Most areas of a solopreneur's work follow clear, predefined methods - building your brand, creating content, or filing taxes. Client acquisition, though, is a particular discipline that can make or break your career. If you won't be able to get clients, it's over.

There is no good or bad advice - the only question is whether it works for a given person. When you ask how most solopreneurs started, you will hear plenty of stories that have a lot in common, but each will have a different twist. This twist is often something unpredictable - meeting a person, landing a project that rapidly expanded their network, some unbelievable coincidence, and so on. What we want to say is that it's difficult to give someone advice about how to land clients or to follow someone else's way of doing so because so much of it applies only to a given person and often to a unique situation they found themselves in, or an opportunity that presented itself.

Sure, some principles are good to follow, and there are things you should definitely try - we'll cover all that throughout all our Flowlance Academy lessons. But there's always one piece of the puzzle that each solopreneur has to find on their own to make it all work.

When new solopreneurs want advice on finding clients, they're often looking for THE SECRET that will magically help them tap into the eternal source of clients that will keep producing them forever.

The truth is that THE SECRET doesn't exist. The sooner you stop looking for it, the sooner you'll be able to get your clients. Even though THE SECRET doesn't exist, we can tell you a secret (without capital s) that every successful solopreneur knows. The secret is that you have to find your own way. It's that simple. Yes, hearing this may be disappointing, but it's much better to know the truth than to believe in the non-existent SECRET. Actually, we don't think it's disappointing - maybe at first, but when you think about it more deeply, it's good news. Your success doesn't depend on you finding THE SECRET hidden somewhere in the Reddit thread about client acquisition, which very few people will ever find. Your success depends on whether you can find your way.

Finding your way doesn't mean you'll identify a certain direction and never depart from it. "Finding" is an active verb. It's not something you do once, and then you're good for the rest of your career. It's a continuous process of experimentation, learning, taking opportunities, and looking for the next step. Finding your first client will look different from your fifth client, and finding your fiftieth client will look even more different.

The problem with copying someone else's way is that you're a different person, probably in a different location and profession, and certainly in a different situation. What worked for someone else most likely won't work for you. If it did, everyone would be successful, famous, and rich because the stories of people who made it are available for everyone to read and emulate. But we all know that's not how it works.

The solution or impulse you're looking for isn't somewhere on the Internet. It's in your head. Look around you with eyes wide open.

We don't want you to become yet another aspiring solopreneur who gave it up because he didn't find his way. Many don't find it because they never even tried to look for one. They only looked at the ways of others and tried to jump in or wished they could. That's the thing about ways - everyone has their own, and everyone has personality, knowledge, and skills perfectly fitted to it. If you try to walk on someone else's, you won't succeed, even if you copy every step they took.

The way you heard others successfully took may not even be there anymore - it may be so crowded that it doesn't make sense to join, or it got so complicated that it's not worth taking.

All this doesn't mean you can't look at the notes others have taken and stories they told about what they encountered during their adventure. It's very useful because your way may converge with someone else's for a moment.

Be wary and suspicious of ways that are too exotic. Finding your way doesn't mean doing something the way it was never done before. If it wasn't, it's a red flag that the approach probably doesn't work. Your way may not even look that unusual, but it will certainly contain a few important turns (think of them as decisions) that will make all the difference in the end.

Sometimes, people stand still for too long, looking in all directions, constantly thinking about which to take or trying to find all possible information before choosing. It's much better to simply go. Unless it involves a big decision, a considerable risk, or could dramatically impact your life in some other way, don't worry about going the wrong way for a while. You can always change the course, and the experience will help you to choose a better one next time. Each time you walk the wrong way, it will give you a better idea of how the right one should look. Just don't stand still - nobody ever got anywhere by standing still.