What did your hustling for clients consist of? Like I get the pounding the network pavement, everyone recommends that, but beyond that I never really get what it is that people do. Like do you just cold call people or do you entirely go through your network? What specific situations do you place yourself in where you can hustle up work?
Me? mostly reaching out through a decent personal network. Did some event sponsorships, didn't do advertising. Blogged, but not relentlessly. Didn't seek media coverage.
Were I to do it again I’d pick 2–3 topics to master and blog, tweet, guest post, relentlessly. Reuse, rewrite, repost the same essay and commentary dozens of times. Get quoted in press and other media coverage. Follow media coverage looking for potential clients, dig into those clients and master all the public information about those clients.
Maybe a couple examples would explain what I think people mean. You're getting dinner with a friend, and they mention their new friend just started a company and is looking for some people who do X. You don't really do X, you do Y, but a lot of people who do X also need Y.
On the 0 to 10 scale:
0:
"I don't really do X, thanks for thinking of me."
3:
"Hey, I don't really do X, but he may need Y. Let him/her know if they need Y they can call me."
5:
"Oh, that's neat. Why don't you introduce us, I'd love to meet them. "
8:
"Oh, cool, what's their name/email? Can I mention your name and reach out? "
10:
"Cool, let's invite them to grab a drink with us after dinner. What neighborhood do they live in so we can go somewhere convenient?"
Important to note that implicit in this example is that you're meeting with friends/acquaintances who are in positions to refer you to this kind of work on a regular basis. That's the other side of networking - if you're not a naturally outgoing person it means putting in the effort to socialize with the right kind of people regularly and make sure they know what kind of work you do / skills you have.
If people don't like doing it,then they need to make sure the entire internet knows about them: bligs,articles, etc. This is one of the ways for introverts to deal with it.
Didn't market. Didn't network.
Didn't constantly hustle for clients.
Didn't outsource scut work.
Didn't down tools when clients were slow to pay.
Didn't develop/maintain a backlog of client work.
Didn't reject fixed price contracts.
Didn't renegotiate when projects changed beyond contracted scope.
Didn't filter free consults against probability they'd turn into a contract.
Didn't have my heart in it (and have since stopped).