1 – How to Get Web Design Clients from Scratch (No Upwork, No Cold Pitches!)

What’s up y’all. Welcome to the web design empire, where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire from a side gig to multiple six fix I’m John. This is Kelly. We’re full time freelance web designers who’ve escaped the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, and our commutes.

Over 15 years ago. And I haven’t looked back. Have you looked back? Not at all. Not, not a little bit. No. Thank you. We’re also course creators, web design, store owners. Kelly owns some Airbnbs. I’m a touring professional musician. All that to say we are building our empires, but yeah, I’m excited to get in today’s episode, but first Kelly, how’s your week?

You got some big plans. Yeah we’re actually getting ready to go to Spearfish, South Dakota for a Labor Day camping trip. It’s one of the very [00:01:00] few trips that everyone in my family actually enjoys. And by everyone, I mean, My three daughters and my husband and I, we’ve made it kind of an annual thing and yeah, we leave tomorrow.

How about camping? Uh, is it, uh, by camping? I mean, glamping, I require a bed when I sleep. And yeah, we have, an RV that will be set up for us when we get there and, or whatever, not an RV, it’s a fifth wheel thing. Got you. Thank you. rent it. Yes. Yeah. Outdoorsy baby. Crazy. I’ll actually be in South Dakota this weekend too.

No way. Yeah. Sioux Falls. Well, that’s not that far. That’s funny. Actually, it is kind of far, far enough that I can’t ride my bike there from Spearfish. So that’s a jaunt for you. Yeah. I think it’s three and a half or four hours maybe.

It’s not that bad. Gotcha. I know we’re playing a festival there and, should be good. Sweet. Should be good. Play some rock and roll and hopefully [00:02:00] the weather will be great outside. Awesome. Yeah, we’ve been in straight up back to school mode over here.

I know that like with your little, little children that you have, it’s probably not a thing in your house. Back to school. But yeah, that’s, we’re in the chaos of all of that. Just all the activities just come screaming back all of a sudden. And, right now, and you know what’s funny? I don’t know if I’ve talked to you about this yet, is, I mean, we’ve been doing this a long time.

I’ve always noticed that fall is like my busiest time with web design business. Have you noticed the same or no? Yeah. It definitely seems to be a mild, like summer, it goes down a little bit. Right. And then fall just like jacks back up. And I’ve never, it’s never occurred to me in like the 20 years I’ve been doing this, that correlates directly with back to school.

And it’s like, duh, of course it does. But yeah, when the kids go back to school, apparently, the adults go back to work and especially with like my type of clients and that probably is associated with you as well. Like with small businesses where there’s not a lot of [00:03:00] people, they spend the summers with their family generally.

And then when back to school hits, it’s back to work time. Not only with existing clients, like I’ve had clients that I haven’t talked to for what, six, nine months, just coming out of the board work right now. But also with like new referrals and new clients, which is what we’re talking about today.

So yeah, what if we had to just break it down and jump right into it, what do you believe is the best method if you were to start from scratch, like obviously John and I are huge fans of referrals and networks and, and that’s how we have built our businesses, So if we were to start from scratch, what would you, knowing what you know now, what would you believe is the best method of getting those new clients?

Cause right now the ones coming to us are generally referrals or they’re finding our site because of Google or whatever. But from scratch. Yeah. I have quite a few here. And so I might just say [00:04:00] a couple and then you can kind of say something like it. We have not shared notes yet y’all.

So this should be, we can disagree. We can disagree too. I put first have a solid marketing website for yourself. It should be your best work. Don’t rush it and make it the example of the best work you can do. There’s been students in our course before who you can just kind of tell they rushed and threw up a quick little site for themselves and it looks incomplete.

It looks amateur, it looks wonky. And so when a potential client that you’re trying to get them to pay you to do a website, they go to that site and they’re like, well, how can, you know, so that’s my. It’s kind of an important piece. If you’re selling web design, your website better be freaking good.

Yeah, for sure. No, I like that one. My number one that I put, was, and of course it’s like a caveat, is to start building the networking, chain of referrals. [00:05:00] Immediately. Yes, that’s not going to necessarily work overnight, but start tapping into your network immediately, and start a system of referrals immediately, because that is what will eventually bring you your work And set you up for success.

