How to find clients as a solo marketer comes down to working backward from where clients already came from: track every paying customer to the first conversation that produced them, then put your hours into the one or two channels that keep showing up. For Andy Milligan, that exercise showed one channel produced the overwhelming majority of his first full year of revenue, and it was not cold outreach.
Andy was laid off from his first marketing job on February 1, 2024. "That next day, I had no idea what to do," he says. One full year later, he had run his own business to $195,000 in topline revenue from 17 paying customers. This article walks through exactly where those clients came from, how he would choose channels if he started over, and what you can do this week to find clients of your own.
If you are still chasing the very first one, start with how to get your first client, then come back here to build a system that keeps finding the next ones.
"This is what happens when you go first and you don't show up with your hand out asking for favors." Andy Milligan
How to find clients: start with where they actually came from
Most freelancers guess at their best lead source. Andy did the opposite. He used AI to read every bank statement from his first full year and attribute each project back to where it started (1:02). The numbers he reported:
- $195,000 in topline revenue, against a starting goal of $100,000
- 17 paying customers
- 88% net margin on a lean contractor model, before taxes
- About $3,000 spent on networking and ad spend for podcast production, roughly 1.7% of revenue collected
Then he broke revenue down by source:
- $154,000 came from his podcast, Marketing by Design, either from people he interviewed directly or from people one degree removed from a guest (2:06)
- $9,000 came from direct referrals that did not trace back to a guest
- A little over $30,000 came from small monthly retainers and hourly work
He also found that 94% of his referral revenue that year came through podcast guests. "And I never pitched them," he says. "I literally showed up, built a relationship."
The lesson is not that every marketer should start a podcast. It is that you cannot decide where to spend your time until you know where clients actually come from. Andy says the retroactive tracking took him a long time. His advice now is to tag where you first met every contact in your CRM from day one.
Why relationships beat volume for a freelance marketer
Andy describes a habit he sees across solo marketers: random acts of marketing. A post here, a cold email there, nothing tracked. His numbers point to a different model, where a small number of trusted relationships produce most of the revenue.
Outside research supports that model. In a March 2026 study of 1,202 U.S. business decision-makers by SurveyMonkey and Reddit, 73% said peer recommendations were their most trusted source when evaluating vendors, ahead of vendor websites at 55%. And in a June 2025 Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers, 73% said they actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.
Andy's data showed the same pattern from the inside. Every referral from a podcast guest was worth almost two to three times a referral from anywhere else, and far more than his inbound or hourly work. His explanation: "Trust arrives preloaded and better fit clients end up staying longer because they already trust you."
The competition for that trust is real. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 11.9 million independent contractors in its latest contingent worker survey, 7.4% of total employment. A referral from someone a buyer already trusts is how you stand out from that crowd.
How to get marketing clients through referral partners
Andy's niche was Webflow websites for healthcare companies. His best referral partners were not prospects. They were agency owners and consultants who served the same clients in a different way, such as social media, Google Ads, or marketing consulting, but did not build websites.
Here is the podcast playbook he used to turn those people into referral partners (5:12):
- Invite them on as the star. Make the episode about their expertise, not yours.
- Actually listen. Have a real conversation and use it to show you think clearly about your space. Do not pitch.
- Promote them. Give them assets they would otherwise pay an agency for. Andy's team provides clips, thumbnails, and a fully edited episode.
- Follow up and name drop subtly. By this point they already know what you do. Reinforce it in a follow-up email and ask for a testimonial if the timing is right.
- Nurture the relationship. Check in, comment on their LinkedIn posts, and stay present.
The returns were concentrated. Andy says one guest's referrals accounted for $60,000 in revenue, a second guest's for $21,000, a third's for $15,000, and three more guests combined for $58,000. "It takes treating referral partners and building relationships like an actual sales pipeline and making sure that is something that you check in on every day," he says.
He also shared one chain of introductions from Columbus. At a small local event, he met a product designer who was not an ideal client. That designer introduced him to a friend who founded a Medicare startup in Westerville, Ohio.
Both became podcast guests, the founder later signed a smaller project, and the founder then referred Andy to his largest account. "If I hadn't gone to that small event in Columbus," Andy says, none of it would have happened.
For a deeper walk through this channel, see Andy's guide to using a podcast for business and his Dream 100 approach to building a guest list of ideal partners.
How to get clients as a freelancer: choose two or three channels
You do not need Andy's exact mix. You need a short list of channels you will actually work every week. Use these three questions to choose:
- Who already serves your ideal client in a different way? Those businesses are your referral partners. List ten of them.
- What format lets you give value first? Andy used a podcast because he genuinely enjoyed it. "Podcasting never felt like sales calls to me," he says. For you it might be a newsletter, a workshop, or a local event.
