RLP 108: How to Get Clients

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 108. How do you get clients? Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (45s):
Hi everyone and welcome to the show. I’m Nicole Dyer co-host of Research Like a Pro, and I’m here with my mom, Diana Elder. Hi, Diana, how are you today?

Diana (55s):
Hi, Nicole, I am doing well.

Nicole (58s):
What’s up? What have you been doing?

Diana (60s):
I am getting ready to do an Institute. I’m so excited because I’ve always wanted to do the IGHR Institute, which is sponsored by the Georgia Genealogical Society. And generally is held on site in Georgia, and it’s never worked out for me to go because it’s always held at the same time as the BYU Family History Conference, but this year that conference was canceled and IGHR went virtual. So I get to participate in Institute sitting at home in Utah. So I’m really excited. The course I’m taking is African-American genealogy. And the coordinator is Dr.

Diana (1m 40s):
Deborah Abbott. I have met her several times. She’s very knowledgeable and has put together a wonderful course. So I’m excited to share some of the things I learned in the course, maybe on the podcast or in blog posts. Yeah. I’m looking forward to a week of learning. It’s going to be great.

Nicole (1m 58s):
That’s fantastic. For those of you who don’t know, IGHR stands for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research, it’s going to be a wonderful course. I’m excited that you get to do that.

Diana (2m 9s):
Yeah. I’ve been wanting to do an African-American course for a while. I’ve done several projects with African-American research. So I know the basics and I’ve worked in the records, but this one is on federal records. And so we’re diving into a little bit more difficult record sets and some lesser known things. So it’s going to be great. Well, let’s do our spotlight for the week. This is by one of our listeners who said, “just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your podcast. While I have put several things I learned into my research program, I still struggle with distraction occasionally. Since I listen as I am falling asleep in the evenings, I usually have to repeat some episodes.

Diana (2m 50s):
Two episodes in particular made me realize I have undervalued the search for family Bibles since prior searches have not been successful. Episodes 91 and 100, I think. Today, however, I decided to try and get on a line I am attempting to document for a lineage society application. This time I simply Googled Ritter family Bible and hit gold. Not only was it the top hit, it was the Bible of the person I am working on. I can’t believe I missed it before and feel silly even admitting this. The handwritten pages helped me confirm a maiden name and names and birth dates of all of the children. Once I complete this application, I think my next project will be to join one of your mini challenge groups.

Diana (3m 30s):
Thank you again and keep up the great work.” Okay.

Nicole (3m 32s):
I love that. It’s fun when we learn a tip and then we immediately go put it into practice and it’s even more fun when it immediately brings us results that we need. So congratulations on finding that Ritter family Bible.

Diana (3m 45s):
Cool. It kind of reminds me of a joke that some of our genealogy friends make that genealogy is like gambling. You know, we keep putting in those search terms and hoping that we’ll get the big payout. And this is one of those good examples where our listener got the big payout. That’s kind of why it’s an addiction, right?

Nicole (4m 6s):
Oh, that’s funny. And that’s why we’re here teaching you a process so that it’s not just gambling, but it actually brings measured returns and results that you can see instead of just hoping for something and then be disappointed most of the time, like gambling.

Diana (4m 21s):
Good point.

Nicole (4m 23s):
So today we have a fun episode. I’m really excited to talk about this. We’re just going to be sitting down talking about some of the things we’ve learned after a few years of experience with doing client research about how to get clients. And so I just imagined that you guys are here and we’re talking face to face and you’re asking us, well, how do you get clients? And this is what we would tell you. So Diana and I sat down beforehand and we kind of went through our list of clients. We have a spreadsheet where we keep track of the projects that we’ve done, and we just kind of chatted about how they found us and how we got our clients. So it was really fun to review that and to see which of our outreach avenues have been most successful.

Diana (5m 5s):
Right. And this was actually prompted by one of our listeners who is thinking about being a professional and just wondering, how do I get people to pay me to do their genealogy? You know, that’s something that we all wonder about, right? When we’re just starting out or before we’ve even gotten onto this career path. So hopefully we can give you some really good ideas.

Nicole (5m 28s):
So before you seek out clients for paid work, we suggest that you consider doing some advanced level education, whether it’s the Boston University course or institutes like Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy or IGHR or GRIP, then practice doing projects and reports for others for free so that you can become more comfortable with it. And you can even practice doing reports on your own families. Obviously we encourage people to do that because that’s one of the best ways to make progress in your research. We also recommend that you work toward gaining a professional credential. If you’re going to do professional research, the BCG and ICAPGen are the professional organizations that offer testing for people to see if they are at an appropriate level to be offering professional services.