And what do I mean by that? I feel like I have to explain this a little bit because I think when people hear the word network, they’re like, Oh, I don’t want to talk to my friends and family. And that’s absolutely not your network. At all, actually friends and family are probably the worst, clients, which was actually on my list as well.

But what I mean by that is, is not best friends, not family. Those people are sacred. We don’t do business with them. I’m talking about like the other hundred ish people that you are in touch with on a regular basis. This is neighbors, old co workers or current co workers vendors or ex vendors, people from church, people from other activities or hobbies, your kids.

friends, parents, just the people that you [00:06:00] generally interact with, whether it’s in a business setting or just general, that’s your network. And we’re not necessarily those aren’t the people you’re selling to. Those are just the people that you want to communicate with and let them know that you’re there.

You do web design. And I think that’s like a gigantic step that a lot of people miss is just they don’t self promote. They don’t let their network know what they’re doing. And the idea is let your network know what you’re doing. Stay in touch with them on a regular basis. So that when they hear of someone that needs a website, they remember, Oh yeah, I got a friend that does that.

So that’s the idea there, like tapping into that network and start that day one. So that, in a few months and years down the road, that’s really working in your favor. Yeah. That was like my cheat for still getting the network talk in there.

Here’s one that might be, I don’t know if it’s going to be controversial between us, but I wrote down, when you’re starting out, maybe even build two to three sites for free. You need the [00:07:00] practice anyway. And these folks will refer you to paying clients at some point.

Also, they’ll need a new site eventually as well. So you can get paid then when they go to redesign their site or do a site for free, but require them to be on your website care plan or your hosting and maintenance plan or whatever you’re going to call it. Start building that thing from day one.

Probably Kelly and I’s biggest mistake, but that’s for another podcast episode. So my first two clients were actually free ones. One was for, a band that I was in, we needed a website, right? Boom. And then we were recording at a studio and they didn’t have a website Talk about cool content.

Like I was like, yes, I’ll take photos of this cool space and I’ll build you a site for free. Why not? It was just something that I really loved doing. And then I went against Kelly’s advice. My first paid website was 400 for my dad’s church. And yes, I will say, it can be challenging working with your dad on a website.

It can be a lot of push pull there. And then [00:08:00] my first non immediate friends and family. Lead was, it was a custom home building website and a friend of mine told his home builder buddy about me. And I know a guy that does websites. That was my first few there on that first referral.

That website was 750 and I immediately went out and bought this big chunky Sony VIO laptop. I swear it was three inches tall. Anyway, what was your first couple of clients? Did you do any free sites early on? And what was your first paying gig? Yeah, I got into it a little different way than you.

I call it my hobby gone out of control. So yeah, I did it for free for a long time. My, my sorority was the first website I ever made. Oh my God, a hundred years ago. And it was pink and had walking turtles and you guys, it was. Wait, wait, wait. Like actual, like animated or video walking turtles.

What are we talking about? I don’t even know. Okay. We’re talking about like 1999, 2000, I don’t even know where I found Walking Turtles. I don’t even know if animated GIFs were a thing back then, but it [00:09:00] was definitely Walking Turtles. I don’t even know how. And it was hard coded from scratch.

I want to see it. I want to see it. I wish I had it. But the first several I did were for free for Activities on campus and it wasn’t because I was like, Oh, I got to build my portfolio. It was just because, Oh, this is my hobby. And I just did it. Once I did start treating it as a business at that point, I already had those referrals coming in really slow.

So that’s kind of the point where I realized, is this really a hobby or should I be doing this as a business and whatever. I like the free websites because, that’s the only thing I would do for, best friends and family.

That would just, I’m just doing that for free. That’s my thing. And that’s how I would build a portfolio. If I were, again, to start over from scratch, that’s what I would do. I would do free sites for my best friends and family and tell them, don’t forget to tell them, don’t tell anyone else you got this for free.

Because that discount does not apply to all of their friends. You would hope that’d be obvious, but you never know. And then I [00:10:00] think the other thing that is my big, And I know you’ll agree with me, John, is if we were to start from scratch, what I would do is hunt down some, and of course this touches on networking, partnerships with either agencies as an overflow worker, or team up with a graphic designer, videographer, photographer, like other adjacent industries to web design that they’re getting requests about websites as well, more SEO people, digital marketers, all of that.

