lot of different things so you're gonna experiment I want you to experiment with blog posts and images and maybe even video if you're comfortable with it if you're short on ideas one thing you can do is to sort of try and reverse engineer what other successful firms and businesses and entrepreneurs are doing online content should answer pain points content should talk about benefits rather than features you know what problems are you solving for your clients?
Speak about those you want to make the abstract service of design real to people like what's the real pain point you're solving? And we talked about this in the previous example but I want you to document your process I want to document your work and share all that behind-the-scenes stuff like that's a great way to do what other people aren't doing there's a lot of people in this industry who aren't willing to bring you into their studio and show you what they're doing and I can promise you people are interested in that and it's a great way to produce content for your content marketing so how effective is this kind of marketing? The majority of my work in the past used to come from referrals and that's how I started off the business we talked about that already the majority of my work now comes through my content marketing and I've put a lot of content out there so I can see what works and what doesn't and I can promise you this does work probably heard that phrase: people hire other people they know like and trust so when you make enough content people get to know you they start to like you – hopefully - and then they trust you and you’re doing all of that before they even reach out and make contact with you and one of the big shifts I've seen in the business is I used to have to do a lot of convincing but by the time people show up to the studio and we're sitting across from each other at this table one of the things people say is like I feel like I know you already and part of that is due to the videos that I've made part of that is due to the voice of my content you know I'm always providing value I'm always trying to be helpful and so it really does help people get to know like and trust you.
You've been working on your referral network you've been making content we need to talk about your portfolio now. Potential clients need assurance that you're actually the right one to do the work and your portfolio is going to sell your experience so in your portfolio you can only put your best work okay that probably means no student work and that's not a dig on students necessarily but like the mortuary thesis project it's just not gonna win new clients clients need to be able to see their work in your portfolio so that's what the portfolio is designed to do I think a portfolio that has maybe only two or three projects and they're really focused around one particular theme or topic is far more successful than one that has let's say you know a retail project maybe a single-family renovation project and let's say a design for a nightclub like that's confusing to a potential client right if client comes to your site and they see those three different things are they gonna be assured that you're the right one to design their new family home on the coast? Probably not, right?
So think about your portfolio like a mirror what you put out there is what you're gonna receive in return so the same goes for lower quality work or work that's poorly photographed and I do see this all the time you know people put up images or projects that they're not totally satisfied with they're not totally proud of thinking okay in the future as I get better projects you know I'll swap these images out I'll swap out my portfolio it doesn't work like that it's a bad idea I think in general because what you put out is what you'll receive I want you to think about your portfolio as the story your future clients are going to be telling and sharing with their friends and family is that a story that's shareable for them? You know low-quality photographs poor projects it's not shareable so what if you don't have any work that you feel like you can share or your portfolio just isn't sort of up to snuff yet? Now I think you have a couple of options I think the first option is maybe to reevaluate and say maybe it's time for me to get more experience more relevant experience maybe it's time to go work in a shop that actually does the kind of projects that I want in my portfolio that's a good rubric or a framework for you if you're a student and you're looking for a job like look at their portfolio and say is that the kind of work that I want on my own portfolio the other thing you can do and I think this is a really great possibility is to do work on spec so the studio here this is a great example of that you know I hired myself to do this project and the great part about that is you have a network of people who helped you build this you have a portfolio piece and you have all this content that you can repurpose for your blogs and your social media outlets and then in the end you have the drawings and the details and the design to possibly sell on your website everyone has done work on spec and if you don't have new clients coming in you definitely have the time to do work on spec okay so social media is a big topic and we need to think about where your clients are spending time online where are they searching for the kinds of things that you do, right?
Where do you search for things for inspiration? Probably Instagram Pinterest you probably visit some blogs you probably go to YouTube I hope and you know there's probably podcasts too so those are the places I'd probably start as a creative and actually I've gotten jobs from every single one of those places online so don't dismiss the the socials please now you actually have kind of an unfair advantage when it comes to social media because you know the bigger firms the places that are already getting work they already have referral networks in place and operating for them and usually they're pretty busy so they don't see investing time in social media as a worthwhile outlet so one of the approaches that I like and I use is you take this epic long-form content that you’ve already been creating for your website and then you start chunking it up right and so these bite-sized chunks are then re-contextualized to whatever platform you're posting on so Facebook for example you can't post long videos on Facebook people aren't there to watch long videos but you can post that on YouTube it works very well. Instagram, Pinterest, those places are visual platforms so that's a great place to post your behind-the-scenes processed visuals you can even post video there there's Twitter there's LinkedIn you know LinkedIn you can do white papers Twitter you can do images with text overlays sort of bite-sized pieces think about the platform think about what makes sense for posting on that platform now I think as a visual creative person you absolutely cannot ignore Instagram so a couple of things about Instagram that you need to know: hashtags obviously use the broad hashtags so architecture the larger broader hashtags to sort of associate your posts with a certain family but then also use the hyper local hashtags like think about hashtags in your local neighborhood places that you actually want to be building think about those hashtags as well because if you can show up in those local neighborhood posts and showing what you're doing people will discover you that way now the other hashtags that you can consider using are search terms you know what would people be searching for on Instagram that they might find you think about ways to be social think about ways to connect think about ways to add value you can tag real local realtors in your posts you can tag local contractors you know engage in the platform and offer value comment on other people's posts you know don't just go in for the ask I get so many DMs from people that just say hey I've got a problem hey I need an advice hey I've you know this litany of questions and I think you have to be considerate of people's time these are busy people that you're reaching out to and if your first introduction to them is an ask for the most valuable thing they own it's just a bad way to be social it's a bad way to build that referral network now the other thing to do on these social platforms is to look carefully at your profile right?
