[tptacek]

You work really hard to get your first clients, fighting for each billable day, dealing with lots of dry spells. Then you "roll them up": you over-deliver and establish a reputation at those clients, find more work inside of them, and ask them for referrals. The stories you generate from over-delivering becomes the ammunition for any promotional work you to to generate new bluebird inbound clients.

There is no secret trick to getting those first clients. It's a scary suck for most people who build successful consultancies. The "trick" is in carefully and aggressively exploiting those hard-to-get first clients in order to make subsequent clients easier and easier to get.