Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Carly Catt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Carly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

I started my business in the middle of 2020—as many people did. Breaking into a completely new industry while unable to go to networking events and meet people in person was a challenge, so finding my first clients was really difficult. All my marketing had to be done online. First, I thought about my ideal client and where they were hanging out online. I landed on Facebook as one good starting place. (Mind you, I had many!) “Present yourself as an authority figure in the field.” I’d heard it many times in all the books and webinars I’d used to learn about business and marketing yourself as a freelancer. So, I joined a bunch of writing Facebook groups with my business Facebook page and starting answering questions and giving advice. Every single day for about three hours I would do this. (I didn’t have clients yet, so what else was I going to do if not market myself?) I got a lot of random people telling me I was wrong—it’s Facebook, what do you expect? But I had some people grateful for my help. And eventually, I had some message me asking for book editing. Lots of people wanted editing for free, so they’d ghost me when I mentioned payment, and then I’d go back to the Facebook groups and keep scrolling. And so it went for about five months. I kept pushing and answering questions and ignoring the rude comments and toeing the line of breaking the “no promotions” rule in groups . . . But I didn’t give up. I knew I would get a client one day. And then I did.
She said she’d seen me being helpful for a while in a Facebook group and wanted to pay me for professional book editing. Actually pay me! With real money! I tried to seem jaded in my messages to her—not too excited or desperate, even though I was totally jumping around my house and texting any of my friends and family who would listen. All my expertise I’d been sharing online was enough to sell her, so she was all but ready to sign a contract with me by the time she messaged me.
It wasn’t smooth sailing from there, but it was a huge step for my business and an amazing confidence-booster for me. All that work I’d been doing meant something. After five months of seemingly useless marketing, I got my first paying client.

Carly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a nonfiction book editor and proofreader based in Arizona. I have a degree from the University of Arizona in psychology, and I love working on psychology books. Other genres I love editing are business, health and medicine, memoir, and Christian. My main goal in editing is to make sure the author’s voice shines through and that they feel in control of their book; that is one of the best things about self-publishing after all.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had graduated from a university with a bachelor’s degree and just started a master’s program online. I wanted to keep my student job at the university to fund my higher education and was promoted to a full-time position there. A week after starting my master’s degree, I decided it was not for me—at all. I was not interested in the curriculum in the slightest, and the jobs I could get with this qualification no longer sounded exciting. So I dropped out. Then COVID hit, and I was furloughed from my job. With no school or job to occupy my time, I spent my days trying to get a handle on the direction my life was going. What now? What do I really want to do? That’s when I came across a proofreading course online. I’d been proofreading documents for my dad since I was a kid, but it never occurred to me that I could get paid to do it.
After lots of Google searches, this proofreading idea felt really good to me. I signed up for the class, and decided that worst-case scenario, I could just finish the class and get enough clients to make back the initial investment. (Like getting clients and making money would be easy peasy. What was I thinking?) After training, I made a website and posted on social media that my doors were officially open.
Once I started getting work (which took a while), there was no going back. This was the first time I had actually enjoyed my job, and I was in complete control of the whole business. If it weren’t for getting furloughed from my job and hating my master’s program, I wouldn’t have considered starting my business.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Word of mouth and referrals have been the best source of new clients for me. When I finished a training for proofreading before I even started my business, I was immediately put on a referral list for a self-publishing company. This has given me a steady stream of clients since my very first client. After that, I worked hard to make connections with others in the industry on social media. I asked for advice and offered it, and once I knew someone was good at what they did, I started referring clients to them. This made them want to refer clients back to me. Before I knew it, I had several editors regularly referring clients to me. You can’t think of other people in your industry as competition. There’s enough work out there for all of us, and not every project is a good fit for me. I send clients to other people all the time because I don’t work on books that genre or my timeline doesn’t work with the client’s or I don’t provide the kind of editing they need. Rather than just turning away the client, I send them to someone I think would be a good fit for the project.
People trust other people’s referrals, so if you can get clients referred to you somehow, do it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cattediting.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cattediting/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CattEditing