Episode 5 - The Top 8 Places to Find Freelancing Clients

Full Episode Transcription:

(00:07):
Hello, my friends! And welcome back to today’s episode of the “Ditch the Classroom” podcast. On this episode, we’re going to be covering the top eight places that you can find different freelance virtual assistant jobs, and I’ll give a description of each and how you can kind of work them to your advantage. Before we dive in, I thought it would be fun to share just a random fact about myself on these solo episodes, where it’s just me sharing with y’all. That way you can get to know a little bit more about who you’re listening to. Today’s fun fact is that I was born in Germany. My dad was in the military, so we – my brother and I – were born over there, but we moved back when we were, I was like two. So I don’t remember any of it, but still cool to say. So I wanted to create today’s episode for you.

(01:43):
Even if you haven’t started your “Ditch the Classroom” journey, and you’re still thinking about what steps you could take, you can start to explore these different places that I’m going to mention and see what kinds of jobs are out there that interest you and just learn, you know, what skills people are looking for, so you can start developing those skills. I do (side note) want to mention that I’m recording in our RV and I turn the AC off and everything that makes noise, but there are obnoxious birds flying around outside. So if you hear some birds, that’s why. So let’s go ahead and dive in the first place that you can search for clients, especially when you’re starting out is with people you know. This is how I landed my first client. My first client was a family member and all I did was post on my social media, that I was starting this new virtual assist journey, kind of what services I could do for somebody and that if anybody had any need for my services or knew anybody who would, that they could share the post with them, it’s just a really good way to help people that you already know.

(03:03):
You already probably have a relationship with them. They already trust you. It’s a really good place to start. You can also, if you don’t feel super comfortable posting on your like public social media profile, you can private message people that you know, but I would go about – I wouldn’t ask, “Hey, do you need these services?” I would say, “Hey, this is something new that I’m doing. This is how I can help. Do you know of anybody in your circle that could use these services, use this help?” And that leaves it very open ended where they could say, “Hey, I could really use your help with that”, or they’ll say, “Oh, I know a couple people who could, so I’ll share your information with them”. If you’re worried about people in your school, finding out about you trying to start this business, what you can do is change the privacy of the post.

(04:04):
So you could still post this on your social media, but under privacy, you can set your settings to show to all of your friends, except, and then you can select which friends you don’t wanna be able to see the post. So that is one way to get around that. My second place that you can find clients, and my personal favorite, where I found 90% of my clients is from Facebook groups. There are so many different entrepreneur, Facebook groups out there, and in these groups, businesses are always posting, looking for help with different tasks in their business, design, work, everything. So if I were you, I would maybe start out by going and searching some of these groups just to see kind of what what’s out there, what people are posting and looking for. Like I mentioned, at the beginning of the show and just seeing what spark’s curiosity in you.

(05:01):
Then I always say, Google’s your best friend. So if you don’t know what these things are, you can Google them. A lot of the different platforms people need help with are very easy to learn. I taught myself it all using Google. So you can just kind of see what’s out there and yeah, start teaching yourself the skills before you even start. Now, I say that, but you don’t need to know everything before you start. So don’t feel like you have to know everything about every platform. I’m a big advocate for learning on the job, but this is just a good way to see what people need. You can also use the Facebook groups to start building relationships. So just commenting on a couple different posts, giving value, where you can, and you’ll start seeing people reaching out to you without you even having to necessarily apply for positions.

(05:55):
One of my first website design clients, I got just asked a question about her website and I knew the answer. So I commented and gave my answer. And I also said, if you want to see an example of what this program can do, ’cause she was asking about a specific program, I said, “if you want to see an example of what this program can do, you can take a look at my site.” And when she did, she fell in love with my work and hired me to do her website. So I didn’t even actually apply, but she just loved my work. So that’s one way you can leverage relationships and giving value. People will start coming to you because they see you providing value for free. Another really great place to find clients is Instagram. So Instagram is a good place to build your authority in your space.

(06:48):
This is kind of more for when you have gotten started in your business, but you can start thinking about it now and you can post different, you know, tips and tricks related to your services. You don’t have to give away all the goods, but you can give away some value and just build your authority in your services. And then you’ll start seeing clients coming to you because they see that you’re giving so much value. And when you do this, you want to use appropriate hashtags to your ideal clients. And so you wanna use hashtags that your ideal clients would be using. The next place I have that you can find clients is LinkedIn. A lot of businesses who are looking for support on LinkedIn tend to be bigger businesses that need more ongoing support. So this is a really good way to find those monthly retainer clients or positions that reoccur month-to-month.