Just partner up with those people so that you’re, you start building referrals to each other. But that’s definitely what I would do if I was starting from scratch, I would be knocking on agencies doors and by knocking, I mean, emailing, probably not physically knocking. But yeah, that was another one for me.

But ultimately, the best method of getting new clients is going to be different for different people Like there’s a whole bunch of tactics, you know with local networking groups or joining a chamber [00:11:00] social media which john and I have never really gotten into but There’s a lot of people I know have had success with Facebook groups and stuff like that.

There’s a whole LinkedIn, paid system that you can be a part of. There’s SEO and ads and outside of the box stuff like job boards, or applying to web designer positions as a contractor and applying that way. Okay. There’s tons of tactics, like we could go into the nitty gritty of all of those, but ultimately you have to just try a handful and see what works for you, your types of clients that you’re targeting, and also your situation, because some people are going to have a lot more time to work with, and some people are going to have more money and less time, to do something like ads obviously would require more money, less time.

So it just depends on your situation. There’s a lot of factors that go into it, but ultimately the best method for getting clients is what works best for you. And that’s going to probably be different from person to person, depending on those factors. Well, yeah, I’ll [00:12:00] share some things that have worked for me, and didn’t quite work for me, but obviously.

Early on, as I would tour and play churches and whatever, and other events, I would talk to the promoter, usually a youth pastor, something like that, and tell them, Hey, I build websites by the way, and I would, I bet out of 50 that I would talk to, I might’ve gotten maybe two sites.

So not, and to play 50 shows that might take more than half a year. And so it’s not a great way to do it. And a couple of great relationships came through that. And it was easy for me to share with them. Like they were warm that I was there, but my biggest source of leads, hands down was for me was subcontracting for other web design agencies.

And not only that, I don’t know if you know this, but, early on, I got a lot of band websites because I was on a monthly retainer for a label, a music label, and they had this, they had this deal, this little, get your, get CD artwork designed and MySpace page design package. Oh my gosh. [00:13:00] Did you do the MySpace design?

I did. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I did the whole like, all the code in the bio section that would transform the whole page. I did flash animations for these things. And, then I was getting paid by the label, like a grand a month. And I was doing like maybe eight of these packages a month, roughly around eight of them a month.

And some of the bands wanted websites and that wasn’t something the label offered. And so I would just do that outside of that arrangement. And so I did probably four or five websites that way. But in the end there was a local. Web designer freelancer that I partnered that I would subcontract for.

And then early on, before we had tools like all these drag and drop web design tools that we have now that make it easy for anyone to build a website before that time, I would work with a, I would usually hire a web developer to work with me on sites that I would build. And then same thing. He would get sites.

And need design and so then [00:14:00] he would hire me to do that. And then I didn’t do this, you mentioned our social media game was weak, mine, mine isn’t. Mine, as far as web design goes, yes. If I was starting today though, I put, I wrote down, posting designs on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

I wrote, I’d recommend this, but I wouldn’t plan on it being a great source of leads. I think of it more as of a support when a potential client that you’re talking to goes to your amazing website, that goes to that website that was step one in my book where it looks great. Then they happen to look you up on another social media.

Thing. And they see other little design bits. They see, little clips of certain design choices that you made and why, or how you did something because the client wanted this, it was about strategy. Or if you built a site where the business is doing well, after the launch a feature that site

and, talk about some of the strategy that went into that. So that was a, I wrote down business owners, love working with designers who design with [00:15:00] strategy in mind. And so I do think that’s where maybe posting on social media. I get, could get excited about that versus here’s a screenshot of the entire webpage, check it out.

Eh, how about Hey, here’s, I had a lot of fun designing this section of this website. And here’s why. Strategic detail. Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just don’t want to do social, but that sounds great. Did you have, so early on, yeah, I had some warm leads that I would talk to, but.

For me, it ended up being that subcontracting piece for you. What was the, the main couple, a couple of minutes for me? I transitioned from a full time job where I managed like 40 some websites. And so when I moved to Lincoln from Omaha, that’s when, we decided to have kids, that was the ultimate factor of, okay, I’m going to do this from home.

It’s going to be awesome. I’m going to make my business. But that’s, so that was my, when I transitioned. To full time freelance, I had this like one big client that was my [00:16:00] previous, employer. So that was nice. I no longer work with them. That was many, many years ago, but for, I would say for five years, I did at least something for them and they, was that like a, was that like on a retainer or what?

