We may be bias but this is probably the best interview you will ever read. Okay so maybe not, but thing is certain this is the best interview you ever read that features John O’Nolan. And to find out what animal is to the right, you will just have to read the article!

First may I call you Big John?

Hell yeah you can! In fact that’s what she said! Though other preferred pseudonyms include “John Teh Awesomez” and “Beaver John” – why? I just love Beavers. In fact if you have a picture of a Beaver, this would be a great place to include it! I could talk about Beavers pretty much all day.

Prefect! Well that’s interesting about your love for beavers. So our topic is client acquisition. You seem to be quite good at acquiring clients. What do you attribute your success to?

Well my current strategy for this is to focus all of my time and energy on NOT acquiring clients. Seriously – that’s actually what I do.

So far I’ve found that my very best client relationships have been with companies who have gone to tremendous effort to research designers, and have hand picked me cause they wanted to work with me. On the flip side when I’ve worked with local clients, who just wanted to use me cause I was “convenient” – it’s almost always ended up with a poor relationship.

So now I put out as much cool stuff as I can – I submit designs to places like Smashing Mag, and I do some guest blogging on Web Designer Depot and The Web Squeeze. The more places like this that I get my work featured, the more likely a great client researching designers is to find me.

Whenever I get an enquiry I tell clients I’m booked up way in advance (even if I’m not, but usually I am) – my strategy is to make clients really want to work with me. In the long run this means they respect me more, and are a lot easier to work with as a result.

Anyone who knows Big John knows he has been featured a lot of places including places like Smashing Magazine. Does this mean as designers/developers we should all shoot to have our work featured in Smashing Magazine or places like it and if we don’t we won’t become a big time designer/developer?

Oh noes! I totally should’ve bothered to read all the questions before I started typing out my answers! I guess you already know the answer to this is that Smashing Mag features have made a big difference to my career, and landed me some big name corporates. So in penance of prematurely answering this question, I will submit to 5 lashes of your finest whip.

If you could give three tips on landing a client what would they be and explain why.

This is easy – only put your best work in your portfolio, make contacts in the industry, and always make sure there are lots and lots of easy ways to get in contact with you.

Remember there are some really awful web designers out there (I won’t name any names) who are doing incredibly mediocre work but still getting featured in blogs / magazines / conferences. To an extent it’s always going to be who you know not what you know – so you might as well capitalize on that as much as you can.

In the long run though – you need to focus on doing really good work. Good work leads to more work

What do you think (or know) got the attention, and eventually lead clients like Virgin Atlantic Airways and Ubisoft to choose you?

I would say that this most definitely has to be down to the fact that I like Beavers – I think both of those companies heard that I was called “Big John” and “likes Beavers” and they were pretty much sold right then and there.

Aside from my love of furry things with big tails, they both told me that they’d seen my work on multiple blogs and they were impressed by my level of interaction with the design community on Twitter – so I think that helped!

On another note it’s worth mentioning that on both occasions I won the projects over big-name studios. Like you’ve probably been to a conference that they hosted or read a book that they’ve written – that’s how big. This just goes to show that small companies and freelancers definitely can compete in this marketplace, you just have to go for it.

Is Chris Spooner your hero? I mean after all he did get you a ticket to DibiConference.

Dude, Chris Spooner is TOTALLY my hero. I once told him that if he wasn’t quite so tall, and had a more womanly physique, I’d totally marry him. I was very lucky to win the ticket from Chris to attend the DIBI Conference next month, and I literally can’t wait to go!

While we’re on the subject of Chris – he recently designed a stupidly awesome logo for my biggest side-project for 2010. You can check it out and sign up for updates about what it actually IS, here: http://www.biothemes.com

Well that about wraps it up if you have any further questions feel free to comment below as I’m sure John would be happy to answer any questions you may have, after all he’s just a nice guy who likes beavers.

Below are some ways you can contact/keep up with John:

• Twitter
• John O’Nolan
• Lyrical Media
• BioThemes