5 Ways To Land Ghostwriting Clients Without A Portfolio, Case Studies, or Testimonials

There are 5 ways that you can land ghostwriting clients without needing a portfolio, case studies, or testimonials, and I'm going to show you exactly how to do that today. Okay, so there are 5 ways. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, before I tell you how to land clients without testimonials, a portfolio, case studies, etc., it's worth asking the chicken or the egg question. Which is how do you think every other person has done it? If it is impossible to land clients without case studies and testimonials and without a portfolio, then how did everyone else get started? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And I find that a lot of writers have this faulty belief thinking they need to have gone and achieved something before they can begin. They think that they need all these case studies before they can start. They think they need 1,000 testimonials before they can land their first client. And it's like, Well, how do you think you get all of those things? You start working with clients. You actually, those are not the required inputs, those are the outputs that happen over time, okay? And this has been true for everyone. How do you think I started? Do you think when I got into ghostwriting, I just woke up one morning and I was like, I'm gonna start getting into ghostwriting and you know what, I'm different and I already have 10 case studies that I can point to. No, of course not. Like everyone starts at zero. Something else that I really like emphasizing for writers is, When I was building my ghostwriting agency, Digital Press, we worked with over 300 different industry leaders, Silicon Valley founders, investors, executives of publicly traded companies, you name it, in every industry. 300+ clients. We didn't use a single case study or testimonial. Zero. Actually zero. And the reason it was zero was because as I'm about to walk you through, we got really good at articulating the client's problem. So good that when we were on the phone with them, they assumed you must be the perfect person to help me because you can articulate my situation so well. And that is the goal, okay? It has nothing to do with case studies or testimonials or having a big portfolio. That is not how you land great clients. Clients don't actually care about those things. Something that I spend a lot of time educating writers on is When a client asks you, okay, yeah, yeah, but do you have a portfolio I can look at? Yeah, yeah, do you have case studies I can look at? Do you have any testimonials? They aren't actually asking that because they need it. They're asking that because either A, you haven't sufficiently educated them on the problem and so they're not really sure, so they're looking for other markers of quote unquote credibility, and B, they're asking that because That's what everyone thinks they need to ask for. They're not asking it because they actually need it. They're asking it because they think they should ask for it. And every single time, like I said, 300+ clients, when someone would ask me, "Do you have any case studies? Do you have any testimonials?" every single time I said the same thing. I said, "As a ghostwriter, the nature of the work that I do, the work that I do with clients is confidential, so I'm not at liberty to share who I work with," which was true. However, I can tell you that I've worked with people just like you, and if you have any specific questions on the service or how this works for you, I'm happy to answer them. I said some version of that every single time, and every single time clients would be like, yeah, no problem. And yeah, 1 out of 100 people that I would talk to would say, I don't want to move forward unless I, you know, have a direct testimonial from someone just like me that you can point to. And I would just be like, yeah, well, I'm a ghostwriter and I am under NDA with all of my clients, so sorry, that's not something I can give you. But it didn't matter because, yeah, 1 out of 100 people said that and we would still close a ton of other business. So I think it's just helpful to start like, how do you think every other writer began? Everyone starts at zero. Now, that said, when you're starting from zero, what are some things that you can do to increase the likelihood of your success? Well, the first one is you start with a free Custom sample. So when you reach out to a client, you— it's not about you having worked with 20 other people. When you reach out to a client, what you're trying to demonstrate is this is what it would look like if we did this for you. That's ultimately the only thing the person cares about. They actually don't care if you've been successful with other people. They only care if you will be successful again with them. And nothing proved that to me more than when people would be like, "I demand to know that this has worked for other people," and I would be like, "Yeah, I can tell you it's worked for other people," and then they're like, "Okay, yeah, but my objection is I'm still worried if it's gonna work for me." It ultimately comes down to the person believing it will work for them, and so one way, one very easy way of getting ahead of that objection is saying, "Let