[00:00:00] If you're working a nine to five and trying to get your first paying client, this podcast episode is for you. This podcast episode will teach you how to avoid the painful mistakes I made while trying to get my first paying client while working in my corporate job. We're diving into my story and I'm teaching you the principles I learned in the process so that you can shortcut this journey.
Let's get into it. Welcome to the Creative Biz Launch Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures. Whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here. So how did I get my first paying photography client? It took me many, many months from the day that I decided to start my business to the day that I actually got that first.
It was a really long time, but luckily for you, I already made all the mistakes along the way so that you don't have to listen to the end to learn all the principles that you need to follow to shortcut this process. A three, win the clock all the way back to 2019 and early 2019. I was fed up with working for someone else.
I've had the idea of [00:01:00] starting my own business for a few years. And the timing felt right. I was happy in all other areas of my life except for my job, so I thought it was time for a change. It's not like I hated my job, it paid me well. The work was pretty easy, and my coworkers were great. I just felt like I was wasting my potential there.
I wanted to be free to do whatever I wanted. I didn't want to answer to someone else. I wanted to be my own boss. And yeah, I know I'm not unique here. Millions of people have the same. But I was ready to do something about this. I grew up being taught that I should get good grades, go to a good college, and get a good job.
After that, I did all of that and I still wasn't happy in my job. Everyone around me fell the same path, so I didn't know there was another option until I really started reading books on entrepreneurship, listening to different podcasts, and watching YouTube videos of people running their own businesses.
The more and more I got into this,
The more I knew that this was the right path for me. All my friends had steady jobs. All of my family had difficult. And I was the black sheep trying to start my own business. It was hard [00:02:00] not having anyone around me that was in the same boat. So naturally, I turned toward the internet. I consumed everything on this topic for months and months and months.
And finally in October of 2019, I made the decision that I was gonna make this work. At that point, I've been doing photography for about three years. I was pretty good at. I knew there was money in this, in this type of side hustle I was doing, but I just didn't quite know where to find it. My work at the time was primarily cityscape photography and landscape and some portrait work as well.
Pretty soon I learned that if I want to stick to cityscape and landscape work, I had to become the best of the best to actually make money and make a living from that type of work. And I knew that I didn't wanna spend another few years trying to become the best. I was a good photographer already, but I wanted to shortcut this process.
So then I discovered product photography. I learned that companies would pay lots of money for great photos of their products, and this seemed like the answer. I watched YouTube video after YouTube video to learn how [00:03:00] people take product photos. I experimented every single day with new setups, new lighting techniques, new props, and new products until things began to click.
At this point, I wasn't even worried about getting clients. I was just focused on building up my portfolio, and once I had my portfolio, that's when the hard part would begin. The photography I had down, but the business side of things, I had no idea where to start. It was January, 2020 at this point, and I ended up buying a pretty expensive online course, and this course taught me pretty much everything about business.
Now, this course is no longer around. The guy who created it now spent all his time building up his own company, but from that course I learned everything there was from photography marketing to sales, to pitching. I took everything that I learned from that, put my own spin on it and started pitching to clients.
This is where the real work began. Now, if you're interested in some course like this, I actually have one called Creative Biz Launch. We have students inside there already gain client wins. Link for that is in the show notes below. Keep in mind that I had a typical nine to five throughout this entire [00:04:00] process.
Each day, I would wake up around five 30 and work for an hour or two before I had to commute to my real job. I'd bring my laptop to work, and at lunch I'd squeeze in another 30 to 60 minutes of work on my break. Then after work, I would spend a few hours on my business. Then I'd wake up and do it all over again the next day.
During this time I was figuring out how to acquire clients. I was sending emails and switching up the cold copy in the emails, trying to land something that would get client responses. I was trying to figure out what industries to target, who would even wanna talk to me as a beginner photographer. Was my portfolio good enough?
I had a lot of self-doubt during these stages. At this point, it was March, 2020, and as we all know, COVID hit all the leads that had lined up. Pretty much vanished overnight. Covid destroyed everyone's budget, so it was impossible to land a deal. I pivoted and saw this as an opportunity. I was pitching to restaurants and coffee shops in the neighborhood, but then I switched to direct to consumer sales online, but built my portfolio.
I first offered a [00:05:00] few free photo shoots in the neighborhood so that I could just get more work on my. And it worked. I was able to land a few really cool coffee shops as clients and a brewery to help them get some content for their online menus. They were doing takeout only, so this was really easy for me to pitch myself.
I told them that I'd do this for free and it would help with their online sales. I didn't know it then, but I actually had a great pitch here. I offered my photography so that I could help with their online sales. It felt awesome to finally get these clients, but they weren't gonna pay me. I couldn't quit my job and take on free clients.
I still had a lot of work to do here with this new portfolio and proof that I had clients on my website. It was time to double down on the work. Now that I had some brands on my. I felt like it would be easier for more and more brands to trust me and eventually give me some paid work, but I had to do a lot of work myself in order to reach out to these brands.
