Your Website Is a Business Card

A new client signed up recently. She came to me through someone I’ve worked with.

Early in the call she said she already trusted me because of who referred her. “We’re not starting at ground zero.”

I’ve been thinking about what my website did in that. Not much, honestly. It’s there so someone can check I’m real before a call. It works more like a business card than anything that sells. Nobody hires someone for a service because a page convinced them. They hire because someone they already trust vouched for you.

Once the work starts

That referral got me the call. What happens from here is on me.

I try to get a new client a real win early, in the first couple of weeks, not months in. I also don’t lock people in. If it isn’t worth it to her, she can stop.

The rest I have a harder time explaining. I just try to be straight with people, and somehow that comes through on a Zoom call.

How does a referred person check your credibility?

People who come by referral usually still look you up before the first call. They mostly know what you do already, because the person who referred them told them. I think they’re trying to get a feel for how you think and whether what they heard holds up, and a few short pieces in your own words give them more of that than a services page can. For me, that’s the articles on this site.

The part I couldn’t do

For a long time I didn’t write. For most of last year I published nothing. I had the ideas and the client stories, and I even had time blocked for it. The pieces just never got finished, and client work kept coming first. I wrote about that stretch in an earlier piece, so I won’t go over it again here.

Earlier this year I noticed that most of my raw material already exists.

I have transcripts from client calls. When I watch a YouTube video and have a reaction to it, I pull the transcript. Sometimes I record myself talking a topic through out loud. And I have my notes.

AI takes that pile and gives me a first draft. Then I add my own take: an example from a client, the part I disagree with, what I’d tell someone who asked me directly. I edit until it sounds like me. Some drafts I throw out, and a lot of them I rewrite.

Between mid-June and mid-September that added up to fifteen pieces on this site, roughly one a week. It’s a lot easier than it used to be, though it isn’t automatic, and nothing goes out without me reading it.

How can a founder do the same?

You probably already produce more raw material than you think. Here’s how I’d start if I were doing it from scratch this week.

1. Pick one source you already have. It could be the question clients ask you every week, a sales call where you explained your approach well, or a video in your field you disagreed with.

2. Get it into text. If your call tool can record a transcript, turn that on. For a YouTube video, open it on a computer, expand the description, click “Show transcript,” and copy the text. For the weekly client question, answer it out loud into a voice memo. On an iPhone 12 or newer, the Voice Memos app transcribes the recording, and you can tap the More button on the recording and choose Copy Transcript. If the raw material is a client call, take out the names and anything that would identify the client before you paste it in anywhere.

3. Ask AI for a first draft. Paste the text in and ask for a short article, around 800 words, for the kind of people you work with.

4. Add what only you would say. The draft will be flat in the places that matter most. Put in the client example, with names taken out. Add your opinion, and the place where you think the common advice is wrong. A referred person is reading for this part more than any other, so give it the most time.

5. Publish it short and keep going. Put it on your site alongside your services page. If you do one a week, after a month someone who looks you up has four pieces of yours to read.

Here’s what that looks like with one question. Say you’re a coach, and new clients keep asking how soon their team will notice a difference. The next time someone asks, answer it again into a voice memo the way you would on a call, including the example you usually give and the part people don’t expect to hear, which might take five minutes.

Copy the transcript, take out any names, and paste it in with a request for a short article for leaders like the ones you coach. When the draft comes back, read it against what you said. Cut anything you wouldn’t say out loud. Put the example back if it got smoothed into something general. Fix the places where it sounds more sure of itself than you are, and add the thing you’d warn a new client about that didn’t come up in the memo. Then read it through once more and post it.

If most of your work comes by referral, what have people told you they looked at before your first call?