Nicole (6m 20s):
And then they give you a credential that shows other people that you are able to do that. If you’ve been following us, you know, that we talk about credentialing and education a lot, so what, that’s not the focus of our podcast today, but I did want to mention that upfront so that before you start trying to get clients, you kind of know some of the things you should have done should have been practicing writing reports. You should have done advanced education. You should look into the requirements for gaining a credential and start that path. And you may feel more comfortable completing your credential before you start taking clients. At least I would recommend doing something like I have done because, although I don’t have my credential yet, I’ve worked closely with Diana who has received her credential and she’s kind of tutored me and been able to mentor me throughout my first client projects.

Nicole (7m 7s):
So if you are thinking about doing client research, make sure you consider those things first, once you’ve kind of started that path of education, practice and credentialing, then you can start thinking about how to get clients and really the word for this is marketing, right? So we’re talking about marketing yourself as a genealogist today. And if you do a good job with marketing, then you’ll have clients. One point I wanted to make is that often people will come across you or your website or your services more than once before they decide to hire you. They might hear your name from somebody. They might see your profile on APG. They might see a blog post that you’ve written, and then they’ll be ready to hire you because they’ve kind of seen you a few times.

Nicole (7m 50s):
So a lot of our clients that we’ve had, we have noticed that they have come into contact with us in more than one way through more than one of our outreach efforts when they decided to reach out to us and hire us. So it’s usually not just one of these things that we’ll talk about, but multiple combined.

Diana (8m 8s):
Right, that’s a really good point. You know, a lot of people don’t really think about hiring a professional genealogist at first. It’s something that you kind of want to do yourself, but then you hit a brick wall or you come into contact with something that is just really way out of your comfort zone. And then you start thinking maybe you should hire someone, but you have no idea who you would hire. It’s just the whole process of getting yourself out there as a professional. So people will know you do this work and you will start to become known as a professional. Now, when you are just starting out, a really great way to start getting experience is to be a contractor for a genealogy company.

Diana (8m 52s):
This is an easy way to start getting paid, and you don’t have to do the marketing because the company is doing that and just feeding you the projects. You do the project and you send it back and it gives you a lot of practice and experience. And so I would highly recommend doing that. There’s lots of companies out there and not all of them require a credential. In fact, most of them don’t, a lot of them want a credential, but you can say I’m working towards that. And they will often say, okay, we need researchers and we’ll take you on. So be open to that idea that that’s a great way to get started.

Diana (9m 33s):
That’s what I did, right? As soon as I became an accredited genealogist, I applied to be a contractor for a couple of different companies. And one of them hired me on the spot and gave me a project right then. And I did many, many projects in all different locations. And I learned so much with each one. And I had a lot of confidence in doing these projects because I had worked through the accreditation process. So that’s one of the things I always talk about with benefits of getting a credential is that it gives you confidence in these client projects.

Nicole (10m 9s):
I think having experience with doing client research is a great way to get more clients, because you can tell people in your lectures, which is something we’ll talk about coming up, and in your other content marketing that you have done client projects. So having an experience gets you more clients. All right, let’s talk about content marketing. Basically this is just creating content: blog posts, podcasts, social media content, writing something, creating videos, anything like that, where you’re creating something and publishing it, either online or another way, and doing that establishes you as an expert in the field. So content marketing is really the new way that most experts are marketing these days online because it’s a really easy way for people to find you and then build trust with you.

Nicole (10m 58s):
So to start content marketing you’ll need to have a presence online, whether it’s a website or a Facebook page or an Instagram handle that you post to. It could be a YouTube channel. It could be many different things. I think it’s really important as a professional genealogist to have a website where people can go and learn about you and see what you’re all about and kind of get a sampling of your personality and your research experience, and even look at samples of your work. I think a lot of people just go to the internet when they’re looking for something. And so if you have a presence on like the Association of Professional Genealogists, and then they can click through to your personal website, they can learn about you and see your pricing and get some ideas of what they would be getting.

