When you decide to start your career as a freelancer, one of the toughest roadblocks you’ll come up against is finding and securing your first few clients. It can often be the most stressful part of getting started, especially if you don’t have thousands of followers or prior testimonials.

After all, no clients means your entire pivot to being a freelancer was a waste of time.

So what can you do?

Most people struggle to get clients because:

Thankfully, ChatGPT can solve many of these issues pretty quickly. But you’ll need to be consistent and persevere past the silence. You may hear crickets initially, but if you try the approaches this week, you’ll start to see the ground moving and you’ll lay a strong foundation for clients to work with you over the next few weeks and months.

If I was to list all the ways you can use ChatGPT to help you land clients, this article would turn into a book, which is not what you signed up for when you clicked to read this article. So today, we’ll keep it simple, short, and sweet, with some quick ChatGPT prompts and actionable tips you can take this very week, to secure your first five clients and get the ball rolling.

Use critical thinking questions and ask ChatGPT to analyze your gaps. Prompts like:

To effectively grow your career and reach as a freelancer you’ll need to connect with the right people. Influential people and decision-makers are most likely going to be hanging around LinkedIn or will look you up on LinkedIn to get to know more about your offer, so it’s important to use ChatGPT to assist you in optimizing your profile so you are not only visible, but your profile looks credible.

Give it prompts like:

Go to the places where potential clients are already looking, i.e. freelance marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, etc., and use ChatGPT to help you at every stage of the set-up, from writing your bio, to your services description, to organizing your packages, to proposals for clients.

You can also use it to formulate pitch templates to tap into your local network of warm leads (ex-colleagues, people you’ve worked with/partnered with recently or a few years ago and have had a positive working relationship with, acquaintances and friends in business, alumni, local networking groups, etc.)

Finally, tell ChatGPT the types of contacts you’ve made and ask it to explore any gaps in your strategy so you can consider who else you could make contact with, to either convert them into clients, or gain word-of-mouth referrals.

Using a combination of all these approaches makes it way easier to secure your first five clients this week.

How can I land clients fast?

At the beginning, focus on where they’re already looking for help, like freelance marketplaces. Make your offer simple and easy to understand, at the same time ensuring it solves a direct need and there are hardly any hoops to jump through. Leverage ChatGPT to help you at every stage, from researching to pitching and proposals.

What if I don’t have any testimonials or reviews yet?

That’s OK, you can start with previous projects you’ve worked on (even pro bono counts), or small wins at work which are related to your freelance service offer. You can also reduce the price so you can use your first five clients as “projects” to secure testimonials, and then you can gain more clients after.