Hello from Las Vegas!🃏 

I attended CES, saw Will.i.am talk about the future of AI radio, and wandered booths filled with… you guessed it. AI companies of every stripe and color.

It’s been fun, but I’m ready to head back to home sweet home CDMX.

In the spirit of conferences, I’m diving into the topic of relationship-building for folks building something of their own.

Today, in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 📊 A simple system to track and measure your relationship-building efforts

• 🎯 How to identify and connect with your ideal clients (with real examples)

• 🤝 11 proven strategies used by portfolio careerists to win leads and clients (that you can implement this week)

 Share | Subscribe | Advertise

FROM OUR OFFICE

🌱 Feeling Stuck in Growing Your Portfolio Career?

Do any of these resonate with you?

• You’re grinding at your 9-5 and struggling to grow your side hustle

• You’re feeling lost and unsure how to move the needle

• You’re feeling confused on how to leverage your strengths

In 2024 I started working with motivated tech professionals like you to build thriving portfolio careers.

Through 1:1 coaching, my clients gain the clarity they need to:

• Transform their side project into a sustainable income stream

• Design a portfolio career that aligns with their unique strengths

• Accelerate their growth to the next level

I'm currently accepting two more clients for the first half of 2025.

👉 Reply to this email if you'd like to explore working together. Let's chat about your goals and see if we're a good fit.

🤝 11 Relationship-Building Strategies For Portfolio Careerists (What’s Working)

Last year, I wrote a popular piece for tech job searchers on how to build relationships in new markets.

However, I realized portfolio careerists and business owners struggle with a similar challenge.

Lately, I’ve been hearing this in our cohort program.

In this newsletter, I share 11 relationship-building strategies for portfolio careerists—focusing on what’s working for me and others I know. 

Whether you’re a side hustler, independent consultant, or full-time business owner, relationships are the foundation for gaining leads and clients.

Here is what I have learned:

1/ Define your business development goal

For a long time, I was missing this step (ironic, considering my growth background).

Now I have implemented a bi-weekly habit to setup a certain number of meetings.

This is helping me track my progress more clearly.

For example, let’s say you have a fractional CTO business.

Answer the following questions:

• How many clients do I want in a year?

• What is my close rate from an opportunity? (opportunity: discovery call or prospect who has expressed interest in your service)

• What is my meeting to opportunity conversion rate? (meeting: networking calls, catching up with a colleague, hosting an event, etc.)

Let’s say you want 2 fractional CTO clients in the next 6 months.

Here is how you might work backwards to your business development goal:

• 2 clients

• 50% close rate → 4 opportunities

• 25% meeting-to-opportunity rate → 16 meetings

This means you’ll need approximately 16 meetings to achieve your desired goal for the next 6 months.

2/ Identify who you want to meet

This strategy boils down to defining a specific Ideal Client Profile.

For example, when I was doing tech career coaching I looked for:

• Tech professionals

• Ages 27-32

• Live in a tier 1 US city (e.g. San Francisco, New York)

• Feel stuck in their current job, wanted to change roles or companies

You can use a variety of attributes to define this profile. I typically like to use 3+ to narrow down the criteria.

Here are example attributes:

• Job title (e.g. product designer)

• Income/Revenue (e.g. US$100k-130k/year)

• Geo (e.g. Tier 1 cities in the US)

• Marital/kids status (e.g. not married/no kids)

• Gender (e.g. female)

• Age range (e.g. 27-32)

• Where they spent their time (e.g. Linkedin, deign Slack communities)

• Pain point (e.g. struggling with business & leadership skills)

Or for B2B services you might look at:

• Company size (e.g. 100-500 employees)

• Industry / type of business (e.g. B2B SaaS, Healthtech, etc.)

• Price point (e.g. sells $10k+ ACV contracts)

Then once you this ICP narrowed down, identify where they spend their time.

This will help you assess which channels are suitable for reaching this group of people (and whether any of the strategies below make sense).

3/ Tap your existing network

Try this exercise. Write down a list of 10 people in your network (colleagues, friends/family, acquaintances) who either fit your ideal client profile OR may know others who do.

Go through:

• Friends

• Friends of friends

• Current & former colleagues

• School alumni

• Clubs & associations

For example:

Some of my first consulting clients were startup founders who I was friends with or knew me through my tech professional network.

If I didn’t start with my existing network, I would have missed real opportunities.

4/ Get referrals through your network (to second-degree connections)