Pull a stalled boutique UI/UX studio out of stagnation. Generate qualified leads without paid media, without a sales team, without a brand overhaul. Use what the founder already had — relationships, taste, and a strong portfolio — and turn it into a repeatable motion.
Positioning and tagline rebuild. LinkedIn presence overhaul for the founder. Organic outreach playbook through second-degree connections. Network activation strategy. Founder coaching to convert messages into conversations.
MQLs up 350%. Founder back in the room with prospects after years of inertia. The studio re-entered active pipeline and the motion is repeatable without me.
The challenge
A boutique UI/UX design studio with a strong portfolio, a respected founder, and zero new leads. The studio had been running for years on referrals and inertia — and inertia was running out. There was no outbound motion, no LinkedIn presence beyond a profile and the occasional repost, and a founder who knew the studio needed to grow but had stopped believing it actually could.
The brief I was given wasn't "build us a marketing function." It was: get me unstuck.
What I did
I refused to start with a brand overhaul or a new website. The studio already had taste — what it didn't have was a motion. Everything we did was built to be runnable by the founder herself within thirty minutes a day, because that was the realistic budget of attention available.
Positioning and language
- Rewrote the studio's positioning — one sentence that named the work, the buyer, and the outcome — so the founder could say it in any room without sounding rehearsed
- Built three taglines for different contexts (LinkedIn bio, intro email, partnership pitch) all rolling up to the same positioning
- Killed the "we do everything" language that had crept into the studio's self-description over the years
LinkedIn presence rebuild
- Rebuilt the founder's LinkedIn profile around the new positioning — banner, headline, about, featured work
- Built a posting cadence the founder would actually maintain (twice a week, content drawn from real client work, no "hot take" theatre)
- Cleaned up the studio's company page so it stopped contradicting the founder's personal brand
Stuck in inertia and watching the pipeline dry up? Book your free 30-min slot →
Network-first outreach
- Activated the founder's second-degree network through warm introductions, not cold messages
- Built a simple message framework the founder used to convert "we should catch up" into "here's a real conversation about a real project"
- Coached the founder through the first month of conversations — what to say, when to push, when to walk away
The outcome
MQLs lifted 350% off a near-zero baseline. The founder went from stagnation to running an active pipeline within the engagement window. Most importantly, the motion is hers — she runs it without me. The studio is back in the room.
You were exactly the air I needed. Thank you for pulling me out of the static state I've been in for the past few years, and making me move and start doing.
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