A family office in Dubai asked Claude who is an AI expert in Dubai, and it found me. The page behind that answer took me 90 minutes to build, late one evening, in English and German. My German speaking clients still come through referrals, but my two strongest new leads this summer came through AI search.

I run my AI agency from Dubai, and until this summer I had done almost no marketing for it. The German speaking clients I work with come because they know me or because someone recommended me, so social media made no real difference to them. Then two leads arrived that had nothing to do with my network. Both were English speakers, both had found me on Claude and Google, and one of them was a family office here in Dubai. That changed how I think about where new clients come from, and it is why I started working on how findable I am in Google and in Claude.

Referrals carry the German speaking market

For my German speaking clients the path is short. They come because they know me, or because a client of mine sent them to me. As I put it to my team in July, the whole social media and the whole marketing do not really matter for them.

That says something about the market itself. In my experience the German speaking market runs around two years behind the US, so we can see what works there and bring it over early. The clients trust me and they like working with someone who speaks their language. They have buying power, and they are reliable.

None of that depends on being found by a stranger. It depends on a network, and mine is strong. The limit is just as clear, because a network only reaches the people who are already in it.

Two leads came from outside my network, through Claude and Google

In the summer two leads texted me that did not come through anyone I knew. Both were English speakers, and when I asked how they had found me, the answer was the same both times: Claude and Google.

One of them was a family office in Dubai. They had asked an AI assistant a plain question, and as I told my team afterwards, "they asked in Claude who is an AI expert in Dubai, and they found me." I called them two extremely crazy leads at the time, and I still think that is the right description.

A family office is a client that usually finds you through people it trusts. This one found me through an answer from an AI, without anyone in between. For an agency that lives on referrals, that is a second way in, and it is one I had never planned for.

The page that did it took 90 minutes

What makes this worth writing down is how little was behind it. The page those leads found was a landing page I put together in about 90 minutes, between half past ten at night and midnight. I wrote it in one go, in English and German, uploaded five pictures and was done.

By my own standards it was not a good page, and I said so to my team. My honest reaction at the time was a question: how is this even possible? I still cannot tell you exactly why an AI picked that page.

What I can tell you is what it had. It existed, it was public, and it was written in both languages. That was enough to put me in front of a family office that asked Claude for a recommendation in Dubai. Everything I do on findability now builds on that small and slightly embarrassing start.

Fifty cold messages brought one client in a week

I did try the direct route as well, and the comparison is useful. On five days in a row I texted 10 people on LinkedIn each day, so 50 people in total.

Out of those 50 I won one client, a lawyer, within a week. He sent the first payment, and we started working together straight away. For 50 messages that is a good result, and it shows that outreach works when you actually do it.

The difference is in who does the choosing. With the LinkedIn messages I picked every person, and it took effort on five separate days. The family office in Dubai picked me. It asked a question, got an answer and wrote to me, and the only work on my side was a page I had built in one evening.

Being findable in Claude and Google is worth building, especially in Dubai

So what does it mean that a family office in Dubai found me by asking Claude? For me it was the signal to take findability seriously. After those two leads I asked my team the obvious question: "what would actually happen if I would really focus on English and, especially here in the Dubai market, and do some SEO and GEO?"

My German speaking clients will keep coming through referrals, and I will keep serving them. Dubai is my second focus, and it may well grow past the first. The way to find out is to be findable, in Google and in Claude, and to see who arrives.

One next step, if you run a business here: ask Claude yourself who it would recommend for what you do, and see whether your name comes up.