Nicole (11m 43s):
Then I think it really increases the chances that they will hire you. If you’ve ever looked up somebody that you might want to hire, and they don’t really have a good online presence and you can’t really find out any information, I think sometimes that can be off-putting to some people. So of course, make a website. And then another way that we have done our content marketing is by doing a blog. You can see a lot of other genealogical companies that have blogs. We encourage people to write blog posts in their specialties so that they will become established as an expert in a certain region, or a type of genealogy, or a method that they use. Obviously, our method that we talk about is Research Like a Pro and so that’s kind of become our specialty.

Nicole (12m 26s):
And then of course, we have our region as well in the Southern United States. You can post about multiple things. You don’t have to just focus on your one thing, but the more focused you can be, the more you’ll become known as a certain type of genealogist. And then you’ll probably get more referrals because people will say, oh, you’re doing research in Florida, well, I know the best Florida researcher. So writing blog posts is a good way to do your content marketing. But if you don’t like writing, maybe you’d rather make videos. There’s some wonderful YouTube channels out there about genealogy that some of our friends do. And it’s a great way to do it as well. Another way you can do it as a podcast like you’re listening to here, we think there’s plenty of need for more genealogy podcasts, especially in focused areas or niches.

Nicole (13m 11s):
There’s some genealogy podcasts out there already. That’s wonderful, but I think there could be way more. Another thing you can do if you do these types of content marketing, writing, and podcasts and videos is become a guest on other people’s blogs or on other people’s podcasts. We’ve done that a little bit, in fact, we’re recording a podcast with another podcast later this week, so it’s a good way to get your name out there. We’ve had people let us know that they would be happy to come on our podcast. So that’s a really great way to do some more outreach if you don’t want to do your own. Another thing that we do for content marketing is our newsletter and we send it out weekly and we talk about the blog posts and the podcasts that we’ve done.

Nicole (13m 53s):
And then people can receive that update in their email inbox. So they don’t have to go check our website all the time. We put sales in there. We’ve got clients from posting that we have a sale on our research package around Black Friday or on the holidays. Sometimes we’ll get people who are on our email list, who just respond and say, I really need help with this research problem, I’d like to hire you. So you just never know who will decide to do research with you when you start sharing that you do that. Obviously we’ve written books and once you get out there as an author on genealogy topics, that’s another way to establish your credibility and your authority in the field. As far as choosing a genealogist, most people will go with what’s convenient because they know you already, and they trust you, they like you.

Nicole (14m 38s):
They’re just going to go with you because maybe they don’t know any other genealogists or they don’t want to go search out any. Sometimes we’ll have people that contact us and what they’re wanting is really outside of our specialty. So we’ll refer them to another researcher who’s more of an expert in that type of genealogy. And other times we’re able to do it ourselves and work with some of our contractors or interns and get it done. So it just depends on the type of project. And you can do the same thing. You don’t have to take every project that you are given. In fact, we don’t recommend that you take a project if you don’t feel comfortable and you have enough experience in that type of research. So that is content marketing, getting your website, your name out there, and really telling people online, what you do.

Diana (15m 25s):
Right. You have just given so many great ideas. It’s been fun, looking at all these and thinking about the different clients that we’ve received through some of these different things. One of the things that I have noticed is when I speak at conferences, a lot of my clients have come because I presented at RootsTech or the BYU conference or BYU education week. When someone listens to you for an entire hour, you’re building your expertise and they’re feeling like they’re getting to know you. And so just start lecturing and teaching if that’s something that you like to do. You don’t have to start at a big event like that, you could start working in small community classes.

Diana (16m 9s):
Now we are all doing things virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic and lots of societies that used to have in-house speakers, or you go personally, they are looking for people who will present via Zoom or a Google meeting or something virtual. And so there’s some opportunities to get yourself out there and present to some different groups. And you may just want to start in your own community, see what people are doing just right in your area. You can, when you’re doing a presentation like that, put together a handout, and you always want to have your contact information on there.

Diana (16m 50s):
It’s great if you have a website, because as Nicole said, then they can go straight to your website where you can put your Facebook page on there. If you’re doing it, that route, whatever your social media is, or your email, if you want to do your phone number or whatever you want to do to get your information in the hands of potential clients. You can also print business cards, which is always really fun to print your first business card is a professional genealogist, and you can give those out at the end of your lecture when we get back to in-person teaching. Another thing that we really like to do is to do an expanded syllabus for our presentations and have that on our website.

