How to Get More Clients Without Working Harder
How to Get More Clients Without Working Harder with Philip VanDusen
Brand Design Masters podcast EP 158
[00:00:00] Hey everybody. Today we are going talk about how you can get more clients without working harder, first of all, let's talk about where do clients come from, and this is a very important metric that you have to pay attention to.
Clients come from three places.
Number One is promotion.
so that's doing ads or cold outreach. And I know a lot of you're saying is, I hate cold calling. I hate cold emails. It feels yucky, feels salesy, and yes it does. Or you can pay for it. You can buy ads. You can pay to get your message and your face and your brand out in front of people.
Number two is attraction.
That's content marketing. That's inbound marketing, newsletters, whatever that is, you show up, you become visible online. You get people to come to you. The challenge with inbound marketing and content marketing is that it takes a while to build an audience, takes a while to build trust, takes a while to get people into that pipeline and to start coming to you.
For instance, this is just a fun fact. [00:01:00] When I started my YouTube channel 10 years ago in June I said to myself, I'm gonna publish a video every week for 52 weeks and I am not gonna stop. I'm not gonna look at my metrics. Until I do that and see what happens. Before I quit, I'm gonna publish a video every week for a year.
And I did that. And , by the end of that year, 80% of my clients for my new consultancy and agency were coming to me directly from YouTube. And that fact is still true today, but it did take a tremendous amount of effort on my part to publish 52 videos and that much content. So yeah, it can take a while.
Number three is networking and referrals.
And that is coming in from partners, either your network or referrals from old clients. And networking can be hard for some people. It takes some effort. You have to show up places, you have to develop relationships and that can be a challenge for some creative professionals too.
So when you look at the breakdown [00:02:00] of the percentage of these incoming new business sources for creative professionals in general, and this is sourced from data from Spark Toro in a survey they did called The State of Digital Agencies. 15% of new business comes in from promotion or cold outreach, only 15% in general. Attracting and content and inbound is 25%.
The vast majority, 60% of new business for small agencies, solopreneurs, freelancers, comes in from your network and referrals, either referrals from old clients or partners or word of mouth. I want you to bear this in mind okay. The creative economy has re exploded.
It exploded about 10 years ago, and it has done nothing but gain steam and the advent, the explosion of AI and what it's doing to our industry and the capabilities it's giving us as creative professionals and the capabilities that it's giving companies and our clients to [00:03:00] do more, be more and create much more impactful creative assets has caused our industry to re-explode.
And we as professionals have to really look at that. How can we utilize that and what can we bring to our clients? Every business needs media, it used to be that businesses could get by with magazine advertising and outdoor and maybe some radio, right? Or if they were a big enterprise, television that is long, long gone.
And it moved into social media. It moved into digital content and digital visibility and social. But almost every business needs a vast array of media these days in order to be effective in today's marketplace, they need social media, they need branded assets, video, audio, animation, possibly they need all sorts of imagery to populate their social posts.
And now there is this explosion of AI and companies are struggling [00:04:00] and they are scrambling to figure out how to use ai, what applications and programs to use, how to integrate with that with their existing media streams, how it can expand their media streams, how it can make their media streams more professional looking or more impactful.
And that's gonna be our job. That's gonna be our job as creative pros to learn how to use that stuff and how to teach and advocate that our clients integrate that into their businesses. And everyone's, chicken little in the creative world saying, the sky's falling. We're all gonna lose our jobs.
AI's gonna take all our jobs. The thing is that AI is not gonna take your job if you make it your job to learn AI because your clients , don't have time for this. They're out there selling products and services, right? They're servicing clients. It is our job to learn these AI tools and to bring it to our clients to help them in the work that we do for them.[00:05:00]
So that's a new business need for us in terms of something that we've gotta sit up straight and get back to school and figure this stuff out because that's what our clients are gonna want from us.
So here's the winning skillset for creatives. Now, in the creative economy.
You have to have your core creative skillset.
