17 ways to get your 1st client as a developer in 2026

i have a quick question for all you software engineers imagine you have a gun to your head and somebody asks i want you to land the client in one hour can you do it what if they said 10 clients in one hour or 100 clients in one hour most of you watching this won't be able to land even a single client let alone 10 or 100 and we are going to change that in this video because i'm going to show you the exact methods give you the exact tactics as well as the exact mindset that you need to be able to acquire clients because this video is going to save you months if not years of struggling and wondering why others get clients and you don't and you thinking that maybe you're just simply not cut out for this so those days are long over i'm going to show you all the different ways that you can land a client in 2026 as a software engineer for your service and or product i'm going to show your digital methods in-person tactics and other creative strategies keep in mind all of these are what i have personally done to transition from a developer making quarter million dollars a year to literally making double that almost last month with my b2b ai consulting firm ab analytics and i have repeated these exact strategies with other founders inside of my startup accelerator code to ceo so without further ado let's get straight into it and to get started i'm going to keep this extremely simple here's how we're going to do this so i'm going to cover the common methods first this is the foundational stuff that everybody knows And when I say everybody, I mean, essentially most individuals. And then we're going to get into the low key methods. So the underrated tactics that nobody really talks about and the out of the box creative strategies. So when it comes to the low key methods and out of the box ones, these are all strictly based on my experiences, as well as those of the founders inside Code2CEO. So these have been proven time and time again to work, especially in 2026. Now we're going to try to cover over 30 methods. We'll see how many we get to. So understand that most people stay at the bottom. They only really use the common methods. So Upwork, LinkedIn, cold email, the stuff that pretty much everybody knows. And they compete with everybody else. That's why most people don't end up getting results and they end up giving up. But the real advantage is that the top is less crowded. When you use the uncommon methods, you're fishing where nobody else is fishing. So there's less competition, better clients, and way higher rates. So let's start at the foundation. These are the common methods. Some of you might know them, some of you might not. But in general, you need to know them, but you shouldn't stop here. So first and foremost are freelance platforms. Now, I can imagine some of you guys are already still letting out a deep side, but please continue watching. You have the Upworks, the Fibers, the TopTiles, right? And most are told to start here. However, I am telling you that only if you are a complete beginner and you are from a third world country, then should you start here, learn here, and earn here? But you should never stay here. If you are located in the green, so in any of these first world countries, please forget about freelance platforms. They are simply not worth your time because of the opportunity cost. I would even argue that if you're located in the second world as well, in very nuanced cases, it would be worth it for you to start on a freelance platform. So most individuals in second world and everybody in first world stay away from freelance platforms when it comes to getting your first customer. Now, why do these freelance platforms generally work? Well, it has built in trust, built in payments and built in disputes. So clients generally feel safe on these platforms. They know you're real. Most of these require ID verification for you to even create a profile and they know their money is protected. Worst comes to worst, they can just, you know, work it out through the platform. So end all, it's really about trust. But the bad thing is that these platforms actually keep about 18% of the fee that you get. So that's why people don't make too much money from these freelance platforms. And the paradox is that everybody is competing on price. So this is the real problem. That's why it's a race to the bottom. That's why I said if you are not in a third world country, this is not sustainable because you will not be able to make enough money to cover your living expenses, right? only the top 000.1 will be able to make enough from these freelance platforms to be able to make a living in a first or second world country so it's a race to the bottom developers from low-cost countries bid let's say ten dollars an hour clients expect ten dollars per hour quality and you can't really compete on price the solution you need to compete on value you need to position yourself as a premium option show them why you're worth 10 times the cheapest bid so don't necessarily try to be the cheapest try to be the best But the clients who also go on these type of platforms are generally looking for the cheapest and not always the best. If you are going to use Upwork, the best way to really win is to niche down extremely hard. so let's say if you're going to be into web development don't be just a regular web developer be a shopify developer for fashion brands specificity is going to be your best friend here you'll be able to charge a lot more even though you might get fewer leads and the portfolio that actually proves it you need to show exactly what you've built for exactly who these individuals are relevance is going to beat way more than anything else that people do and your reviews are everything so always urge to have people to leave reviews do small jobs build five star reviews and then raise your rates from there Now let's get into the second method of outreach and that is LinkedIn outreach now Some of you might also already know this. This is pretty much the b2b goldmine, right? You have over 900 million professionals using LinkedIn Decision-makers are active there daily and this is where the real money is that it's also the number one b2b platform Now when it comes