Diana (17m 35s):
When we teach at these conferences, there’s usually a limit of only four pages. And often the syllabus information is due months before you actually give the presentation because the conference organizers have to have time to put that together, but we’re working on our presentations and the last week or two we’re adding things that we would like to have in the syllabus. So we just don’t expand a syllabus. And then we host that on our website and that brings people who are listening to our lecture, to our website, and then they can see more about us. So that’s another really great tool that helps us as well as those who are watching our presentations. So lecturing and teaching has been a great way for us to get clients.

Diana (18m 19s):
In fact, my very first client was a member of a class that I was doing just at my local church. And he came to my class week after week and finally said, I think I just need to hire you. And so that was my introduction to professional work and I loved it. And that’s really when I decided to become accredited. You just never know where your path is going to take you when you start down the professional road.

Nicole (18m 43s):
Yes. I think lecturing and teaching has brought us a lot of our clients. Often people will tell us, I heard you speak at a conference. And then later, like months later, they’ll contact us and say, I would like you to help me with this project because they remember that we are professional genealogists and they liked our class. And one recently contacted me through Instagram, which leads me to my next point about having a social media presence. I think it’s important to have a social media presence. I don’t think you need to have yourself on every platform, but at least Facebook I think is a really good place to start. A lot of genealogists are on Facebook. If you are posting, you know, weekly or regularly on social media, people will see that and they might start following you.

Nicole (19m 28s):
And then it gives you that door to market to them. So we recommend getting yourself on social media and keeping up a social media presence. And I don’t think it has to be a lot of work. Like I said, you can just do it weekly, kind of like a blog post. And then people will see that and then they can contact you. And what it really is is it’s a convenient way for clients to reach you. Sometimes people aren’t really that into email. So they would rather send you a message on Facebook because that’s just easier for them.

Diana (20m 1s):
Right. And one of the neat things about doing a website is you can set it up, that every time you publish a blog post, it immediately goes to your social media channels. You don’t have to go do that for each one. It’ll just discuss straight to Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest, whatever you set up, social media, the developers, they’ve tried to make it so that you can do some of these things all in one. So it doesn’t have to be as hard. Just takes a little bit of time, figuring it out.

Nicole (20m 29s):
Yes. We have our blog posts automatically published to Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, you can’t do it to Instagram, Instagram. You have to go in and do it manually. And I think Pinterest, you also have to pin those manually as well.

Diana (20m 42s):
Good clarification, because you are our social media Maven and take care of all that I don’t have to worry about that.

Nicole (20m 48s):
We should mention that we do have our, our Facebook groups, Research Like a Pro group and our other groups that we have for our study groups. And those are also really good ways to interact with your followers. And so you might want to consider doing a group because it’s a little bit different than having a page. The group is more interactive and it’s harder to miss posts in a group,

Diana (21m 9s):
Which kind of leads me to the next point about specialties. It’s really, really great if you have a specialty. You know, what do you like to do? What have you kind of learned to do? Are you getting pretty good at translating German? You know, are you a Spanish researcher? Are you New England? Are you the Northwest? There’s so many different places that our research leads us. Maybe you are really honing your skills at DNA. Well, think about what your specialty could be. And then you can advertise as such because people will want to hire an expert in their specific brick wall. It was really interesting when I looked through all my client work, my spreadsheet, I found that I had about 25% of my client work in my specific region that I’m accredited in, which is the Gulf south region that the United States.

Diana (22m 4s):
And then about a third to a half, just in the broad Southern states. Because even though we accredit in a specific region, the methodology just carries over to the entire Southern region. So I thought that was interesting, that not all of my work was in my specialty. In fact, it’s half, if more are various regions. And I’ve had some, like I mentioned, African-American work, I’ve had some Native American work, DNA work. So there’s all sorts of really interesting specialties that you can tag onto your profiles wherever they are. Now, if you want to advertise on one of the main professional genealogy websites, you can put a profile on the APG profile, which is Association of Professional Genealogists.

Diana (22m 51s):
You don’t have to have a credential to be on there, but if you do have a credential, you have the opportunity to advertise as such. So people looking for the Texas researcher can find those with an AG or a CG behind their name. You can put all your specialties states on your APG profile or your countries, you know, whatever you want to specialize in. And I’ve had clients that have done that, that have done a search for a Texas researcher and then they found me. So APG is a great place to have a profile. And once you have your credential, then you’re also listed on those websites. So ICAPGEN, I have a profile there.

