Your Upwork Competition Is Making This ONE Mistake

In 2018, an NBA team looked at a kid and decided that he wasn't worth the money. He was the 33rd pick. That's the second round. Too short, too slow. He spent 4 years as the second option behind a superstar, and then the team that had him, they let him walk because they wouldn't pay him. This has nothing to do with freelancing, I hear you, but just give me a second because by the end of this video you'll understand why you're typing how to get freelance clients into YouTube and why that exact search is the reason that you don't have any. Well, guess what? Two weeks ago, that same kid scored 45 points to win the NBA Finals. Jalen Brunson, 6'2", in a league of giants, Finals MVP. Everybody said you can't build a championship team around a guard that size. He didn't get taller, he got better at the things that nobody else was willing to grind on. I've made $6 million in 5 years with my freelance career in exactly the same way. And the thing that changed, it wasn't a clever chess move. I simply deleted the question that you're searching for right now. You see, because here's the trap that nobody tells you about getting clients. The people who can't get them are all asking the same question: How do I get clients? And the people who have more work than they can handle, they never ask that, not once. And it isn't a coincidence or because they've got work already. The question itself is the trap. It assumes that the problem is out there somewhere in the realm with the rainbows and unicorns. A trick, a platform, a secret that you haven't yet found. Well, guess what? Some hard truths. It isn't. The problem is the thing that the question reveals about you. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. So guys, before I screen share a few things, let me tell you what "How do I get clients?" actually means. Because it's not a strategy question. It's a confession. When you ask how to get a client, you're asking how to convince someone to pick you. You're the one reaching, you're the one in the queue with your hand up saying, please pick me, I'm available, I'm keen, I'll do it cheap. That's Brunson on the bench. Talented, sure, but waiting to be chosen. The second option, easy to pass over. And guess what? The freelancers who win flip the entire question. They don't ask how to get clients, they ask one single thing: how do I become the only sane choice for for the client that I want. That's it. Same job, opposite posture. Here's the number that proves it. I went back through my own data. The proposals where I was trying to get the job, listing my skills, saying I can help with this— my win rate was brutal. The proposals where I walked in already solving their problem, confident enough, very much like dating, I was the obvious answer and the contract was a formality. It's a different universe entirely, and it's all by the aura that you present. Same hand, same CV. The only thing that changed was whether I was asking to be picked or showing up as the answer. The gurus, they won't tell you this because "Stop Asking to Be Chosen and Become Undeniable" doesn't sell a $49 or a $99 course on connect strategies or Upwork secrets. "Here are the 7 Proposal Hacks," that sells. So that's what you've been fed. Tactics for the bench. So if it's not tactics, if it's a posture, the obvious question is, can a nobody from a working-class town actually pull that off? Or is this only for people who are already winning? I'll answer that with my own receipts on screen in a second. I don't want you to take a single word of what I'm saying on faith, so I'm going to screen share it. This is my Upwork profile. 100% job success score, expert vetted, so I'm top 1% on the platform, top 0.1% in my niche, over half a million earned, approaching $600,000, 56 jobs, so I'm averaging just under $10,000 per project that I take on the platform, and I did it all from a coastal town that absolutely nobody bets on. Nobody does anything from where I'm from. So if you think that you've got a location problem, trust me, you haven't. I didn't have a degree that opened doors. I didn't have a network. I had the exact same Upwork that you have open right now in another tab. The difference is not access. Me and you, we have exactly the same access. The difference is that for years I asked the bench question, how do I get picked? And guess what? I stayed broke. The day that I stopped trying to get clients and started making myself the only reasonable choice, the line moved, and it moved fast. So just quickly rewind a second back to basketball. Brunson shared the floor in that final with a 7-foot-4 generational talent in Wembenyama. He's going to dominate the industry. 14 inches taller than him. On paper, it was a no contest. Everybody wrote Brunson off. Brunson was Finals MVP anyway. And it wasn't because he won on high, because he stopped competing on the thing that he would lose and competed on the thing that he would win. You're gonna compete on the thing that you win too, and that's what I'm here for. I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like by taking a real genuinely terrible inquiry that I got for a previous job and rebuilding it live into the version that wins. But first, I just need one thing from you. I've been thinking about running a series for a while now where we chase a specific amount. Either comment $1,000 or $5,000 and that'll be the target that we go for. And I will personally apply for projects, show you the Connect breakdown, show you what I've earned, and we'll see how quickly we can get to that number. There's a lot that I've learned from earning half a million on this platform, and I want to share it with you. I've shared gold on this channel already, but taking you along the journey with me, motivating you to apply every single day and not let an opportunity slip, I need to know if that's something that you want. If it is, comment 1,000 or 5,000. Whichever number wins is the number that I will pick, and if there's demand, I I will go for it. Okay guys, let's go. Let me show you the bench and the answer side by side. This is real. This is 3/4 ago, so I think it was 8 months ago now. I posted this job and got a stack of inquiries, and some were rough. I'm not here to mock anybody. The names are off, the faces are off, but this is about the pattern, not the person, because the pattern is probably yours, and that's the point. So very quickly, let's look at the job post. Very simple, as I like to keep them. Seeking multiple experienced no-code automation specialists, any Animate.com professionals for an automation project. That was it. That's all that you really need to know. I've not really given any other detail apart from being no-code solutions. When you look at the job posts I got back, Upwork was heavily pushing the video interviews at the time. I know that they like to vary that needle around and there was some good— I actually hired from this job post and there was some good interviews inside of there, but these are all of the applicants. Now, some of them didn't even bother to fill in cover letters. Make of that what you will, like they've got a chance of winning the job. A few of them named