to LinkedIn your profile is pretty much your resume your portfolio and sales page all in one, okay your banner image that shows what you do featured section with your best work skills endorsed by real people and recommendations from past clients it's literally your digital resume outside of basically instagram and the way linkedin primarily works is through connection so the connection strategy and you try not to necessarily connect with everyone but rather you want to connect strategically so ideally your ideal clients founders ceos ctos of companies that you want to work with and you want to essentially acquire as clients You primarily want to connect with decision makers. So people with the budget and authority who can actually hire you directly and pay you for what you need to do. And you want to connect with referral partners. So any designers, marketers, agencies who would ideally work with your clients as well. And you guys can pass clients on to one another. And here, once again, the quality is significantly more important than the quantity. When it comes to LinkedIn. cold messaging is going to be your best friend and an anatomy of a cold message that gets response on LinkedIn is something very short and specific. Something along the lines of, hey, saw your post about a specific post that they mentioned, right? Leave an awful comment about it. I help target audience, so ICP, with specific problem. I just helped previous company achieve specific results. If you don't have that, just forget that. You can literally remove this part and just have, if I can help you do the same, would you be open to a brief chat? That is it. Simple and precise. never sell in the first message and never use templates blindly that you see online and when it comes to linkedin and in general outreach particularly the follow-up is the most important 80 of sales happen after the fifth contact and most people especially software engineers give up after one contact because they assume they got ghosted okay so You send out your initial email. Day three, friendly follow-up. Day seven, add value. Day 14, case study results. Day 30, breakup email. Okay? But honestly, this timeline is a little bit more, I should say, friendly. I would argue you can do this every two business days. You can send up a follow-up. And a perfect example of this is Paul, one of the founders from Code2CEO. literally got one of his first decent-sized clients at about ten thousand dollars plus one thousand dollar monthly retainer from sending a personalized call to outreach on linkedin so yes this stuff does work and he himself was even surprised that it worked next up content marketing now this is also some of you might be familiar with this you teach what you know you build authority you attract clients who already trust you before they ever contact you and the entire philosophy is well if you teach what you know that's the best way to prove that you know your stuff teach it publicly consistently to thousands and hundreds of thousands of people because teaching demonstrates expertise content works while you sleep attracts inbound leads and also you build your personal brand so generally people like to jump immediately on youtube kind of ironic you're watching this on youtube because video is the most powerful trust-building medium you can have tutorial videos project walkthroughs tech reviews behind the scenes stuff and keep in mind youtube is also the world's second biggest search engine so people will find you when they're looking for specific solutions that you are offering same exact way twitter nx for developers this is very popular in the indie dev community right building in public sharing your journey posting about what you're building lessons learned all this cool stuff and hopefully you get conversations in the dms and sell you can kind of guess from my tone of voice that i am not too fond of these methods however i have to list them because chances are you most likely are seeing them and you're thinking of doing them yourself my personal recommendation do not touch this nor this so anything in content marketing until you are already making a decent amount of money decent amount of money i would say in my personal opinion ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month then you can start doing these because it's just going to be a lot easier more on that later and example of this once again one of the founders inside code to ceo creating organic content getting leads from that next up cold email once again something that probably most of you are familiar with the most direct path to any decision maker no gatekeepers there's no algorithms it's just literally you and their inbox and hopefully you land in there and not in spam so it's all about finding the right targets your icp you can't just spray and pray you want to be more like a sniper and you can find these leads multiple places so LinkedIn sales navigator Apollo there's a plethora of tools like that Google Maps you can search your local area you can use AI agents to do deep research and find these and you can use company websites and industry directories now it's not just about finding the lead but it's also qualifying these leads such that when you're reaching out to them they actually fit in your ICP So you need to make sure of their company size, a clear pain that actually demands an immediate solution. You need to be reaching out to a decision maker such that they can actually, guess what, make a decision of buying from you. And also they need to have a clear problem that you can solve. And having targeted emails are significantly better than random emails. So 100 targeting emails is worth a lot more than just a thousand random emails that you sent out. And subject line matters the most when it comes to emails because 47 of emails are opened based on subject line alone. so spend 50 of your time on it here are a few examples of what great good and bad subject lines will look like a great subject line would be quick question about company names checkout flow a good one would be ideas to improve your size load time and about one would be web development services so as you could have probably guessed this is about web development if i'm offering web development as a service