What is it that you're great at? What's that one T-shaped skillset that you're amazing at? You have to also, and we're gonna get into this in depth, think about an expanded offering. What is, what I like to call, your "design plus". You also have to have a meaningful network. And I don't mean a casual network, I don't mean social media followers, a meaningful network that actually works for you.
And we're also gonna get into that deeply. You have to have a strong business brand and you also have to have a strong and visible personal brand.
You also have to have a new business funnel. We're also gonna be talking about funnels and what that looks like and how you can actually grow and widen your funnel without working harder. And you have to have a level of business skills and [00:06:00] marketing skills for yourselves, and also an understanding of these things for your clients.
That is a winning, creative economy skillset in 2026.
So what's the biggest challenge I hear from my creative professional clients in my community? How do I get more clients? That is really always the number one question, whether you're coming at a school or whether you've been in business for a long time.
The answer is a wider funnel.
And I don't mean being more places, doing more things, more hustle, more posts, more effort on your part, more social, more outreach. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about the "more work" part of it. When it comes down to it, your funnel is basically your offer and your network.
So how wide is your offer and how wide is your network? I'm gonna show you exactly why that impacts. How many clients you get. If you have a [00:07:00] narrow offer, say you offer graphic design services, you design logos. Your client base is based on what prospective clients are out there that need a logo, right?
It's very fairly narrow. So if you have a narrow offer, you have a narrow prospective client list or a short list. If you have a wider offer, the number of clients who need a range of things is much broader. So the number of clients that are in need of a broader range of services is a much longer list.
So if you're looking at your offer versus your potential clients. Your offer is graphic design, or it's photography, or it's illustration, or you do audio editing or video editing. Your potential clients are limited to that need. And if you expand through what I like to call "design plus" a wider offer, offering a wider range of services, [00:08:00] your list of potential clients broadens exponentially.
So what is "Design Plus"?
And you understand the math here, right? If you have a single offering, the number of clients that you have are the ones that need that single offering. If you offer a much broader range of services, your chances of hitting a client that needs something within that broader range of services is much, much greater.
when it comes down to it really. You have to offer more than design. And I don't mean that it's all has to come from you. But when I say more than just design, like what? What do I mean by that? What is your "design plus"? or what is your photography plus, or your audio editing plus, or your copywriting plus whatever your creative superpower is, your main key offering.
What is the plus to that? " Design Plus" can look like your core offering plus brand strategy, video could be audio editing, could be consumer [00:09:00] insights or marketing content, user research, social media management, illustration, photography, content development, AI implementation.
What is the plus to your core skillset that can widen that funnel, that can widen the number of clients that you could conceivably appeal to? Think about what that is and how you could broaden your offering. And again, I'm not talking about you learning the new thing or all of these new things and offering all these new things yourself.
The thing to remember is that design plus" positions you to become a true strategic partner for your clients. The best thing to be is the go-to partner for your client. You want them to think of you first when they have a problem that needs to be solved.
And clients have a range of problems that need to be solved. And so if you come top of mind as the solution to not just their video editing, but maybe their brand [00:10:00] strategy, maybe their logo design, maybe their content development, you become much more of a true strategic partner. In my brand strategy 1 0 1 course, I talk about moving to the tip of the spear.
When you offer brand strategy, thinking as a deliverable, intellectual partnership for your clients or a broader range of services, you start to move to the tip of the spear. The tip of the spear is where all the strategic decisions are made. Where the problem solving happens before execution. Execution is down on the shaft of the spear.
And if you're a creative professional who's doing audio editing, video editing, logo design, and you have a particular deliverable, you are living on the shaft of the spear. You are living on the execution end and not necessarily the planning, decision making, strategic end. The tip of the spear. The more you offer the broader services that you offer, you become more and more of a strategic [00:11:00] partner, a thinking partner for your clients, for how they can solve this range of problems that they have, and that is the goal of "design plus".
You want to build out your network of specialist partners because you will do this through partnerships. You will do this one of two ways. You will either white label your services under the services of another strategic partner. Or they will white label their services under you.