Ask yourself - again we're gonna view this through the lens of a potential client - if a potential client comes to your Instagram profile and they look at it are they gonna see something that's gonna make them feel comfortable hiring you right? So you probably need a nice profile photo you need to have a nice bio a succinct bio need up links back to your website you know your feed is gonna attract people who are attracted to the things that you're posting there if you're posting photos of just junk like that's kind of what you're gonna receive in return everything's like a mirror here okay so make sure you come up with a nice bio a nice photo maybe some testimonials if you're thinking about posting on Houzz or LinkedIn something like that you need some social proof maybe post a few awards your accolades you know give people a reason to reach out and get in touch with you. Now the last thing I want to mention before we move on from social media your social media following is gonna matter even if you don't think it's going to matter today it already has social currency in the market so people look at the number of followers you have they look at your impact your reach but in the future it's going to not only have real monetary value but it may be the decision point for a client or a collaborator choosing to work with you or not if you have a larger social following that may be enough reason for someone to say, yeah that looks like a good partner for me.
So think about that before you completely dismiss the socials and if you're not finding clients you definitely have the time to invest in this kind of thing. I know it can feel overwhelming what I'm saying do this do this do this do this and yes it takes a lot of work. Okay so we're gonna talk about your email list here for a moment and I feel I know it's gonna feel like another thing to do but if you have an email signup on your website it's a great way to begin cultivating that sort of know like and trust factor with your potential clients so I use MailChimp and we're in the dashboard of MailChimp here and what I've done is set up a series of sort of seven emails that sort of introduce people to what I do how I can help them I'm always leading with value I'm educating I’m providing information and that's kind of how you use an email list I use MailChimp here it's free up to I think it's about 2,000 subscribers I'm beyond that now but once you get beyond 2,000 subscribers you should be finding a way to monetize that email list and that's a sort of next-level discussion that we can have but you know email lists can help you do that as well so what you do you set up this autoresponder when someone signs up it drips out this series of emails to your potential client your potential leads over a period of time at an interval that you choose so it's really helpful for building trust now one of the other things that I like to do is sign up to other email lists so that I can see what they're doing and again we have this idea about reverse engineering things see what other people doing that's effective with you you know you sign up to certainly an email list and there are probably ones that you unsubscribe from and there are probably ones that you sub keep subscribed to because you enjoy their content start making content like that now also you're going to use your email list when you create new products or maybe you have an opening in your wait list or maybe you have a new book that you're releasing and you use that to reach out to an audience of people and tell them what you're doing so it's a way of again building up your referral marketing reminding people that you're out there and building awareness.
Okay we've been talking a lot about sort of experimenting with things so one of my favorite mental models from my hero Tim Ferriss is: what would this look like if this were easy? So I think there's lots of ways to think about this. So what would this look like if it were easy?
Well you could hire somebody who had a bigger network than you right you could hire a sales agent to bring new clients to you. You could team up with another architecture firm right and take all of their smaller work and just agree to be that guy that they send all their smaller projects to you could pay somebody else for their leads so larger firms they have an excess of work maybe you just say hey look I'll give you $1,000 for every lead that comes into my business that I convert into a client. What if you turned all of your clients into customers instead so turn your service into a workshop like a two-day workshop sell it for $500 a seat and fill your studio with ten people and run a workshop.
Maybe your clients aren't actually building things in the physical world maybe you're designing virtual sets for luxury brands and you know before you dismiss this as a sort of joke I've definitely been approached before by people who are looking to design virtual sets for cars and luxury brands so like it really does exist remember you don't have to necessarily have the skills or knowledge necessary to solve a problem if you can rent or buy it elsewhere right? You know I would suggest that you just keep digging in on this mental model because I find it pretty liberating. So I love borrowing tactics from other businesses other entrepreneurs study and learn from other people doing similar things to you and apply it to your business now think about how photographers find clients how do UX designers find clients or graphic designers or illustrators so some great resources online YouTube has some amazing content you can get your virtual MBA this way podcasts books blog posts you know always be a student is kind of the mantra that I've adopted so if you want to know what I'm looking at what I'm consuming books I'm reading podcasts I'm listening to YouTube channels I'm watching check the link in the description and the cards.
Now there's plenty more you can dig into but I think you've got enough to get started for sure this is a lot of work I've been making content a long time so I know how much work it is I also know how successful it can be if you start to implement a lot of these strategies most of what you're gonna do is not gonna work and that's perfectly fine because you don't have time to do all of these things all the time some of them are automated but a lot of them actually take a ton of work now what's important to know is when a lead does reach out a potential client does reach out and say hey I want to talk to you about getting a project going it's important for you to know how they found you so a simple - hey great to meet you how did you find me? - will help you focus your efforts as you move forward so you know what's working and what's not there is no easy button for clients to find you for you to find clients and it's good because it actually filters out the people who are too lazy to do all that it takes to do this and it leaves room for you and for me now if you want to learn how to get more clients you want to dig into this in more detail and possibly even work with me one-on-one I'm working on a course right now and if you want to be a part of that or you want to sign up to be notified when I release it you can check the link in the cards or the description below to find out more about that alright? Cheers my friends we'll see you again next time!