per se i know very basic example but stick with me here and i'm sending out a subject line these are the three ways i can frame it bad one would be web development services affordable rates this looks like a complete scam good one ideas to improve your site load time it's okay but it's a little too generalized whereas quick question about checkout flow meaning it's a lot more personalized and he knows or she knows whoever i'm reaching out to that i actually spend time to look at the checkout flow it's a little intriguing and the entire structure of the email itself after they've opened it needs to look something like this so context why you're reaching out to them an observation which shows that you did some type of research on them and it's not just a generic email value as to how you can help proof ideally for a quick credibility setup and then a cta a call to action a clear next step and you want to keep this entire thing under 100 words because busy people are skimming their emails they're not going to sit down and read each email line by line and obviously you can't write 100 completely custom emails a day i mean you can but it's just going to take you a long time But you can use tools to help personalize at scale when it comes to actually scaling. So you can use Apollo or similar tools for finding these contacts. Instantly AI or similar for sending these emails. Clay for, let's say, data enrichment. And Claude for creating custom first lines. The real balance here is in automating the process, not necessarily the human touch required to make an email good. And John, for example, is a prime example of a founder within Code2CEO who's managed to really scale cold emails to essentially over $1,000 a day such that he's able to break $100,000 a month in recurring revenue. Now, let's get to the fifth method, referrals. This is the highest converting, lowest cost client acquisition method to date. And a happy client referring you is worth literally 10 cold leads. there's four times higher conversion there's literally no acquisition cost and the trust is pretty much pre-built but the problem is the following 91 of clients say that they would give referrals and yet only 11 of sales people ask which means most likely than not your clients are happy they do want to help you but they're busy they won't think of you unless you ask them so just ask And the best way to ask is to have a referral system in place. You want to make the ask for referrals a habit, not necessarily an afterthought in what you do. So right after you deliver, ask when they're most excited about the actual results that you just delivered. And you want to be specific. So do you know anybody else who needs that specific service or product that you just fulfill for them? And then you want to make it easy. Provide email templates that they can simply forward to said individual. Every project should end with who else should I talk to, okay? and you want to make it easy the more friction you introduce the less people are going to be likely to actually refer others to you so remove all friction easier you make it more you're going to get email template write it out for them they just hit forward have a one link portfolio a simple url that sells your services or your products right and offer incentives such that they get commission or at least some type of maintenance or retainer based thing because the more you incentivize them the more likely they are to make you more profitable And that's pretty much the foundation of what you've already seen. At least I'm assuming you've seen. If you haven't, still, you know, recap for you. So five common methods that work. But here's the thing. Almost everybody knows these. Most software engineers, at least getting into this, use these or at least have heard of this. So now let's go where your competition actually isn't. And all of these ones are ones that I have personally done and gotten the results that I have gotten because of these methods. So the methods I'm about to show you. most developers haven't actually ever tried them and most never will that's your advantage while everybody else is fighting for scraps on upwork you're going to be having coffee with a business owner who's never even met a developer in person and you're going to be essentially the first that they need so let's talk about chamber of commerce in my opinion the most underrated client acquisition channel for local developers business owners budgets needs everything is in one room okay this is primarily for people in the united states however I know most European countries actually have a chamber of commerce as well. And in the US alone, there's over 4,000 chambers, and it's literally just a room for business owners to get together. And everybody's ready to buy. And every city also has one. So once again, over 4,000 in the US alone, every city, every town, and all business owners are gathered under one umbrella. There's regional, there's city-based, industry-specific, and even ethnic business chambers that you can go into. And of course, with these business chamber of commerce events, business owners gather there, obviously. And most of them are gonna have terrible websites, broken systems, and no technical knowledge whatsoever. Most of these are gonna be also local to your area. So plumbers, lawyers, dentists, retailers, healthcare people, everybody's pretty much local. And they're gonna have budgets. Maybe not all of them, but most of them. Because they aren't startups burning money, they're actual real business people making a living with their business. And they're gonna need help. Most will have outdated sites, no automation, a lot of manual processes, or they're just going to have ideas about expansion, anything of that sort that you can come in and help as a developer. And of course, they're going to trust a local face as opposed to a stranger or somebody remote from a completely different country. And trust me when I say this, you're going to be most likely the only developer in a room full of people who are going to need one. When I first joined the Chamber of Commerce here in LA, I was the only software engineer there. And the real goldmine when it comes to Chamber of Commerce is the member directory. When you join, you