How does a professional touring musician go from the recording studio to billing $1.2 million in recruitment? And how do you build a thriving seven-figure practice without ever making a single cold call?
Justin Levinson is the founder of Coming Up Creative, a boutique firm specializing in creative talent for entertainment, gaming, and experiential marketing. Before recruitment, Justin spent a decade touring internationally as a guitarist and pianist, with his music featured on radio, airlines, and in film.
Since launching in 2023, Justin has grown from a solo recruiter billing $350K to leading a seven-person global team. He’s built a business fueled by personality-driven outreach, deep-dive sales conversations, and a brand that feels like part of the creative industry, not an outside vendor chasing fees.
In this episode, you’ll hear how Justin uses multi-channel campaigns that don’t sound like campaigns, why he records every conversation to extract intelligence most recruiters miss, and how diversifying beyond theatrical marketing saved his business during the Hollywood strikes. If you’ve ever wondered whether you really need cold calling to succeed or how to make automation feel human, this is your blueprint.
Episode Outline and Highlights
- [3:25] How Justin went from artist management to recruitment after seeing $60-80K checks rolling in
- [6:49] Why Justin never planned to own an agency (he hated billing that much)
- [9:18] The middle-of-the-night launch: building Coming Up Creative in two hours with friends and lawyers
- [12:26] Why branding and design matter more in creative industries than anywhere else
- [14:34] First year solo: $350K without poaching a single client from his previous firm
- [16:38] The seven-person global team: three VAs, three contract recruiters, operating 24/7 across time zones
- [20:00] Delegation breakthrough: discovering someone can do your billing better than you
- [22:26] The tech stack that works: Source Whale, Metaview, Calendly, Recruiter Flow, and why he’s tried everything
- [25:42] The candidate funnel: how market mapping eliminates the need to search LinkedIn
- [32:02] Five client outreach campaigns: hiring signals, job changes, backfills, MPC, and podcast guests
- [36:27] Why Justin’s calendar stays full without cold calling, and how his copy makes the difference
- [37:02] The anti-campaign approach: writing sequences that don’t sound like sequences
- [43:24] How Justin billed $1.2M with just LinkedIn and Google Drive: why the phone is still where money is made
- [46:52] Going three-dimensional on calls: the iceberg conversation strategy most recruiters miss
- [52:42] The podcast advantage: 50+ episodes and multiple guest-to-client conversions
- [54:34] Creating content that positions you as an industry insider, not an outside vendor
- [57:23] The diversification lesson: why theatrical marketing wasn’t enough during strikes and shutdowns
The Anti-Campaign Approach: Writing Outreach That Doesn’t Sound Like Outreach
Most recruiters fail at automation because their messages scream “campaign.” Justin cracked the code by making every message sound exactly like him.
“I don’t spend every Monday being like, hey, are you hiring? We can put clients in a campaign and say, ‘Hey, doing our morning meeting, just checking in on hiring needs.’ One sentence. They’re not going to think, wow, that sounds automated. They know that’s my shorthand.”
His approach is simple: keep it informal, low-key, and personality-driven. In the creative industry, where he’s pitching to copywriters, generic templates don’t work.
“You can’t BS a BSer. They’ve seen that before.”
Justin’s team uses Source Whale for multi-channel sequences, but every message gets customized. If a contact doesn’t respond to Justin, they’ll try a different team member, sometimes even his wife’s LinkedIn profile.
“I’d use my wife’s computer, reach out to people on her page, and they’d respond. I’m like, why aren’t they responding to me?”
The result? Justin’s calendar stays full of qualified conversations without a single cold call.
Three-Dimensional Conversations: The Iceberg Strategy Most Recruiters Miss
Justin didn’t bill $1.2 million in his final agency year because of fancy tools. He did it with just LinkedIn and Google Drive. His edge? Going three-dimensional on every call.
“A lot of recruiters are just like, ‘Oh, you’re not qualified, pass. Oh, you’re a fit, I’m going to submit.’ But all the money in this business is made on everything that’s not that. The big money is the higher-level stuff.”
On candidate calls, Justin isn’t just qualifying for the role. He’s gathering intelligence:
How did they get hired?
What’s happening internally?
Who else are they talking to?
Where do they want to go?
“I just had a call the other day. I picked up four jobs. I found out all the dirt with an entire company. You can turn something into something. That’s high-level sales.”
Justin makes this work by establishing credibility fast. He knows the industry, the players, and the companies. He focuses on helping candidates first, which builds trust. Once trust is there, the conversation opens up, and that’s where opportunities live.
Every call gets recorded with Metaview and transcribed. That data enriches his database and generates content ideas.
“You’re collecting hundreds of conversations a week. That’s creating all the content for you.”
Positioning as an Industry Insider, Not a Recruiting Vendor
Justin doesn’t want Coming Up Creative to feel like a recruiting agency serving the creative industry. He wants it to be part of the creative industry itself.
“I’m trying to not put out AI-driven content like ‘three recruiter tips.’ We want to be part of the industry. I will place an editor who makes a movie trailer, and that finishes and goes to theaters. That trailer might not have happened, or at least not in the way it did, if I hadn’t put that person in that place on that day.”
His content strategy reflects this: celebrating industry wins, sharing events like the Golden Trailer Awards and Clio Awards, and running a podcast featuring creative leaders. The podcast has converted multiple guests into clients while positioning Justin as an expert.
“It gets facetime with very senior-level people you would never get any other way. It offers value first. I’m not coming in begging for work.”
In a space where clients create ads for the biggest brands in the world, branding matters. Coming Up Creative doesn’t look or sound like a typical recruiting firm. The name, the rainbow colors, and the vibe all reflect the inclusive, creative industry they serve. And in a world where everyone judges design and copy, that authenticity is everything.
