Five ways to find clients (a series for people who hate hustling)
The desert after delivery, the second job nobody calls a job, and what we're doing about it.
A project is coming to an end. You’re looking forward to sending the final invoice, wrapping things up, the small relief of it. And underneath that relief, almost immediately, a second feeling shows up. The one that doesn’t let you properly enjoy the quieter time.
The question.
The one nobody warned you about, or warned you it would be this persistent, when you left the job.
Where’s the next one coming from?
You open LinkedIn. You scroll past three posts about AI replacing your work. Two from people who seem to be doing brilliantly, somehow, effortlessly. Two with frameworks and advice. One about a fellowship that closed yesterday. You think about posting something. You don’t. You make tea instead.
If this is familiar, you’re in good company. I hear some version of this from almost everyone I work with.
“When I’m in the work, I’m 100% in. Then I come out and I’m staring at a desert.”
It’s so hard to carve out the space for any of this when you’re heads down trying to deliver good work. And anyway, what’s the point of reaching out when you don’t even have availability? You don’t want to start a conversation you’ll have to say no to.
So you wait. Until later. Until things settle.
Until you reach the moment you wish you’d been quietly nurturing those relationships all along, because now you actually need something. And reaching out when you need something gives off that bootycall energy. Needy. Off. Visible in a way you didn’t want to be visible.
Posting feels worse. If your business were really thriving, would you be posting? What would people think?
So you don’t. And the desert gets a little wider.
The second job nobody calls a job
I’m Lilli. I run a small collective called IMMA, for solopreneurs doing service-based work in mission-driven sectors. Consultants, advisors, coaches, expert practitioners. The kind of work that’s earned through relationships, not cold outreach.
Most of the people I know in this ecosystem are excellent at the work itself. Delivery isn’t the hard part. The hard part is the second job nobody calls a job. Reaching out. Following up. Staying top of mind. Tending a pipeline that goes quiet the moment we step back into delivery.
And it’s getting harder, not easier.
AI is changing how people search and how outreach lands. Funding cycles are tighter. Attention is more crowded. The playbooks that worked even just a year ago feel slightly off now.
The problem: we're competing when we shouldn't be
Inside IMMA Collective, members serve similar clients across Europe, the UK and the US. And right now, every one of us is reaching out separately. One person writes “I can help with your strategy.” Another writes “I can help with operations.”
But maybe right now the organisation doesn’t need any of that. They might need someone to plan a team day. Or they might have a bigger problem a single freelancer can’t solve alone.
Lots of effort. Fragmented. Which makes it feel much harder.
So for the past few months, with a small pilot of five businesses, we’ve been building something different. Five systems for finding clients. The core idea: finding work together rather than have each person hustling alone.
Why five ways and not one
Because one would be fragile. In a time when everything is reshuffling, putting all your eggs in one basket is risky. Running five experiments at once lets us learn much faster what’s working in 2026, and what isn’t. And longer-term, a business shouldn’t depend on a single way of finding work anyway. When one channel goes quiet, the others keep working.
What is coming over the next five weeks
I’ll walk you through each one, so you can get some inspiration and tips:
Referrals. The channel most of us already rely on, and most of us never intentionally set up to make it easy for someone to refer us.
Collecting opportunities. How to stop scrolling alone at 11pm. Where the opportunities already are, and how to tap into them.
Peer promotion. Getting your work seen without relying on self-promotion. Because it lands very differently when someone else says you’re great than when you say “look how great I am.”
Outreach. What we’ve actually learned reaching out to 1,500 ideal clients. What’s working in 2026. What isn’t.
The fifth one. Still being built. The one I’m most excited about.
Each newsletter will leave you with something you can use this week, whether or not you’re ever in IMMA. Some weeks that’s a worksheet. Some weeks a small action you can take. By the end of the series you’ll have a clearer view of five ways to bring in clients, and a few of them already started.
You’ll also get the honest version. What’s working, what isn’t, what we see changing in the market right now, where we’re still figuring it out.
It isn’t you. It’s the moment.
If finding clients has felt heavier than it should this year, you’re not imagining it. Every week I get emails from people who used to have work coming their way without much effort, and who suddenly find themselves wondering how they’re going to bring money in over the next month. People who are very good at what they do.
It isn’t you. It’s the moment.
Let’s start next week with the one most people make harder than it needs to be. Referrals.
Something concrete to get clients
Before that, one thing worth flagging. Next week we’re running a free live workshop: How to Get Clients on LinkedIn — Without Posting or Cold Outreach. There’s a small gift for everyone who joins live. If finding clients is on your mind right now, this is the most concrete thing I can offer you this month. You can sign up here.
A small question to sit with until then:
How easy is it for others to refer you or open doors for you?
That question is where the next newsletter begins.
With you in this, Lilli
P.S. If a friend of yours is currently looking for clients, forward this. The best version of this conversation is the one more of us are in.