Essentially, let's say that I know a copywriter and they have their own copywriting business and their own, business name and they have their own clients, but I have my agency name and my clients, I need some intensive copywriting for a project. I may reach out to my copywriting partner and say, Hey, would you white label your services I have this big project I'd like to bring you in on and you could get a lot of work out of it, but I need you to work under the label of my agency and be invisible in terms of the name [00:12:00] of your agency to my clients.
You're gonna get all the work, but I need you to white label your services under my business. I've done that for other businesses, I still do. It's a very symbiotic relationship. When it comes down to it, you have to let go of your ego a little bit. You have to be a little humble.
But the thing is that working the work is never the problem. The problem for creatives is getting the work. If you can get the work, you can get people to work the work. And there are other people out there, other, expert creative professionals who are thinking the same thing. If they get a project, they would love to be able to accept a large project that's far beyond their basic skillset.
If they have enough partners that they can build a team to work that work. So where do you find these specialist partners who do what you don't do? You have your key T-shaped skillset, your superpower, but how do you find those partners, those strategic partners who are gonna help you work outside of your core [00:13:00] competency?
The answer is your network.
It's a very simple answer, but the word 'network' can mean a lot of different things. And the type of network that we're talking about is a 'meaningful network'. It's a network of potential strategic partners. Again, let's talk about network in regards to getting clients. The narrower network, the fewer clients you can possibly appeal to.
Because if you have a narrow network, a narrow range of possible strategic partners, if you're even doing that, you can appeal to or service fewer clients. The flip side of that is if you have a wide network, a wide range of strategic partners, you can service more clients, you have the appeal of potentially attracting a much broader range of clients.
You look at your network, how many people how many old clients, coworkers you look at the breadth of your network and the number of clients that can [00:14:00] come from that narrow network.
And then you dial into that, you expanded network, your strategic partners, networks, and all of the clients and referral services . And inbound they have in terms of potential clients that are coming from any number of additional people or strategic partners. You broaden the top of that funnel and you also broaden the base of it, which is how many clients that you can get.
So I know the question that you're asking yourselves, right? You're saying, okay, great, thanks Phil. How is all this not working harder? Sounds like a lot of work to me. It actually doesn't have to be, because when it comes down to it, you aren't doing all of this work. You're not learning all these new things.
You're not expanding, and working so hard to find all of, these new clients. You are leveraging the skillsets of others to broaden what you can offer, and you are leveraging the networks of [00:15:00] others as well in terms of the range and visibility and contacts that you have in order to start feeding you work.
When it comes down to it, your network can get you more work. Your network can get you more clients. You have to think of those things being inextricably linked and how do you magnify, how do you 10 x your network without doing a lot more work. I'm gonna tell you exactly how to do that
i'll be transparent. I have an offer at the end that's going to really show you how can literally do this overnight.
Your network is literally your net worth. You have to think about it that way. And when we think back to the beginning, 15% coming from ads and promotion, 25% coming from inbound and content, but 65% coming from your network and from referrals and partners. If [00:16:00] your new business is not reflecting that right now, you have to think about networking and partnerships in a very different way.
As I said earlier on, we're talking about a meaningful network, a network that can get you work. It's very different. Casual connections, social media followers. Connections, quote unquote, on LinkedIn. These are vanity metrics. Unless these are actual partners who are on the lookout for work for you and projects they could pull you into and you are on the lookout for work for them, and projects you could pull them into, that is a meaningless connection.
So who is a network connection? Network connections can be old schoolmates, old coworkers. They could be professional group members. So professional groups like BNI, which is Business Network International or DMI, which is Design Management Institute. The A IGA has chapters all [00:17:00] over the United States.
Anyway. There are ad clubs, creative director clubs, freelance partners, ex clients are one of the major sources of referrals for people, ex managers. They could be mentors or people who've coached you in the past, and also could be business owners that you know, but a lot of us feel stuck when it comes right down to it.
Networking is a little hard.