- Can you track it? If you cannot trace a client back to the channel, you cannot decide whether to keep doing it.
Then pick two or three channels and commit to them for a quarter. If one of them is in-person, start with the networking groups in Columbus, Ohio that match where your clients work. If you need a dependable daily channel while relationships compound, pair it with how to find freelance clients through warm leads first.
The risks Andy found when he ran the numbers
Tracking revenue by source also exposed problems Andy says he would fix sooner (10:25):
- Client concentration. 31% of the year came from one large client. Andy calls this key man risk and recommends keeping any single client below 15% of revenue once you can.
- Time cost. "The cash was small, the time was not," he says. Building the show, editing, scheduling, and coordinating took real hours before he had a team.
His advice on large clients early on is practical: do not turn down a big project from one lead source, but start diversifying as soon as you can.
What to do this week
Andy closes with four takeaways (11:26). Here they are as a one-week plan:
- Give people a platform. Invite one potential referral partner to a conversation where they are the star, whether that is a podcast, a newsletter feature, or a coffee.
- Invite your happiest clients in. Ask one satisfied client to share their story publicly. It becomes a live testimonial. See how to collect client testimonials you already have.
- Attribute every lead from day one. Add a "where we met" field to your CRM today and fill it in for every current client.
- Reinforce referrals. Tell anyone who referred work what happened and thank them. "What gets rewarded gets further incentivized," Andy says. For the conversation itself, see how to ask for referrals.
Where the Columbus marketing community fits
Columbus Marketing Organization is a peer community for marketers, freelancers, and service providers in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Andy Milligan. Members share leads, introductions, and job opportunities, including the weekly Columbus Marketing Jobs newsletter.
Andy's own story started at a local event, and his best clients came from people one or two introductions away. A community is one of the most reliable places to meet the referral partners who serve your ideal clients.
Start finding clients from the right places
Learning how to find clients comes down to tracking where they already come from and doubling down on the relationships behind them. Andy's first full year produced $195,000, and most of it traced back to people he helped first without pitching. Pick your two or three channels, start tracking today, and invest in the people who serve your clients.
Come meet those people in person at an upcoming Columbus marketing event, or join the Columbus Marketing Organization community on Skool.
This is what happens when you go first and you don't show up with your hand out asking for favors.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best way to find clients as a freelance marketer?
Start by tracking where your current clients came from, then double down on the channels that keep appearing. For Andy Milligan, 94% of first-year referral revenue came through podcast guests he never pitched. Relationships with people who serve your ideal clients in a different way are often the strongest source.
How many channels should a solo marketer use to find clients?
Pick two or three channels you will actually work every week and commit to them for a quarter. Choose ones that let you give value first and that you can track back to revenue. Andy's first year was concentrated in one channel he controlled, his podcast, supported by direct referrals and small retainers.
Do I need a podcast to get marketing clients?
No. A podcast worked for Andy because he enjoyed it and it gave him a reason to build relationships with referral partners. Any format that lets you feature others and give value first can work, such as a newsletter, a workshop series, or regular local events with the people who serve your clients.
How much of my revenue should come from one client?
Andy recommends keeping any single client below 15% of revenue once you can. In his first full year, one large client accounted for 31% of revenue, which he calls key man risk. Early on, he still advises taking large projects while you work to diversify your client base.
