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Building Your Ghostwriting Business 🚀

The Art & Business of Writing Podcast with Nicolas Cole

Fri Feb 14 2025

Summary

Coffee With Cole: The Digital Writing Podcast

Episode: Building Your Ghostwriting Business 🚀

Release Date: February 14, 2025
Host: Nicolas Cole

In the February 14, 2025 episode of Coffee With Cole: The Digital Writing Podcast, host Nicolas Cole delves deep into the strategies essential for building a successful ghostwriting business without relying on client testimonials. Cole, recognized as one of the highest-paid ghostwriters globally, leverages his extensive experience to offer actionable insights for both aspiring and established ghostwriters aiming to scale their ventures sustainably.

1. The Challenge with Testimonials

Nicolas Cole begins by addressing a prevalent concern among ghostwriters: "How am I supposed to build my ghostwriting business if I can't talk about my clients?" (00:00). He asserts that relying heavily on testimonials is a common yet often misguided approach in entrepreneurship. Cole emphasizes that testimonials alone are insufficient to guarantee client acquisition. Instead, he advocates for the development of a skill set focused on articulating and solving clients' specific problems effectively.

“People put way too much emphasis on testimonials. And really the skill that you need to build is being able to articulate how you can solve the person's problem.” — Nicolas Cole (04:30)

He further explains that testimonials typically address past successes but fail to assure potential clients of future results, especially if the clients perceive their situations as unique. This disconnect often leads to skepticism about the applicability of the ghostwriter’s services to their specific needs.

2. Five Strategies to Land Ghostwriting Clients Without Testimonials

Nicolas Cole outlines five distinct mechanisms to secure ghostwriting clients without the dependency on testimonials. Each strategy is rooted in building trust, demonstrating expertise, and providing tangible value upfront.

a. Free Work Pitch

Concept: Offer initial work for free to demonstrate capability and build relationships.

Cole likens this approach to tactics used by drug dealers: giving the first one free to hook the customer. Similarly, offering a free project allows potential clients to experience the quality of your work without financial risk.

“The first one's free. Help them solve something in their business for free.” — Nicolas Cole (02:15)

Implementation:

Identify a specific problem within the prospective client's business.
Offer to solve it without charging for the initial project.
Ensure the free work is impactful enough to showcase your skills and the value you bring.

Case Study: Cole shares a personal anecdote where he offered his services for free to an influential venture capitalist needing a commencement speech. By prioritizing the relationship over immediate payment, Cole secured a valuable connection that could benefit him in the long term.

“What's more valuable than money? This relationship. This is an extremely well-connected entrepreneur... I might be able to call in that favor.” — Nicolas Cole (07:45)

This strategy removes initial barriers, making it easier for clients to say yes and trust in the ghostwriter’s ability to deliver quality work, thereby increasing the likelihood of future paid engagements.

b. Comments as Consulting

Concept: Provide valuable insights through public comments on potential clients' posts to educate them about their own business problems.

Cole introduces the idea of using comments as a form of free consulting, allowing ghostwriters to showcase their expertise directly within the client’s public content spaces.

“The bottleneck to them working with you is they aren't sufficiently educated on a specific problem in their business.” — Nicolas Cole (15:20)

Implementation:

Create a list of target clients based on your ideal client profile.
Regularly monitor their activity on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.
Instead of generic praise, offer constructive feedback or solutions related to their recent posts.

Example: If a client’s social media post is poorly formatted, instead of a simple “Great post,” comment with actionable advice, such as:

“I think what you're trying to share here is amazing. Just a heads up, the way this is formatted is kind of hard to read. I reformatted it here so it could be more engaging.”

This approach not only demonstrates your expertise but also educates the potential client on areas they might not have considered improving, thereby positioning yourself as a valuable resource.

c. Pitching in Public

Concept: Publicly share detailed analyses or audits of a potential client's business processes via your own content platforms to demonstrate value.

Building on the "Comments as Consulting" strategy, Cole suggests taking a more advanced approach by creating comprehensive content pieces that critique or offer improvements on a client's business operations.