I don’t even, God, I don’t even remember. It was so long ago. I think it was hourly. But I gave them a good, a really good rate. Just to, cause again, they were sending me a lot of business. And then when, as my rates went up, I would slowly creep them up on them and then they would, send me less and it was fine.

It worked out like my whole department doesn’t even work there anymore. But yeah, that was a, an opportunity I saw to utilize as a big client. And then again, I had been doing side gigs all through college. Yep. From just random referrals from, a couple sites I did as an intern, it just was a super duper slow snowball.

And yeah, by the time that I decided, I’m doing this full time, I was getting a decent stream of referrals, but another [00:17:00] humongous, game changer was when I moved to Colorado and that was when the referrals didn’t stop, but the referrals from my Nebraska clients wanted to work with someone local.

This was like pre COVID when local was more of a thing and you would actually meet in person and stuff. And so I didn’t lose the referrals, but I did lose, Some new business coming from referrals and like all of my existing clients, they didn’t care that I moved cause we were already all good.

But I did have a new business drop and that’s when I went into, business mode and I was like, Oh my gosh, I gotta find more clients. And I tried all of these tactics, that I already mentioned, I even did ads and SEO and, And I started blogging like a maniac.

I think I actually posted on social a few times, which is crazy for me and got into like the Facebook groups. I definitely had a paid membership on LinkedIn and was doing things. Having said all that, , lo and behold, I knew one person when I moved here, one person who lived in this [00:18:00] town, and not, well, it was like a old high school acquaintance.

We weren’t even friends. And my first website in Colorado came from the one person I knew, which again speaks to why networking is so important. And again, just letting people know what you do. It’s not rocket science. But yeah, that was what started it.

And then the referrals, started again from that one client and the vendor I met working over there. And then she referred some other people. That’s the magic of doing well again, referrals only work. if you do good work and you treat people well. And yeah, side note, if you have crappy customer service, you’re not going to get a lot of referrals.

I can’t believe I didn’t write this down, but the whole idea of Subcontractor for someone and reaching out to, other web design, small agencies that might have overflow work for you or web developers, that might need you on the design side. We’ll also reach out to other freelance web designers.

Yeah, that’s true. But why John? They’re my competition. Not [00:19:00] necessarily. And that’s how you and I met. You and I met, you subcontracted me to work on Dawson Public Power, I believe. And then, and part of that project, we met at a Jimmy John’s and that was the start of our working relationship.

So even reach out to other web designers, cause you never know. You never know if they’re overloaded and they just need some help getting sites built. Or if they have a particular type of client that they like to work with that you don’t like again, which fits us because my least favorite clients are generally male business owners, not to be a sexist, but it’s just what it is.

And that’s John’s ideal client. So it is. Yeah. I prefer working with female, like marketing type, like in a marketing role. And John’s not a fan. So yeah, if you team up with other web designers and, you guys each have your own jam or like it’s an industry or whatever, or a location, yeah, that’s a great one.

Who knows, maybe that web designer you reached out to, maybe eventually you’ll end [00:20:00] up partnering up and doing, I don’t know, online course together or web design empire.

Never know. Yes, I’m using Kelly to build my web design empire. That’s right. So funny. You got any more, you got any more best ways? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Let’s dive into some worst ways. Yes, the worst ways. Yeah, I’m curious what’s at the top of your list. Well, I put LinkedIn, Upwork, and Fiverr, and by LinkedIn, I’m talking the non paid LinkedIn.

I also had Upwork as my top, of the worst list. Yeah. I said, a friend of mine calls this. Yeah. Dumpster diving. Dumpster diving. That’s what it is. Well, that’s our support. That’s our support gal for our digital company. And yeah, she calls it dumpster diving and she’s right. There are gems and she would admit that as well, but you got to go through a lot.

Same with dumpster diving. You gotta [00:21:00] go through a lot of garbage to get to the gems, and by default, if someone is on Upwork or Fiverr, like a consumer, someone who needs a website hops on Upwork or Fiverr, by default, they’re looking for a deal.

That’s what you’re going to be dealing with, maybe early on and say, if you don’t want to do free websites, maybe that’s the way, but here’s the thing. The less clients pay, the more they want, the more they want crappy clients.