Read the video transcript
Kind: captions Language: en On February 1st of 2024, I was laid off from my first ever marketing job. The rest of that year, I had no idea what I was doing. I remember being laid off in a single floor plan, 65 plus people, and walking around to everyone crying, getting phone numbers and everything. That next day, I had no idea what to do. I didn't know whether I should look for a job. I didn't know what next steps to take. And it turns out, fast forward one full year, I ended up making just under $200,000 as a 23-year-old and my first full year as a marketing solo business owner. I only had one real full-time job in marketing, and I didn't really know what I was doing. Luckily enough, I had my head on straight enough to where I had this instinct to do business development. Now, I know a lot of us are probably doing these random acts of marketing. And especially as marketers, we have this tendency to be the cobbler with no shoes. Getting leads has always been traditionally a struggle for a lot of independents and solos that I talk to. So, in this video, I want to help you overcome any self-limiting beliefs you have when it comes to business development and share with you every single place I got leads in my first full year when I really had no idea what I was doing and what I would do differently if I were doing it again. So, this is every single place that I got leads when I made $195,000 in my first full year as a freelance marketer. B. Before we get into it, I want to do a highle revenue breakdown. I used AI. I was all my bank statements to help me break this down and do significant lead attribution to see where all of our projects came from. But again, topline revenue was $195,000. um 17 paying customers overall, which is a pretty good LTB, which stands for lifetime value, which you'll learn more about. 88% margin, net margin on a lean contractor model. This does not account for taxes, which if you are an independent marketer and you're doing taxes, stick around because you will need to learn more about that. And I initially set out the goal with $100,000 and I almost doubled that my first full year. So, how did I do it? And this is the exact hourly breakdown of where my leads came from. So, as you can see in this handy dandy little chart here, this big red box is probably going to overcome a lot of your own self-limiting beliefs about podcasting and your own business development. But spoiler alert, $154,000 of that 195K can be attributed back to my podcast. I've been hosting episodes weekly and even two times a week of marketing by design and eventually my podcast reached a place where it was a lot easier to get people to come on it than to where it was actually a status symbol for people to come on your podcast. And the most important part and if I can be self-aware on why I made this work so well is because I actually enjoyed it. Podcasting never felt like sales calls to me. It felt like the one true time of day when I could really study, learn, and enjoy the part of the business that I got to do. And as you guys can see, 154,000 either comes from people who I interviewed on that podcast directly or one degree removed, meaning these are people who serve your clients in a different way. So, we were niched into web flow for healthcare. So I would interview a lot of other agency owners in tangential spaces who served customers whether it was through social media, marketing consultants, Google ads, other marketing services, but did not do web. And I did not hard pitch. I literally showed up build a relationship and was there at the time of need when this arises. 9,000 came as direct referrals, not from guests. And a little over 30,000 and change came from small monthly retainers and hourly work that I did in my first year. Again, the big thing I want to get through to you guys, 94% of the 2025 referral revenue came through podcast guests. And I never pitched them. I literally showed up, built a relationship. I was careful about who I curated on the show. This is the biggest BS about referrals that I hear a lot of people talk about is that while they are not inherently predictable the same way paid ads attribution and other marketing channels for other paid channels might be. You can be intentional about how you curate your efforts to get more of these opportunities. Every single day I post an hour plus long video on my YouTube channel showing you guys what I do each day for business development and how to curate this. It takes taking it seriously. It takes treating referral partners and building relationships like an actual sales pipeline and making sure that is something that you check in on every day. To get more into the weeds without revealing any actual client information, guest number one, kind of our whale client, accounted for $60,000 in revenue. Guest number two was a finance and an HR leader, $21,000 from referrals from them. Guest number three was a research marketer, 15K, and guest four to six combined was 58,000. So again, these were all people who served our potential clients in a different way and we were the obvious choice for them and we were also top of mind when it came to the website of their business, which is what we were well positioned to do. Having a podcast from me and I'll run through this simple playbook here for you. It's really an excuse and it's an accountability mechanism to show up, build trust, and make relationships with people who can curate those referrals for you. We start by inviting them on the show and making it something to where they genuinely feel like the star of the show. In in the heyday of 2025, I was recording upwards of three podcasts a week and we eventually ran into the second problem which was getting into a backlog in terms of you know uh content production which is something that you want to avoid. But we were releasing two to three podcasts a week recording and really cranking through that. We ended up releasing 60ome podcasts over the year which is more than one per week. then you actually listen. You have a real conversation with them. You don't pitch and it's also an opportunity to just bounce ideas off of each other and show to this person you're coherent and you have good ideas in your space. Then you promote. So you give them assets that they would have previously had to pay an agency for. We used to give our guests multiple clips. We still do thumbnails and a full highly edited episode that I personally pay for. Then at the end and the follow-up, you subtly name drop and by this point they already know what you do. You reinforce what you do in a follow-up email, ask for a testimonial if the if the timing presents itself, and you nurture the relationship over time by checking in, commenting on their LinkedIn post, etc. Signs of progress, how you know this is working for you. These are two real screenshots from people who were podcast guests that were sent and back and forth. These people became my friends. Um, this one right here, shared I tagged so you could see it. We do some work with healthcare brands. If there's a way I can help you, maybe to send you leads for web development for companies that don't fit our budget range. 