Freelancer Diaries: How I found my first three clients

How I found my first three clients, plus, what else is working for me (and what isn't)

Hellooo hello,

In the first EVER edition of Freelancer Diaries, I’m answering the holy grail of freelancer questions. Or at least the only one I cared about before I got started, anyway.

How do you find clients?

Genuinely. Just… how do you actually find clients?

It’s a question I asked everyone before I took the plunge full-time. And every single time I did, I felt a little bit self-conscious about saying it out loud.

It was the fact that, if I was considering freelancing in a serious way — which I was — I should definitely already know this, shouldn’t I?

But actually, no. Unless you’ve been quietly building up your quiet pipeline for ages on the side of your 9-5 (in which case you are a better person than I am), it’s really quite difficult to know where to get started.

And a lot of the advice out there is coming from people who’ll promise you a six-figure salary if you just pay them £1,000 now, share their post, and comment “MONEY MONEY MONEY” below.

Then, if you can get past that, the rest of the advice out there can lean towards generic/unhelpful — “use your network”, “post on LinkedIn”, “reach out to old contacts”.

That’s all very well and good, but when you’re staring down the barrel of your own announcement post that, funnily enough, didn’t go viral and generate 25 new smoking hot client leads, you need the advice to be a little more specific.

Specificity is exactly what I’m about. I don’t have all the answers, obviously. But I do have several clients now I’m a few weeks into my official freelance journey. And I can tell you exactly how I found the first three in the hope that it helps you generate ideas about how to find your own. In it together <3