Diana (23m 32s):
And then when Nicole has her certification done, she’ll have her profile on the BCG website. So those are additional places. People can go to search for you. Something that you might want to think about is if you live near a repository, like an archive or a library or a museum that people may visit to do onsite research. You could put your name as part of their listings. There’s a lot of these repositories they’ll have an online presence. And then they’ll have a list of researchers that people can contact because they don’t live in Tennessee or wherever this archive is. And you do. And so if you’re on their list as a professional researcher, you could get hired to go and do lookups for people.

Diana (24m 16s):
And I have done a lot of lookups for people at the Family History Library, because that is one of my repositories I live near and I can combine several trips into one and go up and do look ups all afternoon for clients. And so maybe that’s what you’d like to start doing, doing a lookup in an on site repository that can be kind of fun to do. And I know Nicole, you just had a great experience with hiring one of our genealogy friends. Do you want to tell a little bit about that?

Nicole (24m 47s):
Yes, Melissa Barker came on our podcast as a guest and we were talking about doing research in archives and after the podcast, I wanted to look up and see if there were any sources on Hawkins county, and I know I talked about this before, but the reason that I went with Melissa is because I already knew her. And then when I looked at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, I saw that she was listed as a researcher who was willing to do lookups there. So it was really easy and convenient for me to email her. I already had her email in my contacts list. So it was just super easy to just shoot her an email and say, Hey, would you do this look up for me? And she said, yes. And then, it was wonderful.

Diana (25m 29s):
Right. So don’t be afraid to talk about what you do with your friends and acquaintances. A lot of people will say to me, people pay you to do their genealogy? And I say, yes, they do. It’s such a foreign thing for some people who think that it’s just the hobby and that there’s not a paid profession. So sometimes we have to do a lot education and explain what we do and why we do it and why it’s important to people. And you never know who it’s going to talk to them and they’ll say, oh, wait, I know this person. You never know. It’s always great to talk about what you do and let people know more about this world.

Nicole (26m 4s):
Yes, I think it’s really important to tell people that you are looking for clients if you’re getting started and just say, hey, I’m doing professional genealogy. If you know of anybody, who’s looking for that to send them my way because I’m taking clients. And often, if you’ll tell you, you know, other people who are professional genealogists, they will get too many requests that they can’t do. And if they know one of their colleagues is accepting clients, then they’re definitely more likely to give you that referral. And sometimes word of mouth is the best way to go.

Diana (26m 34s):
Yeah. That is a really good point. And when I look through my past clients, I noticed that several of them were referrals. Other genealogists who either had too much work or didn’t research in a specific area and were passing them on to me because I had more expertise in an area. Yeah, it’s really great. If you’re in a genealogy society or active in some other organization, you know, let people know that you are doing this professionally. Many, many of our clients are genealogists who have hit brick walls. And so letting other genealogists know that you can help them is a great way to market yourself. One other thing that you can do is do an email signature and on that, add your title, you know, professional genealogists or accredited genealogists or whatever, and then a link to your website.

Diana (27m 24s):
So that every email that you send out has that attached and then people will see that and they can refer others just from that simple thing of having an email signature.

Nicole (27m 33s):
Yes. Before we go onto our next thing, I had a story to tell about just talking about your professional genealogy research to your friends and acquaintances. I was working with a man at church. We were both volunteering to plan activities for the children in our area. And we just got to chatting and he asked me what I do for work. And I told him I do professional genealogy. And he told me he had a really difficult case in his family that he felt like could never be solved. And so I asked him about it and I told him, oh, this is what I would do. And I feel like that’s totally able to be solved, especially with DNA. And it was on his patrilineal line. It was his surname line.

Nicole (28m 13s):
So I recommended DNA testing and told him that I would love to work on it for him. I wasn’t pushy, but I have let him know that I was confident I could do it. And he emailed me later and said, yes, I actually do want you to do this project for me, let me know all the details. And he paid me right away, even though I couldn’t take the project for a couple months. And he got started on his DNA testing. So you just never know, who’s really wishing that they could have help, but they just don’t know a genealogist.

Diana (28m 43s):
Right. That’s a great story.