me put together a free custom sample for you." So if you're pitching social ghostwriting, how could you show them a week's worth of social content or a day's worth of social content specifically for them? If you're pitching newsletter ghostwriting, how could you show them a sample newsletter written for them, written in their voice, written by using content from a book they wrote or a speech they gave or a YouTube video they put together? With AI, this is so incredibly easy to do. I used to do this manually, for a ton of clients that I reached out to. I would do free custom samples, and that's how I landed a lot of clients. But this was pre-AI. I was doing it the hard way. I would spend 4 or 8 hours putting together a free custom sample for a client. And guess what? Because I put in that work, the likelihood of them going, wow, this is actually pretty great, I would like to work with you, went up tremendously. So I did this the hard way. Now with AI, you can do a free custom sample very, very quickly. This is not hard to do. Okay, it's just a lot of people don't take the time to do it. And I think often when I point this out to writers, the objection they give is they're like, well, I don't want to do free work for someone. Don't look at it as free work. Look at it as a marketing cost. You reach out to all these people. If you— people think, oh, if I reach out to more people, volume, the likelihood that I land a client increases. That's actually not true. It's not just about volume. It's about quality volume. So you would be better off instead of reaching out to 100 people with a copy-pasted You'd be better off reaching out to 10 people, but creating a free custom sample for each one. That extra time is really just a marketing cost, increasing the likelihood that that person wants to work with you. That's number 1. Number 2 is doing the same thing, but do an entire project. You do a free project. Why is this a good idea? Well, again, I'm not advocating for you to just work for free for the rest of your life. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that in the beginning, if you're starting from zero, there are other things you can get paid in, okay? So you can get paid, let's do this in the green color, you can get paid in confidence. A lot of times people in the very beginning, like the thing to solve for is not cash. What precedes cash is confidence. Like the more confident you get, the higher quality work you will produce, the more likely you are to land clients. So sometimes you need to get paid in confidence first. Another thing you can get paid in is a testimonial or a case study. So you can say, hey, I'm happy to do this project for you for free. I'm happy to build you an educational email course for free. I'm happy to run your newsletter for 3 months for free. I'm happy to run your social content for 2 months for free. But in exchange, I would love, if you're happy with the end result, I would love if you could be a testimonial for me. Now again, I built my entire ghostwriting agency off zero testimonials. Zero. But if testimonials are one of those things that are just stuck in your head and you're like, I need it, I need it, I need it, you can get them very easily. You just trade effort for it. And then the third one is, you're either getting paid in confidence or getting paid in testimonials or case studies, or you're getting paid in referrals. So you can say, I'm happy to do this for you for free, but I would really appreciate it because I'm trying to grow my ghostwriting business if you could introduce me to 3 potential clients. Now, again, that might seem like a crazy ask, but you would be surprised how many business owners— like, business owners love transacting in relationships. It is the unspoken rule between business owners. Like, I have no problem. Instead of paying cash, I'm like, why don't I just introduce you to the right person? Instead of paying you cash, why don't I just connect you with some opportunities? Instead of paying you in cash, why don't I just give you access to this thing that is either expensive or would cost you cash or is something that you wouldn't have access to? Business owners love transacting in relationships. Okay, so there's no reason why you can't ask for this. Which leads to way number 3 is you use yourself. Let's make that readable. You use yourself as the case study. Okay, so what that means is whatever service that you want to provide, the easiest case study to point to is you. So for example, when I first got into ghostwriting, the service that I was providing was writing 800-word thought leadership articles, and my case study was pointing to me. So I would get on the phone. I was 26 years old living in an $800 a month studio apartment with no air conditioning and an air mattress from Target, and I was landing like primo billion-dollar CEOs as clients, okay? So I'm telling you this works, and I was doing this at a pretty young age. I would get on the phone with someone and they would say, how do I know that this is a good strategy? How do I know that this is going to, quote unquote, work? And I would point to myself and I would say, well, let me show you what I'm doing right now on Quora. This was in 2016. Quora was like— like, even today, people have no