Four Ways to Get New Work
You don’t have to pitch directly (or even know exactly what you’re selling!) to get new work.
There are other ways to approach marketing, sales, and “putting yourself out there”.
The key is figuring out what works for your energy/resources, market, and season of growth.
Here are four approaches to get you started.
Put Yourself in the Room
This approach is about being intentional with the environments you put yourself in.
It can be about putting yourself in the literal room (a conference, a trade show, a gallery opening…), or any other contained, communal space.
Rooms are most effective when they’re gathered around a well-defined purpose or market. Instagram is a room, sure, but it’s a damn wide one. And wide rooms are noisy. A conference for financial planners is a more defined room. A marketing workshop for financial planners is more defined still.
The type of room will shape the opportunities available and the speed with which they’ll come together (tighter-knit, high-trust environments tend to move faster).
Examples:
Advertising at or sponsoring events (this is why fast food companies advertise at a baseball game—they want to “be in the room” with you when you’re feeling good and having fun, so you associate their brand with that feeling!)
Attending events
Speaking at events
Being repped by a gallery/shop
Being listed in an online directory
Joining and contributing to an online community
Being a guest on a podcast
Being featured in a magazine
Engaging on social media
This approach works well when you have a general sense of what you want or there’s a rough direction you’re curious to explore (i.e. “I wonder if our booking software would be great for therapists, let’s attend/sponsor one of their conferences so we get to talk to a lot of therapists and find out!”).
The goal here is getting in front of the right people.
How can you make yourself visible and be in someone’s line of sight?.
Invite the Work You Want
What work do you want more of?
Make sure that’s clearly outlined on your website or social media, and easy to articulate in conversations with peers (i.e. I do this kind of work for these kind of people!).
Think about creating some sort of “menu” people can browse and sample. Have a portfolio of your work on your website, social media profile, or elsewhere (of writing samples, art commissions, speaking gigs, custom design work, customer use cases, etc.).
The idea here is to spark engagement by giving people an idea of what you can do with/for them. Sometimes we don’t know what we want or need until we’re shown what’s possible.
Examples:
List examples of topics/questions you love to address with clients (this is great for service providers such as therapists, naturopaths, chiropractors, business coaches, financial planners, etc.)
Create a series of use cases or case studies (great for consultants, physical products, and software)
Use Instagram as a portfolio of project examples
Have a catalog of past projects/clients on your website
Share in your newsletter, on social media, or in a peer group, “I’ve been doing commissions and loving it. I want more of that kind of work, do you know anyone I should be talking to?”
Link your services, products, or an invitation to book a studio visit at the end of every newsletter
This approach works best when you know what kind of work you want. “I know I want to work on more custom hospitality projects, let me put a page on my website showing examples of the last few projects we did.”
The more specific you are, the easier it is for the right people to understand what you do. Instead of saying I design websites, say “I’ve been designing websites for local retail shops, know anyone I should work with?”
With this approach, you’re sending out signals and opening pathways for the right people to travel toward you.
Seek Connectors
Who are the people that can get you work?
The interior designer that can vouch for you to their residential clients. The graphic designer who loves recommending your copywriting services to her clients. The wholesale account that could get you in front of an entirely new audience.
Look for the one person who could connect you to many.
Who are the people that can advocate for you? Who’s network can you plug into?
Examples:
Connect with people who do something similar to you or who do what you want to be doing. Ask them questions and see if there are opportunities for casual/formal partnership (i.e. they pass you freelance writing gigs when they’re at capacity)
Build mutually beneficial relationships with business owners in complementary/adjacent fields. A marketing consultant who can recommend you as an accountant, a web designer who can recommend you as copywriter, etc.
Get a wholesale account or distributor
Hire a sales rep
Sign on with a talent manager
Try influencer marketing or hire someone to be a paid educator for your brand
This approach works best for those with well-defined products and services. It can also work for those with a general direction they’d like to explore (i.e. freelance writing or art direction in a certain field).
With this approach, you’re plugging into the right people and leveraging the trust they have with their audience.
Approach and Ask
Here is your direct, traditional sales approach.
Approach the people/companies you want to work with and ask them for what you want.
Want to write a column for that magazine? Pitch them. Send them samples. Want to redesign that founders website? Email them. Want your furniture to be in the lobby of that hotel? Let them know.
The point here is that you are directly moving toward something, rather than waiting for it to move toward you.
Examples:
Emailing a local shop you love and asking if they’ve considered hiring part-time marketing help, and inviting a future conversation
Pitching a column for a brand or publication you love, i.e. “Here’s what I want to do for you and here’s why I think it’ll help your audience and further your business goals”
Let someone know you want to work with them, i.e. “I do this kind of work and you’re exactly the kind of person/business I work with. Here are a few examples of similar projects for similar companies, and the impact it had on their business.” (Great for coaches, consultants, and service providers)
Similarly, let someone know about your service and ask them to keep you in mind for future projects. A custom furniture maker could approach architecture firms they’d like to collaborate with and say, “We design and fabricate furniture for high-end restaurants, please keep us in mind for future projects.”
When pitching, especially cold pitching, remember that your job is to help someone, not ask someone to help you by hiring you. You’re here to make their job easier, better, or more delightful, and your pitch should reflect that.
This approach generally works best for those who know exactly what they’re pitching. It can also work for those who know they’re interested in a partnership with a specific person/company and are open to shaping the specifics of that partnership together.
This is a very active, specific approach.
You’re moving toward what you want.
Final Thoughts
With all four approaches, you can see we’re simply playing with direction, focus, and energy:
Moving toward what we want vs inviting what we want toward us
Being direct vs indirect
Applying wide vs narrow lenses
Different approaches honour different preferences, personalities, and energetics. The energetics of “turning your light on” and being in someone’s line of sight is quite different from knocking on someone’s door and introducing yourself.
These four approaches are also by no means mutually exclusive. They can be mixed and matched, combined and layered. For example, rather than approach and ask the magazine directly, you might ask a mutual connection to introduce you to the editor.
To uncover what works for you, reflect on what’s worked for you in the past (even if that’s with traditional job searching) and/or notice which one of these approaches gives you an idea you trust yourself to act on.
Starting where there’s a felt sense of openness or momentum is helpful. “Oh, I can do that!” or, “Yes! That reminds me of… !”.
And if you need to drum up cash quickly, start with the idea you trust yourself to act on today.
If nothing else, know that sales doesn’t mean asking someone for money the first time you meet them.
It’s about connections, weaving a meaningful web for yourself, and opening up pathways for mutual exchange.
Take these broad categories as an invitation to design something that truly fits you.
Further resources:
When writing this, I was reminded of the concept of weak ties
If you’re interested in the psychology of social networks, Marissa King’s book Social Chemistry looks at three types of social networks (expansionists, brokers, and conveners)
And if you’d like to work through this together, book an Office Hours session with me
