Evan Carmichael tells a 21-year-old how to land a first client: pick a target market, talk to people in your network about their problems, and over-deliver on a small project. He built a feature nobody wanted at his first company because he never asked customers what they actually needed.
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How do I find my first client? This is such an important question if you're first getting started up because your business should be built around clients. You want to build your products, your services around solving the challenges that your potential clients are facing. I got a question that came in from a YouTube viewer. Love you guys. Uh, Jez Huay. I probably butchered that pronunciation, but thank you for the question. 21 years old, I don't know what to do. I finished college. Now I don't know if I should go get a job or if I should go work for a company or create my own business. I'm trying to figure out what's my next step. What's the best way to target clients? Is handing out business cards effective? I get the frustration. I get the pain. And, and, and if you've never done a business before, it's so scary and overwhelming as what do I do as my next step? What's my first step to getting this thing going? The best thing to do to help you figure out if you want to have your own business or if you want to go out and get a job is to start talking to potential customers. Okay? Don't go out and pitch because you have nothing to sell yet. You haven't actually done anything yet. Go out and start talking to potential customers. So I forget what the— he's into graphic design and photography. Okay? So this is his business. Figure out who you're going to potentially target. So if you say you're targeting entrepreneurs, you want to target business owners. Go and start talking to them. Find out what their problems are with graphic design and photography and figure out what they need help with and give them some solutions. Just call on people and reach out to people in your network and friends of friends and let them know you're just looking to start a business and you want some advice, you want some help. People are always happy to help. They don't want to be sold to, but they're happy to help. And if they like you, they know you, they trust you, they feel like you can do something for them, they're gonna wanna hire you, or they're gonna pass you on to somebody who might be able to use your services. So phase 1 is just go out and start talking to potential customers. Ask them for your help. Make a list of the people who are in your network who are potential customers, who are, say, entrepreneurs, but also just the people you know who you can ask, do you know somebody I could talk to? I wanna start a business, but before I do I just want to get some feedback on it. I want to answer a few questions. Is there anybody you know who I could interview and just ask them quickly about it? That gets the ball rolling. You're gonna make so many wrong assumptions about what you think you need that will only be solved once you start talking to your customers. I made a pretty huge mistake with, with my first business. It was a software company, and I built a feature The most complicated feature in my software I thought was, was that I thought was great, that I thought my customers would love, but it turns out they didn't care about it. And I spent so much time with my team making this thing and it didn't work out. Now luckily I had enough other great features in my software that were less complex to make but that people actually liked and used that the software sold. But the learning lesson here was talk to your customers. We could have been so much further ahead if I just built the stupid thing around what they actually wanted. So you're not going to have a lot of success just going out and handing out business cards and say, "Hire me," because you don't even know what you're selling yet. And make it easy for yourself because that's a lot of pain. If you go out, hand out business cards, trying to sell yourself, everybody says no, no, no, you're just getting rejected constantly. You're going to think, "This is ridiculous. Like, I can't even get my first client. How am I going to build a huge company? How am I going to make a living off of this?" So make it easy for yourself and make it easy for your clients. Make that list, go start talking to people, let them know what you're doing, let them know what you want to try to build. Get some feedback, see what people have to say, see what their challenges are. And there will be opportunities that will open up that maybe you didn't even think of that you can start with them on. It may be one simple small little project, and if you overdeliver like crazy You might be their full-time person that they always bring on and tell their friends about, and it'll take you in a direction that you never even thought was possible. But you don't know that until you go out and start talking to potential customers. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more for you. And please leave a comment under this video. I love seeing them come in. It makes my morning every day. And if you have a question, leave it below. I'll answer you with a video reply. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
