How to run a free workshop that gets you your first consulting clients

There does need to be a way of reaching clients. For me it is a workshop. For you it might be a set of conversations. The rule underneath both is the same: you never message a stranger.

The rule I would give anybody designing their first: do not run the exercise live. Name the framework, show what it does, and leave the doing for later. The exercise is what the programme is for. A room that has done the work in the session has had the programme for free. A room that has watched you do it well wants the rest.

Design it: the bridge test

A workshop fails in one of two directions. Too small, and nobody gives you ninety minutes for it. Too big, and you have given away the thing you sell.

What settles it: teach the first step of your method, never the most valuable one.

And keep the promise small on purpose. They leave with one thing to test, and what they are doing this week to test it. Not a finished positioning sentence. Nobody arrives at one cold in ninety minutes, and a guessed one is worse than none.

Then the title. Cover your name and read it. If three people in your field could run that title next Tuesday, it is not your title yet. My first draft was "Where on earth to start when becoming a solopreneur". I added "and where AI actually helps", because without it, it sounded like everyone else.

Fill it: three sources, and only three

Your posts, pointing at the date. Your newsletter, the one audience you own. And a personal invitation to everybody who engaged with what you wrote.

That third one converts best and it is the one that gets skipped. It is not cold. They read you, they reacted, and the message says so: you commented on this, I am running a session on exactly that, would it be useful?

My route uses no ads and no bought lists. Still not a stranger.

And the arithmetic, said plainly. Not everybody who registers comes, so plan for a room smaller than your list. Your first workshop may have eight people in it, and that is a real room. Eight people who came on purpose, from a list you built yourself, are eight qualified conversations.

Run it: what the room needs from you

In the first five minutes, say what they will leave with and say the shape. A room that knows where it is going stays.

Questions at the end, not throughout, or ninety minutes loses its shape. Cameras off is fine. You are not owed their faces.

The close is the task, then the conversation. The ask is a call, and it comes once people have seen what you do.

Not everyone wants to run a workshop

That is fine. The invite can be a conversation instead.

A private message to somebody who engaged with a post. A reply to somebody who got in touch through your website. An email to the people who already know your work: former colleagues, former clients, your own network. The same rule applies. Reference what they read or said, then ask whether a conversation would be useful. Still not a stranger.

The workshop is one room of twenty. Conversations are twenty rooms of one. Both work, and you can start the second one this week without building anything.

Either way, it is the best test of demand you have

Before you build anything else, the invite tells you whether people want the thing. Who registered, who came, who did the task afterwards. Or who said yes to a conversation, and who asked what it would cost. That is real interest, and it is worth more than any amount of planning.

The people who did the task, or asked the question, have qualified themselves. That is the list you follow up personally.

Where AI comes in

Designing a workshop to a fixed shape is a procedure, so it is a skill, not an agent. It takes your topic and gives it back in your shape, the same way every time.

Then the automations, and an automation does not wait. It runs when you are not there. Registration and reminders, so everybody who signs up hears from you before the day without you remembering to send anything. And the follow-up, within a day: the recording, the task and the call link, to everybody who registered, including the people who did not come. That list is usually the bigger one, and it is almost always ignored.