Clients without a portfolio? 🤔

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Learn UX/UI

7 min readSep 24, 2018

The common knowledge dictates us that first, we need to go to a school, then university, then create a portfolio, the work here and there…Bullshit!

99% of creatives are following this way. This creates crowds with portfolios and high competition, don’t you think?

Here’s my secret formula I’ve developed with the time that constantly generates more and more clients interested in working together and as a result creates bigger demand ( ➡️ raises my market price).

How does it work?

❗️First of all: You have to build a trust. Credibility is your biggest asset

🤝 And the key to it is: NETWORKING!

Trust can beat the best CV in the world and increase your price. Remember expression: “A miser pays twice”? Clients know it very well as working with freelancers proves to be tricky. Good businesses pick freelancers with high credibility and higher cost rather than wasting time and money twice.

Step 1️⃣ : Network offline!

Start by embracing who you are as a person (learn your best personality sides and use them to connect with the people). Be confident, friendly, open, curios and prove them with an action that you don’t need a portfolio. You have to hit every business meetup around you, volunteer in every conference, visit each nearby hackathon and also rent a place in the coworking space…

BE ACTIVE in meeting people you want to work with.

🗝 I got my first job after visiting a hackaton for the first time in a matter of a week. One thing you have to understand: We tend to hire people who we like for who they are. If a client has budget for a junior designer and he like to work with the person like you — then it’ll be enough for the client to just have a glance over your last project.

Step 2️⃣ : Networking online

As soon as you get your first client offline, right away start networking online! Share as much as you can. Connect with the community. Share your lessons, your resources, your inspirations. Remember that Social media is all about providing value. If you generate it — you’re attracting others. This creates your “social proof” and raises your reputation. You’ll not believe how business people trust numbers (in your case “following numbers”). It’s sort of a filter they use to economy the time and avoid bullshit.

Step 3️⃣ : Strengthen trust!

As your “social proof” growth— you should start networking offline more and more. Why? Because now you have a trustable image and you want to attract more perspective clients. They WILL check you up online. They will make get an opinion about you based on your social image and this WILL affect your demand and price. It’s 2018. There is no doubt about it.

So as soon as you meet more “right people” here starts the game. Get ready to be more active. Share success stories as often as you can. Raise your numbers. Create more value. Visit conferences, meet top tier contacts. Help other with education. Became TOP-of-MIND. Leave them no other options but to think of you if they need a designer.

Step 4️⃣ : Repeat!

The more you repeat this loop — the more your price value growth. Every new circle may double your price. Until one moment you realize — you’re on the top of the market. Personally for me — there is still a long way to go. But, the good news — I know where I’m getting.

Here you can stop reading if you get an idea of how it works, but if you’re interested in nuances of each step, then let’s dive deeper ⬇️

1️⃣ Network offline

📍Hackathons

As I mentioned, I got my first clients after visiting hackathon. I’ve met about 200 people on a weekend. People liked who I am as a person and remembered that I’m a designer. One week later they started recommending me as a “great designer”. Jeez, I did feel like an imposter (😟), but who cares now. I got my first paying job. And then another, another and so on…And btw, after 5 years I still didn’t make a portfolio.

📍Coworking space

Another way is to locate yourself in the environment where there are a lot of businesses hanging out: like co-working space or acceleration hub. Be there all the time (working on your hobby projects or so). Meet people. Make jokes. Present yourself as a designer and be sure — soon enough they’ll tell you “We need a designer” (😅). That always happens. In the first month, I got 3 clients. Did they ask me to show a portfolio? Nope. I was working on my startup project, they saw it and liked it. That was enough to understand that we can work together.

📍Business meetups / conferences

Your goal is not to sell your services. You don’t want to seem annoying, don’t you? Have fun, meet people, drink a beer together, make a good impression. We’re all human beings, don’t think that networking is “hunting game”. It’s enough to add the people you’ve met to your professional network (LinkedIn) and just post your success stories now and then. One day they’ll have no choice to think of you for one project.

2️⃣ Network online

📍Friends in your industry

As you expand your network — you meet more people you’re excited to work with. Be it a friend I met in Instagram, conference or in the street.

If I have too much work to do, I’d always prefer to delegate this work to people I know in life. Because I know what they’re capable of and how responsible they are. I trust them! If I create network of friends I want to work with, then someone can be your friend and wants to work with you too 😉.

📍Social media (instagram, youtube…)

Apart from being active in social media there are few more tips I’d like to give: do not show only your pixels, but also a human side of you.

Establish relationship with education first. Give value to people before they give you same in return. Make them talk about you (referral networking is a HUGE power).

📍Other social networks

There are more SM than instagram and youtube. Use Facebook groups, slack channels, angellist, linkedin etc. Choose the platform that fits you the most.

⤵️ Facebook groups:

⤵️ Slack groups:

Here is a list I personally use while searching for channels. My top visited design communities are:

⤵️ Linkedin groups:

3️⃣ Strengthen trust

📍 Word of a mouth (WoM)

Work on your reputation and relations with clients. Referrals are the best way to find new clients. If you established good relationships with your current clients, then they are very likely to recommend you. When you want to find clients on your own, without credibility, you will have to convince people. On the other hand, imagine your previous clients will talk about you in the best sense. Then, you don’t have to convince anyone. You live on your own reputation.

📍 Share your successes as much as you can!

Always share your success stories on Social Media. People want to hire a successful people for their project. Here is one of the greatest examples by Jonathan Courtney from AJSmart on how they Generated More Than €2 M in Sales from SM.

⬅️ Also, I remember when I saw this post from a Tatum Brandt in the middle of summer.

So simple, but so powerful. This makes people feel FOMO and incentivizes to jump others right in (Join / buy / book or etc).

📍Education first

When it comes to attracting clients, education attracts and information converts. Teach your clients something you’re good at (just as you do in Social Media) give them something valuable. This will automatically drawn to you.

Establish a relationship with education first. When your clients are ready, convert them with information. That’s it.

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