No clients? No problem!

Join me as I share invaluable insights and strategies for navigating those challenging times when clients seem to be nowhere in sight. In this episode, I’ll guide you through practical steps to not just survive but thrive during these downtimes. You’ll learn how to revamp your portfolio to attract new clients, harness the power of social media to stay visible, and get creative with client acquisition strategies. Additionally, I’ll share tips on optimizing your business processes for long-term success. By the end of this episode, you’ll be equipped with the tools and mindset to conquer slow seasons with confidence and emerge stronger than ever before.

 

Listen to the episode here:

Spotify  –  Apple Podcasts  –  Amazon Music

 

You will learn:

• How to stay motivated and keep going when you don’t have design clients.
• Techniques to refresh and strengthen your design portfolio.
• Strategies for creating engaging content on social media platforms to maintain visibility.
• Creative approaches to finding and acquiring new clients.
• Tips for optimizing your business processes to ensure long-term growth and success.

 

Aventive Academy’s Resources:

Free Client Portal for Designers: https://aventiveacademy.com/client-portal/

$12k Client Attraction Masterclass: https://aventiveacademy.com/attract-clients-workshop/

The Wealthy Client Blueprint: ⁠https://aventiveacademy.com/wealthy-client/

12-Week Business Program for Designers: https://aventiveacademy.com/profit

The Creative CEO Accelerator: https://aventiveacademy.com/accelerator

 

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TRANSCRIPT:

0:00
We all have slow seasons. You’re not alone, but downtime is actually great and amazing to improve your business operations, to sit down and create a business plan and how you will get clients in the future, work on your social media, your SEO, and so on.

0:18
It really is amazing. But the first thing that I want you to know is that you’re not alone. If you ask any entrepreneur in the world, we all have ups and downs, and that is totally normal. So I just want to embrace that and let you know that you’re not alone.

0:36
Again, you’re not alone. We all have slow seasons and busy seasons, and that is just normal. The only thing you want to pay attention to is having a consistent stream of clients, which is possible.

0:53
However, at some point you might have four clients a month, and maybe you’ll have 15 clients a month. But I don’t want to get to the point where you completely don’t have clients.

1:10
Welcome to the Profitable Graphic Designer Podcast, brought to you by Aventive Academy. I’m your host, Kady Sandel. I’m a brand strategist, designer, creative director, and the CEO of a successful six-figure design agency based in Austin, TX, serving clients worldwide. After mastering the art of building a profitable and sustainable design business, I decided to help you achieve the same success.

1:49
I teach brand, graphic, and web design business owners how to attract more clients, increase their pricing, and develop design businesses that provide the financial freedom and time flexibility you’ve always dreamt of. We offer online programs, courses, and templates that you can use along with our Coaching Accelerator and Mastermind high-touch experiences for creatives. You can learn more about starting and growing your design business at aventiveacademy.com, but for now, grab a cup of coffee and join me in today’s podcast episode.

2:37
I am sure that you’re not excited to listen to this episode because if you’re listening to this episode, it means you don’t have enough clients or you don’t have enough good clients. You’re not able to grow your business. You’re not making enough money and all that. And I can totally relate to that because that’s where I was as well. Not just when I was first starting my business, but when you are a freelancer or even when you are already running a design agency and maybe have employees and contractors, no matter where you are in your business, you will have slow seasons.

3:03
You will have months where you don’t know what to do with leads. You’re getting so many clients, everything is growing. You’re charging a ton of money, everything’s doing well. But then you will get to the point where you might even start panicking. Like, I’m not getting enough clients, I don’t have enough leads, nobody’s reaching out. What is it? Do I need to post more content on social media? Do I need to focus on SEO? Do I need to go to networking events? So let’s figure out how we can get a consistent stream of leads or clients and how we can really grow your design business in a sustainable and simple way where you don’t have those ups and downs.

3:52
And I just want to mention that again you will have those ups and downs even if you were in business for 5, 10, 15, 20 years or sometimes you will even just be completely flat. And what I mean by that is maybe you will be getting four leads every single month for years and you will ask yourself why am I not growing? How can I get to the next level, how can I get six leads, how can I get 10, 20, and so on. But what I want to say, and before we dive into the strategies, is that maintaining motivation during a slow season is very, very important.

4:33
You know it’s easy to feel down, to feel maybe even depressed. Many creatives start to feel depressed and sad and very demotivated when they’re in that client drought and when they just don’t know what’s going to happen next. But you have to keep the faith. And I know it’s easier said than done, but slow periods are part of running a design business or running any business really. If you talk to any entrepreneur in the world, they will tell you the same thing. They will tell you that you have to go over all those humps in order to get to where you want to be. You have to go over the low seasons in order to get to your high seasons.