“Instead of pitching Dickie directly, what I could do is I could write a thread on X about his sales funnel and identify five big problems.” — Nicolas Cole (25:10)

Implementation:

Conduct a thorough audit of a target client's business, including their website, social media, and marketing funnels.
Identify specific areas for improvement and develop detailed feedback.
Publish this analysis as a thread, article, or social media post, ensuring it’s detailed and actionable.

Example: Cole describes how he could publicly analyze an entrepreneur's sales funnel by identifying issues like missing onboarding sequences or inadequate opt-ins. By doing so, he not only captures the client's attention but also engages a broader audience who might face similar challenges.

“All the people who are like Dickie who see it might think they have the same issues and reach out to you.” — Nicolas Cole (28:35)

Benefits:

Positions you as an expert in the field.
Engages multiple potential clients at once, leveraging public visibility.
Reduces reliance on one-to-one outreach by transforming it into a one-to-many strategy.

d. Referrals with Incentives

Concept: Encourage existing clients or network contacts to refer new clients by offering incentives or discounts.

Cole differentiates between two types of contacts in your network: leaks and faucets. Leaks are direct clients whom you can assist immediately, while faucets refer to those who might refer others to you.

“A leak is someone you can help directly. A faucet is someone that you might not help directly, but they know other people who need your help.” — Nicolas Cole (32:00)

Implementation:

Identify contacts who can either become clients themselves (leaks) or refer clients (faucets).
Establish an incentive structure where referrals lead to discounts or benefits for the referrer.
Ensure incentives are meaningful enough to motivate referrals but sustainable for your business.

Case Study: Cole recounts how his agency incentivized a PR firm (acting as a faucet) by offering a $300 deduction from their monthly retainer for every successful referral. This arrangement led the PR firm to refer 15 paying clients, effectively waiving their own payments for a year.

“Every client that you send us that converts and is currently buying, we will deduct 300 bucks from your monthly retainer.” — Nicolas Cole (35:20)

This approach creates a mutually beneficial relationship, where referrers are rewarded for their efforts, thereby fostering continuous client acquisition without additional marketing expenses.

e. Anonymized Case Studies

Concept: Utilize anonymized case studies to demonstrate expertise and the effectiveness of your services without revealing client identities.

Cole suggests that sharing case studies, even without naming clients, can effectively showcase your ability to deliver results across various industries.

“Whenever I would be on calls with clients... I would just find a relevant client in a similar industry and anonymize it.” — Nicolas Cole (40:10)

Implementation:

Select successful projects that highlight your skills and problem-solving capabilities.
Present these projects as case studies, ensuring client confidentiality by anonymizing identifiable details.
Focus on the challenges faced, the solutions provided, and the outcomes achieved.

Example: Instead of naming a specific client, Cole would say:

“We’ve worked with a number of very large enterprise B2B software companies, so we understand your business really well.”

This method allows potential clients to relate to the presented problems and solutions, increasing their confidence in your ability to address their unique needs without breaching client confidentiality.

“The only way that you can really get someone to understand how it's going to work for them is by effectively and accurately educating them on the problem that they have.” — Nicolas Cole (44:00)

3. Integrating Strategies for Maximum Impact

Cole emphasizes that these strategies are not mutually exclusive and can be effectively combined to create a robust client acquisition pipeline. For instance, leveraging public pitches can complement referral incentives by showcasing your expertise to a wider audience, thereby increasing the likelihood of referrals.

Moreover, the underlying theme across all strategies is the importance of educating potential clients about their own business challenges and demonstrating how your ghostwriting services can provide tailored solutions. By shifting the focus from seeking testimonials to offering genuine value, ghostwriters can build trust and establish themselves as indispensable partners in their clients' success.

4. Overcoming Common Objections

Cole addresses a common objection where potential clients may request to see testimonials or speak with past clients. He advises ghostwriters to pivot these objections towards uncovering the client's underlying concerns.

“What's the real objection? What are you curious about?” — Nicolas Cole (50:00)

Approach:

When faced with requests for testimonials, guide the conversation to understand the client's specific needs and concerns.
Provide anonymized case studies or detailed explanations of your problem-solving approaches instead of direct testimonials.
Reinforce the idea that broad testimonial endorsements do not directly address individual client needs.

