I've been working freelance for 10 years.

This is how I landed my first 5 figure freelance project...

WITH NO PORTFOLIO.

I have no Gumroad course to sell.

I do not want your $, or your email.

This is simply the thread I wish I had 10 years ago.

Enjoy

I'm a brand / graphic designer, however the following applies to any field.

When I first started I was stuck in a loop of doing small gigs for $200-500

The money sucked, the clients sucked, the work sucked.

I was stuck in a loop of low tier clients.

Low tier clients are the WORST, they always:

• Want price reductions
• Have little to no budget
• Micromanage the project
• Want to copy trends, vs invent
• Recommend you to other low tier clients

You can skip this part all-together.

If your anything like me,

I hate half baked, poorly done jobs.

Therefore I would always end up doing more than the budget allowed for.

I soon realised after a year or so of doing these low paying jobs, that I was getting no where.

Putting in extra effort, for no gain.

Every low budget client, lead to another one of their cheapskate friends.

It was always the same bullshit every-time.

Extra time spent on revisions because they "forgot" about something they needed but "the budget was tight" and couldn't pay more.

Honestly, I was done.

The problem was, my portfolio was full of all these low budget clients.

How could I approach or pitch to a mid/high tier client when all my work was from low tier clients.

It seemed impossible to bridge the gap.

That's when I realised I could build my portfolio by just doing the work before hand and sending it to them.

Sounds crazy I know, but hear me out.

It changed my life.

The worst that can happen is you have 3 pieces of great work you can use for your portfolio later on.

Okay so think of 5-8 clients you'd love to work for.

I did 6

Find clients who's work inspires you, but are not in the top 1% of companies.

Think companies making 1-10m a year.

That kind of range

Since I'm a designer

I visited all of their websites & wrote down ways I could Improve their:

• Site
• Menus
• Branding
• Social media

However this can be applied with ANYTHING...

• Graphic Design
• Social Media
• Photography
• Branding
• Copywriting

Once I had a list of ideas for all 6 clients

I narrowed it down to 3 who I was sure I could help.

So I now had my 3 dream Clients:

Client A) Law Firm
Client B) Restaurant
Client C) Gym

Time to get to work.

I decided 100 hours of work was enough to test this out.

That meant 5 hours a day extra after work for 3 weeks.

For Client:
A) I Redesigned website (50-60 hrs work)
B) I Redesigned their menu (15-25 hrs work)
C) I Redesigned their social posts (5 - 10 hours work)

For 3 weeks I would religiously finish work at 5:30pm,

Eat and take an hour break,

Then get grinding and put in 5 hours of work.

Finish up at 12pm, sleep and repeat.

By the end of the 3 weeks I had everything done.

I nervously sent everything over to all 3 clients....

Client A) responded after a few hours, they loved the look of the website and wanted me to come in for a meeting.

Client B) Responded after 2 days, saying they had just redesigned them, but said thank you & would keep me in mind for future work.

Client C) Immediately asked my rates for doing social posts.

All in 48 HOURS.

I was PUMPED

If I emailed them my portfolio at the time, they would have laughed...

Yet I got replies from all of them because:

• I showed confidence my skills & work
• They saw the work and then realised the value, vs the other way around
• I showed passion & didn't get $ involved

People LOVE when you care about their business, especially taking that much time and effort to try and solve a problem for them.

Unless you target Nike, Adidas & Chipotle I guarantee you one will respond.

Trust me on the $1-10m in revenue clients.

They are often:
• Outgrowing their old branding / site
• Run buy Boomers who have no idea about tech
• Can't use social media properly
• Run by HUSTLERS who love seeing this level of effort.

Fast forward a few months....

I'm doing business with all 3 clients:

Client A)

I ended up getting 25k contract with the law firm to design the rest of their website, and make some awesome contacts.

Client B)

The restaurant owner works high up in HR for IBM and owns 3 other restaurants.

He respected the hustle so much, that he offered to mentor me for a few months and helped me scale by business.

We are still friends & I outsource design business for them.

Client C) Nothing really ever came of this one longterm... BUT they did buy that batch of social posts off me & I used them in my portfolio to get other clients.

I now charge $500-700 a day for design and branding.

I've worked with fortune 500 companies.

Those 3 projects kickstarted my career.

You either want it, or you don't

There are no half measures.

GO GET THAT BAG