5:46
But what’s very important is not to get into that mode where you’re stressed and then you act from the perspective of “I don’t have clients, I don’t know what to do,” and then you start doing everything and anything without seeing results. And then you’re constantly drowning in doing versus thinking. What I mean by that is if you find yourself all over the place, like you’re blogging, you’re posting on social media, you go to networking events, you connect with a ton of people on LinkedIn and nothing’s changing, it’s time to step back and figure out your overall business strategy and lead generation strategy in order to start getting clients.

6:22
But again, before we go into the strategy, I just really want to tell you that you have to keep going. And again, it’s easier said than done, but I’ve been there so many times I can’t even count, even just a few years ago, I was not getting enough clients or I was not getting enough good clients. You know, it goes up and down. It’s just important to really plant the seeds so that you don’t completely dry out your leads. And what I mean by that is you need to consistently connect with people on LinkedIn or you need to consistently post on Instagram, or you have to consistently go to networking events. Something has to be consistent if you want to get consistent leads.

7:09
But let’s talk about what you can do when you’re slow and when there are no clients, because this episode is not about lead generation, but it’s more about the things you can do to improve your business so that you can increase or start increasing lead generation.

7:33
The first thing that I want you to do, besides keeping the faith, is to improve your portfolio. When was the last time you gave yourself a proper refresh? When was the last time you really went to your website and to your portfolio? I know that many designers keep improving and changing and making tiny tweaks here and there. But when was the last time you really sat down, looked into your website, and looked into those six portfolio pieces that you have on your website and thought, “Oh my God, these look amazing. I love them. That’s it. That’s what my ideal clients are looking for.”

8:14
When was the last time you made those final changes on your portfolio? Now look into who your ideal clients are, who you want to work with in the future. Not the clients you’re getting now or you were getting up to this point, but who you want to work with in a year or two or maybe five years. Then figure out what projects best showcase your skills and that two or five-year vision from now and update those pieces. Make sure your portfolio speaks to that target audience. Don’t forget to include descriptions because it’s not just about the visuals, it’s about the overall experience your potential clients have. When they land on your website or your portfolio piece, your case study, they want to see everything from start to end. How did you even come up with those portfolio pieces? How did you come up with those designs? What was the process like when working with that client you’re showcasing? What was the strategy behind that logo or website or whatever you offer as a brand, graphic, or web designer? Don’t forget to include descriptions. When things are slow, improve your portfolio.

10:04
The next thing you can do is really think about content creation for social media. Now that you don’t have clients, you have time to actually create a strategy that is going to bring in potential clients. Use this downtime to create killer content. Share behind the scenes of your process, offer design tips and tricks, create educational content. Be very consistent and create engaging content. Figure out who your ideal clients are and where they hang out so that you can use that social media platform. I don’t want you to be on all the social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest and YouTube and LinkedIn and Threads. Nail down one strategy for one social media platform and then you can repurpose. Focus on your ideal client and where they hang out. Use this downtime to figure out what your social media platforms need to be doing.

11:15
When things are slow, it’s time to get creative. You have so much time, right? Because if you don’t have clients, you have time now. You have to use that time to get clients. Reach out to all your past clients with a friendly check-in. Don’t try to sell or offer anything. Just be like, “Hey, I want to check in. How are things going? How has everything been?” When they respond, you can say, “By the way, if you know anyone who can use my services or if you need anything, please let me know.” Try to get those referrals.

12:05
Before we continue with this podcast episode, I just want to quickly remind you that if you’re a design business owner whose dream is to have a successful and profitable career so you can enjoy the freedom and flexibility that comes with it, then I have something for you. The Profitable Designer program is my signature 12-week system that will help you improve your business, sign amazing high-paying clients, and truly achieve your financial and lifestyle goals. Visit aventiveacademy.com/profit to check if you can join us now or if we are currently not accepting more designers into the program. In that case, you will be able to join the waitlist and be the first to know when we open the doors again.

12:27
Now we’ll go back to the episode in a second, but I just want to add that designers who completed the program were able to sign five-figure design clients, 10 times their pricing, reach six figures and beyond, make $20,000 per month while working only a few hours a week, and more. Here is what Julia said: “It really has everything you could ever ask for to build a six-figure business that will allow you to have financial freedom.” And that’s why I personally did it. I wanted that flexibility. So if you want to be my next success story and achieve results like these, visit aventiveacademy.com/profit.

