Ten years of practice. Hundreds of regulars. A three-week waiting list. And none of it carries any weight in a city you arrived in last month, because here you are someone with no reviews.
This is the most unfair part of moving and also the most logical. Reputation is not the quality of your work. Reputation is what other people can confirm about your work. The work moved. The confirmation did not.
What a stranger actually sees
| What she checks | A local professional | You |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews | Dozens, with names and dates | Empty, or screenshots from somewhere unclear |
| How long here | Years, with an address | Unclear, appeared recently |
| Anyone she knows who went | Probably someone | Nobody |
| Portfolio | Work that looks local | Work from somewhere else |
Three of those four rows have nothing to do with how good you are. Which is why "just do good work and clients will come" is advice that does not function in the first year somewhere new.
What does carry across
- The work itselfYour strongest asset and the only one that needs no translation. Work done anywhere looks exactly as good here. Show a lot of it, consistently.
- Testimony from people you worked onWeaker than local proof, far stronger than nothing — especially when it is visibly real people rather than text on a graphic.
- Training documentationRarely persuasive on its own, but it closes the question of whether you were trained at all. Worth having accessible rather than in a box.
- How you talk about the workThe most underrated. Experience is audible in a consultation — in the questions you ask and the things you warn about in advance. Clients read that faster than they read reviews.
Closing the gap faster
The goal of the first months is not "collect reviews" but "get the first local confirmations". Those are different things: ten testimonials from people nobody here knows weigh less than three from people they do.
- Ask in the moment she is pleased — not a week later in a message. That moment happens once and it is short.
- Ask for something specific: one sentence about whether she liked it. Vague requests get nothing.
- Photograph local work immediately. In two months you have a portfolio made here, and that persuades more than anything imported.
- Keep it all in one place, not in stories. Stories disappear; the next new client arrives in six months.
- Ask for a recommendation, not only a review. One person telling a friend outweighs five written testimonials.
And one thing not to do: substitute advertising for proof. Ads bring someone to a profile where she still looks for confirmation. If there is none, you have paid to have her doubt confirmed.
The same applies to salons
If you are looking for a chair, the mechanism is identical. An owner cannot verify your experience — she can only verify what she can see.
- A portfolio in one link, not scattered across a messenger thread.
- Willingness to work a trial day. It settles more than any conversation.
- Your own client base, however small — an asset rather than a suspicion, provided you agree up front whose business clients book with and how their records are handled.
- Clear expectations about terms: what you want, what you will give, and what happens to client records if you part.
Say the part about bringing your own clients first, yourself. If it emerges later it looks like something you were concealing.
Build it so it moves next time
The common mistake after a move is to start collecting proof again in exactly the form that just vanished: in chats, in someone else’s software, in a social feed.
If you ever move again — and in this profession people do — the same loss repeats. So from the first day it is worth putting reviews and work somewhere you can take them from: your own profile, not a system that belongs to a workplace.
A reputation that lives only in someone else’s system stays behind when you move.
Should I translate old testimonials?
You can, but keep the original alongside. A translated review with no original reads as something you wrote yourself, and the effect disappears.
How many reviews before I stop feeling like a newcomer?
Psychologically, around ten real ones with names and dates. After that it is freshness rather than volume: five from the last two months persuade more than fifty from three years ago.
My clients never leave reviews. What am I doing wrong?
Usually nothing except the ask. Most people are willing but do not know where or what to write. A specific request at the right moment, plus a one-tap link, changes the rate sharply.