Nicole (28m 46s):
Okay. Now let’s talk about networking with other genealogists because we said you can get referrals. So how do you get to know other genealogists? I’ll tell you about our experience. One of the first things we ever did was start attending RootsTech. The next year we applied to become a RootsTech ambassador, and that really opened the doors for us to network with a lot of people. And that was really fun. And then we started reading more blogs of genealogists and commenting on them and they would comment on our blogs, but you don’t have to do that. You can just start by attending conferences, attending institutes. Institutes are smaller, you have smaller class sizes. There’s more opportunity for meeting professional genealogists. And so it’s more of an advanced level of education.

Nicole (29m 27s):
So we really recommend those. Then I would say volunteering, if you volunteer at societies or other organizations that you’re a part of this helps you to get to know other people who are in the professional genealogy sphere and see what their client work is like. And if they have a certain specialty and then you can share your specialty and you kind of build up your network. So volunteering at your genealogy society is a great way to do that. One more thing you might want to try doing is becoming an exhibitor at conference exhibitor halls and networking with the other people who have booths there, because there’s just kind of a comradery that comes from having a booth at an exhibit hall for a week.

Nicole (30m 11s):
So that’s another way that we’ve really gotten to know people in the genealogy world is from having a booth the last couple of years at RootsTech and at the BYU Family History Conference and at NGS, the NGS exhibit hall went virtual. So that was a little bit different and not as good because you don’t actually network with people when there’s a virtual hall, it comes from kind of being in the hall together, setting it up and going around and saying hi to people and that kind of thing. And then there’s also the Genealogy Business Alliance, which is a fun way to get to know other people doing professional genealogy and who have genealogy related businesses. And that’s a group that was set up by several genealogists who got together and just said, we want to do a group where we can talk about some of the things in the field.

Nicole (30m 58s):
So that’s been a great way as well to find support from others. And that’s how we did our first booth at RootsTech was by sharing a booth through the Genealogy Business Alliance. So networking with other professionals is a very important thing to do. Oh, I forgot to mention ProGen. The ProGen study group has been another great way to meet other professional genealogists or aspiring professional genealogists and learn about the profession and network. So joining study groups and other small learning opportunities.

Diana (31m 30s):
Right, I really love networking with other genealogists. And I’ve gotten some really great clients that just kind of come out of the blue because someone that I met at a conference referred them to me. So you never know where your next client will come from. And it’s really fun to kind of track it back and figure out your shared acquaintance. So if you are wanting to keep working in the professional genealogy world, one of the best ways to continue to have work is through returning clients. When you’re starting out, you’re always hoping that a client will return to you. And that’s why we give them future research ideas. And I have clients that come back every year, they do a project a year and have either a continuation of the old project, or maybe something new that they’ve thought of that they wanted to have me work on.

Diana (32m 22s):
And as you build up your clientele, it’s wonderful because you build a relationship with these clients and you get to know their families really well and they trust you. And so those are some of my favorite projects are when I get to return to something that I worked on before and get to pick right up where I left off and get started again.

Nicole (32m 42s):
Absolutely. So doing a good job on those projects and really establishing good communication with the client and explaining everything and so that they have no unanswered questions when you’re done. I think providing a really good list of future research suggestions is important to get those returning clients.

Diana (33m 0s):
I agree. And I like to chat with the client after I’ve done the project, either with a video call or just on the phone and do that, do a really good explanation if they would like it about the project, because sometimes they have questions or they want to go do a little bit of research next. And I like to help them do that as well. So, you know, whatever their need is, we are a service based industry and it’s really important that we understand our client’s needs and that we try to meet those needs rather than just saying my way is the highway. And this is how I do it, really listening to them and saying, oh, okay, I get that. I can certainly do that.

Nicole (33m 38s):
Yeah, it’s a balance because there are some things that we probably wouldn’t ever agree to. Like if a client asked us to do a report with no citations, I would probably say, no, I’m sorry, but I would definitely give them the word document if they wanted to go and put their name on it and change it. They could take out all the citations. But anything that has my name on it is going to have citations.

Diana (34m 0s):
We follow the ethics too. There’s ethics codes for the APG and ICAPGEN and BCG, when you sign those, you are saying, yeah, I’m going to be ethical and honest in my work. So we have to uphold that as well.

Nicole (34m 14s):
Yeah. And I think it really goes back to that client education and really teaching people why it’s important to do things the way that we do. And if they want something different, try to reach some kind of compromise where we can both be happy.

Diana (34m 27s):
Yeah.