By focusing on the client's unique challenges and demonstrating an understanding of their specific context, ghostwriters can effectively alleviate doubts without relying on traditional testimonials.

5. Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Nicolas Cole concludes the episode by reiterating the effectiveness of these strategies, sharing his personal success of landing over 300 clients without using testimonials. He encourages ghostwriters to develop the critical skill of problem articulation and solution provision, which ultimately renders testimonials unnecessary.

“If you build this skill, I promise you do not need any testimonials to land any ghost trading clients.” — Nicolas Cole (55:30)

Cole underscores the importance of shifting focus from external validations to internal capabilities, fostering a client-centric approach that prioritizes understanding and addressing client needs over showcasing past accolades.

Conclusion

In this insightful episode, Nicolas Cole dismantles the conventional reliance on testimonials in building a ghostwriting business. By presenting five innovative strategies—Free Work Pitch, Comments as Consulting, Pitching in Public, Referrals with Incentives, and Anonymized Case Studies—Cole provides a comprehensive roadmap for ghostwriters to attract and secure clients based on demonstrated value and expertise.

The core message revolves around the importance of educating clients, demonstrating tangible value, and building authentic relationships, all of which contribute to a sustainable and thriving ghostwriting business without the crutch of testimonials. Aspiring ghostwriters are encouraged to adopt these strategies, focusing on problem-solving and client education to establish themselves as trusted partners in their clients' journeys.

Key Takeaways:

Testimonials Are Not Essential: Focus on demonstrating value through direct problem-solving and building trust.
Give to Get: Offering initial free work can significantly increase the chances of securing long-term clients.
Educate and Engage Publicly: Use public platforms to showcase your expertise and attract multiple clients simultaneously.
Leverage Referrals Effectively: Incentivize referrals to create a steady stream of new clients through trusted sources.
Use Anonymized Case Studies: Showcase your successes without compromising client confidentiality.

By internalizing and implementing these strategies, ghostwriters can overcome the challenges of client acquisition and build a robust, testimonial-free business model that thrives on value, trust, and expertise.

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Transcript

A (0:00)