A lot of us feel stuck and so how do you get unstuck? Because networking can really be awkward. A lot of creative professionals that I know, myself included are introverted. We find social outreach when it's cold in particular, or when we're trying to develop relationship nurture networking relationships, go to conferences, reach out and introduce yourself to people that you don't know.
There's a lot of people who are like hyper, phone phobic now, or even Zoom phobic. They prefer to do everything through [00:18:00] texting or email, and that is not a human connection. It's tough to build true, meaningful network connections that way, but it doesn't have to be that hard.
So how do you get more clients without working harder? Let's talk about that a little bit. Where do you find the right people to do this? Sources for new connections are places like conferences. Even though sometimes reaching out to people that you don't know at conferences can be awkward Conferences like the How conference or the A IGA conferences, Fuse, South by Southwest, 99 U, or VidCon, or Adobe Max is a big one.
Or Social Media Marketing world. Adobe Max can be a great one, 'cause it's full of creative professionals and it's a great way to make connections across disciplines. Social media groups like Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, Reddit, Threads. Threads is exploding right now.
And also professional groups, BNI, [00:19:00] DMI,. AIGA chapters Art Director clubs. These are places where you can meet and develop relationships with people who could become meaningful connections, prospective strategic partners.
And here's the secret I want to tell you about: Mastermind groups.
This is how I catapulted myself from coming out of big corporate, big agency work. When I was totally lost, I burned out. I didn't know anything, didn't know how to start my own business. Knew nothing about personal branding or social media or content marketing or any of that stuff, or speaking or lead magnets or email list building.
When I came out of my corporate agency life a decade ago, I didn't know any of this stuff. Any of it. Look, I'm telling you, I was a babe in the woods and the thing that unlocked it for me was joining a mastermind group. I joined a paid community, a mastermind group, and I went into that with the [00:20:00] idea of making as many connections as I could and to add value to that group and share what I knew from my decades of experience with this group.
And I had this feeling like people in that group were gonna do the same for me. And it absolutely catapulted the speed and trajectory of my learning into building my business to what it is today. But when it comes down to it, all of those sources doing that sort of thing, networking can be awkward. But like I said, it doesn't have to be.
How do you make networking painless? You join a mastermind community. It's so simple. A lot of people don't even know what masterminds are. I mention them to people when I go to conferences or show up in different communities and I say I run a mastermind group. I'm part of two other peer mastermind groups.
Masterminds have changed my entire business. And they're like, I've never even heard of this. What is this thing?
A mastermind group does the [00:21:00] two things that we've been talking about today, which are, they widen your offer and they widen your network and they do it very quickly. They can literally do it overnight.
A mastermind community is a peer group that offers a combination of networking and support and feedback and training and goal setting and accountability. And it puts you in touch with potential strategic partners that can exponentially, broaden your offer. Exponentially broaden your network.
When you join a mastermind group, you're surrounded by other like-minded, highly driven, highly skilled, in many cases, committed people who are on a similar journey to you. It's a mutually beneficial society. You are there so you can grow and learn and expand your offering and expand your network.
Other people are there doing the same thing, so we're all there for the same [00:22:00] purpose, and so everyone is very open, and everyone is very willing and trusting to give because you want to give and you want to receive. Masterminds offer you that meaningful network and they offer it to you literally overnight. You have to participate, you have to show up, you have to share your expertise, you have to be vulnerable and talk about what your goals are and what you want to achieve. And you also have to be present and it takes a little bit of time, but you're being connected with all of those people who are in the same boat as you and have the same goals as you. When you walk in the door of a mastermind group, it's a new business pipeline. You get resources, you get inspiration from people. One of the things when I joined the mastermind group that I joined 10 years ago was.
I didn't know anything about, like people who made their business speaking at conferences or people who, had paid newsletters or were [00:23:00] making tens of thousands of dollars through paid sponsorships for their podcast or for their YouTube channel. I had no idea any of this stuff exists, much less how to actually take the first step to going about doing it.
