LocalLead Audit: Automated Business Pain Finder for Local Web & AI Agencies

How do I find clients as a new startup? (I will not promote)

>I’ve seen so many people do it and make a ton of money Step away from YouTube etc and touch some grass. Most of these accounts telling you about their amazing financial successes aren't making sh\*t from doing that, rather they're making their money from views or selling crappy tools to the people thinking that this content is real. That said: Creating a business around making websites has essentially zero to do with being able to make websites, or how you're making them, because the business layer needed is 100% how to find paying clients. That's it. That you can make websites, or whatever extra spice you're adding to them, has very close to zero value as far as creating a business. You need to properly conceptualize and internalize this. Because it's a very common trap to think that just because you can do something, or just because you've built some fancy platform or app or something, you're like more than halfway there with your business. That you then "only" have to figure out how to get users/clients; as if you already have the valuable thing. >most businesses are independent and some may or may not have the budget for that kind of work, which makes me want to ask how do I actually find clients? That's the question that even the most experienced founders end up having to ask themselves when they target certain types of businesses. If you're a natural charismatic salesperson you can sell sand in the desert. That's that 100% business layer that I talked about. Some people just have it, and they can sell whatever. They even sell it first, because they keep stumbling onto great deals, and then they figure out how to provide it. But how do you sell websites to people that don't experience a need for a new website, and don't feel like they have a need for (or financial gain from) a new website, when your whole sales argument can be explained as "I can make websites"?! That's zero business layer, it's zero business. >How do I find clients as a new startup? Where we end up with this is that it comes down to you showing them something that makes them experience a value to be gained. Their experienced cost, basically money + time + risks combined, has to be lower than their experienced gains. Right there and then they have to experience that letting you walk away without a deal being made will end up more expensive to them than making a deal with you. Not tomorrow, not maybe later, not something to think about. Just a simple deal with zero future worries or potential complications.

the advice above is solid so i'll add the two things i think are missing, and one of them is uncomfortable. the uncomfortable one first. a town of 100k people in the UK has somewhere in the low thousands of registered businesses, and of those maybe eight hundred to a bit over a thousand are the sort that would ever buy a website from anyone. thats your entire market. not your year one target, your whole market. and you can genuinely work through a list that size in about eighteen months of steady outreach. that isnt a reason not to do it, its a reason to design for it now. it means two things. one, you need a monthly on every client, not just a build fee, because in year two there is nobody new left to sell a build to and if all your revenue is one-off youre back to zero every january. hosting, edits, keeping their google listing current, whatever, but something recurring. two, use the town as the place you build proof, then go wider on a niche. once you've done six dental practices you can sell dental practices anywhere in the country, and at that point where you live stops mattering. second thing, your prospect list is free and you can build it tonight. open google maps, search a category, plumbers, dentists, garages, salons, whatever, and go through the listings. the ones with no website link, or with a facebook page where the website should be, or a site that clearly hasnt been touched in a decade, thats your list. and the best part is you now have a specific true thing to say to each one that isnt a pitch. "your google listing points at a facebook page so when someone searches for you on their phone theres nowhere to book" is a sentence that gets a reply. "i build websites" is not. an evening of that gets you a couple hundred names with a real reason attached to each. on the AI part, i will personally push a bit further than kind-bathroom did. I seriously think the bigger issue is what you'd actually be selling. for a local business, AI integration doesnt mean a chatbot on the website, nobody wants that and it wont sell. the version that genuinely lands is answering enquiries when they physically cant. a plumber is under a sink at 2pm, a salon is mid appointment, a garage has both hands in an engine. the phone rings, nobody picks up, that job goes to whoever answers. something that catches the missed call, texts the person back within thirty seconds, gets the job details and puts it in front of the owner, thats worth real money to them and they can feel it the first week. thats the thing to build and to sell. supabase and row level security are a reason you can build it properly, theyre not a reason anyone buys. and on the vibe coded slop that annoys you, i'd let that go, genuinely. a cafe owner cannot tell the difference between your work and theirs, and its not because theyre stupid, its because looking at a website is not their job. so if being technically better is your differentiator you're competing on something the buyer cant see. what they can see is that you answered the phone, that you're twenty minutes away and can come in, and that the enquiries went up. build on those. the $100k a month thing, the reply above is right and heres the arithmetic. at £1,500 a build thats sixty six builds a month. nobody is doing that with local independents. local web work is a handful of £800 to £2,500 jobs a month plus retainers, and that is a genuinely good living, its just not the number youre seeing on twitter. those numbers are almost always people selling courses about doing the thing rather than doing the thing. last one, small town cuts both ways. one bad job and everyone hears about it within a month. but one good job for a well liked plumber and you'll get introduced to every trade he drinks with. so overdeliver ridiculously on the first three and dont take the cheapest work, because the £400 clients are the ones who'll tell the town about you and theyre also the ones most likely to be unhappy.