My name is Nicholas Cole. I'm one of the highest paid ghostwriters in the world. And today I'm going to walk you through five different ways that you can land ghostwriting clients without using testimonials. So this is one of the most common questions I get asked is how am I supposed to build my ghostwriting business if I can't talk about my clients? Well, I can tell you because I built a multi million dollar ghostwriting agency without using a single testimonial ever. You do not need testimonials. And all five of these mechanisms work really, really well for overcoming objections and, and being able to show people that you know what you're talking about and you can help them. You can help them solve their problem without needing to rely on testimonials. I find that just generally in entrepreneurship, doesn't matter if you're a solopreneur or trying to build some big venture backed company. People put way too much emphasis on testimonials. And really the skill that you need to build is being able to articulate how you can solve the person's problem. If you can do that, they actually don't care about the testimonials. And a really easy way to understand why is if you've been working for yourself or you've been trying to build a company in the past, you've probably presented a testimonial to someone and the objection they give you then is, well, that's great, but you know, it worked for them. How do I know it's going to work for me? So just because you have testimonials doesn't automatically mean that people just buy things from you. Okay? And oftentimes when you present a testimonial, the person goes, okay, yeah, it worked for them in their situation. And they make up all these reasons why it would only work for them, but then they say, I don't know if it would work for me. And the only way that you can really get someone to understand how it's going to work for them is by effectively and accurately educating them on the problem that they have and what they need to do in order to fix it. Okay, so there's five ways to land ghostwriting clients without relying on testimonials. The first is what I like to call a free work pitch. So, you know, take a page out of every drug dealer ever. What does every drug dealer say? The first one's free. There's a reason they say the first one's free, right? Because they want you to try the Product, so you get hooked on the product. So then you keep buying from them. Right. And you should take that same mentality as a ghostwriter. The first one's free. Help them solve something in their business for free. It doesn't have to be a giant project. I'm not saying that you need to sign up for a year's worth of nonprofit work. I'm not saying you can never charge for your services. That's not what I'm saying at all. All I'm saying is if you can identify a problem in the person's business and you can show them how to solve it, or better yet, you solve it for them, the likelihood that they are going to want your help, your help specifically, not other writers. You. The likelihood they're going to want your help solving all future problems related to writing is very, very, very, very high. Right. So a different way of saying this, and whenever I explain this strategy to writers, like, I always get met with such resistance. But let me just slow down and walk through the logic here. If I told you that even if you executed all the best practices, it was going to take you three months to land a paying ghostwriting client. So it'll take you three months. Or you could do the first little project for free. It could be done in a week, it could be done in two weeks, and then the likelihood that that person becomes a paying client goes up by 90%. And then you could potentially land them in by the end of the first month. Which one would you take? Right? So free work seems like, oh, I don't want to do all that until you put it in the context of, well, how long is it going to take you to land the client if you don't do that? Right? And now, again, like, the nuance is, I'm not saying you have to work for free forever, but consider making the first one free. And the reason this is so effective is because it completely removes all of the other objections that a client would have. They're like, who else have you done this for? You're like, I haven't. You're my first one. But you know what? I'm willing to do it for free. What are they gonna say, right? They're gonna be like, well, I guess that's sort of a fair trade. You know, you experiment with me, and I experiment with you. So, sure, go for Removes objections. It removes the friction of the conversation, which allows you to grow and learn faster. I cannot stress enough how many of my early clients came from starting with free work. And another thing that I point out to writers all the time is that I still use this. So I'll give you a really great example. A year and a half, two years ago, I got connected to a extremely successful entrepreneur, now venture capitalist. He built one of the biggest companies in America. And you would, you would know the company. And I got connected to him through my network, mutual friends. And we got connected because he was looking for a speechwriter where he went to college. They were having him back. They asked him to give a commencement speech, and he needed someone to help him write the speech. He's like, I know what I want to say. I'm just not a writer. And so someone in my network recommended me. And, and I wasn't, you know, I'm building our own companies. I wasn't taking on ghostwriting clients or anything at the time, but I was like, wow, this is a really cool opportunity and this is a really interesting person and I would love to have this relationship. So we meet up, we meet up for coffee and he tells me about it and he's like, you know, I could really use your help writing this speech. Like, if you're willing. You know, you come really highly recommended from this mutual friend of ours, and I'd be happy to pay you, like, whatever you think is fair. Which is, you know, code for you tell me the number and it's fine. And I was sitting there and I was like, well, I know money isn't going to be the issue. Like, I could throw a number in the air and he would probably say yes to it. But I thought about it and I was