idea what Quora is. Quora was an extremely niche site. But I pointed to myself on Quora and I said, I'm writing every day on Quora and I'm writing the same types of things. I'm basically writing 800-word thought leadership articles. And look at Look at the results. I've built an audience. Look at— I'm going viral. Look at— I'm getting pieces republished in these major publications. Look at— like, I just pointed to myself. I said my service, my value prop is I will do what I'm doing for me for you. And that is incredibly powerful. Okay. So if you are pitching social ghostwriting, for example, you should be practicing social ghostwriting on yourself. You should point to yourself as a case study. If you want to ghostwrite newsletters, you should have a newsletter. If you want to ghostwrite like automated email sequences, you should have some sort of mechanism where those email sequences are set up for yourself. You want to be able to point to yourself as the case study. And I think the thing that gets lost in translation here is I'm not saying that you need to like go become this massive industry expert with 2 million followers before you can point to yourself as a case study. I was pointing to myself on Quora as a 26-year-old with an audience of like 8,000 people. Like, I was not pointing to some, like, massive outcome. All you need to do is to just demonstrate, hey, I am practicing on myself. Now, why is that so valuable for clients? It's valuable because what you're basically saying is you're saying, look, you're not gonna be the guinea pig. I am the guinea pig. I am testing all the things that I want to test and figuring out what works on myself. And then after I put myself through all of that, I take the things that work and I do them for you. So you being the case study actually mitigates the client's risk. That's very valuable to the client, okay? Which leads to number 4, which I love this strategy. I don't think enough people do it. It's called pitch in public. So how else can you demonstrate? Because that's, that's really all we're talking about, like case studies and testimonials and a portfolio. What are those really trying to achieve? All they're trying to achieve is demonstrating to someone else that you can do what you say you're gonna do. That's all. You're just demonstrating skill. You're demonstrating expertise. And my point is there are lots of other ways of demonstrating skill, demonstrating expertise. And so one technique that I really love is called pitching in public, which is instead of pitching someone directly in private, which would be DMing them or sending them an email, right? Or sending them a text if you're connected with them. That's great, but it's happening in private. Like, it's only between you and that person, which means it's not very, quote unquote, scalable. Pitching in public means the same thing that you would say to that person. Why don't you just do that in the form of content? So I'll give you an example. Instead of me pitching you, let's say you're a business owner. Instead of me pitching you directly, via email, via DM, privately. Instead, what I do is I go through my same process, I do my homework on you, I go to your website, I check out your funnel, I type in my email, I look at your content, right? I'm trying to figure out like, what are you currently doing and where do you have leaks in the bucket? I'm trying to identify problems I can help you solve. And then instead of telling you and educating you on those problems in private, what I do is I do it in content. So I write an article or I write a thread on X or I make a video or I make a LinkedIn carousel and I say, hey, this business owner I think is really great. You, I think you're really great and I love the business that you run. But if I was CMO for a day or if you hired me as a ghostwriter after going through your funnel, these are the things that I would encourage you to do. These are the upgrades I would make. So your content is actually a pitch. It's demonstrating how you can help them, but it's also content for you. It's a pitch in public. Now, why is that so great? Well, one, it's another way of getting in front of the prospect. It's another way of getting their attention. But more importantly, number two, is that even if you don't get their attention, or even if you do but they don't respond, or you get their attention but they don't become a client, what you're really doing is you're demonstrating your expertise in public, which will attract other similar types of people. So you might not land the person that you're writing about as a client, but you might attract someone else who has a similar business who reads that piece that you put together and goes, wow, that was really helpful, and actually I have all those same problems, and then they reach out to you. So it's, it's actually turning your outreach efforts into a content strategy. Now whenever I share this, and I have shared this tactic a gazillion times inside our premium GoTraining Academy where I've trained thousands of writers, Whenever I share this tactic, the number one objection that I get back is, "Cole, isn't the person gonna get upset? Isn't the person gonna get mad at me for telling them all the things that they're doing wrong?" And that is a