My Journey to 32 Customers

My company (Draft.dev) reached a big milestone this month: 32 customers! 🙌

We're a productized service, so those contracts are pretty hefty ($2k+ per month). We've now got a team of 50+ freelancers and 5 full-time team members.

I've learned a ton along the way, but the most common question I get is, "Where did you find your customers?"

So, I figured I would break it down for you all here. 👇

1. Saw Previous Work 22%

We have a naturally viral service: we write content that will be published publicly on the internet and is designed to perform well in search engines. Create things on the internet and share them. Content has a longer shelf life than you realize.

2. Paid Referrals (19%)

I established a couple strategic referral sources early on that helped me juice the pipeline. It cuts into margin but was well worth it when starting out.

3. Personal Introductions (19%)

I spent nearly 10 years as an engineering leader in Chicago startups, so I came into this business with a lot of valuable industry contacts. Several made introductions that led to a sale. Build and maintain a network. I can’t stress how valuable this has been.

4. Linkedin (13%)

I tried a little bit of cold Linkedin prospecting last year, but half of my clients who came from Linkedin are actually inbound. Social media can work in B2B sales if you maintain a consistent presence and spend time on it.

5. Slack (9%)

While I don’t use Slack for work, I am in several professional networking Slack groups. By simply being active, helpful, and keeping an ear on a few groups, I’ve built several relationships that eventually led to clients.

6. Twitter (6%)

Typically, my followers mention me when another person asks about hiring a technical blogger or writer. Followers want to be helpful, so turn them into lead sourcers if you can.

7. Email Newsletters (6%)

Email newsletters are a great captive audience, and advertising in small, niche newsletters can be extremely cost-effective. I'm just starting to experiment with this and seeing good results so far.

8. Cold Emails (3%)

I ran one cold email campaign in December, but the leads coming in from a cold email are the most skeptical. They want small trial runs, which are difficult to execute and not profitable, so I've stopped doing this.
Cold email might work for smaller ticket services, but it is a hard channel to build trust on.

9. Events/Conferences (3%)

This is new, but I’ve already closed one deal and have several more in the pipeline. Being an invited speaker will help you quickly build trust with an audience.

Even more detail and juicy nuggets in the complete blog post here: https://www.karllhughes.com/posts/journey-to-30

But feel free to leave questions in the comments. Always happy to help!