like, you know, what's more valuable than money? Well, it's this relationship. This is an extremely well connected entrepreneur. This is an extremely knowledgeable entrepreneur. This is someone that I could potentially learn from. This is someone that I could call and ask for a favor later on. This is someone where, you know, next business or two business or three businesses from now, maybe I want to take a swing at a big company and I want to raise a bunch of money. If I do this for him for free, 10 years from now, I might be able to call in that favor. There are a lot of things more valuable than just money. And so at the end of our coffee conversation, he was like, you know, so what'll it take? Like, how much will you charge me for this? And I said, I, how about I don't charge you? How about I do it for free? And just know that, like, at some point in the future I might need your help with something. And I would love if you return the favor. And at first he was like, no. Like, no, I have to pay you. I don't want to take your talent and your skills for granted. Like, I really want to pay you. And I explained to him, I was like, honestly, the money's not the most valuable thing for me. I would way rather do this for you for free and be able to call in a favor later on. Well, I did the project for free. I worked a couple extra nights for a couple weeks and just put in the work and did that. And now I have his cell phone number, and I could hit him up and I could ask him any question I want, and he's gonna feel indebted to me for the next 30 years. And that is the beauty of this strategy. And I still do this, and I do this with people where money is no problem. And so I explain all that, and I tell that little story to show you that this is not just like, you know, some writer on the Internet, me being like, oh, just start for free and good things will happen. Like, no, I did this when I was starting out, and I still do this today. And there are certain opportunities where this makes a lot of sense. And this is the best way to remove friction and actually unlock way more upside. Because there are things in life more valuable than just getting paid two grand, three grand for a project. Now, I understand you got to pay your rent, especially in the beginning. You can't make all of those bets. Right? But it's worth internalizing the thinking and understanding why this is so valuable. Okay, the next two are extremely tactical, and they're so effective, but I find so many writers don't do them. So the second one is what I like to call comments as consulting. So again, the bottleneck to someone working with you is not, do you have testimonials? Yes or no? The bottleneck to them working with you is they aren't sufficiently educated on a specific problem in their business. They either don't know it's a problem, or they know it's a problem, but they don't have any urgency in solving it. Okay? So the very first thing that you need to do is you need to educate them on the problem. And once someone has been sufficiently educated on a problem, they can't get it out of their brain. Right? A very extreme example would be you think you're healthy. You think you're healthy. You think you're healthy. You go to the doctor one day and they say you have cancer. The moment you are aware of that problem, you go Home. And that's the only thing you think about, and it's the only thing you think about until you start with whatever the solution is, until you find a solution, or until you begin down the road of, I'm gonna solve this thing, right? And on top of that, usually the person who, quote, unquote, diagnoses you with the problem or the person that educates you on the problem is the person that you trust most to help you solve it. So the entire game actually is not how do I acquire testimonials. The game is I have to sufficiently educate people on a problem in their business. And once I sufficiently educate them and I am the one who educated them, the likelihood that they want to work with me goes up very, very high. Because I'm the one who educated them, right? Most people don't get educated on a problem and then go, okay, so now, thanks for all that really helpful information. Clearly you're really knowledgeable. But I'm going to go on upwork and see if I can find a different writer to help me. That's not what happens. Okay, so your whole game and the whole skill is educating people on the problem. The way that you can do this in public is through commenting on their posts. So I'll give you a really simple example. If I was starting a social media ghostwriting agency tomorrow, what I would do is I would make a list of a bunch of clients that fit the archetype of the sort of person that I wanted to work with. I would go find all of them on X and LinkedIn every morning. I would then go through my list and I would see which of them had recently posted something. Chances are, the people who are currently posting aren't doing it very well. So what I would do is once a week or every other morning or whatever the cadence is, I would comment on the most recent thing that they wrote and I wouldn't just comment like, great post, right? That doesn't do anything. I would literally say in my comment something that I would tell them on a quote unquote sales call or a free consulting call. So if they wrote something that was really poorly formatted, I might comment something like, hey, I've really been enjoying your posts. I think what you're trying to share here is amazing. Just a heads up, the way that this is formatted is actually kind of hard to read. So I went ahead and took it and I reformatted it here in the comment for you just so you could see what it would look like. I think if you made some of these upgrades, people would be more likely to read your content. Exactly what I would tell them on a call. You comment it. Okay, now why is this so valuable? Well, there's two reasons. One is it again helps educate the person that you're trying to pitch on a problem. They might not even know that their formatting is off. They might not know, hey, more people will read this idea if it's framed as a framework rather than just a bunch of rambling. Right? They don't know the mistakes that they're making. So I need to educate them. But second is it's in