100% referrals. 0% marketing.
I’ve just reviewed my freelance business for 2025 and 2026. I’ve reached a milestone.
Every dollar I made came from prior relationships. None of it came from outbound marketing or cold leads.
Here’s where my clients came from.
- Recommended by former client (3).
- Recommended by hybrid publisher (2).
- Former colleague (2).
- Recommended by former client and former colleagues.
- Referred by agency after pitch (3).
- Referred by agency who reached out with no pitch needed.
- Recommended by a contact.
- Saw me on a free presentation to an author group.
I do no outbound email marketing and no advertising. I do effectively no public speaking. I buy no advertising.
I write on this blog and share what I post on LinkedIn. I try to make sure all of the posts are helpful to authors. There is no hard sell in anything I do.
I’m comfortably busy and well compensated doing work I like without marketing effort. How is this possible?
Easy. Just be relentlessly helpful and smart for more than a decade.
I was an analyst for 20 years. During that time I met many people in media and marketing businesses. I was highly visible and always helpful. My colleagues at Forrester respected me, and over time, that amounted to thousands of people. Because Forrester was full of smart people, those folks ended up spread out broadly throughout industry and the world.
Since 2015, I have been an independent freelancer. During that time I developed the following principles.
- Leave every client happy. Put in extra work to help clients make smart decisions, even when it doesn’t pay extra.
- Do free discovery calls with any credible prospect. Focus first on helping them. If they need something I charge for, great, if not, send them to people who can help them.
- Be relentlessly collegial with agencies, publishers, other freelancers who don’t compete with me, and other freelancers who do what I do (coaching, editing, ghostwriting). Give everybody a hand whenever possible.
- Constantly learn. Keep my knowledge up to date.
- Post useful content every weekday.
The first three principles spread my reputation and word-of-mouth. If you’re going need my help, there’s a good chance that when you ask someone, they’ll recommend me. I’ve had cases where people who became clients asked several of their contacts, and all of them recommended me.
The last two principles keep me top of mind. Why does some guy I worked with ten years ago think of me? Because he’s connected with me on LinkedIn and sees that I’m posting about writing and publishing. This makes it a lot more likely that someone seeking help with a nonfiction book is going to hear, from their friend, “Josh Bernoff does that.” They remember that I do that because of all those blog posts.
I also maintain a professional web site and LinkedIn profile. This means that when a prospect who doesn’t know me looks me up, I look like the kind of person who can help them. (If you’re doing this kind of work and you don’t have a web site, who knows how many potential leads aren’t even getting through to you.)
As a result of all of this, I get leads. Not a whole lot of them — dozens every year, not hundreds. But they’re qualified leads. More than half end up being clients. They know who I am. They know what I do. They know my clients are happy with my work. And they can pay. People referred by former clients and colleagues are not looking for somebody cheap and new. They want to pay well for somebody excellent and experienced.
One more thing. During less busy times, I make less money. I don’t need to generate cash every week to survive. That keeps me happy with this word-of-mouth pipeline, for the most part. If it gets too lean, I’ll poke my agency and publisher friends and something will appear.
Can you do this?
No. You’re not me. You’re probably going to have to ramp up some kind of marketing, or rattle your network until something appears.
Sometimes people ask me how to get started as an editor or ghostwriter. I have no useful advice. Basically, I’d say, find somebody who needs what you do and do great work for them. Form relationships with publishers and agencies. Then be so awesome that clients can’t live without you.
Very few freelancers can start with a network like mine and then put a decade into delivering excellent work. So this is not a how-to for most of you.
But I still believe that doing great work for clients willing to talk about it will get you noticed.
So will posting regular advice based on your intelligence and experience.
I only know it worked for me. And this beats sitting around by the pool feeling useless.
This particular post is resonating with me as my company’s revenue only comes from referrals. The operational similarity between you and me is that once we meet someone worthy of a relationship, we maintain the relationship and look to grow it by being helpful. My approach is 1:1 meetings and small gatherings of professional friends that are both insightful and fun. The latter two adjectives can also describe your daily posts.
To me, the key is the prioritization of objectives. My objective is to help authentic leaders achieve breakthrough results. And that is what my consulting firm is geared to do. However, most people start freelance or other business with top objectives of either getting rich or famous (or both). When that is the case, people look for shortcuts (hacks) to achieve those objectives fast and they ask you and me about our “techniques”.
But, similarly to you, I am neither rich nor famous. But I am mighty helpful to ALL clients we have ever served and EVERY employee or contractor we ever hired. Most years we manage to make money. But not every year.
The bottom line is that I fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow, because I have no remorse or regret.
So, my only caveat to your post is that you covered the HOW pretty well. But I would focus on the WHY. When people ask me how to build a business like mine, I say that they need to start with Genuine Care about their customers’ and their employees’ success. The specifics of the operational model are secondary.
Hope this is helpful.