 Oh, what's up, website creators? All right, so you're looking to get into a career of building websites. You've probably been watching lots of videos like this. You've been learning things like HTML, CSS, WordPress, Elementor, and now you're ready for the next step. You wanna start getting your first clients. What if I were to tell you that finding your very first clients really isn't that difficult? Or at least it doesn't have to be that difficult. Now, it could be, and most likely, many people watching this right now are struggling with it and having some challenges. But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be that difficult or it could be super difficult. And it's all gonna depend on one of two approaches that you take. Now there are two ways that you could do this. There are two approaches that you could take to finding your first clients, and that's gonna determine, it's really gonna determine the outcome of your path. It's gonna determine how your career goes and whether is this gonna be something that's gonna be making web design something you love and that turns into a sustainable career that you could really build a future on? Or is it gonna turn into something that's stressful, a headache, something where you're constantly struggling and just kind of set up for failure? We're gonna go ahead and get into those two paths, those two approaches. First, we want to identify the problem. Because before we could give a solution, we need to find the problem and identify it. Now the problem, there's actually three problems to this. Number one problem is we gotta get good. You gotta build skills. Your skills aren't there yet. If you're brand new, your skills aren't there. And the way we build our skills is through a whole lot of hard work. Now some of us are more natural than others and get good a whole lot faster. Then we got others like myself that have to work really hard in order to get good. I had to put in lots of hard work. I sucked when I started off. I'm not gonna say like I just started off and I was like naturally inclined to this and it was a complete opposite. And this takes time to build those skills. Now the second one, second one is going to be there's so much to learn. You need that education. You need to get some knowledge because there is so much to learn when it comes to building a business and freelancing and building websites. Now you got a lot to learn about building a website and making a website good but there's other things we gotta learn. You gotta learn how to deal with clients, how to talk to clients, how to communicate with them, how to manage them, how to manage projects, how to do proposals, how to do contracts, how to gauge the scope of a project which is determining how big the project will be. How do we price a project? It just goes on and on. The list goes on and on and we need a lot to learn. When you're new, you don't really know too much. You're just getting started and that's okay. That's totally fine. But we got to first learn a lot of things and the way we learn them is through experience. And that's the third problem is when starting off in web design there's no experience yet. And a lot of the lessons that we learn and a lot of things that we gotta learn we gotta learn through experience. Now we can learn a lot through videos like this. You can learn a lot through working with mentors, being in Facebook groups. You can learn a lot from reading blog posts, reading books. You can learn a lot that way. There's this other kind of learning that you need to do that only comes through experience. So those are the three big problems right there that we need to look at. Skills, gotta build them. Knowledge, you need to learn. And experience, we need to do work. And that's the solution. The solution to those three are doing work, getting projects, getting clients. So now that we've established a problem and the solution now is to find clients in order to fix those problems right there, to solve them. And this is where the two different ways of going about finding your first clients is gonna determine whether you succeed at it, whether it's something that's easy, something that's not super difficult and something that you actually enjoy and have fun with. Or then there's the other route that is difficult, it's hard, it's stressful, setting up for failure and you most likely are gonna end up not really liking doing what you do if you go this other route. And I'll start with that one. I'll start with the route we want to avoid. And that is doing this to make money. Now, I know we need to build a career out of it and it might sound a little contradictory to some of my other content I put out because my main focus is like one of the reasons why I created my channel is I wanna help new web designers build a sustainable income, a sustainable lifestyle by going into business on web design. I really want to because it did so much for me. I wanna share that with others. But when you're new and you're finding your first clients and you still don't have the skills yet, you don't have the knowledge yet and you don't have the experience yet. If you're trying to find clients because you need to pay rent because you need to take care of your family and because you just need to make money, you are setting yourself up to go down the wrong path. You're setting yourself up and you're laying the groundwork to failure right there. And you have to do this because you love it because you like it because you enjoy it because you wanna learn. I understand and I empathize and I understand we need to make livings and especially if you got a family and you got that fear of rent and I am not gonna front to anybody. I'm not gonna sell some like, you could build this amazing career out of this type of dream to people. That's not what this is all about, not what I'm all about. I'm all about keeping real, keeping honest. And I think by being brutally honest, it's gonna help more people than someone that's just trying to, you know, it's gonna help more people than me trying to sell something big and I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm trying to keep it real right here. My first year as a web designer and as a freelancer, I barely got by. There were months where I did not think I was gonna be able to pay rent. I did not know how I was gonna pay rent. At some points or I barely had enough to eat. It was, my first year was a struggle but I can tell you this, that first year I woke up every day happy. I woke up every day excited. I woke up and I was on fire. I was fully self-motivated. I was doing something for myself. I didn't have a boss that I was working for, I didn't like. I wasn't at a job that I didn't wanna be in. I had this freedom, this freedom that came with being a freelance web designer and that's why I got into it. That's the reason why I got into web design and web development is I wanted freedom. A freedom I've never had before and for my first year I was broke. I barely got by and I had freedom. I was happy. I was driven. I was motivated and every single time I got a client, I'd put everything I had into them which now let's go into the right way of finding clients. The right way is you wanna find your first client so you could get better, so you could get some experience and so you could learn. So you could learn and grow. If you approach finding your first clients as I just wanna get my client, I wanna work with someone so I could learn and get better. That's it. And that's coming from right here. You are going to attract people. People are gonna really wanna work with you so finding your first clients is actually gonna be quite easy when you come at it from this approach. I mean, you will be surprised how people respond and how the positive response is that you get when you put it out there and you put something out there like, hey, I'm brand new. I'm trying to learn web design. I want to make this a career but I need to build my portfolio. I want to get some experience. If you let me give me the opportunity to build your website, it'll really help me out because I'll be able to learn. I'll be able to get some experience and I'll put everything I can