public, which means other people that are like them. Right. Other potential clients also might see my comment and then go, wow, that was actually really helpful. That was really insightful. I wonder if you can help me with my content. Right, so it's actually one of these things where you were already going to do this with the prospect. It's just most people think to do it behind closed doors. They do it via email, they do it via dm, they do it just on, on a call. And why not do it in public? Because then you're not just talking to that person, but you're talking to all the other people who might come across that post and go, you know what, I actually need help with my formatting too. For example, the third one is the advanced version of this. So the same idea of comments as consulting, you can do this in your content itself. And this is what I like to call pitching in public. So if you were to pitch a prospect, what you would do is like, for example, this is what we train ghostwriters to do in our premium ghostwriting academy. So you go find a target client, someone that you want to pitch, and you go to their company website, you go to their personal website, you go to their socials and you sort of do a little audit and you're like, okay, do you have a newsletter? Do you have some sort of valuable opt in to capture emails? Are you actively creating content on X or LinkedIn or Instagram or any of these social platforms, right? You're doing a little audit to see what are they currently doing, what are, what aren't they doing, where are their opportunities, where can they improve, right? And then after you do that little audit, what you do is you package up the, here's what I need to educate you on and then you go say that to them behind closed doors, right? You're like, I'm gonna send you a dm, I'm gonna send you an email, I'm gonna send You a loom, I'm gonna get you to jump on a call. And it's a very one to one relationship. And that's great. And that is usually how landing clients goes. That's how I built my entire agency was off of cold outreach and just getting really, really good at free value. Free value, cold outreach, okay. Pitching in public though, is, instead of doing all of that behind closed doors, why wouldn't you just turn that into a piece of content? And it's so obvious that people don't think to do it. So for example, if I was to pitch my co founder, Dicky Bush, right? If I was just some ghostwriter and I did a little audit and I was like, hey, you know, I think you could improve a couple things. You know, I could help you scale up your content. I could create a better opt in if he didn't have one, right? Whatever the problem is. Well, instead of pitching Dickie directly, what I could do is I could write a thread on X. Being like, I've been following Dickie for the past two years. I think he posts really amazing content. But I recently did a deep dive on his sales funnel and I actually found five big problems. And then in the thread, you literally say all the things that I would say to Dickie on a sales call. I'd be like, hey, problem number one is you need to improve your opt in. Problem number two is after you type in your email, I notice that there's no onboarding sequence. Like, for example, if we didn't have any of these things, there's no onboarding sequence. Problem number three is, you know, because there's no onboarding sequence, people are confused. I noticed that you have like a book, a call feature for one of your programs, but there's no lead up sequence. People aren't getting educated. So literally everything I would say to him on a sales call, I turn into a thread or I turn into an atomic essay or I turn into a LinkedIn carousel. Now why is this so effective? For the same reason comments as consulting is so effective, because not only am I likely to get Dickie's attention when he sees like, wow, this person wrote up a long form thread all on my content and my sales funnel, maybe I should check it out. Right? High likelihood that he sees it. But second, even more so than the person you're writing about is all the people who are just like Dickie who see it, right? It's in public. So other people who have similar types of businesses are like, wow, you're right. I don't have an opt in or oh, you're right, I don't have an onboarding sequence. Or oh, you're right, I book sales calls, but I don't have any way to educate people on autopilot before the sales call, right? So they start to see themselves in the thing that you wrote about, about Dickie or whoever you're writing about. And this is where you start squeezing so much more juice out of your outreach. Because now it's not just a one to one relationship, it's a one to many relationship. And when you do this, especially when you do this in public, right? If you attract someone's attention and they go, hey, I saw your thread about Dickie sales funnel. I'm wondering, would you be able to help me too? The conversation of do you have testimonials? Goes out the window because they're the ones now dming you. They're the ones reacting to the content you created, right? So the likelihood that they need to see a testimonial to move forward just plummets. Like they don't care because they saw the way that you were able to diagnose a problem and now they trust you and you individually. So comments as consulting and pitching in public are so incredibly effective. And I find a lot of ghostwriters don't do it, but it's an amazing way of continuing to build your reach without having to actually talk about your clients. Number four is obviously referrals, and I'm putting here incentives. So this was something that I did with my agency and it's a. I found it to be a really great growth mechanism. So a concept that I educate ghostwriters on is that there's two different types of clients or people in your network. There's what I like to call leaks and faucets. Okay? So a leak is someone that you can help directly. It's like your bathroom is leaking. I can fix that for you, right? So a leak is someone you can help directly. A faucet is someone that you might not help directly, or they might not need your help directly, but they know other people who need your help. Okay? So they become a faucet for deals. They send people your way. And sometimes clients