And what do clappy clients refer John? They refer more crappy clients. Crappy clients. It’s like the law number one of web design, or just probably, any industry. But yeah, crappy clients are gonna just, as you said the other day, breed other crappy clients. Yeah. And these folks have no These folks have I mean They have no connection to you.

They’re, it’s just starting from scratch. They don’t know who you are. Going back to the network referrals, even someone else telling someone about you so much better than Upwork or [00:22:00] Fiverr. Or come on, LinkedIn, I get a message at least four times a week from someone on LinkedIn saying, Hey, your, does your company, SEO, whatever, do you need overflow work?

We do this. And I appreciate it. But most of the time I just trash those. I don’t I just trash them. Yeah. And I feel bad. I feel bad. No, you don’t. I don’t feel bad. But no, but here’s the thing. I do a little because I’m like, what state are you in that you’re, that this is the way, right, right. I feel for them. I know. But here’s the thing about like upwork and freelancer. com and those sites is it can be a way to build a portfolio, but if you’re going that route, just know, like you have to have a different mindset that these are crappy clients. I don’t want referrals from these people.

I am just here to build a portfolio. So It for those who need to portfolio build. That’s, it’s an acceptable method for that. But know that you will stop dumpster diving once you have built [00:23:00] your portfolio. Like you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta be able to shut that off. But yeah, there, it’s the worst type of clients in general.

Well, story time. Story time. Here we go. Yep. this was like in the last two weeks. Okay. I got, we got an email, we got a, we got an email from a designer. And I marked a spam and deleted, but John read it. So I guess, so this wasn’t through LinkedIn. First, let me go into my next one.

What’s your next worst way? What is probably the same as mine. What’s your next worst way? Oh, my next worst way is not yours. It’s, Best friends and family are the worst clients like just don’t go I know you do your dad’s site and you made him pay but like I will do anything for my parents for free.

Anything for my best friend for free. But like when friends are like, Oh, I should I want to what then I just know it’s going to be a disaster. And Side note story on that, when my best friend did need a new website because she is a, she’s a entrepreneur. She has a wedding planning business.

And when she did need a new website, [00:24:00] she consulted me, sent me a gift card for it, and then went to a different web designer to actually build the site because she knew she was going to be a pain in the ass and she didn’t want it to ruin her friendship. And I’m like, that’s how it’s done. Well done. Well done.

Yeah. No, I agree. It gets awkward. And then it’s just, a mind trip because it does, even if you’re good, even if you’re good. And let’s say, and you’re good. Let’s say sure. Everyone deals with imposter syndrome. And we’ll talk about that on a different episode.

Yeah. But when a friend. Comes to you and says, build me a website. Then you’re just like, then you really start to question like, Oh no, I hope they really like it, Oh man. And then it’s just, well, then it’s just like never ending. Like you, you can’t get. Firm with them and be like, yo, I need these updates.

By this day, , this has been going on for six months. You can’t go there with a friend. And so it just becomes this wishy-washy and they can’t do that with you either. So it’s just a difficult vibe to deal [00:25:00] with. Yeah. That’s my take. So my next one, and this is where the story that I was going to share earlier, cause I, I forgot that girl didn’t come through LinkedIn.

She came through cold outreach, cold outreach. I put on cold outreach can be very discouraging. And I have two different. Stories on this the first one, a quick one, a buddy of mine decided to I’m going to start a church website business. I’m only going to build websites for churches and we’re going to have 300 sites the first year, all this stuff.

They made 90 cold calls to churches. They got a handful of meetings set up from these cold calls, like less than five, no sales. And then they stopped. Now, maybe they stopped too soon. Now this might work for larger companies, right? We had one student who used to work for a company that did construction websites, nationally, and they had the manpower to pay people to like, you’re going to reach out to a thousand construction companies in order to get [00:26:00] 50 meetings and sell maybe 10 websites like that. That might work on a large scale, but as far as like individual trying to build up their freelance empire, it’s not the way you’re going to burn yourself out.

You’re going to get super discouraged. It’s going to be very frustrating. What are your thoughts on cold outreach? Yeah, no, ditto, 100%. I did that as part of my Colorado moving frenzy to get business. And if there was one thing I learned in that madness, it was that there’s like a hierarchy Of what works and like obviously in person meeting people is the best.