Nicole (34m 28s):
So lastly, we have another form of outreach, which is volunteering in the community. I know a lot of our listeners are volunteers at Family History Centers and they help people who come in. So that’s a really good way to get started with even seeing if you like doing client research and helping other people with their projects. Sometimes you’ll get people that will come in and their project will be too advanced or too long or involved that it isn’t really suited for helping them in the Family History Center. And then you may refer them to a professional genealogist. One of our friends who volunteers at the Family History Center is a professional genealogist. So sometimes she’ll be able to help them in that capacity or she’ll refer them to somebody else that she knows.

Nicole (35m 9s):
And that’s how I got one of my clients. Someone came into the Family History Center, she was helping him. And then his problem was a little bit more involved. And so she sent him off to me and I decided to take the work and assist him. So volunteering in the community in a center or library does a really great way to just get to know people who are needing help with their family history, potential clients, and possibly work with them outside of that capacity in a professional role.

Diana (35m 40s):
I, I think that one of the things that really struck me when I was thinking about doing this professionally was a podcast I listened to. And this was a man who was very, very successful. And someone had asked him where his success came from. And he said it was volunteering because he was giving service in the community. And he said, that has come to really help him in his professional life. And I thought that was really interesting, that whole idea of how much value there is and volunteer thing I know in the Genealogy world, a lot of times we talk about how much time it takes the volunteer.

Diana (36m 23s):
You know, you can be really involved in so many organizations where you are volunteering your time, but whenever I’m asked to do something in a volunteer situation, I always think back to that man sharing that, that so many good things have come from volunteering. And I have truly seen that so many good things, so many good connections, just great things that happen. So we do have to be careful of our time and balance and all of that. But volunteering is a wonderful way to give back and do good in the genealogy community.

Nicole (36m 58s):
I have found that with my experience, volunteering at the Pima County Genealogy Society, it has brought me so many wonderful opportunities. And so I feel that all the time I’ve spent volunteering, there has been so worthwhile, even though I didn’t undertake the volunteer position, thinking that the returns would be so great, but it has been just wonderful, the connections and the networking and the opportunities to speak at our monthly meetings and all those kinds of things has been very wonderful. I know that you volunteer with ICAPGen. What are the different roles you have done there?

Diana (37m 33s):
For ICAPGen, as soon as I was accredited, I was asked in my oral review to redo all the videos because the videos about the accreditation process were outdated. You know, the process changes from time to time and they needed to be redone. So I guess, because I had a website, I was an expert enough to do videos, which I really wasn’t, but I gathered a team and together we redid the videos that are now on YouTube that talk all about skill building and ICAPGen accreditation process. And that was great. You know, it was hours and hours of work, but it’s such a huge return on those videos. So many people that have commented on what a help they’ve been.

Diana (38m 14s):
And I’m just really grateful to be able to do things like that. So I did the videos. Now I’m serving as a commissioner on ICAPGen board and we have several different little assignments that I will go and do. I do a lot of presentations about accreditation to different societies or groups, and I’m technically called the Presentation Specialist. And so that is what I do. And I love it.

Nicole (38m 41s):
You know, I learned a lot from my position last year on the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy committee, helping with their publicity and just learning more about institutes and how they work and all the time and effort that goes into planning those. So volunteering has just been fun and very educational.

Diana (38m 59s):
Well, this has been really fun to talk about how to get clients. We just really highly recommend that anyone thinking about this as a profession, take one or two of these things, whatever struck a chord with you that we talked about today, get started in doing something, whether it’s just to get more education or to start volunteering or to do a website, whatever situation you’re in. And you might want to do some type of a plan, you know, put together a one-year plan or a five-year plan if that works for you. But if you’re seriously considering it, I would highly recommend it. It’s really a fun profession. And I’ve seen so many people that have chosen it just like me as a third career.

Diana (39m 43s):
It’s a great thing to do when you’re more of a retired person and you don’t need to have full-time income. You may be just want to have work a few hours a week, very flexible hours. And yeah, I would highly recommend it.

Nicole (39m 55s):
Well, great. I’m going to put the list of all the ways that we mentioned for how to get clients into a little handout thing. And I’ll put the link to that in the show notes. So we hope you enjoy the episode and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Diana (40m 9s):
All right. Bye bye everyone.

Nicole (40m 13s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book research Like a Pro a genealogist guide on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our research Like a Pro online course or join our next study group. Learn more@familylocket.com to share your progress and ask questions. Join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our eCourse or study group. If you like, what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to research Like a Pro.