Your First Client Almost Always Already Knows You

Over the weekend a bookkeeper replied to a message I had sent her. She is qualified, she is ready, and she is having a hard time finding her first client.

She had found one. He turned out to be a scammer.

She also said the marketing company she had hired was starting to look suspicious. Then she asked me the question I get more than any other from people starting out: how did you get started, and do you have any tips?

I want to answer it properly, because the honest answer is a lot less exciting than the ones she has probably been sold.

First, the two things that are not clients

A real first client will never need you to send him money. Not to "cover a fee", not to pay a vendor on his behalf, not to return the extra from a check that came in too large. The overpayment is the scam. The check bounces a week after your refund clears.

Other signs worth knowing:

• He is always in a hurry and never wants a phone call.
• He cannot give you a business name you can look up.
• He asks for your bank details to "test a deposit".
• He wants you to buy gift cards, which no business in history has ever paid a bookkeeper in.

The client who needs you to send him money first is not a client.

The marketing company is a different animal, but the pattern rhymes. Be careful with anyone who guarantees a number of clients, wants payment up front for leads you cannot check, will not tell you where those leads come from, or locks you into a long contract before you have seen a single name. Anyone selling you guaranteed clients is selling to you, not finding clients for you.

None of that makes you naive for trying. It makes you normal. The people selling shortcuts to new practice owners are very good at finding new practice owners.

Where first clients actually come from

Almost every first client I have seen come in has come from someone who already knew the bookkeeper. Not from an ad. Not from a directory. From a person.

Think about who is already in your life:

• The former coworker who went out on her own last year and is doing her books at the kitchen table.
• The neighbor with the food truck who keeps his receipts in a shoebox, and says so.
• The hairdresser who does her own bookkeeping on Sunday nights and hates every minute of it.
• The guy from church who builds decks and has not reconciled a bank account since 2019.
• The person on your LinkedIn you have not spoken to in four years, who just posted that they started a business.

You already have a list. You have just never read it as a list of clients.

The part I got wrong, recently

The work is going through those people one at a time and saying something real to each of them. Not a post. Not "I am now taking clients!" to everyone at once. One person, one message, about them.

I know this works because it is how I spend part of most mornings. And I know how easy it is to get wrong, because I got it wrong last week.

Two people turned down something I had never offered them. One filed it as help she might ask for later. The other filed it as a feature she could add for her clients. It was neither. It was a free course for them, and my message had led with the offer instead of with the person. The fix was not a better offer. It was putting them first in the sentence.

That applies to you more than it ever will to me. When you write to the former coworker, the first line is about her new business, not about your services. The services come up because she asks.

Doing it without a spreadsheet of guilt

The hard part is not writing one message. It is writing forty over a few weeks without it turning into a list you feel bad about.

That is what our LinkedIn Connection Engine is for. It is the outreach system we run on our own list, packaged for yours. You export your LinkedIn connections, it sorts them into who to approach first, and it gives you ready-to-send messages with a space in each one for the thing that is actually true about that person. There is a follow-up sequence and a 30-day plan, because most replies come after the first message, not from it.

You can claim it free. Just ask for the LinkedIn Connection Engine: https://aiaccounting.legacysbc.com/claim-agent

And there is one more place worth being. Our free community is full of practice owners, and some of them hand out overflow work when they are busier than they can manage, which in accounting is most of the year. That is a very common way to land a first client and prove yourself on someone else's file before you have your own: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1024923770013348

If you want to build the skills while you build the list, our nine-belt AI course is free, self-paced, and nothing renews or expires: https://humansplusagents.ai/legacy-sbc

What I told her

I told her she was already doing the hard part, which is asking. Most people starting out do not ask anyone anything. They buy the thing that promises they will not have to.

Your first client probably already has your phone number. They just do not know you are open for business yet.