get access to the member directory. So names, companies, contact info. It's pretty much a pre-qualified lead list of who is in your chamber. So download the directory, fill it out by industry that you serve, research their websites, and reach out with very specific insights. Now, as for the events, because Chamber of Commerce also owns events. And this is where actual relationships form. So there's mainly networking events, after hours mixers, ribbon cuttings, and business expos. Your strategy is to go consistently. So if they see the same face, it's going to build trust. Ask questions, but don't pitch. And follow up within 48 hours of people. And of course, try to offer value first. You show up three times, you're going to be a regular. If you show up six times, you're going to be trusted. And if you're trusted, you are given opportunities to present. And a lot of the Chamber of Commerce... I'm going to ask you to become a member. They're going to have a membership. It's going to cost around $200 to $500 a year, maybe even cheaper. So one small project is literally going to pay for 10 years of membership. There's literally no reason why you shouldn't do this. You get so much in ROI. Now, when it comes to presenting, as we talked about before, offer to speak at these local Chamber of Commerce events. If you position yourself as a tech expert in your business community, in your local area, you will be swimming in money. So talk about easy topics, practical topics, trending topics, and really the result, because you are essentially the tech person that everybody's going to remember. And trust me, chambers are desperate for speakers, especially people who have very specific knowledge, let's say about AI and software as of right now, which all you software engineers watching are at least, at bare minimum, interested in. Next, local business groups. So beyond the chamber, there are dozens of local groups where business owners gather regularly. These can be service clubs, referral groups, and associations. So you might be already familiar with Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis. These are just based in the U.S. But these service clubs are basically networking gold mines. This guy is community service. Business owners, leaders, decision makers, all meetings weekly. And you can go up to them, make an introduction. They might even need your help and services and all that. And also with this come the BNIs, so Business Network International and other referral groups. And since these are referral groups, the key is referrals. so a bni for example business network international it's a one person per profession so there's no competition you have weekly meetings which hold you accountable and it's very referral focused and referrals are actually tracked the commitment it's just weekly attendance you have to bring in referrals for other people as well so it's not just people bringing referrals to you there's of course a membership fee and it's mainly for serious business owners pni members on average report twenty thousand dollars worth of referred business per year next up industry associations so every industry has associations real estate healthcare manufacturing join the ones that your ideal clients belong to for example if you build real estate websites national association of realtors if you serve healthcare practices local medical society these are hyper targeted and your exact ideal clients are here now we're getting into a little bit of Some nuanced territory, high-end hotels. So this is where business travelers, corporate meetings, decision makers are staying potentially overnight and they're all in one place. And businesses happen at hotels. So think about who stays at business hotels. You have sales reps, consultants, executives, entrepreneurs, people with budgets primarily need solutions. It can be a corporate traveler, conference attendee. It can be just a regular meeting space, relaxed environment, anything of that sort. When I go to any hotel, whenever I'm going to a city, I always get the best hotel, at least one of the top hotels. And I try to stay there. So be it Vegas, be it Tokyo, wherever I go. And what I do is called the sauna and hotel bar strategy. This is something that I just realized it works. And I've gotten so many clients from this as a software engineer. Every essentially morning, I go to the sauna, right? I enter the sauna and the spa and I meet people and I just talk. Who they are, what they do. make contact and in the evening i go down to the bar or the lounge area even though i don't drink i sit there i bring my laptop or i'll take out my phone and i simply just make conversation with either the same people that i saw previously at the summit earlier in the day or just new people that interest me and i listen and i go usually around sundays so i'm located here in la if i go to bel-air hotel for example or i go to the waldorf astoria sit down chill a little bit I meet a lot of business people walking in and out, make conversation, meet somebody. Let's say I even do this once a week for a year. Out of 52 weeks, if I meet even one person that turns into a six-figure deal, it is technically worth it for me. Next up, business centers and lounges. So many hotels have business centers or executive lounges. You can work from there, strike up conversations. But once again, main thing really is that high-value networking that you'll be getting. getting access to now the key point here is that basically what client acquisition is really becoming is a lifestyle type of thing it's a way of life you are consistently putting yourself in situations and environments where you are constantly surrounded by wealthy individuals and most likely your ideal customers You can understand how if you turn this into a lifestyle. So if you are going to go get coffee anyways, if you're going to go to these places anyways, if you're going to try to create new experiences anyways, this is just literally another way of doing it such that you can do already what you were going to do while at the same time benefiting in terms of client acquisition. Same thing with conference hotels, right? Especially where they're doing business events. So think of Dubai and Vegas where they're constantly doing