Like you just happen to, meet someone and they say, Oh, what do you do? A web, I’m a web designer. And like that’s the best calls is second. If you can get someone on the call, but cold calling, forget it. Just forget it. I hang up on a thousand. And then the next like hold email does not, it just, I don’t know how that works for anyone at this point.

Maybe it worked like 10 years ago, but at this point, I don’t know how that works. And even if I remember I [00:27:00] sent like screen shares or screencasts Hey, here’s your website and did a screenshot so that they could see it right away. And introduced myself and oh my gosh, just got nowhere.

But what was the best way of cold outreach that I found? And again, this was what, nine years ago at this point was social media cold outreach. And it’s because whoever’s running the marketing is generally, on top of that social stuff and it’s the right person. So that was Easier I thought than hunting it down on LinkedIn even and finding the right person to talk to.

It’s whoever’s managing that social media, again, for the types of clients that I was going after. So that was a better method than the others. But yeah, cold outreach, it’s just it’s painful. So a couple of weeks ago we got an email. Someone, this designer emailed.

It’s our break into web email and break into web is our online web design school. And so it’s not break into web doesn’t build websites for [00:28:00] people. It’s not an agency. It’s an online design school. So I guess red flag number one was this person. We’ve said, Hey, if you guys need design help I can, I designed websites, which they probably should have gone to the site and realized, Oh, this is an online web design school.

But anyway, so that’s red flag. Number one like do some research. If you’re going to do this, do a little bit of research on the company your cold emailing. So at least, you know, if they even need your services or not, but regardless, I opened it up and I. I I, for some reason, usually I just delete them.

Usually I would, but for some reason I opened this one up and I read it and they check out my portfolio. I click the link, they check out their portfolio and it goes to a, it goes to their Behance page. Now Behance is like a, Adobe owns it and it’s just like an easy way for someone to throw up portfolio work, but it’s not a personal website.

So it’s like, go back to step one, right? What I said. Build your own thing, your own website, make it gorgeous. This person didn’t do that. [00:29:00] They’re sending out this third party service that they had. They have some screenshots on, ah, red flag number two. Okay. But the stuff looked really great.

Designs look really great. And so then I reply to them like, Hey, these designs look really great. How much per hour are you? And do you build websites? Can you build websites instead of just design them? And she writes back and tells me her hourly rate, which is 50 an hour. Okay, fine. And she can build sites in Divi and Elementor.

Now we’re a Divi shop. That’s what we use. And it’s just a certain page webpage builder that we use. So I’m like, awesome. Awesome. So guess what I asked? I ask, can you send me a few examples of sites that you’ve built? And that was over a week ago and no response. So you went through the trouble, the cold outreach me and then, and I actually reached back to you and then you just fall off the planet.

Why? Why? Why? I’ll tell you why. Cause she probably has [00:30:00] no examples. That’s probably why. Do you think her portfolio is just squandered from other sources? Did you see one of your sites on there? I didn’t see any of my sites on there, but, uh, No. Someone has stolen our logo before another web designer, but oh, yeah.

Yeah back in the day But no, I’m starting to at first I didn’t you know funny you say that so when I first look at the designs I thought they were so they were just such a variety and they were all so good that I was just like I wonder if these are just borrowed, right? I’m going to say, whatever, but then I saw some comments like on this platform, folks in common age design.

And I saw some folks, great work, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, Oh, maybe it’s legit. But now I’m starting to feel like, yeah, it was, and they were so good too. It’s like. When she said 50 an hour, I was like, Oh, it could be a deal. No, John, stop, you know? So anyway that’s my, my, my cold, which I also put down here.

I know you like chamber groups and stuff, but man, we. We did. I do. You mentioned it. I don’t know if you do or [00:31:00] not, but I put down here like chamber groups or your local business group. And I wrote, I would argue these are not worth the time they want. They want you to be at a meeting. Right?

So the one I joined was like an independent business. Local thing. And there was a weekly meeting that you were encouraged to go to. And not only that, they want you to refer people to the rest of the group. So you might be the sole web designer in the group. Someone else might be like a life insurance provider, right?

Like classic or a financial planner. And then they’re like, Hey, John, so who are you bringing? What names are you giving out here? And it was just like. It was awkward. I didn’t really like it. I got no clients from it. What’s your experience been with any kind of groups like that? I would have loved to join the chamber here and I tried.