me, so there was somebody somewhere that named me. But anyway, the point is, let's take this one, this cover letter here. Hello, thanks so much for considering my proposal. I'm an expert vetted freelancer with strong experience in NAN and Make.com, focused on streamlining operations through automation. See, do you see what that is? That It's pick me. Every line is reaching. Not one removes my doubt or showcases to me that they have any talent above and beyond the bang average at best. If I'm the client, I've stopped reading by the time I get to the end of the first sentence. This person might be brilliant. You might be watching. I'll never find out because that is the bench. So we'll keep that application in mind, and now we're gonna have a look at a job that Rebuild for an account that I won. This is the— this for a wellness brand. We're seeking a Google Ads expert based in the UK to manage a Google Ads account. The ideal candidate experience responsibilities include optimizing ad campaigns, analyzing the goals, da da da. Google Ads expert for wellness brand. Now look at this. This was my application. Currently achieving 12 ROAS in the wellness industry for a yoga travel brand. Please check out the Loom below where I show you the receipts. That's what they read. Compare that to what we saw here. Hello, thanks so much for considering my proposal. I am an expert vetted freelancer with strong experience in— and then make.com. Let's read it again. Currently achieving a 12 ROAS in the wellness industry for a yoga travel brand. Please check out the Loom below where I show you the receipts. They mentioned wellness brands. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to repeat back to them what they have, and I have the receipts. I show them in the Loom video. Maybe I'll put that in a document below, I don't know, but The point is, immediately the fire is lit. What do you mean Michael Elliott's achieving a 12-row ass for somebody in the wellness industry, and he's created a personalized video for me to watch that shows what he's doing? Imagine the difference between those two things, how it would move me. Going back to this application, if they had said, hey, I've just saved a business 42 hours a week by streamlining their payment processing an internal structure and I can knock this out the park. Even something like that, the dynamic of my brain when I look at it completely changes, right? If you open on their problem or something that you've done to solve their problem, name specifically, it proves that you've read it and that you get it. Relevant proof, like mentioning that I manage an account that's got a 12-row AS in that industry, that removes doubt. Show the first step of the solution free. In the message and in a Loom, and then close with quiet certainty. I don't want to say arrogance, but you definitely don't want to smell like desperation. And when you do all of that, the contract is a formality. If they would have flipped that on its head from this job that I won that came through this application— I've had $130 million in ad spend in my career working with some of the world's largest brands and have a huge backlog of experience in the wellness field in many avenues, including supplements, etc. I've just nailed it, and that's why I won them. Same job, same length, completely different posture. The first one asked for a chance, the second one is the chance. I didn't get taller, I didn't improve in any sort of way, I just got undeniable. And guys, that is literally the whole game. You're not trying to be the best freelancer on the platform, you can't control that. You're trying to be the obvious choice for one specific client with one specific problem in one specific moment. That you control completely today and for every application that you provide. And there's a reason that this works even when you're brand new with zero reviews. It's the same reason a second round pick can captain a championship team. Let me close on that because it's the part that actually changes how you'll feel on Monday morning. Now I'm going to tell you something that's going to sound completely bonkers coming from somebody who's just shown you a $500,000 dashboard, but the first time that I made a million dollars, where I looked at a bank account that had a million dollars in it, I was happy for about 15 minutes. Then everything went quiet, including my brain. Do you know the end of like Grand Theft Auto where all the missions are done and you're just driving around aimlessly doing nothing? That. I'd built the thing and the thing didn't fill the hole that I thought it would. So let me do you a favor, brothers and sisters, because if I could click my fingers right now and hand you everything that you are chasing— more Upwork clients, a better service, more MRR, finances, a million dollars, all of it today, here's what would actually happen. You'd be thrilled tonight, absolutely thrilled, and by tomorrow you'd want more. The number never lands. Trust me, it never lands. It moves. The goalposts move the second that you reach it, which means the catch was never the point. You will never feel fulfilled. Not the clients, not the millions. You don't actually want the gazelle. You want the chase, and the chase only feels good if you stop sprinting at it like your whole worth is waiting on the other side. The gazelle doesn't taste as nice as you think it does. Enjoy the hunt. That's the part that lasts. And here's the part that makes this more than just a nice idea and a pretty story. That desperation, the need for the catch, a client can smell it. It's the exact thing that makes your proposal reek of the bench. Please pick me, I need this. The freelancer whose content— who's in it to get better at the craft— writes calm, certain, undeniable proposals. Lose the need, win the work. The contentment isn't soft, it's the unlock. So you're two different people now. Like, just like I showed you the two examples, that was two different people. You're the one who stopped asking to be picked and started showing up as the answer. Prepared, and you're the one who stopped needing to be the catch to be okay. Put those together and you get the only freelancer who actually wins long term. Undeniable on the page, unbothered underneath. Brunson didn't chase the ring, stoic the whole way. Next game, next game, next game, all season long. He became the player the ring comes to. 6'2" in a world of giants, and he never once played their game. You're not short on talent, You've just been sprinting at a gazelle. So do this: stop searching how to get freelance clients. That search is the bench, and it's the sprint. Rebuild your next pitch around their problem, not your CV. Calm, certain, no need in it at all. And if you want the exact template that I use to rebuild that proposal that I did with you live on the example, I'm going to put it below. It's the first link in the description. Go and take it and mirror it. If you've enjoyed this, go and check this video out right here. But if you want me to go on the series and journey with you to make $1,000 or $5,000, you have to hit me up in the comments with the value, $1,000 or $5,000. Like, subscribe. I'll see you in the next one.