conferences, right? And other events. You can go out there, hang in the common areas, look for the badges, right? VIP, regular attendee, whatever, and start making conversation. And Dom, actually, one of the other founders within Code to CEO, kind of did this where he was on a flight in going from Dallas to Sydney, and he ended up meeting a high net worth individual who ended up and he ended up selling him on a contract. So there you go. This stuff works. Next up. car shows and expos once again something unexpected but in my personal opinion one of the most essentially low-key gold mines that you can go into because car shows are where rich people are think about business owners so who owns classic cars exotic cars or show cars well people with a lot of disposable income most often than not business owners other entrepreneurs or decision makers at top tier companies and the best part about car shows is that it's a very low pressure environment and you can build genuine connections. So whether or not you're actually interested in cars, if you are, this is even better for you. If you're not, just like how I wasn't, I kind of learned to make it work. So your shared interest already breaks the ice because you can talk about the cars. There's no real sales pressure. Conversation flows naturally. And of course, you can build trust over time, especially if you guys keep going to the same car shows, right? You see the same type of individual there. and you can transition in conversations from hey what do you do i will software for you know their industry oh really we actually need that software and then exchange business cards you follow up you close the deal done this so many times already last count and frankly i have come to the conclusion that car shows are one of the best environments on the planet to be able to form these connections and actually meet very high net worth individuals and get the perfect clients because there is no real display of status meaning status is not as important from the perspective of somebody can be in a five million dollar hypercar and I can still go up to him talk with him in my let's say Toyota Camry because we both share the same passion for that car and he's not going to look at me a different way I'm not going to look at him a different way because we are talking about a common interest and we're both sort of like little kids excited about the big toys Next up, trade shows. So trade shows of all kinds, not just car shows, right? Any industry event where your ideal client is going to gather, home shows, boat shows, art fairs, food festivals, food and wine expos, home and garden shows, anything of that sort. You need to find out where your clients hang out and go there. And become a regular at these type of events. If you do this, once again, you are creating a lifestyle around this because you're going to want to have new experiences anyways. And if you already do some of this stuff, just do it consciously now. But if you set up your entire lifestyle around this type of a thing, because it's still a net positive for you, you're going to get a lot of new experiences. You're going to learn a lot of new things. You're going to make a lot more money. You're going to become just a better all-around, well-rounded individual. So the weekly car meets, you see the same people, your familiarity is going to grow with them. The monthly shows, you know, that consistency is going to build a lot of trust. And you're going to become, oh, he's that software engineer in the community or he's that tech guy or he's the AI guy. That's how I literally became the AI guy down here in Los Angeles. It's that I went to these shows so often. I went to these local business meetings so often. I essentially became a regular at everywhere that was happening in my city. And people know me as, oh, yeah, he's the software engineering guy, the AI guy that helps all the businesses with AI integrations. So that's who I became. Number 10, local conferences. So regional events with less competition than national conferences is way easier to stand out and also it's easier to connect. So a lot of people want to, let's say, speak at SXXW, TechCrunch, Web Summit, all this stuff. But honestly, I would just say skip them. Competition is way too fierce. But in local conferences, there is actually no competition. And in fact, they're begging for the speakers because the speakers they want to get are speaking at these other big places, right? So speak at local events. it's a way easier path because you can easily get speaking opportunities so pick a practical topic so something that business owners can see submit early call for speakers opens months ahead and then just show results any case studies testimonials and just plain data that would allow you to basically win if you speak once it's instant credibility if you speak regularly you do become the expert in your area once it's the same exact thing with me here in all the business stuff that's happening in my city i always go i always talk in the local event that's happening i always start speaking about ai and on that topic and remember just how previously with the cold email stuff follow-up is key here conferences are completely worthless to you without follow-up you want to collect business cards connect with them on linkedin within 24 hours shoot them a message and really reference your conversation and you need to schedule at least something in person or something a little bit more intimate within ideally a week or two weeks and have that 24 hour rule always there follow up fast or be forgotten number 11 once again little nuance but personally helped me a lot in my own life with regards to getting clients golf courses so for reference i don't know jack anything about golf i don't know how to play it but found out that golf has 18 holes and it takes four hours during that four hours there's a lot of conversation happening And you can't really replicate that in a 30-minute or a 45-minute onboarding meeting or like a sales call. It's a relaxed environment. There's no pressure. You get to see somebody's character, how they handle bad shots, stress, the heat, all that stuff. There's natural conversation flowing. And of course, post-round drinks where you can network