That's the sort of inspiration that I got, and I built my newsletter, then my YouTube channel, then my podcast, then my brand strategy course. Then my mastermind groups, which I've run a number of different types of. All of that came from my exposure to people in the mastermind group that I joined, and I continually to be inspired by the people in my mastermind and also in other masterminds that I'm a part of.
You set goals and by putting a stake in the ground, you become accountable to the other people in the group. If you voice your goals, you are much, much more apt to achieve them. If you know that you're being held accountable by the people in the group, you also get trusted, constructive feedback from people that you trust.
This is one of those things I hear a [00:24:00] lot, and I'm just gonna go off a side jog really quickly, and that is that creative professionals can't build anything for themselves. We are great at building creative stuff and products and marketing for our clients, but when it comes down to it, it is really hard for us to write our own social media, to write the, God forbid, the copy on our website, or redesign our websites, or recreate new customer journeys or navigation on our websites.
Because we have no perspective on ourselves, we don't have the kind of distance that you need to be able to make those more objective observations and decisions on what it is that you're doing. Mastermind groups give you that. They give you a trusted audience of creative professionals overnight, like a dozen, agency people who are going to give you a critique of what it is that you're doing, give you suggestions of how to do it better so you can get that sort of perspective.
And you're not paying them as individual agencies, thousands of dollars to help you build your website. You're essentially getting a [00:25:00] tremendous amount of impact on your business for a tiny investment.
Through this your confidence in your own decisions increases. This is one of those things that I hear all the time in my mastermind group that I had no idea about until I really got deeply into them myself. And that is that your decision making confidence goes way up. So all that self questioning, all that second guessing of yourself can go away because you can get true perspective and feedback from people that you trust.
When you're surrounded by people who are on fire for their businesses, they're ambitious. They want to change, they want to grow, they want to get more clients, they wanna make more revenue. When you surround yourself by people who are on fire, you can't help but catch fire too. Because when it comes down to it, you can't make great leaps by yourself. It's very difficult. And as creative [00:26:00] pros, a lot of the times we find it very awkward to do anything in groups, particularly reach out or talk to or be vulnerable with people that we don't know.
So I started this group. It's a mastermind group. It's a membership group, so there is a subscription fee. It's called Bonfire, and it's built around this idea that if you surround yourself with other people on fire, you can't help but catch fire too.
And if you go to philipvandusen.com/Bonfire, you can learn more about it. There's a lot more detail on that page. There's a couple videos from me on that page describing what it's about. There's also a number of testimonial videos from people who are in Bonfire about the effect that it's had on their business.
The thing you have to understand about this is that I ran four different time bound masterminds before Bonfire over a period of two years. They were incredibly successful and I decided to make it a non-time bound thing. So it's an ongoing thing now, and I named it Bonfire's been running for over two years [00:27:00] now, and it is not in beta, right?
It is a proven thing that is delivering results for its members. Here's just a quote from a woman named Joselle she said, "I came in with three clients and in 12 weeks I had 10. One of them even came from someone who was inside the group itself." Really amazing. Here's another quote by a very talented New York designer named Mark.
He said "the industry has changed so much and my career plateaued. And then a lightning bolt hit me when I came across Bonfire and I suddenly realized I had to change things to get different results." I hear that a lot.
Bonfire's, a mastermind group. We meet on Zoom four times a month. Two of those meetings are mastermind sessions, one is an 'office hours' and one is either a 'visiting expert', I bring in experts to present to the group, and we also have inspiration sessions called Pasture. So there are [00:28:00] four Zoom meetings a month. And Bonfire offers you mentorship and group coaching from me. Depending on the level that you enter in on, you can get one-on-one coaching with me.
You get this overnight meaningful network, goal accountability, a trusted peer feedback loop. You make more confident decisions, and you have exposure to the possibility of these strategic partnerships and greater progress in growing your business and getting more clients.
Here's a quote by a guy named Zach:.
