How I became a UX Designer - Without a Portfolio

This was me back in 2020. And yes, the things that you see on my face is indeed a mustache. I had my first call today from an interested lead during quarantine season. Now that is absolutely insane. It is mid-April. This is— It's been over 2 years now since I quit my job and started my UX design business. And since then I've been able to generate $287,512.46 in total revenue. I've designed and launched 4 app ideas for all of my clients. And I've increased conversions by a total of 884.9% across all my winning A/B tests. Now, I'm not sharing all of this to brag, but to tell you that it's possible for you. You see, I started my UX design business with no portfolio, no experience, and no one to give me a small loan of $1 million. And I'm going to share with you exactly how I got my first UX design client, because this was the first step of my UX design career, and it can be your first step too. See, before I decided to try to get any clients, I had to address some pretty important questions. What if a client asks me to see my work? I have no experience and no portfolio. What are they going to think? Or what if they ask me how many years I've been in business? What am I going to say, that I've been 1 month in business? No one's going to want to hire me. And so I had to face that reality. But then I kind of remembered that this is how everyone starts. They all start without experience. And at the time I had a very great example. My friend Noah the developer. I mean, he was running his app development agency business and he started without any experience. And look at what he was able to build. You see, throughout the years, our friendship grew. I would overhear him on his sales calls talking to clients.

I want to pay you as little as possible, give you the most amount of equity and put this thing up into the $100 to $300 million range.

And I learned about his business before I even decided to start my own. And this helped me out tremendously.

Hey, look, I love when you call me, so call me anytime.

Okay, you got it.

Okay.

All right then. And then one day I had an idea. What if we were to partner up? I would use his portfolio and in return he would get my clients for the development phase of the project. This means that we would split revenue with the clients that I bring into the business. And this was absolutely genius. This would change everything for me. I would no longer need to focus so much on building this fake portfolio of concept projects. I could actually use real projects that he's worked on and get clients that way. If they ask me how many years I've been in business, I can use the amount of years that he's been in business plus my one month and use that as a calculation because the client would work with me and would work with my friend. See, now that I had the partnership set up, I can actually get to work. The first thing that I needed was a website, something that said, we can build your app ideas. And then the next thing that I needed to think about was how will my potential clients find me? I knew I had a couple of different options, and the first one that I kind of thought of was the organic content model or strategy. But see, that was playing the long game, and I knew that if I really wanted to start my business soon, that I needed to think of something faster. And so that's when I considered my second option, which was Google Ads. This was a paid advertising method. I had a job at the time and so I had money coming in and I would use some of that money to point it to this Google ad campaign. And so I set a budget of about $3,000 and I started targeting, you know, broad keywords like app development company or hire app developers. But you see, I directed this traffic to my homepage and I realized pretty quickly that this was a terrible idea and the homepages are never great for conversions. My keywords were also too broad and way too expensive. I knew that I needed to go back to the drawing board, go back into the YouTube rabbit hole and start learning more about these marketing strategies and how to optimize a Google ad campaign. And so that's exactly what I did. And I learned something very interesting. So I stumbled across a concept of targeting high-intent keywords. These are keywords that people put on Google with a high intent to buy. I figured out the exact keyword that would lead to a much better cost per click and a much more qualified leads, and that was You ready? Drum roll. It was, how much does it cost to build an app? This is someone who understands it costs money to build an app and they're trying to get quotes. They're trying to figure out how much will my app idea cost so they can then make a purchase. And then here's where the secret sauce comes in. I use this tool called Jotform to create an app cost calculator where a user or a visitor can go in and answer some questions about the features that they want to have. And essentially at the end of this calculator, they would get a quote to their email. But as a result, I would get their email. And then when they would finish the Jotform or the App Cost Calculator, they would get onto my Calendly link where they can schedule a call to talk more about their app idea. And as a result of this strategy, it led to about 2 to 3 qualified hot leads every single week. But you see, now there was only one problem. I really sucked at sales.

Hello?

Hey, how's it going?

Is this Quincy?

This is Andres Gonzalez.

Is this about the app? Man, it's a bad time, dude. It's a bad time.

You know, whenever you're ready to continue, I know that, you know, this is kind of a reminder of the importance of kind of being online and being mobile. If you're ready to move forward, the time is now.

What you just said That is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.

Super cringy sales calls. But I didn't stop there. I continued learning. I continued trying to do whatever I could to improve my sales skills because this was the roadblock. If I can improve my sales at this point, I can make my first sale as a UX designpreneur.

So I'm not going to push too hard on closing deal, because I know that closing a deal is more of a result of providing a great service, having a great relationship, and providing value during the sales process more than anything else. I'm not gonna look at the end result. I'm gonna look at me, what I can control. I'm gonna try to do my best to identify and improve my skill set within that sales process rather than just being completely focused in on closing the deal.

And I also did something very clever, which was when I was on the sales calls, I would hear them say certain words, and then I would type them in my computer on the computer and I would repeat back the exact words that they used during the sales call, and they felt incredibly heard. In the midst of all this progress that I was making with sales, life decided to throw a curveball. I was blindsided by a performance improvement plan at my job that was paying my bills like that Google ad campaign that I was running. I realized that I had to make a choice. I couldn't keep running my UX design business as a side hustle, and so I decided to quit my job and go all in on my UX design business. Well, this is my last day. And, uh, and when I quit, I didn't really have any revenue or any clients. And even some of my family members told me that this was a really stupid move. But I had the confidence to make this sort of decision and take this leap of faith because I really felt at the time that God was with me guiding my path. And it kind of made me realize that I have nothing to worry about, that I could look at this jump and this transition with courage. And one day I remember going home back to LA with my parents. I remember doing a prayer with them, asking God again just to continue guiding my UX design journey. And the very next morning I wake up with this kind of whisper or this voice that says, "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and doors will be opened for you." And this was a verse I kind of stumbled across a while ago. And so I didn't really think much of it. But that very same day I had a call with this lady and the call went really, really well. I mean, she even told me she already made a decision. She already made a choice that I was I was the one that she was going to work with. So I kicked into gear, applied everything that I knew. I scheduled the kickoff meeting. I sent the agreement. I sent the 50% invoice for the $3,000 project that I was charging her for. And then she signed and paid the invoice that same weekend. And I still kind of remember it today. It's one of the best feelings that I've had ever in my life. It's the feeling where all the work that you've done actually begins to pay off. Now I know for a fact that I could have gotten my first client without spending $3,000 on Google Ads. And I know that to be absolutely true because one of my friends, Jacob, did that exact thing by posting strategically on Dribbble. I know I also could have gotten my first UX design client without necessarily partnering up with my friend and splitting my revenue. So all of these lessons of what I would do differently actually is inspiring me to create my first course, How to Get Your First UX Design Client. And I'm super excited because this course is going to be amazing. If you like my videos and you like my edits and you like the content that I'm producing, imagine the type of course that I'm going to create. And the first 50 people to sign up using the link down below will get this course completely for free. You see, I'm already working on a roadmap that will give you step-by-step instructions on how to get your very first UX design client. And instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a bootcamp, you can actually start your UX design career with a real client like me. What I really hope and what success looks like for this course is that this course pays itself 10 or even 100 times over when you actually get your first client. But just know that whether you buy my course or anyone else's course, it's going to be a lot of work and you're going to have to put in a lot of hours to make this work. And my course is only one step step of your overall journey in helping you get your UX design client. And if not, don't worry, I'm going to be producing free YouTube content to help you on your UX design journey that will be completely for free, like this one where I talk about how to teach yourself UX design with no courses and no bootcamps. So God bless your UX design journey, and I'll see you next time.