more and just get to know other people. Once again, you don't play, still not a problem. You have a driving range and clubhouse alternatives that you can go to. I personally am not a golfer myself. And I didn't really need to be one to be able to network at golf courses and get a few clients. Now, I've only gotten two clients from golf in general. I've probably spent, let's say, I would say maybe 40 to 50 hours going golfing and going to these events. And in terms of money, I've probably made at least like a 20x ROI on my time for reference. So same exact thing with the tournaments and scrambles a lot of the cherry tournaments that are being held in the corporate scrambles These are all networking events this guy's that's golf So business owners supporting causes or just company teams decision makers are all going to be present at these and it's built-in networking tool for you to use Next up another really big one that has Essentially made me a significant amount of money as well gyms and fitness centers. So The 5 a.m. crowd, I never really understood it until I started doing it myself. And they're very serious about success. I can tell you that much. Early morning networking. This is a legit thing. So the 5 a.m. people at gyms are mostly business owners, executives, or any other serious professionals. So people who prioritize discipline and success. And if it's not 5 a.m., it's essentially the earliest time that your gym will open up. And I see the same faces daily. You know, we all have this, you know, casual conversations and we have a shared commitment, sort of like, oh, yeah, we both work up early and we're going and doing this thing. And for me, what really changed things for me was going to a more premium gym. So I used to go to 24 hour fitness here in my area. I switched over to Crunch, a few other things. I tried that and then I ended up landing on Equinox. Now, not going to lie, Equinox isn't necessarily the best. Frankly, it's a little bit of a rip off if I'm only considering. fitness equipment however what does make it worth it is the networking because members have disposable income if they're paying over 200 on a monthly gym membership guess what they're most likely my ideal clients because they are business owners right so i highly recommend every single software engineer watching this go out and go to a premium gym country clubs so very similar to golf but this is exclusively for networking and pretty much everybody really knows this everybody who goes here rarely goes for what it's actually built for and they just go for networking membership is very steep sometimes so it can cost from like 50 uppers to i put 50k here but i've seen someone's here in la that can go upwards of like a couple hundred thousand dollars plus monthly dues it's expensive but of course you get what you pay for You get one client from here, it could potentially pay for multiple years of membership. So you can set up an initiation, monthly dues. So even a 120K project can cover a decent amount of ROI from that perspective. And then amenities wise, you can use the club facilities for meetings. So dining, bar, lounge, business center. It's essentially these country clubs are basically business clubs with golf attached. You have best of both worlds here. I highly recommend all software engineers if you have one in your area. At least do it once a month. Trust me, you'll make an ROI on it. Okay, guys. So we're almost there. We already covered 13 methods, the common ones, the low-key ones. And now we're going to get to the ones that most developers will never try. These are also some of the ones that got me a significant amount of results. So let's get into the advanced tactics. Once again, these are out of the box. These are the creative approaches that I call it. These are the things that really separate the top 1% from everybody else. They require more effort. They are more creative. but they also have less competition and high rewards so first and foremost strategic partnerships it's kind of as the name suggests partner with businesses that serve your ideal clients they need what you offer you need their clients so think of the verticals of what you're helping solve right if i'm helping a law firm right with let's say ai automations in their business i'll take a look at what other businesses that serve law firms are and i'll partner with them to refer me to other law firms Productized services is another one. You want to package your services into fixed price, fixed scope offerings. You want to remove the friction and you want to make buying extremely easy. This is an extremely important one that skyrocketed client acquisition for me because instead of kind of getting a custom quote for every single project, I got to create packages and clients knew exactly what they were going to get and what costs. And I have myself split this up and do it yourself, done with you, and then done for you. so now we are extremely specific on done for you that's what we primarily do but i sort of started off from the very bottom and then got to dfy's done for use and then it's the workshop strategy 16. so teach in-person workshops this is one of my favorite ways of doing it position yourself as a local expert and get paid to basically generate leads i used to run ads on facebook towards an in-person webinar that i would hold in my city to kind of make myself to be the expert in what i was teaching at the time it was basically talking about ai in businesses it was a free workshop i would teach something extremely valuable and specific business owners would come and some will need more help than you can give in two hours that's when you kind of make the call to action and they start working with you a lot of times you could even partner with local venues so libraries co-working spaces specific colleges for you to come in and talk and they'll even give you the space as well as a promotion sometimes even financial incentive to come in and actually talk and do these workshops case studies as well so document wins to attract similar clients detailed case studies are your best sales tools but not in the general or testimonial way you might think so don't just say i built a website show that before the process the results and the roi