" Bonfire helped me build my personal brand online and gave me the kick I needed to start putting myself out there without the fear of failure or judgment. Before I knew it, I'd landed a full-time role teaching designers at the university level" Zach did not come into Bonfire with the goal of teaching designers at the university level.
He was inspired to do that through his exposure to people in Bonfire and suddenly got [00:29:00] the confidence to start to pursue that idea. And it happened for him and turned around for him very quickly, and he was blown away by it.
A woman named Anne said, "After being laid off, I was at a crossroads. After joining Bonfire, within months, I landed an incredible creative director role. If you're a creative pro navigating a career transition, I cannot recommend Bonfire enough."
It transformed her career. And Anne in particular was dealing with developing her portfolio, figuring out how she was gonna represent herself, redesigning her website.
She was really down. To be honest with you, and she was really stuck in terms of how she was going to pivot her career. She had been laid off, she was not expecting it. She was mid to late career and she was stuck. And her experience in Bonfire gave her the feedback and the confidence to make those [00:30:00] decisions that she needed to make and moved her to a very new place and a better place very quickly.
So Bonfire gives you group coaching with me. We record everything. They're all posted on our community online, which is firewalled. Only members can access it. It's not visible to the public.
And you can look at any of the sessions if you missed one or you just want to go back and review some of the feedback that you got. There's a private online community. There's a massive resource library of playlists and tools and downloads and templates that you have access to from the day you walk into the group, and then you also get a steep discount, a 50% discount on brand strategy 1 0 1.
Laura, another member of Bonfire said "I was recently promoted to associate art director and Bonfire was a huge part of making that happen. The feedback I got was super helpful and Philip's mentoring gave me the confidence I needed [00:31:00] to tackle some tough decisions." Laura's career skyrocketed from her experience in Bonfire and continues to grow.
Sonya, a dedicated member of Bonfire said, "I had goals of building and communicating my brand, but I was struggling with how to do it. Now I've got more confidence because I can bounce ideas off peers I can trust."
There are a number of people in Bonfire who have been rebuilding their social media platforms, their content platforms, their websites, repositioning themselves and representing themselves and improving their visible business brand and personal brands, and they're being helped through that and given feedback to do that through their relationships and their participation in Bonfire.
Here's a point I want to make to you. You may tell your clients often that they need to invest in creative in what it is that you deliver so their [00:32:00] businesses can grow in the future.
Invest in branding, invest in logo design, invest in content or video or audio editing for a podcast or a better website. You're encouraging them to make that investment in their business so they can grow in the future. But it's shocking to me how few creatives will do this for themselves.
We don't practice what we preach that much. If you look at the stats, most businesses, and this is in aggregate, on average, across enterprise to the smallest of small businesses, most businesses will reinvest 15 to 20% of their revenue back into new business development. Whatever that looks like, whether it's content or whether it's, branding and marketing, or whether it's paid advertising businesses reinvest the money they make back into growing their businesses.
They spend money to make money, we have to practice what we preach. As [00:33:00] creative professionals, we have to spend money to make money. You need to invest time and money into your own business so you can grow in the future. And that leads us to Bonfire ship, not membership. It's a Bonfire.
So there's embers, right? Branding: 'embership. Bonfire 'embership is $97 a month, or $291 a quarter. And generally people pay quarterly because you want to come in, spend a little time there, build some relationships and trust, and you'll begin to see the benefits of being in a Mastermind group very quickly.
Bonfires on a really amazing platform. There's all these different spaces and forums and chats and resources and downloadable asset areas and video replay areas. It's a very robust platform, and when you join, you get access to all of this immediately. There's [00:34:00] hundreds of resources, there's tools, there's templates, there's checklists, there's downloads, there's a number of video playlists.
If you are interested in joining Bonfire, all you have to do is go to: philipvandusen.com/Bonfire, and go to the contact page and shoot me a contact email and say, I'm interested in joining Bonfire and we'll schedule some time on Zoom and we can talk about whether it'd be a good fit for you.
So, this has been really awesome. It's been amazing hanging out with you today. I hope you have a fantastic week. See you again soon.