into your project. I'll do the best that I can and I could do it for a really low cost because I'm brand new. You will be surprised how many people will respond positively to that. It'll be so much more easier landing a client versus the other designer, other developer who is like, hey, I'm brand new and I just, I'll do your website really cheap. Just put both of them together. What's to say you got two designers, two developers together, both of them, we're gonna say they're both at six months. They both have six months underneath them, both at the same skill level, both charging the same price but this one right here, they just need to make money and that's their approach to it. This one right here just wants to learn. They're loving doing what they do and that's it. That is their sole motivation. Now, as a client talking to both of them, the client's gonna sense the desperation in this one. They're gonna sense that this one just is gonna say anything to get the project. This one is just trying to get the job and then on this side right here, the client is gonna sense like this person right here, you know, not only do they sense desperation here but they sense passion, they sense goodwill, they sense hunger with this guy right here. This guy right here feels like to them, like he just wants to help them out and he just wants to get better and as a client, they're probably feeling like this guy over here, this guy or this girl, this designer, this developer is going to really put in a whole lot of excellent work. It's really gonna take care of them the best. They're gonna have more faith, more trust and you gotta keep this in mind. A lot of times when a client hires you, they hire you for you. They like you. There's something about you that they like. You know, this guy right here is stressed out. This designer, this developer right here, stressed out. This one needs to make money. This one might not be able to pay rent. This one has to get the job in order to survive. This one over here, this one wants to learn. This one is full of passion. This one might be broke, might have to go sleep at a friend's and live with a friend for a little while but they're excited, they're passionate, they're loving doing what they're doing. This is what a client sees and that's why I can honestly say, finding your first client does not have to be that difficult and it can't be easy. It's what comes from in here. What is your motivation? What is the motives behind you getting your first clients? Look at your brand new. You know, let's keep it real, your brand new. You're not there yet. You need to learn. You gotta get some stuff to learn in order to build a sustainable business out of this and you can. My first year, I was broke. My first year, I barely got by. I didn't have any money. I didn't have a huge savings. I took huge risks but I took risk on myself and I loved what I do. Second year, I started making decent money. I started like, okay, this is looking good. Third year, I was making more than I ever have before and it just keeps going up from there. The thing is these last five years and still to this day, I still approach it the same way. I don't take projects for money. It's not about that. I know my value. Being a web designer and focusing on value, the value that I could build and that I could give to others, I start to learn about my own value and I do price appropriately for the value that I give but that's because I have worked so hard for five years to give more and to help more and that's the other difference between trying to get clients just for money, trying to get clients to learn. If you're trying to get the clients just for money there's a good chance. You're just gonna wanna finish a project real quick. You're gonna wanna do what needs to get done so that way you can get paid and jump to the next one versus the other designer developer that is taking projects so they can learn, get better and because they really wanna be a good designer. They really want to build a good career. This one right here, this one is gonna put, they're gonna put themselves into the project. They're gonna go all the way in. They're gonna go above and beyond. They're gonna really put so much into that project. They're gonna build this relationship with a client. The client is gonna be really happy with them. In fact, building relationships with clients and doing it very early on is what's gonna set you up to actually building a business out of this. You're gonna start getting referrals and recommendations. That's the easiest way to start getting new projects and by putting your all into your first clients those referrals and recommendations are gonna start coming in. So that's it right there. That is the key to getting your first clients. Find your first clients so that way you can learn, you can grow and you can get better. Now a couple other points that I really quickly wanna bring up that are really important as well when you're finding your new clients that are gonna, your first clients that are gonna help you out. First one is be completely open and honest. Do not hide the fact on where you are at in your business. If you started six months ago, let them know. I started six months ago. It's okay. You don't have that whole faking and making stuff is not for this industry. It's not for this space. Be open, be honest. Let people know you're new. It's okay to be new. In fact, it's better to be new right now as you are new. You mean let somebody know you're new. You've been doing this for so many months or you've been doing this for almost a year or so you let them know. First off, the client isn't gonna place all these expectations on you. They're not gonna expect you to do like really more advanced type of stuff. Another thing is you're gonna get respect out of it. People respect that. They're gonna hire you for you. As long as you put it out there, you're new. You just wanna learn, you just wanna grow. You're gonna attract a lot of people too. All right, the second one really quick. I'm not gonna go too deep into this cause I'm actually creating a second every video on that. But this is a rule right here that I strongly recommend that is to never do free work. Never do a project for free. And it's very tempting. It's tempting to come out and be like I'm just trying to give some experience. I wanna learn and grow. I'll do websites for free. I wanna do three websites for free. It's very tempting to do that, but don't do that. The main reason behind not doing any free work is if you do free work, you're gonna be taken away from yourself that experience that you need. Every project that you get, you need to learn and get as much experience as you can out of it. Cause the more experience you get is gonna get you closer to the point where you are making a good living at this. If you don't charge anything for a project, you do it for free, you're not working on your pricing. You're not working on your scope. You're not working on your client and project management. There are things that you're missing out on. Charge something. It doesn't have to be a lot. It probably won't be a lot for your first projects, but charge something because you need to get that experience. Remember, you're not just learning how to build a website. You're learning the whole process behind building websites. All right, so that's it for this video. I hope this helps out. If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments. You could ask me directly. I will get back to everybody. I'm here to help out. This isn't just a channel where we're just putting out videos. This is a community for web designers, brand new web designers looking to start and web designers with experience are looking to level up the game and to scale up their business. So anybody who has a question, you can drop it in the comments and I'm gonna get back to everyone. And if you felt that this video and content like this adds value to you and helps out, hit the subscribe to subscribe to the channel. Your support is really appreciated and it does help. Well, thanks for watching. I hope this really helps. I'll be back soon again with more web design related content. Thank you.