But my problem was all of them met. Either at 8 a. m. where hello, I got to get my kids to school or at 5 p. m. where hello, I got to drive my kids around to their activity. Like it [00:32:00] was, there was no like noon meeting or anything during the school day that a working mom could have possibly pulled off.

So that was my beef with this chamber. And I like kind of yelled at him for it. But yeah I have been recruited for the networking type groups that I think you’re talking about. Is there like a BNI aren’t there? Nash nationwide ones where they have like different sectors in each city or something.

Yeah. BNI would be one. Oh, BNI. That’s it. I joined the Lincoln independent business association. You know what? Here’s a funny story. My dad used to be president of Liba. And so when I did decide I’m going to be a freelance web designer full time, like that was one of the things I tried.

I forgot to mention that. I emailed all of the Liba people, and this was a hundred years ago and I got. I got two responses and I got one client from it and I probably shouldn’t say the name of the site. But it was easily the [00:33:00] worst website I’ve ever created and it had nothing to do with me if that.

He wanted homepage This video of this boy ringing a bell to play and then the ticker would increment one of how many visitors to the site. Oh, you know what I’m talking about? Like that, that dates how old I am. But yeah, that was what he wanted. It was crazy like that. You hear that it was exactly like that

Oh, and then it would go from, 52 to 53 . Which was, I thought, which the total number of visits ever on that website. . I thought you were gonna say, man, the guy wanted walking turtles on there. Like, oh, well I knew how to do that. I could have done that. along the same lines of the chamber groups.

Yeah. I only have a couple left here. Was like classified ads. So there was a Oh, a business. There was a business directory. Oh, I got you. Yeah. The only time that I ever spent. Marketing dot web. No, that’s not true. We did Google ads another time. So [00:34:00] we’ve done Google ads for a short spell, like a three month period.

And then stop them. And then this. And I paid for a year to be in this business directory and not nothing, zero, nothing at all. Isn’t that funny? It’s just, I know, right? I was just, which it wasn’t that expensive. And you know what, I’m not going to say the chamber groups are the worst way.

They’re definitely, it’s, I’ll put them in between. And for me, it’s kind of in between. Yeah. What else you got? You got any more? I was just gonna wrap up with same thing I said for the best. Ultimately, the worst thing for you is whatever does not work for you and your situation and your types of clients.

So if there’s something that isn’t working, quit trying. And there’s so many other tactics to try and move on to something else. But yeah, that’s, I think you. I think you won on the worst. I think you, you nailed it. Well, I have one left. Oh, there’s more. Okay. And I feel like it should be obvious, but I feel like [00:35:00] we see some students do this and it’s they do nothing.

Oh yeah. They build their website and they think, build it and they will come. And they launch their website. That’s not how it works. And they sit back and they’re like I’m not getting any leads. So anyway, obviously that should be an obvious one, but yeah, that’s my life.

It’s so worth saying. It’s similar to the, just not telling people who know, like, and trust you what you’re doing. If they don’t know, they can’t help you when in reality, like those people those hundred ish people that you see all the time and talk to, once a month or whatever.

They are your greatest ambassadors. You just need to tap into them and let them know what you’re doing. It’s so simple. And a lot of people, like you said, do nothing or they don’t even, they don’t even tell people. Love it. Love it. Is that a wrap? Are we wrapping? I think that’s a wrap.

Oh, here’s one more thing I will say on my outside the box. My outside the box note was you had sent me a, [00:36:00] it was like a meme or whatever of someone. It was a picture of a guy with his yard sign. Do you remember this? And it was like, need a website and it had his phone number and he in it, the caption was like, he made it to six, six figures in six months, something like that with freaking yard signs.

So again, like there, there’s so many tactics, it’s just, what do you have the guts to do? And go for it and be creative and there’s, it’s unlimited really where you can, yard signs, who would have, people look at them though. Yeah. They do. People look at it. They do.

Not that expensive. Another guy had a magnet on the side of his car, like web design. Oh, there you go. I’ve considered doing that. Just so my accountant stops bugging me about your car isn’t for business because it is. It is. It’s my office. Oh man. I love it. I love it. All right, y’all. Thanks for tuning in and joining Kelly and I today on the Web Design Empire.

Also, check out breakintoweb. com. Learn how you can break [00:37:00] away from your daily grind, become a freelance web designer, and create the empire you’ve been dreaming of. All right, y’all. Cheers. Later.