are actually both. So you start working with someone, they're a leak, but they enjoy working with you, and you enjoy working with them so much that they start sending people your way, right? So the leak becomes a faucet. And one of the most valuable things that you can have in your ghostwriting business is a small network of faucets because now you don't have to market yourself anymore. I mean, you still should. You should never stop doing cold outreach. You should never stop creating content. Right? All of these things. But it takes less pressure off it. Your streams for new clients are diversified. And a way that we found to incentivize these types of leaks and faucets is what we would do is when someone, when we were working with someone or we saw like they were both, they needed our help, but they could also send us clients. What we did is we basically said, every client that you send us that converts and is currently buying. So it's not just like they convert. They're here for a month and then they leave. But the person who referred them still gets the benefit. No. As if they convert. And as long as they are paying. So as long as they stay a client, we will deduct it was something like 300 bucks from your monthly retainer. So this is. This is a true story. This is a client that we were working with. They were a leak. They needed our help directly. They were paying us something like three grand a month to help them write articles, thought leadership articles on the Internet, ghostwriting them. But they were also a faucet. They were a PR firm. So we were ghostwriting for a PR firm. And the PR firm was like, we have all these clients. We would love to send them to you. Can we put together, like an incentive structure? And so I said, sure. Every client that converts and continues paying us, we will deduct 300 bucks from your monthly retainer. Well, what happened is they ended up referring so many clients to us that they chipped away down their entire retainer to zero. So we worked with them for free for like a year straight. We worked with them for free. They didn't pay us anything. But over here, they had sent us like 15 other paying clients. And that is an amazing mechanism for, again, you don't need testimonials because the person who is incentivized to refer you like that, they basically do the selling for you. This PR firm went to all their clients and was like, trust us, these are the guys to work with. Like, just don't even ask any questions. Just ask where to send the contract and where to send the first invoice. And that's how a lot of them went. We did the sales call as the formality, but every time the sales call would go, you know, you come really highly recommended from this client. And, you know, we just, like, we trust them, so we trust you. So let's get going. And incredible way. Incredible way to land clients without relying on testimonials. So I would really encourage you to think about using a similar structure where you might have one client that you work with for free. They have to earn it, right? But it doesn't really matter that you're working with them for free because they've sent you so much business over here. And so this was. This was a really effective growth mechanism for. For our agency. And then the last one is a case study. The. The way that you do it is you anonymize it. So whenever I would be on calls with clients, and especially when they were in very specific industries or, you know, some clients are just like, well, you know, I want to make sure that you know how to work with our specific type of company. You know, everyone thinks they're different, and they're usually not. All I would say is, I would say, well, because of the nature of our work, I can't tell you exactly who the client is. I can just tell you that. And then I would just find a relevant client that was in a similar industry and just anonymize it. So, for example, if I was talking to a large B2B enterprise software company, I would be like, well, because of the nature of our work, I can't tell you about the client, but I can tell you that we've worked with a number of very large enterprise B2B software companies, so we understand your business really well. And that's all I had to say. So literally one sentence. And sometimes people would push back. Sometimes they'd be like, well, you know, could we talk to anyone or testimonial? And whenever that would happen, I would just circle back to the thing that I said at the beginning of this, which is, I would say, even if I could, that's not the real issue. Right? The real issue is, like, you want to make sure that this works for you. And so the reason that you have that question or you have that objection is that there's something here that we haven't talked about. So what's the real objection? What are you curious about? And whenever I would dig, they would either realize that they were asking for things that they didn't actually know why they were asking for it, or they would share the real objection. And then once they share the real objection or the real problem or the real thing that they cared about, then I could just speak to that, and then the testimonial didn't matter anyway. All roads lead back to the person has to know that it's going to work for them. And the only way to get them to understand that it's going to work for them is you have to be the one to sufficiently educate them on the problem. And if you accomplish that, they don't care about the testimonials. Again, I'm telling you because I've landed 300 plus clients without using testimonials. I've gone through this a gazillion times. They don't care about testimonials. But if you don't sufficiently educate them on the problem, then they are going to care about testimonials. And that's where people get mixed up is they when that happens, they think, oh, the testimonial is the important thing. No, you're misunderstanding what's happening. You haven't built the skill yet of sufficiently educating the person on the problem because if you had built that skill, they wouldn't care about the testimonial. So you're gravitating to the crutch and you're avoiding the real skill that needs to be built. And if you build this skill, I promise you do not need any testimonials to land any ghost trading clients.