faulty belief. First of all, you're not telling them things that they're doing wrong to shame them in public. You're telling them things that they're doing wrong as missed opportunities so that they become more successful. And I don't know anyone on planet Earth who would go, "You know what? I run a business, but I would actually prefer to not be educated about problems that I have in my business. I'd prefer for it to just stay stuck and not growing and not as profitable." Of course not. So you have to view it as helping. You are helping the other person. And speaking from experience here, I've done this for a decade. The vast majority of the conversations I have with business owners are not me just validating, telling them, "Oh, you run a perfect business and you have no issues." No, I go to them and I say, hey, I spent some time poking around your funnel. I want to point out some things, and if we solve them, you will be more successful. That is helpful, and it's a very powerful way of you demonstrating your expertise, demonstrating how you can help someone. Which leads to the fifth one, and this is ultimately the only thing that matters, is you build the skill of educating the client. The client does not care how much quote unquote industry credibility you have. The client does not care how many case studies you have. The client does not care how big your portfolio is. The client does not care if you have a gazillion testimonials or one testimonial or zero testimonials. The client doesn't care. The only thing the client cares about is you educating them on a problem they know they have in their business but haven't gotten around to solving. Or a problem they don't even know they have in the first place. I can prove it with a very simple example. If you scroll TikTok or you scroll Instagram Reels, you scroll and all of a sudden someone appears on your page. You don't know who that person is. You don't know if they're the most credible person in the world or if they're a super random person in the world. You know nothing about them. You don't know where they went to school. You don't know what their job is. You don't know anything except a talking head on the screen in front of you. And what do you do? You give that talking head about 5 seconds, and if they start talking and they start demonstrating expertise that's relevant to you, or they start educating you on a problem that you have or a problem that you don't know that you have, you keep listening. This is like short-form content consumption 101. It's such a perfect example of how much we all, when the head appears on our screen, our first question is not, "Where did you go to college?" Our first question is not, "How much industry credibility do you have?" Our first question is listening to the words that you are saying and trying to gauge whether or not you know what you're talking about by your ability to articulate my problem. It's such a simple concept, but it is such a difficult skill for people to wrap their heads around. Your credibility is irrelevant, and I can demonstrate credibility much better by articulating your problem in detail rather than just me saying, look at all these things I've achieved. And actually, this video is a great example. In this video, I am probably articulating very specific things that either you've tried but failed at, or things you didn't even know you could try, and in educating you on it, there is some part of you that goes, Cole seems to know what he's talking about. And you don't have that feeling because I've sat here and just rattled off, these are things that I've achieved in my career. That's not the thing that's actually helpful to you. That's not what matters to you. What matters to you is my ability to articulate the problem that you have. And the more I educate you on that problem and the more I educate you on solutions, the more you believe that I am qualified to help you. And this is the whole game. Like, if you want to go out and land writing clients, it is not about you having some, like, perfect portfolio. I really, I really want to drive that home. The portfolio is irrelevant. I've landed hundreds of clients without a portfolio. I've landed hundreds of clients without pointing to testimonials. That's not what matters. What matters is your ability to educate clients. And the way that you do that is by you building the skill of knowing what to look for, of learning how to do your homework on a client, of learning to identify what problems they have, learning how to articulate, you have this problem, articulating the consequences of that problem, articulating the benefits of solving that problem. That is a skill. And if you build that skill, it solves all of these other issues. You don't need testimonials, you don't need a portfolio. Even today, like, my portfolio is me. I don't point to like a client portfolio, I point to myself. I am my own case study. And so that's the goal. If you're like, Cole, what is the best way to start from zero? I have no testimonials to point to. I go, great, that's not the problem. What you should do is practice on yourself, make yourself the case study, and then build the skill of educating the client on a problem they have in their business. And if you do that, you will be successful.