How I Landed My First Ghostwriting Client

I challenged myself to land a client in 30 days

I lied to my first ghostwriting client.

If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have closed the deal.

Here’s the story:

It was November of 2021.

I had just invested in a writing coach and course. He said I could ask for a refund in 30 days if I could show him I did all the steps he told me to do.

So I did it all:

• I operated from a “writer mindset”
• I picked topics/niches I’m interested in
• I built my own website (and paid for it)
• I built my online portfolio in just one week
• I reached out to clients every day and kept following up

I saw how powerful cold outreach was.

The more emails and DMs I sent, the more responses I got.

It was clear to me that as long as I had a portfolio, it was just a matter of effort until I landed my first client.

My portfolio was my way of saying “I’ve done this before. And I’m an expert at this.” So then my prospects started to believe I was an expert.

One day, there was this lady who responded to me and asked me how much I would charge for a 30K-word project.

More than the excitement I felt, I was nervous as hell.

I had no idea what I was doing.

How much would I charge?

How on earth am I going to write a 30,000-word ebook?

I had to lie.

I told her I would charge $800 for this (this felt a lot to me at the time).

She negotiated to $630 and I said OK.

Whew!

I’ve only had $5 to $20 gigs for blog articles before.

Aside from the 5 articles in my portfolio, I haven’t written anything about personal finance!

But here’s what gave me confidence: I chose self-improvement and personal finance as my initial niches because I spent the last two years learning these topics.

I convinced myself I wasn’t lying and I could deliver.

I was an “expert” on these topics because I did tons of research and applied the learnings myself.

Anyway, to stop feeling bad about lying, I told the client 2 things:

• I’ll write the 1st chapter. If she doesn’t like it, we’ll stop.
• I’ll give her a refund if she’s not satisfied.

Guess what? After spending a month on this project, she was happy with the results!

That was a groundbreaking moment for me.

With that, I’ll end this with my favorite quote from Napoleon Hill:

“If your mind can conceive it, you can achieve it.”

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