80K plus. And this one is another text message. Again, texting. When you text someone, pretty clear sign that you're friends. Got you a 10K client. Confirmed budget. Confirmed web flow. Got you entire call recording where we go over everything. This is what happens when you go first and you don't show up with your hand out asking for favors. I have a one really cool story where I didn't want to disclose these names, but I had to share this short version of how it happened. I ended up attending event here in Columbus and I met a product designer. Let's call him Josiah. I met Josiah at this event. I became friends with him at the event. He's a product designer, not really our ideal customer prototype, but he introduced me to one of his friends that he knew from church named, let's call him Matias. Matias is someone that I really hit it off with, became close friends with. He was a founder of a Medicare startup here in Westerville, Ohio. And I went to his office, met a lot of his people, became great friends. They didn't end up becoming customers until about 6 months later on into the year. And if you haven't caught the gist of this, both of these people ended up becoming podcast guests. So, Matias, the healthcare scient, like I said, ended up signing for a smaller project uh later in the year after I knew him. But the big thing is that guy ended up referring us to our largest account. that ended up being one of our royal clients from last year at just over $6,000. So, like I said, getting really self-aware and tracing these small things back. If I hadn't gone to that small event in Columbus, if I hadn't invited that guy on the podcast that introduced me to Matias, introduced me to the biggest lead out west, none of this would have happened. And that's what I'm saying is that when you have the surface area to nurture, maintain, and add value to other people, it just makes it so much more likely that these circumstances actually come to fruition and end up becoming paid clients. One more visualization of the breakdown here. Six podcast guest referrals and the average client value per client. every referral from a podcast guest was almost 2 to 3x what a referral from other places were and far higher than our inbound or hourly work. So, this just goes to show the leads that we get from podcasting are not just more frequent in a lot of cases, but they're infinitely more valuable because there's that inbuilt rapport and trust that we have with the person that was on the podcast or the person they ended up referring us to. Trust arrives preloaded and better fit clients end up staying longer because they already trust you. The cash was small, the time was not. I'm not going to lie to you guys, it was a big time investment building this show and doing a lot of the editing, the production, the scheduling, and the coordinating. Now I have a team that manages a lot of that. But in the beginning, it was so much of this on my own, and it was a lot of work. We spent about 3,000 or so on networking and ad spend. This was for content production software and editors and things people that helped me that went into the production of the podcast which is a one point only 1.7% of the revenue that we collected that year which is pretty good and like I said 64 published podcasts in that year man I was grinding guys so this did not come easy but it did come this is just so rewarding to look at right here January through April we are still finding our positioning for the podcast not being as consistent with it only uploading once a week, doing a lot of solo episodes because we did have a little bit of backlog and I was getting behind. Average about 8K per month in the back half of the year where we really made this our core bisdev mechanism. Again, treating the podcast seriously and inviting on people and treating it like an actual bisdev mechanism, not as just inviting on friends and making it a fun thing that we publish willy-nilly. It had exponential value and it really did pay off in these last months and it's really rewarding to see this visualization that makes it come to fruition. The downsides, the things that I fixed sooner that going into the numbers really revealed to me. Uh 79% of the year came from one client. So we did have one whale client that ended up being a lot of revenue. They were both a recurring customer and also a large projectbased customer. 79% of the year came from one channel which was this podcast channel. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing because it's something that I can control. I can control how many podcasts I create and I put these fruition. I created the circumstances for these referrals to happen, which I'm very proud of. 31% of the year came from one whale client. This is what we call key man risk and it's not a good thing. Again, having a whale client could be a very, very positive thing if you are in the early days of your business. Definitely don't turn down large sums of revenue from one lead source. But again, you want to make sure that you're diversifying. You don't want to have any client above 15% of your agencies or your marketing business's solo revenue. And the biggest key man risk, everything is done through you, but that's okay because you're a solo marketer and you're looking to increase your revenue. So that's okay. Four main takeaways that I want to leave you guys with guys with is to give people a platform. When you invite people on, the purpose is to make them feel like a star. Second is to invite your happiest clients on as well. This is literally an excuse for them to rave about you and become a live testimonial for you. I wish I had done this more often and worked it into our strategy. Number three, try and attribute your leads back from day one. It took a long time for me to go in and do this retrospective and find where all of our leads came from. And now that I have this visibility, I'm deeply compelled to go in and act on it and more capable to do so. So track your leads from the beginning. have a CRM where you tag where you first met people and track that whole customer journey. And number three, the last one here is to reinforce this. So I met with those two people that I gave in that story. I told them what they ended up doing for our business and it made them very happy and it also incentivizes more of the same behavior. What gets rewarded gets further incentivized. So if someone referred you work, tell them about it, express your gratitude and even give them a kickback, which I have done at times if they saying you paid client work. So that is a big reason how I was able to make 200K after being laid off in my first full year as a marketer. I invested in relationships and I really worked hard at it. I treated it like something that I could control and I did everything I could to invest in relationships and not have to go on the salesy side of things. So, if you're a solo marketer and you're looking to get more leads, connect with other high performers, and grow your business, I encourage you to check out the first link below and use those LinkedIn posts that got me a lot of these paying customers, that helped me get a lot of these paying customers and podcast guests and helped me get started. Thank you guys for watching. Please subscribe if you get value out of these videos and I'll see you next