the problem what the individual faced the solution what you specifically built the process how you did it and the results and you put all that into a webinar funnel So use the webinar to generate leads. You promote the webinar. So it can be, you know, through social media, through email, through other partners. You teach valuable content, build trust through expertise, and then you offer a paid service at the very end that will have about 15 to 25% conversion in just typical sense. One webinar can literally generate three to six months of client work. Now, speaking of webinars, I'm going to do a shameless plug here. I'm actually doing one on ideation on February 22nd. So if this video is about premise client acquisition, I'm going to be talking about how to ideate. So how to find something and offer to even offer for the specific clients that you're going to get. So if you have had difficulty with either having way too many ideas, not knowing which one to do or not having any ideas at all, the workshop on February 22nd will answer all your questions. And I'm going to do a live Q&A at the very end. So you can even come in with a pre-existing idea and validate it with me live. So if you want to join that, click the first link in the description below. There's only limited seats. So make sure you sign up quickly because the seats are going to fill up. very quickly let's move on the entire point of the webinar and live workshop right the free training builds trust for people webinars work because of reciprocity rule you gave value so people feel obliged to kind of give you value you have the authority you demonstrated a lot of expertise and you also have the trust because they see you live so you haven't edited anything you're not doing anything behind the scenes and the formula is 60 teaching 20 case study and then 20 on the offer this is generally how i like to run it of course follow-ups as well you always want to email sequence to the non-buyers remember the follow-up is literally existed in every single client acquisition method that's for a specific reason always follow up no matter what method you are doing minimum five follow-ups i personally recommend following up until you explicitly get hey leave me the hell alone but despite covering all these methods none of this is going to matter if you do not put in the work consistency beats intensity every single time okay one massive push most likely won't get you too many clients if any at all but daily small actions will even 30 minutes every single day beats five hours once a month so if you do the math 30 minutes a day over the course of 30 days that's 15 hours a month consistency is going to build your momentum so i want you to pick three of these methods and master them maybe one from the common one from the not so common and then one from the creative right pick three methods do them daily for 90 days bare minimum and then master them before trying to add on any more of the other methods if you do three methods for 90 days you're going to become a master at what you do and you are going to get clients some of the lifestyle ones such as hotels and all these things you can incorporate it into your daily day-to-day life i highly recommend it trust me you're going to spend less than 100 hours a week on each of these staying at these hotels right going to the sauna playing golf But the ROI is so crazy because even if you just get one client from them, it's going to be worth it to you. And trust me that one client can literally be a very big differentiator in where you end up in life. And of course, you want to track your numbers. What gets measured gets managed. So track your outreach, track your responses, track your meetings, your proposals, your closes. If you do not track them, you're not going to know what to improve because you're not going to have a feedback loop. You need a feedback loop to be able to iterate and improve for the next time such that you increase your KPIs. So this means your response rate, your meeting rate, as well as your close rates. And understand that your first client is going to be the hardest. OK, it's going to take the most effort. It's going to require the most outreach and it's going to feel like pushing a boulder uphill. But if you can prove to yourself that you can do it, it's going to become so much easier. Your confidence is going to increase. Referrals are going to start coming in. Your portfolio is going to keep going. And each client is going to become easier and easier to get. Client 1 is hardest. Client 5 is easier, of course. And client 10 comes to you. So momentum is going to build over time. So I want you to start today and not tomorrow because the perfect time does not exist. The best method is the one you'll actually do. So even if you're going to start messy, start messy. start small but just start please pick one method once again do it today do it again tomorrow get to the three and once you master those continue adding it on so now you pretty much have no excuses we covered 17 methods common ones uncommon ones creative ones every possible way to land the client obviously i didn't get into ads or anything of that sort because this is more so tailored for a beginner right and by a beginner i mean Not necessarily from the perspective of software engineer, but a beginner to business. So if you're a senior level engineer, this is exactly for you. I'm not going to get into ads. That's for a future breakdown, but that's a little bit more advanced. I don't recommend beginners getting into that. So you can't say, I don't know how. Now you do. You can't say, I've tried everything. You definitely haven't tried some of the stuff I mentioned. And you can't say there's no opportunity because it's literally everywhere as you saw with the proof that in your face. So go get your first client. Stop watching this. Start doing. Your next client is out there. Please go out and find them. The only thing standing between you and that client is action. So hopefully you enjoyed this video. I had a phenomenal time making it. As always, thank you so much for watching. And don't forget to sign up for the masterclass, the live workshop, whatever you want to call it on February 22nd on ideation. As always, have a good one.