13:15
Now let’s go back to the episode. You can also partner with complementary businesses for mutually beneficial collaborations. This is when you would go to LinkedIn. I always suggest LinkedIn. Connect with people who offer different services to the same target audience. Those would be writers, web developers, content creators, social media managers, all these people who are not designers but have the same target audience. They also work with small to medium-sized businesses or whatever your target is. Let’s say your target is someone in the beauty industry, someone who is opening a spa. Who else do they need besides you? They need someone who’s going to help them with their SEO. They need someone who’s going to work on their web design if you’re a brand designer and you don’t do websites. You would connect with web designers. They will need someone who is a commercial realtor if they’re looking for a space and things like that. Connect with all these people as your referral partners. This isn’t a strategy that’s going to work overnight where people are going to send you clients tomorrow, but it’s very strategic and a very easy way of getting clients. It’s my favorite. It’s amazing. Connect with 5 to 10, even 20 people a day on LinkedIn now that you have time. Start building or continue building that relationship and you will start getting clients. Don’t forget the power of networking, either online or offline. There are many amazing networking events that you can go to, either to connect with your target audience or to connect with your referral partners. Networking events are another amazing way of getting clients.

15:21
Finally, I want to talk about business optimization. Use this downtime to assess your processes and workflows, maybe create client portals, improve your proposals, go through your contracts and see if there is something you want to add or remove, and things like that. Improve your business operations. The last time we had a slow period, I improved our client portal. This is where we add our clients once they become clients so that they can follow the process. This is where they will find all the presentations, invoices, contracts, things like that. The last time we had a slow season, I went in and made some changes because I wanted to improve that. I trusted that we were going to get clients pretty quickly, so this was my focus on improving those things. Also making some changes, small, tiny changes to our proposals, making them more simple. I was also making some changes on the website content itself. Be very creative when it comes to improving your business. There are many different ways you can improve your business. There are many different things you can do in your business. Figure out what you really want to put to the next level and what needs your attention at the moment.

17:09
Don’t freak out that you don’t have clients. You can always split your time. Let’s say you have 20 hours a week to work on something in your business. You can put 10 hours into looking for clients or doing social media or connecting with people, client acquisition, and then 10 hours on improving your documents, your systems, your workflows, your emails, whatever it is. I know you will start to see traction, and if you need any help, you can go to Aventive Academy. I’m going to leave the link below, but aventiveacademy.com. We have a couple of different programs, either that’s figuring out your pricing or niching down. We also have the Profitable Designer program, which is my 12-week signature business program that will help you improve all of these aspects we just talked about and it will help you get more clients and consistent leads. If you also have some clients but you want to increase your prices and you want to start getting wealthy or high-paying clients, then we have the Wealthy Client Blueprint. I’m going to leave the link below, but you can find it all on aventiveacademy.com.

18:31
Overall, stay proactive, stay inspired, and keep designing your way to success. I know you will be able to grow your business. I know you will. I was able to, and many of my students, also brand, graphic, and web designers, were able to grow their businesses as well. I know you will get there too. You need to focus on improving your portfolio, figuring out your social media presence, getting creative with client acquisition, and optimizing your business practices. If your business is set up for success, you will see it succeed. You will see that your previous clients will keep coming back to you or will keep sending referrals. I know that your business will grow, and I can’t wait to see you get there. Don’t freak out if you don’t have clients at the moment. Clients will come, but these are just some ideas of what you can do when your season is slow.

19:31
OK, that’s it. I hope that this episode was helpful and I encourage you to subscribe because we are releasing one episode a week, one educational episode a week, and I know you will benefit a lot from this podcast. See you next time.

19:48
Thanks for tuning in to the Profitable Graphic Designer Podcast, but wait, before you go, if you enjoyed this podcast episode and want the chance to access one of our online courses for free, simply leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Each month, one lucky reviewer gets to pick a course as a token of our appreciation. And here’s a reminder, we are here to help you build the design business of your dreams. Whether it’s creating compelling proposals, attracting $10K clients, pricing your design services, improving your portfolio, reaching six figures and beyond, or helping you stand out, we’ve got you covered. I invite you to join over 1,000 designers in my signature 12-week program, The Profitable Designer. Visit aventiveacademy.com/profit and also don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. That way, you’ll be the first to know when each new episode drops so you never miss out on future content. Until next time, be sure to connect with us on Instagram at @aventiveacademy, where we share valuable business tips, stories, and resources for brand, graphic, and web design business owners. Bye for now, your host, Kady Sandel.