I had a systematic approach to how I was going to get clients. I was going to send cold emails, then book discovery calls, send proposals. And [00:06:00] finally closed deals. That was the plan. I knew that if I could get one client using the system, I would be able to get 100 more. That was what I was working towards just one client with the system.
And then if the system proved that it could work, I would be able to get a hundred more clients and easily quit my job with just that one client. The last thing that I want to happen was get a referral. I actually didn't want to rely on referrals because referrals weren't sustainable. If a close friend or family member referred me to someone, They became a client of mine.
That would be cool, but that would do nothing in proving that I could land clients and my system wouldn't have any proof that worked and I wouldn't be able to quit my job. The referral clients wouldn't be clients that I acquired. They be clients someone else got For me, that didn't seem like it would be sustainable, and it wouldn't give me the confidence to really quit my job.
Instead, I relied on my system. I sent email after email, after email. I got some nasty replies, but I also got a lot of positive replies. And I talked on the phone with a lot of people. After those discovery calls, I sent them proposals, but [00:07:00] none seemed to actually wanna sign that proposal and work with me.
That was until one day in July of 2020 where I finally closed a deal with a paying client. It worked. My system worked. What I was doing was working. I knew that one client didn't seem like much, but that client proved that the process I had in place worked. It took me many, many months from when I said I wanted to start my business to actually landing a paying client.
I was patient and I was persistent, and it finally worked. After that first client, I knew that I just had to repeat my system over and over and over again. That first client was only worth 500 bucks, but I quit my job then and there. And here we are. Now, this story is fun and all, but let's break down the key principles that allowed me to gain competence and gain that client while working a nine to five.
Number one was moving the needle each day. I want to move the needle forward each day. What does this mean? Well, this is one of the most important things when you're starting a business. There's a lot of things that you can't be doing, whether that's trying to improve your photography, building up your [00:08:00] portfolio.
Reaching out to clients, redoing your website, posting on social media. There's so much that you can be doing, but the number one thing that you can and should do is reach out to potential clients each day. This was really hard for me. I'm not used to cold email or cold messages, but this is what will actually get you clients and get you money.
A lot of days I would try and improve my photography website thinking that this was the missing piece of a puzzle. The truth is my stuff was already decent enough to land clients. I was just procrastinating because I was scared to reach out every day. I was scared of rejection. It's also not that fun sending all those emails.
It's boring, sending the same emails over and over. It's soul crushing when you send all these and get zero responses, but that's the thing that will move the needle forward, and that's why I had to. Being aware enough to know what actually matters and what doesn't matter is the most important thing in your business journey.
And 99% of the time, the thing you should be doing is reaching out to potential clients early on. The second principle is to use systems. I had a systematic approach to my client [00:09:00] acquisition. I didn't rely on referrals because referrals can't be replicated time and time again. Asking for a favor from a friend to refer you as a photographer may get you a client, but won't be a predictable way to build your client.
systems on the other hand, are totally predictable. If you follow system approach to get clients, you can repeat that same thing time and time again. And when you go all in on this business, you'll know you have a system in place that's predictable and can get you clients.
My system was find emails of potential clients, send emails out to. Follow up with them, book discovery calls, send proposals, and close deals. I would find 100 brands and send 100 emails. I would follow up with all the ones that didn't respond, and then probably 10 of those 100 emails actually got me a discovery call and then one out of 10 of those signed on as a client.
Now these numbers may sound tough, but it was a system that worked for me and it still works to this very day. Secondly, I systemized, when I worked on the business, I worked a nine to five, so my system. [00:10:00] Was to put in time before work at lunch and in the evenings to grow. My photography business systems gave me the structure to, to my day to actually grow my business.
Incorporate these systems, follow them, and you will succeed. But now without hard work and persistence. The third principle in getting your first client is to work hard and be persistent. It's hard to wake up early. It's hard to work on your business when you're tired from working your nine to five.
Maybe you dealt with a lot of issues during your work day. You're tired. You just want a beer and to relax. You don't feel like working well, that's too bad because your competition is putting in the hours. Someone out there is working hard and they're gonna be success. If you're not working hard and you're not persistent in the early days of starting your business, you're not gonna make it.
I'm sorry. Now, yes, hustle culture can be unhealthy, but I believe that at the start, this is what it takes. There's no magic formula that will get rid of all this hard work. Having systems in place makes this a whole lot easier, especially when you're trying to move the needle forward each day, but you still need to put in the work and three months down [00:11:00] the road after you feel like nothing you do is working and you see zero progress, you need to stay persistent, stay the course.
Staying persistent, even if you haven't had any wins, is what will set you apart. A lot of people will give up at this point, but you need to trust the process. If you want gain clients while working at nine to five, you need to move the yield forward each day, have systems in place and work hard. Thank you for listening.
If you need any more help with systems, go to creative biz launch.com. We have a free training on there to get you started. Other than that, I will catch you in the next episode.
