2 builders who never spoke to each other

Show up in the rooms where your industry talks

Two builders describe the same mechanism: speak at the conferences and take part in the forums where your field argues, and the requests arrive unprompted. One founder's consulting business started entirely that way. Across hundreds of founder interviews the step changes traced back to a person rather than a tactic, which is the argument for treating time in those rooms as the highest leverage thing you do.

The method

1. 01

   Treat network-building as the highest-leverage activity and make it deliberate: leave the house for meetups and conferences, spend a week at a time in other cities meeting people, and start an interview podcast.

2. 02

   Speak at industry conferences and take part in the forums where your field talks, and the hire requests come to you unprompted.

What it returned

• $50k

  Across hundreds of founder interviews the step changes came from a person, not a tactic - Hiten Shah told Nathan Barry to take ConvertKit seriously or kill it, so Barry hired a developer, put in $50k and closed his other business; ConvertKit later passed $1 million a month.

• William's conference talks and forum activity led directly to people asking whether he was available for hire, which is how his consulting started.

Sources

• Student Success Story with William Durkin - Double Your FreelancingWilliam Durkin · doubleyourfreelancing.com · What got you into freelancing? And was it what you expected? · 2015-06-19
• What would you do differently?Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Fourth, I would meet people · undated