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2:38 — Freelance Platforms (Upwork/Fiverr/Toptal)

5:37 — LinkedIn Outreach (DMs + follow-ups)

8:23 — Content Marketing (YouTube/X, authority)

10:06 — Cold Email (targeted + short)

13:27 — Referrals (systemize asking)

15:48 — Chamber of Commerce (member directory + events)

19:17 — Local Business Groups (Rotary/BNI/referral clubs)

20:24 — Industry Associations (join your clients’ groups)

20:44 — High-End Hotels (sauna/bar/lounges networking)

23:58 — Trade Shows & Expos (incl. car shows)

27:11 — Local Conferences (speak + fast follow-up)

28:47 — Golf Courses (4-hour relationship building)

30:18 — Premium Gyms & Country Clubs (high-ROI networking)

33:11 — Strategic Partnerships (with adjacent providers)

33:34 — Productized Services (fixed scope/price packages)

34:11 — In-Person Workshops (teach locally → leads)

35:02 — Case Studies + Webinar Funnel (document wins → sell)

If you’re new to the channel, welcome! I’m Bgo - ex NASA and Fortune 500 developer who walked away from it all to build my own 7-figure firm—without funding, luck, or virality. I used a repeatable system to turn my skills into income, and now I help mid-to-senior engineers do the same—building $25k–$50k/month client businesses without wasting time on another failed side project.

I want every software engineer to know they can do more than just code—they can lead, innovate, and change the world. 

We as software engineers are the next bastion of humanity - how we approach the upcoming advancements in technology will determine the course of humanity for the next few centuries.
More about me: https://bgo.codetoceo.com/