(07:48):
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. So things like website, design, logo design, those are one-off projects. They’re one and done. You’re not going to keep doing it for the same client, but if you find monthly retainers, those are services that continue each month. And so you can rely on that consistent income rather than having to find different clients all the time. On LinkedIn, there’s a lot of businesses who need that monthly retainer support. And the only thing is with LinkedIn, I know there are a lot of positions that might want to hire you as an employee, rather than a contractor. So you can be hired as an employee, but still virtual and not have to report to them. It might be nice because you could get benefits being the employee, but it might take away a little bit of the time-freedom.

(08:37):
There are contractor positions on LinkedIn, but there are more of the employee positions as well. The next place is Indeed. Indeed is similar to LinkedIn in that a lot of the opportunities tend to be bigger businesses that need that ongoing support and want to hire you as an employee rather than a contractor.

(08:59):
Number six in the list of where to find clients is cold pitching. So what cold pitching is, is reaching out to people that have no idea who you are, different businesses that may not know about your services, but could really use your support. So if you’re following someone on Instagram, who’s running an amazing business, but you see kind of a gap in something that they’re not doing or something that they are doing, but maybe they’re doing it themselves. And they could offload that work onto you so they could focus more in their zone of genius, you can reach out to them and ask if they would like your help with your services.

(09:45):
You need to do this in a respectful way. It can be a little bit easy to come across as, “Hey, you’re doing this wrong and I can help you.” You don’t want to do that. You want to be very respectful and just say, “Hey, these are services that I can offer. This would really help you and your business in these ways.” And so on, this is something I go a lot more in depth in, in my Brand New Boss Babes course. So shameless plug here, but the course has all the tools and resources and templates for you to pitch to different businesses and clients. And so there’s templates you can use in there and just tweak some of the wordings so that you can reach out to these potential clients in a really respectful manner.

(10:34):
The next place I want to mention that you can and find clients is your local chamber of commerce. You generally have to pay a membership fee to be a member of the chamber of commerce, depending on the size of your city or town. It could be pretty cheap. It could be a little pricier if it’s a bigger city, but you can become a member of a chamber of commerce, even if you don’t live in that city. So if there is a bigger city, you know, maybe 45 minutes away that you want to join their chamber of commerce, you can do that. And it’s just a really great way to network and build relationships and build the relationships with businesses, that, again, don’t know that people even offer these services, but could really use their help. One really big area, just for an example, that a lot of businesses don’t know they need help in is social media. Especially right now in all the COVID craziness going on.

(11:32):
So many businesses are having to turn online and a lot of them haven’t done this before and don’t know what to even post on social media. So that’s one area that you can really help in if social media is the avenue that you’re interested in. All right, the last place that I have on my list is one that you kind of have to already have a business going in order to do, but referrals. Referrals are one of my favorite ways to find new clients. It builds on itself and it requires less work from you. That’s where it’s really nice. When you get your first client, you can offer some sort of incentive to them so that they’ll send you referrals without you having to do that additional work. What I do is I will send them a certain amount back to their PayPal account or just bank account, in return for them referring someone to me.

(12:31):
Now, the person that they refer to me has to sign a contract and pay, obviously. So once that contract is signed and the invoice is paid, then I would give whoever referred them that referral bonus. So really cool, builds on itself over time and makes it a lot easier for you to find clients without having to go out and search for them yourselves. So, I know that the, this was kind of a lot. I gave a lot of information. If you need to listen to this episode again and take notes, you can, it’s always here for you. But I just wanted to share this with you so that again, you can get your feet wet. See what’s out there. See what interests you. If you’ve already kind of started your journey, you have all these places where you can start looking for clients that need your services.

(13:17):
But again, if you haven’t even started, go explore. Join a couple Facebook groups. Search around on Instagram. See what people are doing and see what really gets you curious. You don’t have to know what to do already, but get curious. Start Googling, start figuring out these different systems people need help with, or what’s entailed in these different services. And you can just start exploring and start your digital classroom journey. I hope that this was helpful if you know of any other places that are really good to find clients, please feel to reach out to me. And if you have any questions about any of these that I mentioned, you can always email me or reach out to me on Instagram, at arianna.vernier. I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and I will see you on next week’s episode.