TCC Podcast #401: Get Good at Finding Clients with Ryan Guthrie

Finding clients is hard. And it might even be getting harder. But that doesn't mean you can't do it. In fact, there are lots of copywriters who don't struggle to book clients for weeks or months into the future. So how do you do it? On the 401st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with client acquisition specialist, Ryan Guthrie, about the three ways to get clients. We go into depth on this. You're going to like it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: It doesn’t matter how good you are as a writer, if you don’t have good, high-paying clients, you will never have a successful copywriting business. It all comes down to your ability to attract, connect with, and get hired by business owners who will pay you to help them tell their story. And even though we’ve talked about this topic a lot on this podcast, it seems as if there’s always more to learn. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I talked with copywriter and client acquisition specilist Ryan Guthrie. Like many of us, Ryan started out as a copywriter. But he cracked the code on finding clients early on, so other copywriters began asking him for help with their own pipelines. And he shared a lot of how he does it in today’s interview. But before we jump in with Ryan… We have a new gift for you as a listener to the copywriter club podcast. We went through the past 400 episodes of this podcast looking for the ideas that our guests have shared over the past couple of years related to finding clients. We pulled out a bunch of our favorites and compiled them into a new pocket sixed guide that will inspire you as you look for ways to attract the right clients to your business. Ryan shares how he does it on this episode. But once you’re done listening, or now if you are near your phone or computer, visit thecopywriterclub.com/pocket to download your own copy of this new guide. And with that, let’s go to our interview with Ryan Guthrie... Kira Hug: All right, Ryan, let's start with your story. How did you end up as a client acquisition consultant? Ryan Guthrie: By doing a lot of other things first. I started copywriting in February of 2020, which is an awesome time to start something new. But I was going to be a nurse, right? And I just kind of fell out of love with it. I didn't want to go to work every day and see people having the worst day of their lives. And so I kind of dropped out of college a little bit. And my girlfriend at the time, who's now my fiance, said, Hey, you're a pretty good writer. Here's this course that showed up on my Instagram feed. It's an ad, take a look at it. So I took a look at it. And I was like, I can do this. Sure. It was a copywriting course. I can, I can do this. And so I like, fully dropped out of college and bought this course with all my savings to the horror of my mother. She was like, you know what, you go do this for a year and we'll see what it looks like after a year and then we'll talk about this again, right? So I did that, and so I worked at my regular job from like six to three, six in the morning, three in the afternoon, and then I would get home and I would just do copywriting stuff, right, from like four to like 10, doing hand copy and just trying to learn as much as I could going through this course. After about three months, I got my first client, and it's a funny story, people always think they need to be super polished for that first client. I did my first sales call in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's, And I took notes on the back of an organic cookie box. So just throwing that out there. That was my first ever sales call. I got that client. He paid me $400 for some emails. And then I was like, this is it. I'm a paid copywriter. I'm a professional. And I ditched my job. And then the next client did not come as quickly as I thought it was going to come, but the bills still kept coming. And so I was like, okay, we need to make this work now. So it's kind of like an out of necessity thing. I just, um, did the client outreach stuff that I was taught in that course. And it, and it kind of worked. Um, it was much more of a, just, I can outwork my lack of talent kind of situation. And so after about six months, um, a little over six months, I hit my first 10 K month. And then a little over a year being in this career, I was starting to have those consistent 10K months. And funnily enough, I actually hired my mom for a little while to do some content writing for one of my clients that I didn't want to do anymore. So it's funny to see that come full circle. She was like, no, you have to go to college. And I'm like, hey, mom, I can hire you. She's like, oh, OK. So that was fun. Did copywriting for a while. And then I had a client who was like, Hey, do you, you write all this other stuff for me? Would you help me write a book? And I was like, yeah, sure.  No idea what I was doing again. Dove into it head first, learned how to do it as I was doing it, and we got through that project. I don't know how it ended up being a pretty decent book, but it did. And I was like, I really like this. I really like these big projects. And so I kind of shifted to doing those big projects. I was like, I can help these people write their books. And then I know how marketing kind of works. I know how book funnels work. I know how this stuff works. I can show them how to do all that stuff. And so I went over into ghostwriting and I wrote for big consultants and agencies or for a politician, all kinds of really cool, interesting, fascinating clients. And then while this is all happening, I also actually became a coach in that initial program that I took way back in 2020. And I was just, every single time I would interact with another copywriter or another freelance writer or anything, it was, how do you get clients? You seem to be doing really well. How do you get clients? How do you get clients?  I guess I'm just a nerd about how to get clients. I'm always listening to podcasts and YouTube videos and reading books and all kinds of things about getting clients. It's actually very annoying for my fiance. We'll be going on a trip and I'm like, I'm going to listen to a podcast. And she's like, Oh no, you're not. All right. And so I just started helping a lot of people with how to get clients. And I, I had results with things that I was doing and then I would teach other people and they would have results. And I was like, well, you know, I love teaching this stuff. Maybe I should just, Maybe I should do this. And so then I kind of became a client acquisition coach consultant. And that's, that's what I do now. I help copywriters and B2B service providers get clients. I work with people one-on-one to create really customized client acquisition strategies. Cause I know a lot of times you get into a course and client acquisition is, it's a really small part of the course. And it's like, what's kind of the biggest hinge there is to success. And a lot of times with the courses and stuff, it's just kind of like, it's whatever worked for that person who built that course, right? It's whatever works for them. Sometimes it doesn't work for you. It's not the right strategy, right? Like if you're a kind of shy and timid person, you go into a course and they're like, Oh, you got a cold call. And you're like, uh, maybe not. And then you don't really go anywhere. So I like working with people one-on-one and we build something that works for them. So that's kind of my story from a 30,000 foot view. Rob Marsh: I like it. You said one phrase that immediately stuck out. I immediately wrote it down in my notes, and that is that you had to outwork your lack of talent. Yes, very much so. Let's talk about that because I think this is a very real situation that a lot of us find ourselves in, especially when we're starting out or if we're switching to a new niche or we're working with a higher level client, there's a learning curve. So yeah, talk to us just a little bit about your thinking around that and what you actually did in order to overcome the lack of talent because again, if you don't have the talent to write or if you don't have the talent to deliver the solution that your client needs, that's a problem. Ryan Guthrie: Yeah. So I, when I started it, I kind of figured in my brain, I was like, okay, I'm at point a, I want to get to point B. I am probably going to have a certain amount of mess ups, screw ups in this period of time going from A to B where I'm, you know, I don't really know what I'm doing right now to being a actually competent service provider. So I figured, okay, well, if I can just get through that as quickly as I can, that would probably be ideal. And so I did a ton of just outreach and, you know, cold emailing and networking and all kinds of stuff. And I got a lot of clients early on and like, kind of like to the point where I was like, I was working a lot. Like it wasn't, it wasn't looking a whole lot better than a full-time job, but I was able to learn so much by doing so much upfront.  Working with clients while still kind of a newer copywriter. I wasn't charging a ton. And so I was able to really get paid to learn right up front. Cause I, you know, I kind of came into this, I was an okay writer. I don't. That's kind of even stretching it. I was a B minus in English kind of guy. I was decent at writing, but it really wasn't an awesome skill for me, especially in copies, different from regular writing, so I had to learn that. But how to do a sales call or a discovery call, how to do client communication, how to manage software. I'm probably the worst millennial in the world at technology. I'm terrible with it.