If you exercise an hour a day, will you be in better shape a year from now? Of course, you will.
If you practice guitar for an hour a day, will you soon be able to riff Fast Car with your eyes closed? Probably!
So, when it comes to building a thriving freelance business, what can you do each day that is most likely to grow your client base and income?
You may not like the answer. (But please stay with me.)
It’s prospecting.
I learned that early in my career. I was struggling to market my freelance business and read a book by Stephan Schiffman. He claimed to make prospecting calls for one hour each day, even though he was a CEO and had a team of marketers and salespeople.
He said it was the most important thing he did to build his firm.
Inspired, I gave the strategy a try.
Before I explain how it worked for me, it’s important to clarify what I mean by “prospecting.”
By prospecting, I don’t mean posting on social media or updating your website, as effective as those marketing activities may be. I’m talking about personally reaching out and connecting with new people — one at a time — who may be interested in your services.
You can call it outreach, cold emailing, LinkedIn-ing; whatever. (I prefer networking because that’s the ideal mindset for prospecting.) What you call it doesn’t matter. It’s what you do that matters. And that’s regularly reaching out and expanding the pool of potential clients who know who you are, what you do, and how you can help.
In workshops, I’ll often remind freelancers that, chances are, there is a client out there looking for a copywriter for a lucrative project. And you're the perfect fit. The client would hire you in a heartbeat. The only problem is, they don’t know you exist.
Prospecting gets you on their radar screen.
So, what happened when I embraced Schiffman’s prospecting advice all those years ago? Honestly, the initial weeks were a mixed bag. While I managed to connect with a few promising prospects, the groundbreaking results I hoped for didn’t materialize immediately.
But I kept at it.
I continued my daily prospecting hour, refining my approach and learning from each interaction. Gradually, the results improved — more inquiries, new clients.
Prospecting, I discovered, is akin to rolling a snowball down a hill. It starts off slow and small, but with consistent effort, it gains speed and size, eventually looking like the boulder that chased Harrison Ford in the first Indiana Jones movie! The challenge lies in the early days, when progress seems slow, and the temptation to quit is high. Yet, this is precisely when you need to stick with it.
The reality is, prospecting works — it just requires time, adaptation, and persistence. Think of it like going to the gym regularly; a routine that, once integrated into your daily schedule, pays off, big time.
Here's my advice: dedicate an hour each day to reaching out to new prospects in a way that feels authentic and effective for you. Make it part of your routine.
Your prospecting doesn't need to be perfect. (It really doesn't!) It just needs to be consistent.
So schedule time each day to reach out to new people. If you do, I suspect you’ll be thanking yourself a year from now.
