Where to Find Brand Strategy Clients
[The following was originally posted by Aaron G. in the Brand Strategy Bootcamp Slack Community.
Disclaimer: As you read the following post, you may be thinking — “So is the only way a strategist can find clients is by taking the Brand Strategy Bootcamp?” Absolutely not! This is Aaron’s personal experience and his takeaway of where we spend our time, effort and curiosity can be applied in any community. He just happened to spend most of his time with us in the Bootcamp community 😉]
A list of all the online networking tools/communities + which have been most “successful” for me
I was curious after today’s group sales coaching call & decided to list out all my networking sites & groups. I was interested in listing out which I’m using & which of them have been most “successful” in helping me find work.
I assumed the easiest success metric was which have led to paid projects. Numbers include projects landed through contracts, referrals, or hired on as help.
Networking Groups + Number of Paid Projects the last 2 years:
LinkedIn (10 yrs): 0
This Bootcamp (1.5 yrs): 9
LunchClub (1.25 yr): 1 (2 projects pending)
Trends FB group (1 yr): 1
Otta (6 mo): 0
WorkingNotWorking (4 mo): 0
Breef (2mo): 0
iloveCreatives (1.5mo): 0
Some of these are paid, some are free.
I have spent approximately 0 energy here in BSB selling or trying to “get” anything from anyone, other than the occasional “I’ve got no work, let me help you!”. But the majority of it is has been just hanging out, meeting new pals, and learning out loud.
Lunch Club is pretty rad and I take the same approach. Spent over a year there just meeting folks, learning about new businesses, practicing being curious, etc. I’ve met some rad people on this platform and I’ve even hired one person I met as a coach.
Last week I was at the tail end of a chat with a new friend on Lunch Club and he asked what I did. Spent like 3 min stumbling through a brief overview of what gets me excited about strategy and he immediately said “I think I might need to hire you.” Pretty cool.
Anyway, I think my point or observation here is that you don’t have to network in huge groups (even though Trends has like 17k members). It just matters where you put your time and effort and genuine curiosity.
Join our community!
These are the types of things we love sharing in the Brand Strategy Bootcamp. If you’d like to join a community of other brand strategists who value community over competition and share all their resources with one another, check us out!
About the author:
Aaron Gonzalez is a strategist, creative, and touring musician currently based out of Dallas, Texas. His creative studio, Bad Platypus, is just a dude & occasionally some friends that hate boring brands. It was hatched from a desire to embrace and celebrate the things that make us different.